The German House Read online

  Right after lunch, Eva and her mother started fixing the coffee together in the spacious kitchen. Annegret had left. She had to work the late shift at the hospital, had to feed her infants. Plus, she didn’t care too much for cake with buttercream icing.

  Eva sliced thick pieces of Frankfurt Crown Cake while her mother ground coffee beans in a small electric grinder. Edith Bruhns stared at the growling appliance. When the noise stopped, she said, “He’s not at all your type, Evie. I mean, I can’t help but think of Peter Kraus. He was always your heartthrob. . . .”

  “Just because Jürgen’s not blond?”

  Eva was shocked by how obviously her mother didn’t like Jürgen. And she considered her mother a great judge of character. Working at the restaurant, Edith had met countless people. At first glance, she could tell whether a person was decent or a lout.

  “Those black eyes . . .”

  “Mum, his eyes are dark green! You just need to look more closely.”

  “I mean, it’s up to you. His family is certainly above reproach. But I have to be honest, child, I can’t help it. He will not make you happy.”

  “Would you just get to know him first?”

  Eva’s mother poured bubbling water into the filled coffee strainer. The coffee smelled like the expensive kind.

  “He’s too withdrawn, Eva. He’s spooky.”

  “He’s thoughtful. Jürgen did want to become a priest. . . .”

  “God forbid!”

  “He had already studied theology for eight semesters. But then he met me and started rethinking celibacy.”

  Eva laughed, but her mother remained stony-faced. “Surely he left school because of his father? Because he needs to take over the company.”

  “Yes.” Eva sighed. Her mother was not in the mood to joke. They watched the bubbling water seep through the coffee filter.

  Spooky Jürgen and Eva’s father sat in the living room with cognacs. The radio played untiringly. Jürgen smoked a cigarette and studied the ponderous oil painting hung above the cupboard. It depicted a marshy landscape at sunset, the red sky flaring up beyond the dike. Some cows grazed upon a lush meadow. There was a woman hanging laundry beside her cottage. A short distance away, on the right edge of the painting, stood another figure. It appeared out of focus, as if sketched in after the fact. It was unclear whether this was the cowherd, the husband, or a stranger.

  Stefan crouched on the rug and prepared his plastic army for battle. Purzel had been let back out of the bedroom, and he lay on his belly and blinked at the soldiers gathered before his nose. Stefan assembled long rows. He also had a tin wind-up tank. It lay waiting in its box.

  Meanwhile, Eva’s father was sharing a general outline of the family history with his future son-in-law. “Yep, I’m an old sandworm. Grew up on Juist, as you can probably hear. My parents owned a shop. Supplied the whole island. Coffee, sugar, window glass—we had everything. Actually, Herr Schooormann, just like you. My mother died early. Father never really did recover. He’s been gone for fifteen years now, himself. Edith, my wife, well, I met her at the school of hotel management in Hamburg. That was in ’34, and boy were we wet behind the ears! My wife comes from a family of artists, if you can believe it. Her parents were both musicians in the philharmonic. He played first violin, she played second. It was the other way ’round at home. My wife’s mother, she’s still alive. Lives in Hamburg. My wife was meant to play violin too, only her fingers were too short. So her hope was to become an actress, which her parents nipped firmly in the bud. At the very least, she wanted to see the world, so they sent her to study hotel management.”

  “And what brought you here?” Jürgen asked with friendly interest. He’d enjoyed the roast goose. He liked Ludwig Bruhns, who was giving such an enthusiastic account of his family. Eva had inherited her sensuous mouth from her father.

  “‘German House’ had belonged to one of my wife’s cousins, and he wanted to sell it. Boy, if that didn’t fit like an ass on the can. Pardon the expression. We seized opportunity and reopened in ’49. We’ve never looked back.”

  “Sure, Berger Strasse is worth it. . . .”

  “The decent part, I’d like to point out, Herr Schoormann!”

  Jürgen smiled reassuringly.

  “Anyway, since the episode with my back, my doctor’s been saying I should close up shop! So I spelled out my pension for him. Now we don’t open till five. But there will be an end to this decadent lifestyle, come spring!”

