The other riders turned away in shocked silence as she disappeared across the platform. The old man stood nervously and shuffled to another seat. When the car was under way again, no one spoke, which made the two- minute ride to the next stop seem more like ten. Liesl and Kurt scampered out of the car, and to their relief no one followed. As soon as the train departed they burst into laughter and fell into each other’s arms.
“My God, but that was close,” Liesl said. “Of all things for you to think of at a time like that. Frau Knoterich! What made it worse was that the old guy next to you looked like Herr Bramsig. I felt terrible for Hannelore, but I couldn’t help myself.”
“Oh, she’ll get over it.”
“Yes, but will she get over you?”
“So you’ve noticed she doesn’t like me?”
“And also that the feeling is mutual. Even at the meetings you never agree. What’s wrong with you two? Don’t we all want the same thing?”
Yes, Kurt thought. We all want Liesl. And for now, at least, he had her to himself.
Twenty minutes later they reached their bicycles and pedaled off to Liesl’s house. On arrival Kurt discovered more good fortune. Liesl’s parents were still away, visiting friends. Liesl’s sister was gone, too. A night that had careened so close to disaster suddenly seemed full of promise. Such were the fortunes of wartime, Kurt supposed. Nothing was certain. Luck was all.
When Liesl turned on the light, yet another pleasant surprise was revealed.
“Look!” she cried. “Chocolate!”
It was true. An entire bar, perhaps half a pound, poking from butcher paper with only a corner missing. You could already smell it, like something from another era.
“My mother said she’d have a surprise for us, but this is amazing.”
“I haven’t had any chocolate since…” Kurt paused.
“Since when?” she asked.
He had been about to say, “since December,” when his father and he had attended yet another holiday party at the Stuckarts’ house. But he didn’t want her to know that he still kept in touch with Erich. Did she really expect him to give up everything from his past life? Besides, if he changed his habits too much, people would get suspicious. He was sneaking around enough as it was. Tonight his parents thought he was seeing a mindless Heinz Ruhmann comedy at the Ufa-Palast, on a date with Heidi Falken, whom he hadn’t spoken to in ages.
“Oh, I don’t know. A long time.”
“Mmmm,” she said, taking the tiniest of bites. “Here.”
She broke off another piece and held it out. He opened his mouth, and she placed it on his tongue. Kurt licked a bit of melted chocolate from her fingertips, and she smiled. He was about to follow up with a kiss, but she abruptly backed away and refolded the butcher paper.
“We should save it. We can divide it when everyone else is home.”
Her voice was quieter, and he could tell she was still a little fragile. Understandable. One stumble and they would have all been sitting in Gestapo interrogation cells by now, down in the basement on Prinz-Albrecht- Strasse.
“How ’bout some music?” he said, flipping on the radio.
Maybe that would calm her down. With any luck the stations wouldn’t be playing the nationalist dreck that had recently dominated the airwaves. Three days of national mourning had followed the announcement two weeks ago of the German surrender at Stalingrad, and ever since then the radio had played little more than dirges and marching songs. And of course there was never any jazz or swing, not the real stuff, just the counterfeit local version that had been approved for public consumption. Lately everyone seemed too cowed to show any joy, lest some officious snoop decide you weren’t “supporting the troops” in a suitably serious manner.
But there was no music tonight, only a familiar hectoring voice backed by an obliging crowd. It was Goebbels, shouting something about the new plan for victory in the east.
“So much for that idea,” Kurt said, reaching for the Off switch.
“No, wait. I want to hear it. We need to know what he’s up to. Please.”
Well, that would certainly end his chances for the evening, Kurt thought. Nothing quite like the venom of the Cripple to get a girl out of the mood. He sighed and took a seat, sagging onto the Folkertses’ leather couch, which smelled like her father’s pipe tobacco. At least the chocolate was good. The taste lingered sweetly on his tongue.
“Did you hear that?” she hooted scornfully. “He said we should all try to emulate Frederick the Great, right after saying that by the end of the Third Silesian War he was fifty-one years old, had no teeth, suffered from gout, and was tortured by a thousand pains. Well, that should really inspire the masses.”
The problem was that the masses did sound inspired-over the radio, anyway. Kurt wondered who was in the audience. Handpicked Party loyalists, perhaps, although there sure were a lot of them. As if in answer to Kurt’s question, Goebbels began describing the crowd gathered at his feet.
I see before me a cross-section of the whole German people in the best sense of the word! In front of me are rows of wounded German soldiers from the eastern front, missing legs and arms-
“Then how are they clapping?” Liesl said derisively.
Behind them are armaments workers from Berlin tank factories-
“Good God,” Kurt said. “This must have been what they were talking about the other day at the office. An order came in to send at least a hundred workers to the Sportspalast tonight. That’s them you’re hearing-Bauer employees, screaming their lungs out. Too bad they didn’t send some of the Poles instead. They’d have eaten him alive.”
“Your dad’s using captured Poles?”
“Czechs, too. A whole boxcar arrived just the other day. Jews, mostly. Sticks and bones. Some didn’t even make it off the train, and they smelled like an outhouse. I wonder where they sleep at night, because it’s not like we have anyplace handy.”
“Where
“A government compound, I guess. Some sort of barracks. Who knows?”
“It’s probably horrible. You should find out. Do something about it.”
“Liesl, not even my dad can tell Speer and Sauckel what to do with guest workers.”
“ ‘Guest workers.’ You make it sound like they’re glad to be invited.”
“How do you know they aren’t? Have you seen the newsreels from Warsaw? There’s nothing left of the place.”
She shook her head, but said nothing more, apparently unwilling to argue the point. Or maybe she was just exhausted, because she sagged against him on the leather cushions. The warmth and pressure of her body produced an immediate reaction. An erection stiffened against his trousers.
“Listen to him now,” she said.
The Cripple had raised his voice to a tumult. Kurt could easily picture the wiry man’s emphatic gestures, elbows thrust out at right angles as he waved his forefinger like the barrel of a Luger. It might have all been silly and melodramatic if not for the crowd, which was lapping it up, roaring a huge “Ja!” at every command. He was exhorting them with a series of questions now, appealing to their deepest need for vengeance.
I ask you, do you want total war? If necessary, do you want a war more total and radical than anything that we can even imagine today?
“Ja!”
Even Kurt almost shivered. But given what they had endured earlier that evening, the worst moment came a few seconds later.
Do you agree that those who harm the war effort should lose their heads?
“Ja!”
They sounded like they meant it. Liesl pressed closer and turned her face to his.
“I’m scared, Kurt. And the worst part is, I’m not sure I will ever stop being scared. Not after tonight.”
“It will be better in the morning,” he said, stroking her hair. “It always is. We’ll go for a walk in the Grunewald. Enjoy some of that fake sunshine you see on the tree bark.”
She shook her head, as if that was no good at all.
“Sometimes I think we’ll never even survive the year. Not just us. Everyone. Either the police will take us
