Chapter 3 Return of the Native
RETURN OF THE NATIVE
How does one know one is in one’s home country?
The language helps, of course. I hadn’t spoken German much in decades, but here it was all around me, as it had been since we’d landed the previous day.
The neatness and efficiency of the Frankfurt Customs officials, too, and the same tightening in my throat as I’d handed over my passport, with its reassuringly dark-blue cover, its golden eagle, and the words beneath.
United States of America. How much safer I’d felt, all those years ago, once I’d had that little book in my hand.
Yesterday, the official had glanced at it, then at me, and asked, “You were born in Dresden?”
“Yes,” I’d answered, unable to get out more than that. I’d never have shared it, but there it was, printed beside my photo. Birthplace: Dresden, Germany.
“Welcome home,” he’d said, still in English, and handed back the blue booklet.
And that was that. No roiling of the stomach, no held breath that you had to try to conceal so they wouldn’t suspect, no hostile, suspicious surveillance of my papers, no suggestion that I was not the person listed herein.
Although I was not. Did my passport say Marguerite von Sachsen Stark, an abbreviated version of my full name?
No, and neither did any other of my documents.
They all said Marguerite Glücksburg Stark, because when I’d first applied for the passport, I’d been wary of owning more than that small part of my names and titles.
I wasn’t Marguerite Anastasia Alexandrina von Sachsen und Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg anymore, the daughter of a King of Saxony and the princess of yet another state, and I hadn’t been since I was sixteen years old.
I was Marguerite Stark, even if I had to lie to make that so.
Except when I needed to be that other person, that princess who expected to be treated as such. There—that was the difficulty. I had to step into that other woman’s shoes now, but shoes don’t fit as well after almost eighty years, it seems.
When Ben took me outside to the car, Alix was waiting to hand me in. I stopped, though, and stared. “What?” Alix asked.
“Nothing,” I said, and climbed inside and let Alix shut the door on me.
That wasn’t the last of it, of course. “What?” she asked again, hopping in behind me and slamming her own door.
“I forgot that the Continental Hotel was destroyed in the bombing,” I said.
“It was just here, directly across the street from the railway station. It’s become that hideous block of a thing instead.
That will be the Russian influence. East Germany wasn’t interested in architectural perfection, I hear. ”
“A special place, was it?” Sebastian asked, slipping into traffic and into a completely unfamiliar series of divided roads.
“Not in the way you mean,” I said. “It was the headquarters of the Gestapo.”
The word didn’t fall with a clang like one would imagine. Ben merely asked, “What’s that?” Proving that the mists of time close over even the worst deeds.
“The state police,” I said. “Not regular police. Hitler’s police. Secret police.”
“Like with torture and everything?” Ben asked.
“Yes,” I said. “With torture and killing on the least pretense, including for entertaining defeatist thoughts, even when Germany was so clearly defeated. Hanging and shooting and the guillotine.”
“The guillotine?” Ben asked. “Like, the machine to chop their heads off? I thought that was in France! We read that book, A Tale of Two Cities, in my new English class. It was better than Shakespeare. I could at least understand it. But seriously? Why?”
“I suspect,” I said, “because it made an impression. Separating the head from the body carries a special sort of horror, doesn’t it? It’s supposed to be quick and painless, though, so I suppose that’s a benefit.”
“Wow,” Ben said. “So this was, like, right near your house. Or castle or whatever.”
“Yes,” I said. “And directly across from a very large train station, as you see. The guillotine is quiet, and the torture, of course, happened underground.”
“Like, dungeons?” Ben asked.
“No,” I said. “Like cellars, but with cells.”
“Good God,” Sebastian muttered.
“But right in the middle of the city?” That was Ben again.
“Ben—” Alix began, but I said, “No. We’re here to explore the past, and here the past is.
It was always about fear, and Hitler and Himmler knew their business.
If you want to keep everyday people too frightened to object to what they see, or even to admit they see it, how do you do that?
With informers and secret police who could be anywhere you go, anyone you know.
