Willi brought the tea and cups on a tray along with a few cookies on a plate. Frau Schimmel was standing by the small dining table. ‘Please,’ said Willi, motioning toward a chair.
‘You don’t have any pictures,’ said Frau Schimmel.
‘What?’
‘Pictures.’ She motioned around the room. ‘You don’t have any pictures on the wall.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Frau Schimmel, would you …’
‘They were in plain clothes, Herr Juncker. They wore hats; their hair was short on the sides. If I had to guess, I’d say your Herr Weber and Herr Meier were Gestapo.’
‘Frau Schimmel …’
‘You need some pictures on the wall, Herr Juncker. A few knickknacks too. A vase maybe. Your apartment looks like nobody lives here.’
‘Who are you, Frau Schimmel?’
‘Who am I? I’m the old lady who lives across the hall, Herr Juncker. Who are you?’ She smiled. ‘No, Herr Juncker, I’m not really asking. I just thought you’d want to know about your visitors. Your tea is very good, by the way.’
‘It’s from England,’ said Willi.
‘I know,’ she said.
They sipped for a while in silence.
‘Frau Schimmel, may I ask you a question?’ said Willi. ‘Several questions, actually?’
‘Of course,’ she said, but did not pause to hear his questions. ‘I don’t get around as well as I used to,’ she said, ‘but as you’re certainly already aware, I make it my business to know as much as I can about what goes on in the building. And elsewhere too, if I can. True, I know almost nothing about you, Herr Juncker, but that is as you want it, isn’t it?
‘I know a bit about Schleiffer, though, the little storm trooper and his Nazi nonsense. He visits me, you know, for information. I give him gossip and he spills the beans.’ She laughed. ‘He’s quite a competent plumber, by the way, and he likes to talk as he works.
‘But he doesn’t like or trust you, Herr Juncker. That won’t be news to you. He has reported you at least once to his Obergruppennazi. He more or less told me so, when he was asking me about you and your foreign mail. I think he has reported me as well, although for invented and inconsequential stuff.
‘No, Herr Juncker, I don’t tell him anything about you or anyone else. He is simply set off by suspicions that come to him apparently out of thin air. He believes, for instance, that several people in the building are Jews, when I am quite certain that I am the only one.’
‘Frau Schimmel, you don’t have to …’
‘Herr Juncker, look at me.’ Willi realized he had been avoiding her eyes, looking at the bare wall above and behind her instead. He lowered his gaze. Her eyes were dark and penetrating, and he could sense a fierce intelligence behind them. She had short, stylishly cut white hair, a small nose, a firmly set mouth with brightly painted lips, and a strong, rounded chin which she held high. ‘First of all,’ she said, ‘I was a member of the KPD – the German Communist Party – and the Spartacus League during and after the war, in the teens and twenties. I was friends with Rosa Luxembourg. We were together during the November revolution. I loved her dearly. So you see that, besides being a Jew, well, the Third Reich has many reasons to want me dead.’
Willi’s discomfort was plain to see.
‘I’m eighty-two years old, Herr Juncker. My family is either dead or out of the country. I’ve been operated on three times for cancer, and the prognosis isn’t good. So, you could say, I suppose that by talking to you as I am, I’m placing myself – and possibly you and others – in danger. However, I don’t think that is the case. First of all, I know enough about you and your … circumstances to be reasonably sure that what I have told you about your visitors will be helpful to you. And I think of myself as having nothing to lose and also much to gain by what you probably regard as my “reckless” behavior.’
‘Much to gain?’ said Willi.
‘Well, your friendship, for one thing. And Lola’s too. She’s lovely. I like her very much.’
Frau Schimmel stood up with the help of her stick. ‘Herr Juncker, it has been a pleasure. I’m sure we will be in touch again.’ She turned toward the door and then turned back toward Willi. She held out her hand. Willi took it, and she held on for a minute. ‘You know, the Nazis know everything about me. They will have reams of paper with my name on them – not Bertha Schimmel. Still, they’ll find me eventually – they’re not all idiots. But I like the idea of going down fighting.’ She turned again and took Willi’s arm as they walked to the door.
‘Hang a few pictures, Herr Juncker,’ she said. ‘Here and maybe over there. A potted plant or two would be good. Make the place a little homier.’
Willi was unnerved. That evening he stayed with Lola and told her about the visit. ‘I don’t know a thing about her, and she knows a great deal about me.’
‘But she told you about the Gestapo visitors. Without her you wouldn’t know that.’
‘That’s not reassuring,’ he said. ‘I don’t need more people.’ Having few social connections still seemed like the best thing for him and for others too. Lola looked at him with raised eyebrows. ‘I didn’t mean you,’ he said. ‘But Frau Schimmel was reckless.’
‘Was she really?’ said Lola. ‘I mean, she told you what she saw and who she is, knowing that it won’t go any further.’
‘Why would she do that?’ said Willi. ‘And how does she know it won’t go further?’
‘Because she knows who you are, Willi. She figured out enough about you to know she can trust you.’
‘I know. You’re right,’ said Willi. ‘She figured me out.’
‘Aha. That’s what bothers you, isn’t it? But she trusts you,’ Lola said again, ‘and
