“Have you met my husband?” Margot gestured toward the stranger – the only unfamiliar face among the uniformed Amis.
Gerlinde regarded the tall man in surprise. She remembered quite a different husband that always accompanied Countess von Steinhoff to official gatherings; blond, exceedingly handsome, and in a field-gray uniform.
“Paul Schneider.” The stranger in the civilian suit offered Gerlinde his hand, palm up.
She shook it cautiously. The name sounded vaguely familiar but she still couldn’t place him. He must have been in his late forties or even early fifties, Gerlinde guessed but belonged to the fortunate type of men who aged well. His dark hair was graying at the temples but the eyes, of some extraordinary reddish-brown color, were alert with fiery intelligence and the face was remarkable and had that chiseled, Rodin’s quality to it, which made it even more appealing.
“I don’t believe we ever met.” Gerlinde tried to smile, still far too shaken up.
“No, I don’t believe so. I left Germany in 1933. You must have been a very small child back then.”
Now, she remembered his name. It flashed before her eyes from the list of banned journalists and directors, which their BDM leader made them study by heart and write up articles on how they betrayed their Fatherland in the name of the Jewish decadence.
Paul Schneider. The enemy of the state.
Instantly alarmed, Gerlinde turned to Margot and searched her face. The latter lit a cigarette and pulled on it with the same enigmatic smile on her face.
“You must have a lot of questions,” she spoke at length.
That was one way to put it. What happened to your first husband? How come the Gestapo didn’t execute you? Why are you married to this man? What are you doing here, in Germany, in my house, with all these Amis around?
“Vati said they executed you for treason.” Gerlinde cursed herself inwardly as soon as the words flew off her lips but there was no going back now. May as well wait for the explanation.
“Is that what the rumor was?” Margot appeared almost amused.
“You left the Ministry without any announcement and disappeared from the city without any proper authorization issued in your name by the headquarters. Goebbels himself issued the warrant for your arrest as the Reich Commissar for the Defense of Berlin. Defeatism…” Not quite sure of how to proceed, Gerlinde receded and looked at her shoes.
“Oh, that.” Margot laughed carelessly. “When rats began jumping ship, one of them took me along for a ride.”
Gerlinde winced at such a blunt characterization but Margot continued without appearing to notice the effect her words had produced. “Fortunately for me, his rank held enough weight for the Feldgendarmerie chain-hounds to let us through and not bother us all the way to Austria.” Her head cocked slightly, she regarded Gerlinde with sudden interest. “Did they indeed say that I was executed?”
“Yes. Minister Goebbels announced it himself on the radio.”
Paul Schneider snorted softly and grumbled, “what else is new,” under his breath.
“All he ever did was lie to people,” he explained to Morris, who’d observed the entire scene silently, only taking small sips of his coffee from time to time. “I knew he was a liar, without any conscience, from the very first time I met him at his headquarters, to which he summoned me right after they won the elections, to discuss my professional future.”
Morris pulled forward, interested. “What did he offer you?”
“In short, to sell my soul,” Paul jested but the playful grin slid off his face almost at once. His brow furrowed. “He was very explicit in his wishes: I film his Nazi propaganda and get paid handsomely for it or else. To that, I brought up the idea of freedom of artistic expression and my principles of self-determination as an artist or some such. He warned me not to be a fool. I told him to go hang himself.”
Tadek snorted with laughter in his corner, from which he kept observing the unexpected guests. Gerlinde shot him a glare full of daggers.
“Naturally, after that exchange of courtesies, we had no other choice but to part ways,” Schneider concluded. “I ran before he ordered my execution but it appeared, he was too busy recruiting people who weren’t as burdened by principles as I was, to bother with—” He stopped abruptly, suddenly mortified with what had just come out of his mouth. His extraordinary eyes were fastened on his wife’s face, from which a previously-careless smile had vanished, as though wiped out by his harsh words. Paul made a move to her. “I didn’t mean you. You’re an entirely different case altogether; you had different reasons for staying. You know that I never held it against you and even praised you for your bravery… Any fool could get himself in an uproar at the injustice and leave the country in a huff but to stay, to stay and to try to fix it all, little by little, from the inside out—”
“A whole lot of good it did.” Margot’s tone was cold and embittered. “In the end, none of it mattered one iota.”
“But it did, Margot!” Paul had just opened his mouth to bring up more seemingly useless arguments that appeared to only upset her but Margot waved him into silence.
“Don’t try to justify my decision to stay. I should have left with you, then. I shouldn’t have nursed that ridiculous hope that I would somehow change anything for Germany.” She made a vague gesture of frustration. “I’m just as guilty as Leni, like Heinz, God rest his soul. We all are. Whatever our motives were, we should have left with you and Erich and Fritz… But why talk about it now? What’s done is done and it’s on my unclean conscience.” She suddenly turned to Gerlinde, a practiced, brilliant smile replacing the expression of mortal weariness that had been in
