There was a general swell of affirmation.
“And suffering,” Connie said. “It means suffering for many, many people . . .”
Silence fell across the group as sounds of laughter and strains of the accordion filtered through the leaded windows.
“And it means reasonable citizens must take action,” Connie continued. “We are not all thugs and villains. But we will become these, if we don’t try to make change.”
It was a bold statement, a challenge almost, and Marianne watched it register on the men’s faces with varying results. Hans nodded dramatically, captivated. Eberhardt von Strallen, clearly disapproving of such rash talk, flicked at the lint on his lapel. Albrecht frowned thoughtfully.
“It is our duty,” Connie said. “If we don’t work actively to defeat Hitler, it will only get worse. This man—this zealot who calls himself our leader—will ruin everything we have achieved as a united nation.” He continued, “If we don’t begin to mobilize like-minded people against him, if we don’t begin to actively enlist our contacts abroad—the English, the Americans, the French—he will draw us into a war, and worse. If you listen to the things this man says—if you really listen, and read—it’s all there in that hideous book of his, Mein Kampf; his ‘struggle’ is to turn us all into animals! Read it, really read it, know thine enemies—his vision is medieval! Worse than medieval, anarchic! That life is nothing more than a fight for resources to be waged between the races—this ‘Master Race’ he likes to speak of and the racial profiles he has devised—these are the tools he will use to divide us and conquer.”
Marianne had heard Connie’s views before—how many times had they talked late into the night around the fire in Weisslau? Hitler was a madman and a thug, they were all in agreement. Ever since the Putsch this had been clear. Connie, as well as Albrecht, had spent a good portion of the last years assisting the victims of the National Socialists—Jews who wanted to emigrate, imprisoned Communists, artists whose works were banned. Without law, Albrecht always said, we are no better than the apes. His work was as much to uphold and strengthen the law through practice as it was to win each individual battle.
But Connie had given up on the law, increasingly castrated as it was under the Nazis. He was a born dissenter and a believer in direct action. It was one of the things Marianne loved most about him—Connie, her childhood playmate, dearest friend, and the man she most admired, other than Albrecht, of course. He had always been an agitator, a passionate champion of what he felt was right. As children, he and Marianne had spent summers with their families at the Ostsee, and Connie had always led them on quests against injustice, plotting to reveal the hotel concierge’s unkindness to dogs or some wrongheaded parental prejudice. And usually he prevailed, through sheer force of character or single-mindedness.
“. . . We must find ways to work against him,” Connie continued. “Not only to bring the attention of the world to his ugly aspirations, but to take action ourselves. If we sit by and judge from behind the safety of our desks, we will have only ourselves to blame. So I suggest we commit to active resistance from this day forward. To trying to steer our country from Hitler’s destructive path.”
Connie finished. Sweat had formed around his hairline and he was out of breath.
There were murmurs and nods among the men gathered.
“I agree with the principle.” Albrecht spoke slowly into the swell of support. “But active collusion against our government—this government—is a dangerous thing. And we have wives and families to consider. I am not suggesting we should not, only that we think carefully—”
“Your wives and families will support you,” Marianne interrupted, surprising herself and the rest of the room. It came out like a rebuke. Albrecht was always so measured, slow, and thoughtful. A plodding tortoise to Connie’s leaping stag.
“All of them?” von Strallen asked wryly.
“All of them,” Marianne repeated. Von Strallen was a chauvinist. He told his silly wife, Missy, nothing and took her nowhere. Poor Missy, treated like a dumb fattened cow.
“And bear the risk?” Albrecht asked gently.
“And bear the risk,” Marianne repeated.
“All right,” Connie said, turning his intense gaze upon her. “Then you will see to it that they are all right. You are appointed the commander of wives and children.”
Marianne met his gaze. The commander of wives and children. She knew he did not mean to belittle her, but it smarted like a slap.
The meeting—if that’s what it was—broke up, and with a sense of unreality, Marianne headed back to the party to resume her hostess responsibilities. Conversations rose and fell, the jazz trio played, and from the landing of the stairs someone recited Cicero in Latin.
But outside, beyond the castle walls, terrible things were happening. Marianne could imagine Hitler’s thuggish Brownshirts swarming the streets, swaggering and shouting with their air of unchecked violence. She had seen them marching in a parade last summer in Munich. Two of the men had broken formation and rushed toward her across the sidewalk. For a moment she had stood frozen, afraid that she would be attacked: but for what? Instead they knocked down the university student beside her and kicked him as he curled into a ball, their shiny black boots hammering at his back. It had happened so fast that she simply stood. Why? What did he do? she asked a man standing beside her when the SA were gone. He did not lift his hand in a proper Heil, the man whispered as they bent to help the poor student to his feet.
For days afterward she saw those men’s faces as they rushed at her: ordinary, middle-aged faces flattened and made stupid with violence.
“What is it? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost,” Mimi Armacher said, interrupting the memory. Mimi was a sweet woman, a distant cousin of Albrecht’s whom Marianne had always liked.
“I’ve just heard—” Marianne faltered. What to call it? It was something from a less civilized time, and for which she had no vocabulary. “We’ve gotten news from Munich that there is rioting—the SA—beating people, breaking down Jewish properties—”
“News?” Mimi repeated, as if this were the incomprehensible thing.
“From a friend of Connie’s who’s just arrived,” Marianne explained.
“Oh, how awful,” Mimi said, and her face fell. “In all the cities?”
Others gathered around. Marianne was aware of Berna and Gottlieb Bruckner at the edge of the group, and Alfred Klausner: Jewish friends whose own positions here in Germany were increasingly difficult. Generations of assimilation no longer seemed to set them apart from the eastern immigrant Jews Hitler was obsessed with deporting. No one was safe.
Marianne felt exhausted suddenly. “That’s what I understood.”