Chapter 17 Alternative Explanations
ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATIONS
Alix said, “What?”
Ben said, “You’re kidding.”
Ashleigh said, “I don’t believe you people.”
Sebastian said, “Could you explain your reasoning, please?”
I said nothing. What could I say, after all? Sebastian was right—I wouldn’t know what to respond to until I understood the objection.
Nobody else on the board spoke, and neither did Dr. Bauer. Germany remains a disciplined and quite hierarchical society even today, and there was one leader here.
Or two, because I had power in this situation as well. “You said ‘at least two other explanations,’” I told Dr. Eltschig. “I assume you mean two ways in which I could be somebody other than who I say I am. I can think of three ways, actually.”
“Please go on,” Dr. Eltschig said.
“One.” I ticked it off on my forefinger.
“I could be Lotte, the scullery maid in the palace. She wasn’t much older than me and about my size, and, of course, she knew the palace and my family well.
If I’d died—I mean, if Marguerite had died in the bombing raid or its aftermath along with my parents—either the first raid or the second, as you have only my word that everybody survived the first—and my mother had brought the parure downstairs with her, Lotte could have abstracted my Kennkarte, my identity card, the photos, and the parure, and taken on my identity.
That is, if Lotte had been the sort of devious criminal who could think of such a thing, and not a sweet and hardworking but quite unintelligent young girl.
And if she had assumed my identity, why the second Kennkarte?
She would pretend to be the princess after the war, but not while it still went on? Why?”
“Maybe because of the Gestapo thing,” Ben said. “Because they’d be after you. Would they be after you, though? I thought it was your dad.”
“The Gestapo believed in spreading a wide net,” I said. “But if I’m Lotte and making up this story, was there any Gestapo thing?”
“Right!” Ben said. “You made that up to give you an excuse for running off alone with the jewelry. Except … would you have been the only one who survived, if you’re not you, I mean?
If you were all in the same place, wouldn’t everybody have died?
And if you were the only one who survived, and you did all that, why didn’t you come back here and, you know, get your stuff back? ”
“But then,” I said, “why didn’t I come and get my possessions back long before this, if I really am Marguerite?
Other than the fact that the palace was a ruin.
Lotte, on the other hand, would certainly have jumped at the chance to escape to the United States with the parure.
She wouldn’t have been able to get away with the impersonation in Dresden itself, where I was known to so many people.
No, the real difficulty with the Lotte hypothesis is: how did she alone survive in that cellar?
How did she know about the secret passage and the other cellars, if I’m telling the truth about that?
And where did she discover all this derring-do?
Of course, I’m the only one who can attest to her character, so we’ll call this one ‘unproven’ and leave it for now. ”
“Well, yeah, we will,” Alix said. “I can’t believe you.”
“Oh, come now,” I said. “You’re more clever than that. You’re no Lotte, that’s certain. Think, now: what’s the second explanation? Which is actually much more plausible.”
Alix said, “Do you think you should really treat this like a game, Oma?”
“Oh, so much of life is like a game,” I said, “with its winners and losers. Chutes and Ladders. In my day, it was called Snakes and Ladders. A very dull game, then and now. You land on the wrong square, you slide down. You land on the right square, you climb up. No strategy. Nothing but chance, but then, much of life is chance, or combinations of circumstances that appear to us to be chance. Have I given you enough time to think of a second explanation?”
“Well, obviously,” Alix said reluctantly, “the Jewish girl. I can’t remember her name.”
I beamed at her. “Very good. You do have a clever mind. Yes, Andrea. She was twelve and I was sixteen, but she was tall for her age and I’m small, so we were much of a size.
She was dark, of course, and I’m fair, but who was to know the difference, once the original Kennkarte with my photo was hidden?
I could have died in the fire once I’d ventured out after the second bombing to check on the situation, and she’d heard my father tell me where to find the jewels.
She’d have had every reason to have a new document forged with the correct photo but without the damning “J” stamped across it, at least until the war ended.
Again, she couldn’t have come back to the palace, for she was obviously not me, and why would she have kept the original Kennkarte, unless it was to swap out her own photo for mine, which she didn’t do? But—”
Alix said, “Oh! Wait. There’s no way. You met Grandpa when you were, what? Seventeen and lying about your age?”
“Sixteen,” I said. “Eighteen at my marriage. Barely. And no, I wasn’t lying to him. Him, I told everything to.”
“I think he’d have noticed if the girl he was into was twelve, though,” Alix said. “Somehow I don’t imagine he’d have failed to miss that.”
“Unless he was a pedophile,” Ashleigh said. “Hey, it happens.”
“I don’t see how we prove that somebody who’s dead wasn’t a pedophile,” Ben said. “Oh, wait. I know the third possibility. It’s obvious. Somebody stole your document thing and the jewelry when you were … whatever. Running away. Like, you fall asleep and they take your stuff.”
“Except that she said she sewed the jewelry into the sleeves of her coat,” Ashleigh said.