And if you want to keep newspapermen and priests and professors and judges, people who are used to speaking out, too afraid to do what they know they should do, to say what they know they should say, they must be frightened of something very specific.
A place in the middle of the city that people sometimes come out of to tell the tale?
To talk of the sound of the guillotine’s blade striking, and of beatings in the next cell?
Of days spent under bright lights, without sleep, being asked and asked and asked who else was involved, who else knew, until, in his confusion and pain, the strongest man may break?
That’s effective, and so is the knowledge that it won’t just be him facing judgment.
It will be his family as well, his wife and children ‘evacuated’ to Theresienstadt. ”
“Where’s that?” Ben asked.
“A concentration camp,” I answered. “In the beginning, people sometimes served their sentences and came home. Later, they didn’t come home. We didn’t know where they went, but we knew they never came home.”
Ben said, “That’s really depressing.”
“You think?” Sebastian asked.
“As they say,” I said, “freedom isn’t free. If you don’t pay attention, it can slip away before you realize it’s gone, and it doesn’t come back easily. Alix’s grandfather knew that.”
“Was he in the war?” Ben asked.
“Yes,” I said. “He was never here, though. Here, the Russians came instead.”
It was five minutes, no more, before Sebastian was pulling into a most familiar courtyard.
A building rose around it, perhaps three hundred rooms in all, a minor palace only.
The windows weren’t arched and grand anymore, but marched along like so many stiff and upright soldiers.
Not a very successful restoration, to me.
“Why are we here?” I asked.
“This is the hotel,” Alix said. “The Taschenbergpalais. I thought it could be a surprise for you, because the palace is right next door. I guess this was a palace too, right? Do you recognize it?”
“Vaguely,” I said. “It was the headquarters of the Wehrmacht during my childhood. The Army.”
“Oh, geez,” Alix said. “I’m sorry. I should have asked. This whole place is a land mine.”
I waved a hand and had to laugh. “It has much more history than that. And there were many decent men in the Wehrmacht. My father, for one.”
“Really?” Alix asked. “I didn’t …”
“I’ll tell you later,” I said, because a bellman was loading our mountain of luggage onto yet another cart. “Let’s go inside and see what a bombed-out palace looks like, once it becomes a hotel.”
What it looked like was a hotel, and not even one with a grand lobby. Rather pedestrian, to me. They really should have tried harder.
Alix, of course, started out by chanting, while Sebastian was handing over his credit card, “I’m not looking. I’m not looking. I’m telling myself that you play in the NFL and want to throw away stupid money on your fiancée and her grandmother.”
“For somebody who’s not looking,” Sebastian said, “you sure are noisy about it.”
“Fine,” she said. “So is it the same, Oma? Do you recognize it?”
“Not much,” I said. “It’s quite different.”
“Do you know Dresden, Madam?” the middle-aged desk clerk asked politely. He wore glasses and was balding, and looked very much like a butler, tall and full of deference. I wondered if the hotel had selected him for that quality.
“I lived here as a child,” I said. “Is Dresden also your home?”
“Yes,” he said. “All my life. Things are very different, of course, since Germany was reunited.”
“Thirty-five years ago,” I said, for Ben’s benefit. “The hotels are grander now, no?”
He smiled. “Indeed. Is this your first visit home?”
Home. There was that word again. He must have registered something on my face, because his smile faded and he said, “I’ve misspoken. Excuse me.”
“She’s not Jewish, or whatever you’re thinking,” Alix said. “My grandmother. But she did leave Dresden after the bombing.”
“Ah,” the desk clerk said. “Yes. You will find it odd, how so much that was destroyed has been rebuilt to look the same. My mother and father found it so, but they were proud, too, to have Dresden become a Baroque jewel-box once more. My father always said it was the most beautiful city in Germany.”
“And your mother?” I asked. It was only polite.
“She was from Prague and would never admit the comparison,” he said, “although she did say that Dresden feels less like God has his eye on you every moment, and is hence more comfortable. She had the true Czech humor. But you have no doubt seen Prague and all its churches.”
