Brown legs pumping at the pedals of her bicycle. Pretty legs, surprisingly pretty.
Lying beside him beneath the stars telling him for the first time about the
Locking horns with Dagmar, the millionaire’s daughter.
‘She always was a Communist,’ Stone said. ‘I suppose she still is.’
‘Well, then,’ Bogart remarked with a gentle smile, ‘here’s your passport, all stamped and ready. Off you go.’
Mixed Marriage
NEITHER THE BRIDE’S nor the groom’s parents attended Paulus and Silke’s wedding.
Silke’s father had of course last been seen disappearing from a boarding-house bedroom in 1920, and she and her mother had not spoken to each other since the mid-1930s.
Wolfgang was dead, which left only Frieda.
She stayed away as a matter of decorum. It would not have done for an SS corporal to have a race enemy attend his wedding.
Paulus had known that he must move quickly to get his domestic arrangements in order. Germany may have been victorious in the east but the nation was still at war with Britain and France and there was little doubt that a reckoning would not be long in coming in the west. As a soldier in the Waffen SS, Paulus would have to fight and might very well be killed, so there was no time to lose.
He and Silke had settled on a furnished apartment in his mother’s childhood district of Moabit. Neither he nor Silke were known there, and it was also a goodish distance from the leafy suburb of Charlottenburg in which Dagmar had grown up.
As a single man and serving soldier it would have been out of the question for Paulus to have enjoyed the luxury of a foreign maid, so before Dagmar could be hidden away in her new home with her new identity, Paulus must first marry Silke according to their plan.
On the morning of the wedding, Silke and Paulus met at the apartment which from that day on they were to share.
‘You look very nice, Silks,’ Paulus said.
She was wearing a pale green two-piece suit and a cream-coloured hat with a feather in it. Her thick blonde hair had been set specially for the occasion, and, rarely for her, she was wearing lipstick.
She did indeed look nice.
‘Thanks,’ Silke replied. ‘I’m trying to look stern and noble but also feminine and compliant. A credit to the Fuhrer.’
‘You got it bang on. Goebbels could put you on a poster.’
Silke smiled and looked Paulus up and down.
‘I won’t say you look
‘Come on,’ Paulus said, ‘take a look at the apartment of the soon-to-be Frau Stengel.’
He took Silke’s arm and guided her around the flat.
‘I thought this could be your bedroom,’ he said. ‘I mean, if that’s all right. Then Dagmar and I could take this one. It’s up to you, of course. I mean, you can choose.’
‘I’m fine, whatever you think,’ Silke said briskly. ‘I imagine I’ll be out quite a lot anyway.’
They paused together outside the room Paulus had suggested for himself and Dagmar.
‘Funny how things turn out, isn’t it?’ Paulus said.
‘Do you think,’ Silke began, and then stopped.
‘Do I think what?’
‘Nothing. It’s not important.’
‘I know what you were going to ask,’ he said. ‘Do I think Dagmar would have ended up wanting to marry me if there’d never been any Nazis? If she was still a Ku’damm princess and me the son of a trumpeter?’
‘And a doctor.’
‘All right, I have a bit more class on my mother’s side, but I’m right, aren’t I?’
Silke sat down in one of the easy chairs in the living room, giving a little bounce, testing it for comfort.
‘Well, all right. If you like,’ she said. ‘I have wondered.’
Paulus sat down in the chair opposite, grimacing slightly as he detected a jutting spring in the upholstery.
‘Well, she probably wouldn’t, I imagine. I mean, it’s impossible to know what might have happened in our lives if Germany had been a normal country, but I expect Dagmar would have gone to a Swiss finishing school and then married a multi-millionaire.’
‘Yes, I think so too,’ Silke admitted.
‘But Germany’s not a normal country. It’s a nut house. Hitler won and so here we are. Making the best of it. As is Dagmar. I don’t blame her for that. Come and look at the kitchen.’
They got up and went through into a decent-sized room with a modern gas stove. Silke opened the cupboards, running her finger along the shelves. A year of compulsory, unpaid domestic service had made her very aware of dust.
‘And I do admit,’ Paulus went on, ‘that I like to think she
‘And you’ve got the very thing you’ve wanted since you were twelve years old. So the really funny thing is, if it wasn’t for Hitler, you wouldn’t have got it. You owe Hitler for Dagmar.’
‘I know,’ Paulus conceded. ‘I think that’s what they call irony.’
Silke leant against the fitted drawer unit, her feet crossed on the shiny yellow linoleum.
‘I was in love with Otto, you know,’ she said.
Paulus had been checking a dud light bulb. He turned and looked at her.
‘Were you?’ he said rather weakly.
‘Don’t tell me you didn’t suspect. Otto may have been pretty blind to a woman’s emotions, but I always credited you with subtler instincts.’
Paulus looked a little embarrassed. ‘I suppose I have wondered. Mum certainly thought you were.’
‘And now he’s gone,’ Silke said. ‘You persuaded him to switch identities with you.’
‘Silks,’ Paulus said very seriously, ‘I didn’t come up with my plan so I could steal Dagmar and cheat you of Otto. I came up with it to save her life.’
‘The life of the person you happen to be in love with.’
‘Are you blaming me, Silke? Are you angry? I really thought you understood.’
Silke looked away.
‘I do, Pauly. Actually I do. I think you did have to do what you’ve done… I just wanted you to know, that’s all. I was a bit fed up of suffering in silence.’
‘Did you ever tell Ottsy?’ Paulus asked.
‘Sort of. In a way. On the train, but it was no good. He loves Dagmar. Just like you. So I was never in with any sort of chance really.
Paulus smiled, and then Silke gave him a hug.
‘It’s a nice flat, isn’t it?’ Silke said. ‘We’re lucky.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Do you think it was stolen from Jews? Like your grandparents’ apartment was?’