  They fell silent. Jürgen sensed there was more Ludwig wanted to say. He waited. Ludwig cleared his throat and did not look at him.

  “Yes, well, my back issues. They’re from the war.”

  “An injury?” Jürgen asked politely.

  “I served in the field kitchen. On the Western Front. Just so you know.” Eva’s father polished off the rest of his cognac. Jürgen was slightly perplexed. He didn’t sense that Ludwig Bruhns had just lied.

  Pow pow pow! Stefan had released his tank. It made a tremendous racket struggling over the rug, as though the pile were eastern marshlands. It ran over one soldier figurine after the other.

  “Young man! Take it into the hallway!”

  But Stefan had eyes only for Jürgen, who feared children’s directness. Then he remembered Eva’s advice, to win over her brother.

  “Can you show me your tank, Stefan?”

  Stefan stood up and handed Jürgen his tin toy.

  “It’s almost two times bigger than Thomas Preisgau’s,” he said.

  “Thomas is his best friend,” Ludwig explained, pouring more cognac.

  Jürgen admired the tank with due care. Stefan snatched up a figurine from the floor. “Look, I painted this one. It’s a Yank! A Negro!”

  Jürgen glanced at the small plastic soldier with the painted face Stefan was holding out for him. It was blood red. Jürgen closed his eyes, but the image remained.

  “And I’m getting an air rifle from Father Christmas!”

  “An air rifle,” Jürgen repeated absently. He took a long draft from his glass. The memory would fade in a moment.

  Ludwig drew Stefan close. “You don’t know that for certain, little one.” Stefan squirmed loose.

  “I always get everything I ask for.”

  Ludwig looked at Jürgen apologetically. “It’s true, I’m afraid. The boy is spoiled rotten. My wife and I, well, we certainly weren’t expecting anything to come after the girls.”

  The telephone rang in the hallway. Stefan reached it first and flatly recited his lines: “Bruhns family residence, Stefan Bruhns speaking. Who’s there, please?” Stefan listened, then called out, “Eva, it’s Herr Körting! For you!” Eva came out of the kitchen, drying her hands on her apron, and took the receiver. “Herr Körting? And when? Immediately? But we’re all here—”

  Eva was interrupted. She listened and looked through the open door at the two men sitting at the table. They look quite comfortable with each other already, she thought. Then Eva spoke into the phone, “Yes, all right. I’ll come in.” She hung up.

  “I’m so sorry, Jürgen, but that was my boss. I have to go to work!”

  Her mother emerged from the kitchen with the coffee tray.

  “On Advent Sunday?”

  “Apparently it’s urgent. There’s a trial date scheduled for next week.”

  “Well, it’s like I always say, you can’t mix duty with pleasure.” Ludwig got to his feet. Jürgen stood too. “But you stay here! You’ve still got to try this cake!”

  “It’s made with real butter. A whole pound!” Edith added.

  “And you haven’t even seen my room yet!”

  Jürgen escorted Eva into the hallway. She had changed and now wore her modest business suit. Jürgen helped her into her pale checked wool coat and murmured in comic desperation, “You planned this as a test, didn’t you? You want to leave me alone with your family and see how I fare.”

  “They don’t bite.”

  “Your father’s got those bloodshot eyes.�
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  “That’s from his pain medication. I’ll be back in an hour. I’m sure it has to do with that suit for damages. Those faulty engine parts from Poland.”

  “Should I drive you?”

  “Someone’s picking me up.”

  “I’m coming with you. If you’re not careful, you could end up compromised.”

  Eva pulled on her deerskin gloves, Jürgen’s gift to her on Saint Nicholas Day.

  “The only client who’s ever compromised me is you.”

  They looked at each other. Jürgen moved in for a kiss. Eva pulled him into the corner beside the coatrack, where her parents couldn’t see them. They embraced, smiled, kissed. Eva felt Jürgen’s arousal, saw in his eyes, that he desired her. Loved her? Eva stepped out of the embrace. “Would you ask him today, please?”

