“Oh no—not the one for little girls—for the older girls, Belief and Beauty. I’m nineteen.”
“Ah.” Marianne patted her arm. “Positively ancient.”
The girl glanced at her.
“Aren’t these lovely?” Marianne pointed at the white chrysanthemums and dark autumn anemones arranged in pots along the balustrade. High above, pale clouds scudded across the dark sky. And in the distance, the woods were inky in the twilight. “So the town square . . .”
Benita sipped her champagne and coughed. “It’s not much of a story. We met and talked and then later we went out for dinner.”
Marianne rested her glass atop the courtyard wall. “And now you are to be married.”
“When you say it like that”—Benita hesitated—“it sounds odd.”
Marianne smiled and cocked her head to the side, knitting her brows. She had learned this scrutinizing expression from the countess and found it proved helpful at drawing out confessions and explanations from children and family members, even grown men.
But it did not have the desired effect on the girl. Instead, she seemed to find her mettle, squaring her shoulders. “There were a few things in between.”
“Of course,” Marianne said. Why had she taken this interrogative tack? The girl was to become Connie’s wife. It would do Marianne no good to have started off this way. “I’m sorry—I don’t mean to pry.
“Come.” She glanced around the rapidly filling courtyard for an opening and, with relief, spotted Herman Kempel, one of the rubes who had been so smitten with Benita earlier. “Let’s go talk to your latest admirer.”
As the night wore on, a kind of giddy, reckless energy took over. A comical figure in lederhosen and kneesocks played an accordion—was he someone the countess had hired or a local guest?—and people began folk dancing on the uneven cobblestones. Women even kicked off their shoes, despite the cold. And inside, the American jazz trio the countess had invited finally arrived. They played ragtime in the great hall while a number of the bolder, more cosmopolitan guests demonstrated dances with silly names like the Big Apple and the Lindy Hop. Somehow, despite the improvised stove and lack of running water, the chef presented a steady stream of delicacies: traditional pork meatballs with a delicate parsley sauce, plump white steamed dumplings, and silver-dollar sausage rounds. But also novelties—asparagus wrapped with paper-thin ham, jelly molds, pineapple flambé, and caviar toast . . . like the music, the food spanned the gamut of German cultural life.
Marianne drifted in a haze, not of alcohol (the hostess never had more than one glass of punch—this too she had learned from the countess), but of relief. She had managed to continue the immodest tradition of the harvest party, even as the nation was swept up in this wave of rigid and peevish militancy. And she had managed to transcend her own upbringing (how mortified her father would be to see her throw a party featuring jazz dancing and champagne toasts) and provide these people with something lovely, liberating, and ethereal.
Buoyed along by this thought, she greeted guests, checked on the liquor behind the bar, the food on the buffet. “The countess junior!” a jolly, quick-tongued cousin of Connie’s cried, wrapping a thick arm around her shoulders. “What a party! But where is your esteemed husband? And all his high-minded friends! I haven’t seen a one of those trolls for the past hour! Are they holed up in some sort of elite gathering without their old chum Jochen?”
“No, no.” Marianne waved him off with a kiss on his cheek. But his question was a good one. Where was Albrecht? And for that matter Connie and Hans and Gerhardt Friedlander? She had not seen them for some time. Albrecht had probably pulled them into the library to review his letter. The thought irritated her. Albrecht’s sobriety—his constant ability to focus on the world beyond what was directly beneath his nose—felt like a reproach. He was right, of course. Poor Ernst vom Rath lay in some hospital bed and thousands of Jews slept out in the cold borderland. Germany was being run by a loudmouthed rabble-rouser, bent on baiting other nations to war and making life miserable for countless innocent citizens. And here they were, drinking champagne and dancing to Scott Joplin.
In a state of defensive irritation she burst into Albrecht’s study, where, yes, there they were—all her missing guests: Albrecht and Connie, Hans and Gerhardt, Torsten Frye and the American, Sam Beverwill, and a few others, many of whom, like Connie, worked as staff officers in the Abwehr, the military intelligence office.
“What’s this?” she said, trying to make her voice light. “A secret, serious party? The countess will not be pleased to know you’re all skulking about in the study instead of dancing.”
“Marianne—” Albrecht said.
“Albrecht! Let your guests come out and enjoy the evening—”
As she spoke, she noticed a new person in their midst: a short, dark-haired man, balding, with a kind of intensity to his homely face. The energy in the room was odd; the men’s faces remained grave and unchanged by her appearance.
“I’m sorry,” she said to the new man. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”
“Pietre Grabarek.” He stepped forward and extended his hand. A Pole. Albrecht and Connie both had many contacts in the Polish National Party.
“Marianne von Lingenfels. The wife of your sober host here,” she said, gesturing toward Albrecht.
“Marianne—” Albrecht interjected again. “Pietre has traveled from Munich with some alarming news. This evening—”
“Vom Rath is dead?” A chill swept over Marianne.
“Dead.” Albrecht nodded. “But that is only part of it.”
Marianne felt uncomfortably at the center of this small group now, all scrutinizing her reaction. This was not a position she was used to: the ignorant one.
“It seems Goebbels has given orders for the SA to incite rioting, destruction of Jewish property. They’re throwing stones through shop windows and looting, making a sport—”
“Not a sport—a battle! An organized attack!” the man interrupted.
“—of destroying people’s lives.”
“How terrible!” Marianne said. “Did Lutze condone this? What does it mean?” Lutze was the head of the police, the SA—an unpleasant man she had recently met and disliked.
“It seems so,” Albrecht answered.
There was a shifting of glances and bodies.
“It’s descent into madness—Hitler is exactly the maniac we’ve suspected!” Hans exclaimed, but no one paid attention. He was a sweet, foolish boy. There are thinkers and there are actors, Connie had once said. Hans is an actor. Albrecht had balked at this dichotomy, though—so black-and-white, so reductive and unforgiving. Action should follow thought and thought should include careful deliberation. But this was not Connie’s way. He was more of an actor himself, and his views, while informed and considered, were rarely mulled over and always absolute.
“It means shame for Germany in the eyes of the world,” Albrecht said.