hungered for all the things I had been denied. All the lovely, silly, soul-preserving things that other people did without thinking; popping into a shop without calling ahead and having to slip through the back door after-hours. Attending the symphony without wearing a disguise. Meeting friends for lunch in restaurants. Pushing my baby in a pram out in the open, watching him play with other children in a public park.
“And no one would bother us—Chancellor Hitler could see to that,” I continued, playing with the fine blond hairs on Charles’s forearms, watching his face fight the urge to give in to ticklish laughter. “Imagine having a public official on our side, protecting us! But, Charles, it’s such a step—we don’t really know the language, of course. We haven’t seen everything—only what the chancellor has wanted us to see. You know that.” For even in my excitement, I couldn’t ignore the feeling that I’d had all week—the suspicion that the Germany being shown to us was like one of the little villages we’d seen in our flights to South America, particularly in the Andes. On certain cloudy days, you could walk the pleasant, ordinary streets and never see the mountains, but still you knew they were always looming, barely kept at bay by the swirling gray mists on all sides. I had the same sense here; that there was something hidden, something suppressed—yet always close at hand.
“I suppose so,” he admitted, leaning back with his arms behind his head. His chest was so lean, yet muscular; there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him still, nearly ten years after his flight to Paris. He was so obviously no longer a boy, yet he did sometimes still have boyish ideas—I understood this about him but could never let him know. His view of the world tended to be more simplistic than mine; this was what frustrated him about me, and me about him. He always saw the clearest, straightest path to any solution, and was mystified when others could not. Politicians, for example; he had no patience for the murky ways of compromise, of weighing issues, of giving some importance, dismissing others. There was only good and bad, right and wrong, to Charles Lindbergh.
“But we’re here, Anne,” he mused, looking up at the ceiling, covered with gilt panels. “We know what we see. It angers me to think how the newspapers in America and England depict Hitler—as a clown, a buffoon. It’s the Jewish influence, of course. They hate him for the Nuremberg Laws. And while I may wish that Hitler wasn’t quite so strident, I can’t fault his logic, because obviously, it works. Germany is a remarkable nation, strong, forward- looking. Hitler is simply thinking about what’s best for his country, and he has the courage to do it. Unlike these other so-called leaders.”
“You sound very political,” I teased, leaning my head against that lovely chest. “Very statesman-like.”
“I have been reluctant to assume that mantle, but as Truman said, the times are changing. Look at the war in Spain—that’s an air war, the first real one. Countries with airpower, like Germany, like the United States, need to be very careful, for in the future civilians will be casualties. Perhaps I can be a voice of reason. And really, Germany isn’t a natural enemy; the northern races should never fight each other. The Asiatic nations, like the Soviet Union— that’s the true enemy, not Hitler. But people like Chamberlain and Roosevelt don’t realize it. They’re grumbling about Hitler because the Jews are pushing them, making more out of the situation here than there is—and what a tragic mistake that will be.”
At this new mention of the Jews, I disentangled myself from his arms. And a question I had wanted to ask him for years could no longer go unasked.
“Charles, what about Harry Guggenheim? You know he’s Jewish, yet he’s been such a great friend to you— and me. Sheltering us, after the baby, after all the chaos. All the money he’s helped you find for funding, not to mention—well, back in ’thirty-two. The guidance, the support. What about him?”
“The individual Jew, I have no problem with. Harry has been a good friend, and I won’t deny it. It’s the overall influence, particularly on the press and the government. Roosevelt is surrounded by Jews, and one of these days, I’m afraid he’s going to listen to them. And that will be tragic, and one reason is that no country can stand up to Germany in terms of air superiority. That is one thing I’ve learned this week that Roosevelt has not.”
“Then, I suppose you need to speak out,” I said slowly—reluctantly, wondering how we could reconcile this development with the dream of living, forgotten, in Germany. I had seen how politics practically killed my father. And I feared the singular glare of the political spotlight; it was much more unforgiving than even the one we had been under. “I suppose that’s the right thing to do.”
“Of course it is. As Truman said, I’m in a unique position. I have a responsibility to the world now.”
He said it so matter-of-factly. I remembered that drive back through the city the night he proposed, when I had first heard him talk in this manner—this calm recognition of the unique position he was in, and the responsibilities that came with it. I had chided him on it, but I could afford to then. I was young. Untethered. My entire life ahead of me.
I couldn’t afford to now. I was too dependent on him, too wrapped up in his life, too marked by it. And at thirty, I could no longer imagine what lay ahead of me, because of the tragedy of all that was behind. So I didn’t speak out; I didn’t question him. Not then, not later. I sat by and watched the untouched boy of ’27 become someone else;
And I allowed him to turn me into someone else, as well. Someone who could sit, beaming, just a few rows up from Adolf Hitler while he received the straight-armed salute of the Nazi Party. Someone who could eagerly look forward to the next time we visited Germany, in 1937, and again in 1938, when we actually started looking at houses, even after the Anschluss and Czechoslovakia. Even after I understood that Thomas Mann’s wife was not the only Jew who was not welcome in Germany.
Someone who could smile and nod when Minister Goring presented Charles with the Order of the German Eagle, on behalf of the Nazi Party and Herr Hitler himself.
Yet for all my smiling and nodding, my eyes were shut; shut deliberately to a truth I didn’t want to see because it interfered with my dream of an untroubled life with my children; a stable life, for if Charles was content, maybe he wouldn’t keep asking me to fly off with him. With every leave-taking, now that Jon was growing into his own little, absorbing person—so different from Charlie, and now I could rejoice in it—more and more of my heart was left behind.
Were we to live in Germany, one of Hitler’s aides promised us at a private meeting, Charles could have his pick of jobs with the
However. I wasn’t so changed, so dazzled by promises and dreams of a real home, a real
But I did; I fingered the cold, raised Nazi insignia on the medal. And I whispered, more to myself than to him, “The Albatross.”
CHAPTER 13
“MAMA! Are we going to live in America now?”
“Yes, darling.”
“With Grandma Bee?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And Uncle Dwight and Aunt Con?”
“Yes.”
“Will Father be there, too?”
“Of course he will! He’s already there, you know that!”
“Will you have to fly away with him again?”
I looked up from my desk, where I was reading over the letter from Charles that I’d just received, full of clippings of various houses we might rent. I also had the latest shipping schedules, although they seemed to change by the minute as the world turned upside down around us. Seated on the floor, playing with some wooden toys that had not yet been packed, Jon looked up at me so wistfully. His reddish hair needed cutting; I reached down and brushed wispy bangs out of his eyes.
“I hope not.”
