“You’re very brave, both of you,” she said quietly after a moment. Then she looked from one to the other of the young men. “But where is my father? And what happened in the shop where you ran the old press?”
Bader sighed. He looked around, pulled up a chair, then left the room and came back with two more. He nodded to Schmidt, who moved a small table strewn with papers and photographs so that Bader could set the chairs in a cluster.
“I’m sorry I can’t offer you anything to eat or drink, Fr?ulein Donat. We subsist on very little.” Bader pulled a crumpled cigarette pack from inside his jacket and shook out the last three cigarettes. Maisie declined. Schmidt and Bader each took one before Bader returned the packet to his pocket. Schmidt reached for a box of matches on a shelf, picked out a match, and struck it on the wall. The two men lit their cigarettes and drew deeply on the tobacco, seeming to hold on to the smoke until it filled their lungs, before exhaling.
“I don’t know how much of the story you know, or even if it was the correct and true story, but here’s what happened.” Bader took another draw on the cigarette. “Leon contacted me when he first arrived in Munich. He knows my father—my parents lived in Berlin, but they’ve moved to Geneva, where my father runs a business. It seems Father voiced his worries about me—as far as he is concerned, writing is not real work. Leon said he thought he might have something for me. I could continue with my writing, as the work had an element of leeway. Anyway, when we met, he explained that he was only here for three days, maybe four, and he wanted to discuss a job he thought I might be interested in. I wasn’t making enough to get by, reporting for a newspaper. It was all parochial news, you know the sort of thing; births, marriages, deaths, meetings. But in the meantime, we had founded the Voice of Freedom, and every pfennig I earned was going into spreading the truth about our beloved Herr Hitler, and how our freedom of speech, freedom of movement, even our freedom to think as we wanted, were being crushed under his jackboots. He had shown our people that they should fear insurrection in their midst, that there was terror afoot, and he enacted draconian new laws supposedly to protect his people, but that only put us more securely under his thumb.”
Though she was taken by the young man’s passion, Maisie was anxious to move Bader back to the issue of Leon Donat. “Yes, I know this, but how did my father fit into your plans?” She looked at Anton Schmidt. He had closed his eyes, but was not asleep; he continued to smoke his cigarette.
“The job he offered seemed a good one. I would visit our seats of advanced learning—universities and so on—discuss the company’s library of books, and hopefully the teachers would tell their students to go out and buy them. I also had to find some translators for a number of the books, and would work on building the company’s ability to publish in this country. Leon told me that next time he would send the head of the publishing company to talk to me, to set up all matters concerning translations. I wanted to work for him. As he described the job, I realized it would give me some, well, room to maneuver. I would be working for myself and wouldn’t have to go to a formal office; I would be responsible for my own time, as long as I did the job. I imagined that, in due course, the company would set up an office here, so it seemed to be a good position, with good money. More than anything, though, it would give me enough time to work on the Voice of Freedom with Anton, and the funds to support us.”
“Then what happened?”
“I suppose someone tipped off the Gestapo. They knew where to find the press. Klaus had already volunteered his rooms, using his business as a cover. He wanted the Voice of Freedom to flourish—he said he never wanted to see another war. And he was prepared for the worst.”
“Weren’t you afraid he would crumble if he was captured and interrogated?”
Schmidt’s eyes were open now. “No. The poor man becomes mute under any kind of pressure. Fortunately, this level of angst does not usually happen in the quiet life of a tailor—the job he came back to after the war—but I have seen him pushed too far during an altercation with one of Herr Hitler’s Brownshirts, when he was unable to lift his hand in salute—he’d had problems with his shoulders due to the work he was doing, hunched over the machine. Klaus was shouted at, shoved against a wall, and could not hold his water. He was ridiculed by the men, and others joined in the humiliation.”
“Let me be clear on this.” She looked from one to the other. “Anton, Ulli—this man, Klaus, knew that he could be caught, and you took the chance because you knew his condition—caused by the war—would render him useless to his captors.”
Schmidt shrugged. “And, well, we know all old people start to look alike as the years begin to tell on them. So when the time came, and we knew we were minutes away from being raided, we pushed Leon’s papers into his pocket and made our escape.”
“So my father was with you in the room with the printing press?”