  Jürgen did not respond.

  Eva left the apartment, and Jürgen headed back into the living room. There the Bruhnses sat at the coffee table, like actors waiting onstage for their prompt.

  “We’re not at all dangerous, Herr Schoormann.”

  “Totally harmless, Herr Schooormann.”

  “Except for Purzel. He bites sometimes,” Stefan called from the rug.

  “Well, let’s get a taste of that cake.”

  Jürgen returned to the warmth of the living room.

  Eva came out of the house. It was already getting dark outside. The snow cover glowed soft blue. Circles of amber lay beneath the streetlights. A large vehicle, its engine running, stood in the middle of the street. The driver, a young man, impatiently beckoned to Eva. She climbed into the front passenger seat. It smelled of cigarette smoke and peppermint in the car. The young man was chewing gum. He was not wearing a hat, nor did he shake Eva’s hand. He just nodded curtly: “David Miller.” Then he stepped on the gas. He wasn’t a good driver—too fast—and routinely shifted gears either too late or too soon. Eva didn’t have a license, but she could tell he was not familiar with this vehicle. He was a bad driver in other ways too. The car repeatedly fishtailed. Eva studied the young man out the corner of her eye. He had thick reddish hair a little too long in the back, freckles, fine, pale eyelashes, and slender hands that gave off a strangely innocent impression.

  It was evident Herr Miller had no interest in conversation. As they drove in silence toward the city center, the lights grew brighter and more colorful, with a particular tendency toward red. The lower section of Berger Strasse featured several such establishments. Suzi’s or Mokka Bar. Eva thought of Jürgen, who had by now returned to the table, sat, and eaten the Frankfurt Crown Cake she’d baked, barely tasting a thing. Because without question, he was nervously debating whether he could ask of his family that they accept hers, and whether he wanted to spend the rest of his life together with her.

  The law offices were in a tall building on one of the city’s main streets. David Miller stepped into a small elevator alongside Eva. The doors shut automatically twice. Double doors. David pressed the eight, then looked at the ceiling, as if expecting something. Eva also looked up, at a screwed-shut hatch with countless little holes. A ventilation duct. She suddenly felt confined. Her heart pounded faster, and her mouth went dry. David looked at Eva. Looked down, although he wasn’t much taller than she. He felt uncomfortably close. His eyes were strange.

  “What was your name?”

  “Eva Bruhns.”

  The elevator stopped with a jolt, and for a moment Eva feared they’d gotten stuck. But the doors opened. They stepped out, took a left, and rang at a heavy glass door. An office girl in green trotted up from the other side and let them in. Eva and the girl swiftly looked each other over. Same age, similar figure. The girl had dark hair and bad skin, but her eyes were a clear gray.

  Eva and David followed the girl down a long corridor. As they walked, Eva scrutinized the girl’s tight suit and the folds that formed on her rear with every step. The heels on her black pumps were brazenly high. She’d probably bought them at Hertie’s. What sounded like sobbing could be heard from a room at the end of the hallway, but the closer they came, the softer the noise grew. It was silent when they finally reached the door. Perhaps Eva had simply imagined the cries.

  The girl knocked, then opened the door to a surprisingly cramped office. Inside were three men, surrounded by cigarette smoke and document files stacked on tables, shelves, and the floor.

  One of them, a short, older gentleman, sat bolt upright in a chair in the center of the room, as though the entire room—the entire building—had been constructed around him alone. Perhaps even the entire city. A younger man with light blond hair and fine, gold-rimmed glasses was wedged behind a desk laden with files. He had cleared himself a small spot, where he was now writing. He was smoking a cigarette but had no ashtray. As Eva looked over at him, the ash fell on his notes. He mechanically brushed it to the floor. Neither man rose, which Eva thought quite rude.

  The third man, a gnarled figure, even turned his back on her. He was standing at the window, peering out at the dark. Eva was reminded of a film on Napoleon she had seen with Jürgen. The general had assumed the same stance at the palace window. In despair over his planned campaign, he had gazed across the countryside. Only they could see that the landscape outside the window was painted on cardboard.

