You finally have your way with it all, Fr?ulein Communist, Marianne imagined Albrecht saying at the sight of the shredded Communion dress. It was their little joke. She had liked to proclaim fancy clothing and fine table settings bourgeois banalities—distractions from the real fineries of human life: music and poetry, theater and art . . .
Which was itself a foolish, bourgeois statement. The war had made this clear. Music, poetry, and art were luxuries, too. Everything was a distraction from the basic struggle between life and death.
What Albrecht had not understood, though, when he packed their trunk, was that the culture that had given birth to these precious objects and endowed them with value would be so thoroughly self-immolated that its assignations were no longer valid. What was the point of a Chinese silk pinafore sewn by Weisslau’s finest tailor when you didn’t even have a pair of shoes? Or a Meissen china tea service, transported without so much as one chipped plate, when there was no tea, no bread, no table to eat at? He had anticipated disaster but not lived to see its depths.
“Mama!” The washroom door flew open and Katarina appeared. “The American leader is here.”
“The American leader” was how the children referred to Lieutenant Peterman, the man in charge of rebuilding Ehrenheim and its surrounding area. He had been kind to the von Lingenfelses since their arrival, and he treated Marianne with a certain nervous respect based on his belief that she was descended from royalty (she was not) and that her husband had been a friend of the American general Patton (a vast exaggeration, as Albrecht had never even met the man). Marianne had not planted either of these ideas, but she didn’t go out of her way to correct them. Peterman was a useful ally. She had enlisted his help in her search for fellow widows of resisters, the women and children she had sworn so passionately to protect at the countess’s long-ago harvest party. The commander of wives and children, Connie had called her. The words had seemed demeaning to her at the time—an exclusion from the real business of conspiring, a reminder that she was, in the end, a woman, and therefore relegated to the work of picking up the pieces. But in the years since, she had come to understand his words differently: she was the last man standing, the decoy left holding the key.
Though what she was supposed to do with it remained opaque.
At the very least she could honor her promise and do her best to look out for the wives of the men present in the room that night.
“Frau von Lingenfels,” Peterman barked in his jocular way. On his lips von Lingenfels always sounded comical to her ears, the g hard and the syllables flat.
“Lieutenant,” Marianne replied.
Behind Peterman, she noticed another man—tall, thin, and wearing a ragged Wehrmacht uniform with the insignias removed. He stared down at his boots. A German prisoner of war. There were thousands of these in the British and American internment camps. “Have you found one of my fraus?” Marianne asked Peterman lightly. It was the same joke he had made when she gave him her list of names. So look for any of these names with Frau in front? he’d asked.
“I’m afraid not,” Peterman said. A shadow swept over his face. Clearly he had not given the list a thought. “But I’ve brought you someone to help out around the castle.”
Marianne looked from Peterman to the other man, who met her eyes for an instant. His own were a pale, almost transparent shade of blue, and he had a broad, unexpectedly handsome face. “Herr Muller is one of the detainees from our camp. And I figure you could probably use an extra set of hands around here. Muller is handy. Worked on a farm before the war, right?” he asked, turning to the man. “Bauernhof?”
The man looked from Peterman to Marianne questioningly.
He was not a farmer, Marianne understood.
“That’s all right.” She frowned. Marianne did not like the idea of relying on an ex-Nazi prisoner of the Americans for help. God knows what sort of person he was, what sort of soldier he had been. And on top of this, he was her countryman. “We don’t need any help.”
“I beg your pardon, Frau von Lingenfels, but—” Peterman stepped back and surveyed the castle edifice. “You have broken windows up there and missing slates. And”—he looked at her—“winter is coming. You’ll need wood.”
Peterman turned to the man again and pantomimed an ax. “You can chop wood—Holz. Right?”
The man nodded in assent.
“So?” Peterman asked, squinting at Marianne. “Will that suit? I’d hate to have you freeze up here, especially with so many trees around.”
Marianne sighed. “You make it hard to say no.”
“All right,” Peterman said. “Next Thursday then. You have an ax?”
Dinner that night was their usual nearly unpalatable meal of soup. Marianne had never learned to cook. As a girl, she had been spoiled—the bright and favorite daughter of a wealthy widower who believed in women’s education over domesticity. She had read Goethe and Schopenhauer and Schiller, rather than cookbooks.
“We are going to have a slave here? In our house? Once a week?” Elisabeth demanded.
“Oh, stop it. Certainly not a slave,” Marianne snapped. “Why would you say such a thing?”
“Well, he is.” Elisabeth harrumphed. “That’s what prisoners of war are. I heard Herr Koffel say so. Slave labor. Against international regulations. How is that different from what we did when we were in charge?”
“‘We’?” Marianne echoed, appalled. “We were never Nazis. Don’t forget that.”
Elisabeth shrugged. “Still. He won’t be getting paid for his work.”
“Right now, if you hadn’t noticed,” Marianne said, “no one is getting paid for their work. And certainly coming here to cut down trees once a week will be a pleasant relief from the internment camp, which seems to be an impossible place.” There were rumors of men dying in such installations, barren fields with no shelter and no shade from the sun, of men sleeping in holes they dug out. Though Marianne did not trust most rumors the Ehrenheimers circulated.
She turned to her son. “Fritz, sit like a man and stop fidgeting.”
“Did he kill many people in the war?” Katarina asked in a hushed voice. “Is that why he is a prisoner?”
Marianne looked at this daughter: dark haired, plain faced, and thoughtful. Always slow and deliberate in her reactions. So much like Albrecht. “I don’t know, love.” She sighed. “Lots of people are prisoners. Even boys your own age who don’t know one end of a rifle from the other. I don’t know what Herr Muller did.”
“Something bad anyway,” Elisabeth grumbled.
“Oh, Elisabeth, really,” Marianne snapped. “I didn’t ask for his help. But now we have it. He will cut wood to help us get through the winter, and for that you should be thankful.”
In the silence that followed, she mulled over her own words. Is that how it works? she could hear Albrecht asking. Personal gain trumps moral decision?
Yes. No. What was the difference between the man working here at the castle or for the Americans? Either way he was a prisoner. Connie would have supported her view, wouldn’t he?
She doled out the last of the soup.