“Not that I remember,” I said. “I haven’t been in Europe since I left, and before that, of course, there was the war.”
“We will have to welcome you properly, then.” He looked at his screen, probably because of something in my face. “I have three rooms listed here. One palace view room, one junior suite next door, and the Queen Suite.”
“The junior suite is us,” Alix said, “the palace view room is Ben here, and the Queen Suite is my grandmother.”
“Frau Stark,” I said, before Alix could have us all on a first-name basis, and probably saying du also, so ready to become familiar. “But you should take the larger suite, Alix. There are two of you and only one of me. There was no need for this.”
“Of course there was,” Alix said. “Of course there is. This is your trip. And we need a table to sit around for our councils of war, so you see? We needed this suite. This way, we can come to you.”
“The Queen Suite is very fine,” the clerk said. “In fact, not named for a queen, but for the Countess Cosel.”
I laughed. Ill-mannered of me, but it took me by surprise.
“Excuse me,” I said at the desk clerk’s evident confusion.
“The Countess Cosel,” I told the others, “was Augustus II’s favorite mistress.
Augustus the Strong, that was, who built this palace for her.
He also elevated the Residenzschloss to its full grandeur, and planned the building of the Frauenkirche, the Lutheran church, and only after that was done, the Hofkirche—the Catholic church that is attached to the Residenzschloss.
The rulers were Catholic, you see, and the populace Lutheran. Augustus II was a skilled politician.”
“Wait, he was Catholic and everybody else wasn’t?” Ben asked. “Huh? I thought religion was, like, a big deal in the olden days.”
“He wanted to be King of Poland as well as Saxony,” I said. “So Catholicism was necessary. As I said—a skilled politician, in the fashion of 1700, and most ambitious. He did become King of Poland. For a while.”
“Did they cut off his head too?” Ben asked.
I laughed again. “No. He lived a good long time and had a good many mistresses. So I will sleep in the mistress’s suite tonight. My mother would have been horrified, but so amusing, do admit.”
“You are familiar with your history,” the desk clerk said.
“She’s absolutely familiar,” Alix said. “That’s because she’s the Princess of Saxony. I feel like we need a drumroll here. Her father was the King. The last king, I guess. The lost princess returns.”
“No,” I said firmly. We would need this nonsense, I knew, in the days to come, but did it have to begin now?
“The titles were abolished in 1918, as I’ve mentioned.
My grandfather abdicated, and there it ended.
An ersatz princess only, I regret to say, although in truth, I’m probably not a monarchist. One does see the pitfalls of a single ruler by this point.
No, my granddaughter and I, and her mother, are all only ersatz princesses these days, but Augustus the Strong was my ancestor.
He could break horseshoes with his bare hands and ride a horse balancing a child in each hand with the reins between his teeth. Or so they say.”
“Probably good,” Sebastian said, “if you’re trying to get to be the King of Poland. I had no idea it was an elected position.”
“The battle does not go to the strong, Ecclesiastes tells us,” I said. “Except that it generally does. Let’s see this suite, then. I’ve never been a mistress. I find I’m quite excited about it.”
“Gn?dige Frau,” the desk clerk said, probably dating himself with the old-fashioned address, then adding a little bow to finish the job. “Or as I should say, Your Royal Highness. Allow me to fetch the hotel manager to escort you there. If we had known …”
“Nonsense,” I said. “No need for ceremony or titles. Frau Stark will do. If somebody will bring my bags up, though, I would be most happy. A cup of tea and a rest, I think. I am a very old lady, as you see.”
“A cup of tea and Lebkuchen, perhaps?” the desk clerk said.
“Ah,” I said. “It’s been a long time since I had authentic Lebkuchen. This much special treatment, I will happily allow. Thank you.”
“A tray, then,” the clerk said. “For the princess and her family. The Queen Suite will have a princess in it, for this brief time at least, who truly belongs there.”
Clearly a much better capitalist than he’d been a communist. If he sent me Lebkuchen and tea, though, he could call me whatever he liked.