She drew the ragged quilt around her. “Other people have lived in worse places,” she croaked, testing out her voice, which had been silent for so long. It was hoarse and rough, but she continued, finding the sound reassuring. “Right now, there are people in much worse places—in Ravensbrück, and Dachau, and Auschwitz. And I know they’re being brave. People have spent years in the camps, enduring crueler conditions than this.”
She looked over at her book on the table, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. She picked it up and turned to a random page: “If he be Mr. Hyde,” he had thought, she read, “I shall be Mr. Seek.”
There was the odd smell—familiar now—and then Brynn fell back against the bed, her eyes closed.
Chapter Eight
The next morning, Elise had to wear the slippers to her appointment at the Reich Main Security Office. She stood in the snow on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, looking up at the massive gray stone building. Then, pulling her scarf firmly over her shaved head, she strode—head high—up the main steps and into the building’s lobby.
The SS officer at the security desk raised his eyebrows at her appearance. “Papers?” he barked. Elise noted there was no gn?diges Fr?ulein here.
She handed them over to him. “I’m here to see Captain Alexander Fausten.” Her voice echoed in the cavernous marble space. “We have a nine o’clock appointment.”
“Regarding what, exactly?” The man’s tone remained insolent.
“Condition of release,” Elise told him, her voice not betraying the fear she felt.
The man thrust back her papers, scarcely glancing at them. “Up the stairs. To the right.”
In the antechamber to Fausten’s office, a buxom, blond, well-coiffed secretary sat at a large desk, her fingers striking the typewriter keys in sharp, precise movements. “You are Fr?ulein Hess?”
Elise nodded.
The secretary looked her up and down, taking in her scarf-covered bald head, her slippered feet. She pursed her lips. “One moment,” she said, pressing down on the switch hook to clear the line, then pushing a red button under the telephone dial. “Elise Hess is here, sir.” She replaced the receiver and thrust out her chin to indicate the heavy double doors. “Go in.”
Elise knocked, then swung one of the doors open. The room was enormous, with red-and-gold wallpaper, and several small windows covered by heavy damask curtains.
“Come in!” Fausten called, smiling, rising behind his mahogany desk. There were death’s-heads carved into the legs. “Good morning, Fr?ulein Hess!” And then he saluted. “Heil Hitler!”
Elise was taken aback by his energy, his—life force. No one at Ravensbrück was anywhere near as…animated. Fausten didn’t seem to notice her shorn hair. Or her grossly swollen feet in her slippers. “Please,” he requested, gesturing to a leather chair, “sit down.”
She did as he asked.
“Did you sleep well, Fr?ulein Hess?”
“Yes,” Elise managed. She was not about to thank him for his concern.
“I have met your father, Herr Miles Hess, one of my favorite conductors, of Wagner’s Ring Cycle especially. He was here several times on your behalf.”
Elise stared at him blankly.
“Well, your father went to Himmler himself about you. And your release. Your father was quite…persuasive, shall we say.” He held out his hand. “Now, let me see your papers.”
Elise handed them over. She knew what asking Himmler for her life must have cost her father, the anti-Fascist who’d hated Clara’s Nazi cronies, who’d referred to Himmler in the past only as “the little chicken farmer.”
Fausten dropped the papers on the desk in front of him, slipped on a pair of tortoiseshell spectacles, and read them over. As he did, he lit a cigarette and inhaled.
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking up. “Where are my manners? Would you like one?”
Elise would have liked nothing better—it had been months since her last cigarette and she knew it would calm her nerves. But she shook her head. She would take nothing from this man.
He picked a piece of stray tobacco from his lip, then cast his eyes back down to the folder. “Here’s what they say about you. According to the findings of the State Police, Elise Hess endangers, through her conduct, the stability and security of the People and the State, in that she does egregious harm to the interests of the Reich through her subversive activities and collaboration with one of the most critical and harsh opponents of the National Socialist State.”
He pushed the file away, taking a thoughtful drag on his cigarette. “So, you are released from Ravensbrück and are here in Berlin on a nine-day leave to attend the memorial of your mother, opera diva Clara Hess. You are staying in the care of your father, the great conductor Miles Hess. You were arrested for aiding Father Licht in his denunciation of Dr. Brandt and Operation Compassionate Death, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And do you know our Führer has stopped the program?”
He’s not my Führer. “Really.” Elise didn’t know this, but even if Hitler and his minions had deferred to the bishops and public opinion, she wasn’t convinced the Nazis’ murder of so-called defective children wasn’t continuing in the shadows.
“He did.” Fausten smiled. “This must please you.”
Elise was silent. She looked down at her hands, knit gloves stretched tight over the swollen joints.
“Come now, Fr?ulein Hess,” Fausten continued, his tone jocular. “You and I—we are friends, not enemies. Our common enemies are the Communists, the Bolsheviks, and the Jews.”
Elise kept her face impassive but bit the inside of her cheek, hard.
He rose and walked around his desk to sit on the leather chair next to her. “Please see past the uniform, Fr?ulein Hess. I studied law, you know—I didn’t choose this career. It chose me.
“I have to ask you—how were you treated during your arrest, interrogation, and incarceration?”
“As you must know, I signed a nondisclosure agreement.” Elise trained her eyes on the soot-stained window, where a shaft of light had pierced through.
“Really. Tell me.”
Elise met his gaze without flinching. “I’ve been hanged on a cross, knocked to the ground, kicked and beaten, stripped naked, put in solitary confinement, starved, and lunged at by snarling dogs. We—they—we are Stücke. Things.”
Fausten blinked impassively.
“Even fellow prisoners—some of whom have positions as guards, policewomen, and barrack chiefs, can—with impunity—insult and revile us, beat us, trample us underfoot, and yes, if the whim strikes them, kill us.
“As far as anyone in the camp hierarchy is concerned, it’s good riddance—one less ‘vermin’ to deal with.”
Fausten blinked again. “I see.” He rose and went back behind his desk, as if it offered him some fragile protection from the vile things she had just told him. “I read in your file that, before your incarceration, you were a nurse at Charité Hospital in Mitte. I also read you were planning on taking vows to become a nun.”
“Yes.”
“Would you be surprised to know that when I was younger, I myself wanted to be a priest? Yes, I am Catholic as well, Fr?ulein Hess. You see, we really are on the same side.”
I highly doubt it, Elise thought.
“Jesus was a Jew, of course, but he rose up and overcame his disability,” Fausten continued, crushing his cigarette in a heavy bronze ashtray. “The Aryans overcame Judaism. Overcoming it was, indeed, the work of the Lord. And now it is our work, Fr?ulein Hess.”
“I judge not by race, but by character.”
He looked at her sharply. “You must judge by blood.”
“I am a nurse. And I can tell you, this is the truth—everyone’s blood runs red.”
He kept his gaze on her. “The Jews are different.”
“And the Poles?”