Downstairs, Marianne sank into the cool leather of the chair at her husband’s desk with the intention of going through their accounts. She had taken over the bookkeeping when Albrecht’s work in government—and more important, in the resistance—became too demanding. Sitting here, at this great desk, where he had drawn up many plans and documents, Marianne was struck, as if for the first time, by the possibility that their plot might fail.
Outside the window, she caught a flash of black flapping across the lawn, followed by a brown-gray blur, which resolved itself into a cat chasing a crow. As she watched, the cat managed to bring one outstretched paw down on the bird’s wing. The crow half flew, half jumped forward, wing crooked at an alarming angle, and the cat, satisfied with the damage, turned and streaked back into the bushes. The bird staggered and flapped. It began to utter a throaty, guttural sound. Three other crows flew down from the treetops and stood at a respectful distance, watching, heads cocked, as it hobbled before them with its terrible trailing wing spread out as evidence.
Then, as if they’d passed judgment and found their comrade beyond hope, they flew away.
The sight was at once horrifying and addictive; Marianne could not avert her eyes. It was just the two of them now, though the crow did not know she watched. She stood frozen at the window with a hard, knotted feeling in her chest. If the cat returned, she would open the window and shoo it away—or go outside and throw a rock. But it didn’t. It was content to leave the bird to die.
Marianne was not a believer in signs and portents. These were the recourse of the powerless. But all the same, in that instant, she had the clearest sense the coup had failed. In the end it will hang on chance, Albrecht had said when she last saw him. She had nodded but had not understood it in her heart. She had never really allowed herself to consider the opposite of success. She had believed, almost superstitiously, that to admit doubt would invite failure, and to imagine success would bring it about. And her imagination was docile. It conjured what she told it to, no more, no less. She did not imagine crevasses and hidden boulders when the children skied; she did not picture an accident when Albrecht drove too fast. It was part of what made her confident rather than anxious. It was part of what made her an optimist.
She had pushed Albrecht to support the plan and championed taking action almost from the start. Inaction was impossible. Once you knew—really knew—of the women and children being shot in the woods, of the shower rooms constructed for the sole purpose of killing, how could you not act? But now, here was the obvious reason she had repressed: the cost. If the plan failed, all that she cherished would be lost.
Somehow Marianne managed to get through the afternoon, a blind woman fumbling her way down a familiar path. She filled out the ledger with the number of pigs born in the last month and the bushels of wheat harvested. She presided over tea. If the conspirators were intercepted, what would happen? Arrest? Imprisonment? Death? Albrecht’s connection would surely be discovered. How could it not? He had hosted the plan’s primary actors on many occasions and was a known critic of the Nazis. Of course, they had been careful—last month they had burned letters and buried notebooks and plans. Even the guestbook of Weisslau had been “lost.” But there were countless threads to implicate him.
Meanwhile, outside, the crow staggered around in the dark margin of shadow between the woods and the lawn. Its wing dragged, its shiny eye blinked. She did not want the children to see it. Don’t look, don’t look, she told herself, but her eyes were helplessly drawn to where it hunched, damaged wing extended like a cape.
Before supper, Frau Gerstler, the cook, entered the study with a stricken look on her face: “Our Führer has been injured! Our dear Führer! Assassins have made an attempt on his life, but praise God, he has only been hurt.”
Marianne clutched the arms of the chair to steady herself. It was less a shock than a confirmation.
“Our Führer, our Führer,” Frau Gerstler cried. “Thank God he has survived!” Almost as if he were her own son or husband.
“What is it? What happened?” the children clamored around her, drawn by instinct from wherever they had been playing.
“Frau Gerstler has heard rumors,” Marianne said, amazed she was able to speak.
“The Führer?” Fritz persisted. “Did she say he was almost killed?”
“Don’t eavesdrop on adult conversation,” Marianne snapped, drawing courage from the sound of her own voice.
“Frau Gerstler,” Marianne said when the children retreated in confusion, “I would appreciate it if you kept such rumors out of our house.”
“But, madam,” Frau Gerstler said, “it is on the radio.”
After that, there was no possible excuse for turning off the radio. Hitler himself was expected, at any moment, to give a speech.
The urgency forced Marianne to calm the storm inside her head. She had to be careful. From now on, every movement she made would be suspect. Frau Gerstler loved the family, but she did not love them so much that she wouldn’t inform on them if the Gestapo asked.
So they listened to the broadcast as a group, Frau Gerstler at their center, wringing her hands and shaking her head. Fritz too could barely contain himself, his eyes bright with anger and astonishment. But Marianne was too distracted to be rattled by her son’s ignorance. The girls listened with less fervor. Elisabeth rolled her eyes at the hysterical tone of the announcer behind Frau Gerstler’s back. Katarina sat quietly beside her mother, looking up from time to time with wide, perceptive eyes, trying to read her face.
When Hitler spoke, his voice was as absurd as always, but this time tinged with a special, bellicose fury:
The claim by these usurpers that I am no longer alive is at this very moment proven false, for here I am talking to you, my dear fellow countrymen. The circle which these usurpers represent is very small. It has nothing to do with the German armed forces, and above all nothing to do with the German army. It is a very small clique composed of criminal elements which will now be mercilessly exterminated . . .
The word exterminated repeated itself in Marianne’s ears. There would be executions, certainly. Claus von Stauffenberg. Ludwig Beck. And Connie. Connie! There was no way he could escape. He was too central to the plot. She held her hands together in her lap so no one could see them shake.
But what of Albrecht? What of the children and Weisslau? What of herself? She had to remain calm and think straight. Albrecht had many powerful friends, even among Hitler’s regime. It was possible this would help. And she had heard nothing from him yet. So she would need, first of all, to wait. They had discussed what she should do in the case of his arrest, but until she had confirmation, she must carry on as normal.
Somehow she managed to get the children to bed that night.