  The blond man behind the desk gave Eva a nod. He gestured toward the seated man. “This is Herr Josef Gabor, from Warsaw. The Polish interpreter was meant to come with him today, but he encountered some difficulties in leaving the country. He was detained at the airport. Please.”

  Since none of the gentlemen made any moves to help her, Eva removed her coat herself and hung it on a stand behind the door. The blond man pointed at a table against the wall. On it were dirty coffee cups and a plate with a few leftover cookies. Eva loved speculoos. But she refrained from indulging. She had put on two kilos in recent weeks. Eva positioned herself at the table so she could look Herr Gabor in the face, and removed the two dictionaries from her handbag. One general, the other a lexicon of specialized economic terms. She slid aside the cookie plate and set the books in its spot. Then she pulled out her notebook and a pencil. The girl in green had taken a seat at the other end of the table, at a stenotype machine. She fed the paper tape into the machine, the roller chattering. She never took her eyes off the light blond-haired man. She was interested in him, but it wasn’t mutual, which Eva detected straightaway. David Miller also removed his coat and sat down in a chair against the opposite wall, as though he weren’t involved, his coat across his knees.

  Everyone waited, as if for a starting pistol. Eva looked at the cookies. The gnarled man standing at the window turned around. He addressed the man in the chair.

  “Herr Gabor, please tell us what, exactly, occurred on the twenty-third of September 1941.”

  Eva translated the question, although the year struck her as odd. That was more than twenty years ago. They must be examining some crime (although hadn’t the statute of limitations expired?) rather than a contract violation. The man in the chair looked Eva straight in the face, clearly relieved to have finally met someone in this country who understood him. He began to speak. His voice was in direct contrast to his upright bearing. It was as if he were reading from a letter faded with time, as if he were at first unable to decipher all of the words. He also spoke in a provincial dialect that gave Eva some trouble. She translated haltingly.

  “That day it was warm—almost humid, in fact—and we had to decorate all the windows. All the windows in hostel number eleven. We decorated them with sandbags and filled all of the cracks with straw and dirt. We put a lot of effort into it, because mistakes were not tolerated. We finished our work toward evening. Then they led the 850 Soviet guests down into the cellar of the hostel. They waited till dark, so you could see the light better, I suspect. Then they threw the light into the cellar, down the ventilation shafts, and closed the doors. The doors weren’t opened till the next morning. We had to go in first. Most of the guests were illuminated.”

&nbs
p; The men in the room looked at Eva. She felt slightly nauseous. Something was wrong. The woman tapped away at her machine, unfazed, but the blond man asked Eva, “Are you sure you understood that correctly?” Eva paged through her specialist dictionary. “I’m sorry, I usually translate in contract disputes, regarding economic affairs and negotiating settlements for damages. . . .”

  The men exchanged looks. The blond man shook his head impatiently, but the gnarled man by the window gave him a placating nod. From across the room, David Miller looked at Eva with disdain.

  Eva reached for her general dictionary, which was heavy as a brick. She had the feeling it wasn’t guests, but prisoners. Not a hostel, but a cell block. And not light. No illumination. Eva eyed the man in the chair. He returned her gaze, his expression as if he were suddenly feeling faint.

  Eva said, “I apologize, I translated that incorrectly. It was, ‘We found most of the prisoners suffocated by the gas.’”

  Silence filled the room. David Miller was trying to light a cigarette, but his lighter refused to catch. Chk-chk-chk. Then the blond man coughed and turned toward the gnarled man. “We should be glad we found a replacement at all. At such short notice. Better than nothing.”

  He responded, “Let’s try to continue. What other option do we have?”

  The blond man turned to Eva. “But if you’re ever uncertain, look it up immediately.”

  Eva nodded. She translated slowly. The woman typed on her machine at the same trickling pace. “When we opened the doors, some of the prisoners were still alive. About one third. It had been too little gas. The procedure was repeated with double the amount. We waited two days to open the doors this time. The operation was a success.”