“You have my word,” she said softly, and felt the full gravity of her promise well up around them.
And then, in a moment that Marianne would replay in her mind again and again, not just that night but over the years, long after Connie was dead, Albrecht was dead, Germany itself was dead, and half the people at the party were either killed, destroyed by shame, or somewhere between the two, he leaned forward and, with the same intensity he had used to extract her promise, kissed her. It was a kiss that dispensed with any trappings of romance or flirtation, that leapfrogged (and here was a question that would gnaw irritatingly, irrelevantly in her mind forever) maybe even over desire, straight into the sea of love and knowledge. Here were two people who understood each other. Here were two people aligned in something greater than themselves.
Who pulled away first? In all the replaying, this was never clear to Marianne. And had the moment lasted minutes? Seconds? It was both crystal clear and full of confusion. For days afterward she could feel the place where Connie’s hand had brushed the hair from her cheek. It shivered in memory, hot and cold at once.
“Connie,” she said when they were once again apart. He leaned forward and brought her hand to his lips. But before she could think what to say, what to ask, he rose and was gone.
Part I
Chapter One
Burg Lingenfels, June 1945
The entire cart ride from the train station to Burg Lingenfels, Benita lay on the musty hay bales in a half stupor, no longer caring what she looked like: a slut or a vagabond reclining in the open air, making her way across the country with all the dignity of a sack of potatoes. She was sick. Her stomach churned, and the sockets of her eyes ached. Possibly it was from the sausage Marianne had brought—rich, flavorful meat, the likes of which had not passed through Benita’s lips for years. She could not think of it now without retching.
The train trip from Berlin had taken them three days, including one night in a transit depot crowded with every wandering rape victim, bereft mother, and wounded soldier west of the Oder. Benita was sick to death of desperate people. Berlin was bad enough, with its carousing Russians and half-starved virgins hidden in cellars, its countless dead—some still buried in the mountains of rubble—and its stinking, overcrowded bomb-shelters-turned-refugee-camps. And the route west had been even worse, clogged with all manner of suffering and human detritus. It was as if the great continent of Europe had shrugged and sent everyone rolling. Benita had no illusions. She was an animal like the rest of them, no more concerned with their pain and suffering than they were with hers.
The cart bumped over the rutted hillside, and the clouds above bounced in time across the sky, round and friendly, as innocent as they had always been. They were the best thing she had seen in weeks. Her mind drifted in and out of exhausted slumber.
In Berlin, sleep had been rare. If it wasn’t the Russian captain barging into what was left of Benita’s bombed-out flat, it was some other bastard who didn’t yet understand that she belonged to the captain. That was how it worked in the half structure once known as 27 Meerstein Strasse. And then in the mornings, the Russian soldiers played boisterous card games at the kitchen table, and Frau Schiller, frightened old bag that she was, banged pots and pans, cooking the illicit goods the soldiers gave her to prepare for them. Benita hadn’t slept a full night since Berlin fell, which was a mercy, maybe. Because with sleep came dreams. And her dreams were a distillation of every horror from the past year.
When the cart stopped, Benita woke with a jolt. They had arrived at Burg Lingenfels. She scrambled to sit, and spots swam before her eyes. When they subsided, there it was: the castle, exactly the same and totally different from how she remembered it. Rough stones, deep-set leaded-glass windows, and giant, intimidating oak front door. The building itself was untouched—what was another war to this ancient fortress? But it possessed none of the grandness that had so overwhelmed her when she’d first seen it at the countess’s party. All the candles and music and pretty dresses, the fancy cars parked helter-skelter along the hillside . . . it was hard to believe that was only seven years ago. It seemed to belong to another lifetime. Now the aristocrats and artists and intellectuals who had so intimidated her were dead, broken, or irrevocably guilty. And no better off than she.
“You remember it?” Marianne was saying, lifting Martin down from the wagon—sweet Martin, Benita’s precious boy, love of her life, the child she had thought she would never see again.
She nodded and tried to climb out of the cart.
“Let me help,” Marianne said. “You are exhausted.”
Benita willed herself to step over the side and drop to the ground. She would walk with her son. But Martin was already ahead of her, following Marianne’s eight-year-old boy, Fritz.
“What a healthy child. That is a blessing,” Marianne said, taking Benita’s elbow.
And despite the many years since Benita had seen her, despite the fact that she had never even known Marianne, really, that she had—if anything—been irritated by the older woman’s surety and quick tongue, she allowed herself to be guided.
When Benita woke the next morning, the sun was rising, pink behind the black outline of the chestnut tree, the stable, the crow perched on the roof. The scene reminded her of the silhouette cutouts she’d cherished as a girl: quaint two-dimensional forms of children frolicking, dirndl-clad maidens dancing, steepled churches rising over sleeping towns. She had always stopped before the artists’ stall in the Saturday market and admired these black-and-white visions of an uncomplicated life.
She rolled over and surveyed her surroundings. The room had once been used as a pantry—the walls were lined with empty shelves and an ancient butter churn sat in the corner. It smelled of damp stone and, faintly, of pickling vinegar and Christmas spices. Old smells, baked into the walls.