the purity of it, a new Germany full of healthy young men and women with Nordic features and platinum hair. In that crowd I knew I’d stand out like a film star. But, did I want to trade one police state, Stalin’s, for another? Have to be so careful of what I say? How can I look at the super-Nazis goose-stepping down the street and not think them ludicrous? I thought, Well, the Germans are a strong, self-willed people, they won’t stand for Adolf and his gang too long, having the Gestapo in their lives. After the war it will change back to the way it was.”
“What about the killing of Jews,” Jurgen said, “do the people accept it?”
“They turn their heads.”
“But they know about the death camps.”
“They can only wait until Germany is beaten and Adolf is tried before a world court. Everyone knows the end is coming. I hear: we can’t win. We should settle for peace now and try it again in ten years. I hear: America will demand unconditional surrender. Germany will have to give up the land it stole, the countries. Give up everything, or the Russians will be turned loose on them.”
Jurgen was shaking his head. “We won’t have a choice.”
“I try to rationalize,” Vera said, “how can I work for this war-loving, Jew-baiting Führer? I see a story about Henry Ford and learn he’s critical of Jews. He warns of the international Jewish conspiracy, which I take to mean communism, what else. We know he’s opinionated. Henry Ford believes sugar on grapefruit causes arthritis. But in his factory he’s a genius. Why is he so against Jews, as a race? I think he resents Jews because they tend to be smart. He knows that some of them, like Albert Einstein, are even smarter than he is. He won’t admit it so he condemns all of them as a race.”
“I read about Ford,” Jurgen said, “before the war and was quite surprised.”
“My point is, there are a variety of prejudices against Jews. Henry Ford was a pacifist while America was neutral,” Vera said. “He refused to build aircraft engines for England. Two years later he’s producing an entire four-engine bomber, a Liberator, every hour of the working day. It’s what they’re doing at Willow Run, putting together more than one hundred thousand different parts to make a bomber. To make a Ford sedan took only fifteen thousand parts. That’s the kind of information I store in my poor brain. The Willow Run plant is more than a half mile long. It’s put together with twenty-five thousand tons of structural steel. Ninety thousand people have jobs in that one plant. At Chrysler, on the other side of Detroit, they make tanks by the thousands. Packard and Studebaker make engines for planes, and Hudson makes antiaircraft guns to shoot down the other side’s planes. Nash does engines and propellers and General Motors makes some of everything America needs to make war. They can produce three million steel helmets”-Vera snapped her fingers-“like that, at a cost of seven cents each.”
“Now we have to admit,” Jurgen said, “we didn’t come close to judging them correctly, as an opponent.”
“Your Führer was too busy strutting before the world to notice,” Vera said. “Do you know what I’ve been doing, what my contacts used to ask for? They wanted the names and locations of companies that produced light metals. They believed if we could destroy all the aluminum plants in America they wouldn’t be able to produce bombers. They wanted me to stop the Allies from bombing Germany. They’re going crazy over it, bombs dropping on them twice a day. Abwehr Two are the saboteurs. They were told in directives, ‘For God’s sake, cut the fucking source of power to the plants. Turn them dark, quick.’”
“Were any of them successful?”
“You would have read about it.”
“No major feats, like stealing the Norden bombsight?”
“That was 1938, the year Fadey and I got together. I tell them about a fast new welding process at Fisher Body. At the Chrysler arsenal they’ve reduced the finishing time on antiaircraft guns from four hundred hours to fifteen minutes. I ask if they want details and get no reply. They’re down in their bomb shelter.”
“How do you send it?”
“I want to tell them to subscribe to
“How do you remember April twenty-fourth, 1939?”
“Vera has a fantastic memory,” Bohdan said, “but has to see the words or figures written.”
“If you tell me something I should remember,” Vera said, “I write it down so I have something to look at when I wish to call it to mind.”
No one spoke for several moments. In the silence Jurgen could hear, very faintly, Glenn Miller’s “ String of Pearls” on the radio in the kitchen. He said, “There’s a federal agent, a marshal by the name of Carl Webster, who’s after me.”
“Yes, I read that in Neal Rubin’s column,” Vera said. “You’re the one he’s after?”
Jurgen said, “I thought Walter would have told you about him.”
“Walter lives in his own world.”
“If Carl knows about Walter, he knows about you.”
“You’re on a first-name basis with this policeman?”
“We know each other.”
“And you think he’ll come here looking for you. Would you care to give yourself up, the war nearing its end?”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“I don’t blame you. But if your friend wants to search my house, what do we do with you?”
“I’ll leave,” Jurgen said.
Vera took her time. She said, “Let me think about it.”
It was quiet again, a silence beginning to lengthen, as Bohdan said, “Well, now we’re coming on to teatime.”
“We can let the vodka be our tea,” Vera said and looked at Jurgen. “Why don’t you go up and rest. I put magazines in your room I know Walter wouldn’t have, or even know they exist. Have a nap, come down at six for cocktails and a supper Bo will prepare for us.” She turned to him. “What do you have in mind, or would you rather surprise us?”
Jurgen was watching Bo. For a moment Bo’s expression said he was tired of this happy home life routine. But then he did come alive and seemed keen to answer Vera.
“I can’t surprise you, Countess, the way you come in the kitchen sniffing. But let’s see if I can stimulate Jurgen’s appetite.”
“I hope I didn’t sound like I was flirting,” Bo said, on the sofa now with Vera, her fingers feeling through his cap of Buster Brown hair, brushing his shoulder now with her hand.
“I think you have dandruff.”
“I set my mind to play a
“You’re very believable,” Vera said, remembering the afternoon Fadey came home hours early and almost caught them in the bedroom naked. He called her name from downstairs, “Vera?” By the time he came in the bedroom Bo had become a drag queen in one of Vera’s frocks, hands on his hips, looking at himself in the mirror. Vera, now in a skirt and sweater, stepped out of the closet to see Fadey staring at Bo.
She said to Bo now, “Do you remember what I said?”
Bo grinned. You said, ‘He loves to wear women’s clothes, but he’s still the best fucking cook in Odessa.’ I wanted to kiss you. And Fadey accepted it.”
“He didn’t care one way or the other.”
“I don’t know how you thought of that so quickly. You hear him downstairs and I’m a sexual deviant in the same moment.”
“You
“It was fun.”
