“He is at least a speaker of German,” Lotty said unexpectedly. “When he first arrived, I wondered if any of his story was true—you know, on the tape he claimed to have come here as a small child, speaking German. So I asked him in German if he was brought up on the myth of the Ulrichs as wolflike warriors. He clearly understood me.”
I tried to remember the sequence of remarks in the hall but I couldn’t quite get everything straight. “That’s when he said he wouldn’t speak the language of his slavery, isn’t it?” Another yawn engulfed me. “No more tonight. Carl, Michael, the concert today was brilliant. I hope the rest of the tour goes as well—that this disturbance in the field doesn’t affect your music. Are you going on with them?” I added to Agnes.
She shook her head. “The tour goes on for four more weeks. Calia and I will stay with Max another five days, then return directly to England. She should be in kindergarten right now, but we wanted her to have this time with her Opa.”
“By which time I will also know the story of Ninshubur the faithful hound by heart.” Max smiled, although his eyes remained grave.
Morrell took me by the hand. We stumbled out to his car together while Don trailed behind us, getting in a few lungfuls of nicotine. An Evanston patrol car was inspecting Morrell’s car stickers: the town makes money by having capricious parking regulations. Morrell was outside his own parking zone, but we got into the car before the man actually wrote a ticket.
I slumped against the front seat. “I’ve never been around so much emotion for so many hours.”
“Exhausting,” Morrell agreed. “I don’t think this man Paul is a fraud, do you?”
“Not in the sense that he’s deliberately trying to con us,” I murmured, my eyes shut. “He sincerely believes what he’s saying, but he’s alarming; he believes a new thing at the drop of a hat.”
“It’s a hell of a story, one way or another,” Don said. “I wonder if I should go to England to check up on the Radbuka family.”
“That gets you kind of far from your book with Rhea Wiell,” I said. “And as Morrell advised me yesterday, is it really necessary to go sleuthing after Lotty’s past?”
“Only insofar as it seems to have invaded the present,” Don answered. “I thought she was lying, didn’t you? About it being someone at the Royal Free, I mean.”
“I thought she was making it clear it was her business, not ours,” I said sharply, as Morrell pulled into the alley behind his building.
“That history between Lotty and Carl.” I shivered as I followed Morrell down the hall to the bedroom. “Lotty’s pain, Carl’s, too, but Lotty feeling so alone she couldn’t tell her lover she was dying. I can’t bear it.”
“Tomorrow’s my last day here,” Morrell complained. “I have to pack, and I have to spend the day again with State Department officials. Instead of with you, my darling, as I would prefer. I could have done with less trauma tonight and more sleep.”
I flung my clothes onto a chair, but Morrell hung his suit tidily in the closet. He did at least leave his weekend bag to unpack in the morning.
“You’re a little like Lotty, Vic.” Morrell held me in the dark. “If something goes amiss with you, don’t creep away to a cottage under a fake name to lick your wounds alone.”
They were a comfort, those words, with his departure so close, with the turbulence of the last few hours still shaking me. They spread around me in the dark, those words, calming me into sleep.
Lotty Herschel’s Story:
V-E Day
I took Hugo to Piccadilly Circus for the V-E Day celebrations. Masses of people, fireworks, a speech by the king broadcast over loudspeakers—the crowd was euphoric. I shared some of the feeling—although for me complete euphoria was impossible. It wasn’t just because of the newsreels of Belsen and other camps that had sickened the English that spring: stories of death had been floating in from Europe with the immigrant community for some time. Even Minna had been furious over some of the MPs’ callous response to the men who had escaped from Auschwitz when it was first being built.