“And put the Kennkarte under the insole of her shoe. It’s not like she’d have been wandering around the countryside saying, “Hey, you got any food? I’m a princess, by the way, and I’m carrying all this priceless jewelry with me. ”
“OK, first,” Alix said, “Grandpa wasn’t a pedophile. No possible way. He was … he was honorable. He did the right thing even when it was harder. The same way you do, Sebastian.”
“Well, thanks,” Sebastian said.
“And second, “ Alix went on, “it’s too bad, Oma, that you don’t have any pictures of yourself with your parents. You don’t look the same now, but if you had a picture of yourself with Grandpa when you were young and a family picture with your parents, it would be obvious you’re the same person.”
“Sadly,” I said, “my father refused to be photographed. And my mother took only the two wedding photos with her to the cellars. It was a very confused time.”
Herr Eltschig, who’d been listening to all this with a bemused expression, now cleared his throat. I said, “What have we missed?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Those are the possibilities I had envisioned, though I didn’t think of the Jewish girl, since she was much younger.”
“And,” I said, “she had a father and brother, unless our scenario posits that everyone but Andrea died, and she somehow had the wits to survive on her own as a twelve-year-old with an assumed identity. Her father would never have stolen my family’s property.
Impossible. Oh, and in Scenarios One and Three—Lotte the scullery maid, or the random stranger—there would be no Andrea.
Why introduce this other family, this other location, into the story? ”
“I suspect that I’m going to need a diagram to remember all these permutations,” Sebastian said. He looked amused, which was good. He might keep Alix from exploding.
“Of course,” I said, “there’s another point of proof. I am a hemophilia carrier, as are my daughter and Alix. My grandmother was one as well, obviously. There should be a record of that, at least, somewhere.”
“Or of the Queen’s condition,” Herr Eltschig said. Not “your mother’s.” He was keeping his options open.
“No,” I said absently. “Not of my mother’s, or mine at the time.
Hitler had a horror of genetic diseases and imperfections.
That was his mania, after all: the fiction of a pure Germany populated only by strong, healthy citizens of unblemished Aryan blood.
One didn’t advertise one’s hereditary health conditions in the Nazi era.
One hid them. Oh, the horror of those athletic BDM sessions! ”
“Those what?” Alix asked.
“The League of German Girls,” I said. “Like the Hitler Youth for boys, it was a mandatory program for all Aryan girls, but instead of training us for war, they trained us to be good German wives and mothers. Very tiresome it was, too, involving the singing of a great many dreary songs and also much physical exertion. We should be strong, you see, to bear children more easily. Swimming wasn’t bad, but gymnastics—well, you can imagine the bruising. ”
“There,” Alix said triumphantly. “Unless you think this hypothetical imposter was also a hemophilia carrier, which would be one heck of a coincidence, doesn’t that do it?”
“If there were a possibility of DNA analysis,” Dr. Eltschig said.
“Mass grave, on the parents,” Alix said. “Not so much.”
“What about the cathedral?” That was Sebastian. “Couldn’t you get your proof there?”
“Excuse me?” Dr. Eltschig said.
“Her ancestors are buried there, right?” Sebastian said.
“Her parents aren’t, but her paternal grandparents are buried in the crypt.
I know, because we visited the place yesterday.
The heart of Augustus II is buried there, too.
The Saxons sure liked that guy. There you go, though—material for a DNA test. Proof positive.
She either is or isn’t their granddaughter. ”
“Possibly,” Dr. Eltschig conceded. “Although we would need permission. It’s not a small thing to disturb the tomb of a king and queen and desecrate their remains.”
“And here you have their granddaughter to give that permission,” Alix said.
“But they don’t know that she’s their granddaughter,” Ben said. “It’s like a puzzle, like a math problem, but with an error. A circular reference.”
“Indeed,” Herr Eltschig said. “The board will have to confer.”
“Wait, what?” Ben said. “Don’t you want to get the tiara?
I mean, I guess the fact that Tante Marguerite knows it’s down there isn’t proof that she’s the princess and it’s her tiara, if she’s one of these other two people—she couldn’t be the random girl on the road, because how would she know so much about the palace and know the hiding place?
—but at least you’d get to see it. And if Tante Marguerite can’t prove it’s hers, you get to put it in your museum, right, with all the other jewelry? I don’t see how you can lose.”
Everyone looked at each other. Dr. Eltschig, for once, didn’t seem to know what to do.
I pushed my chair back carefully and stood.
“If you’d like me to help you find the hiding place,” I said, “assuming the deep cellar is still accessible, call my granddaughter. We’ll be here another ten days or so.
Now, though, I’m tired, and I must rest.”
Hitler lost the war, and untold millions lost their lives, because his ego couldn’t allow retreat even when his refusal cost him half his forces.
Sometimes, though, retreat is the best course.
The board didn’t know where to find the tiara—I hadn’t shared the detail about the cistern, or the location of the winding stair—and maybe they needed time to realize that.
Also, I was hungry.