Chapter 48 Long Day’s Journey
LONG DAY’S JOURNEY
We went on with the story in my suite after breakfast, for now that I’d started the telling, I felt a great urgency to finish it.
Ashleigh and Ben were still producing their “bites,” and although I still wasn’t watching them—mostly, I’m afraid, due to vanity; it’s very difficult to feel sixty-five when looking at a video of one’s shrunken, wrinkled self —I felt an obligation to tell the story.
Not my story so much, but Germany’s, and Joe’s, and finally, the story of Nuremberg.
“You can’t imagine,” I said, sitting as upright as possible on a gold-upholstered chair as Ashleigh filmed, “what a new thing such a trial was. Oh, how angry the defendants were! To be accused after the fact of crimes that had never been set down as such in law—this angered many Germans, not just the Nazis. And to put on trial not just concentration-camp commandants and the governors of captured states, who would have ordered atrocities directly, but also generals merely accused of waging aggressive war while being aware of those atrocities, was quite controversial. And it was all done extremely quickly. In October, Joe was assigned to interpret for one of the investigators, a captain in Army Intelligence, and the trial began in early November and lasted almost a year, with the investigation proceeding alongside it.”
Alix said, “How can you start a trial when you haven’t even investigated the crimes yet?”
“Well, the Nazis helped,” I said. “Much of the evidence was already in Allied hands, for the Nazis were meticulous recordkeepers. Efficiency and organization are very German traits, even when put to evil use. The SS did try to destroy records at the concentration camps there at the end, but they weren’t very successful, and as for everything else?
How can the judges believe that the director of the Reichsbank knew nothing of what was going on when they watch a film of the bank’s vaults full of Jewish treasure, including a chest of gold teeth and fillings taken from the mouths of murdered Jews?
What other explanation is there for that? ”
“Oh, my God,” Alix said.
“Yes,” I said. “It was a story that I believe needed to be told. But his part in uncovering these deeds was hard on Joe. Very hard.”
“I’ll bet it wasn’t any picnic for you, either,” Sebastian said.
“No,” I said. “It wasn’t.”
December was very cold that year. I was sitting in the little room off the bread kitchen—the warmest place in the house—one snowy afternoon, reading Brideshead Revisited.
I confess I found it rather tough going, and I was both a Catholic and an aristocrat!
But our little book-discussion group was delving into it next week at Dr. Müller’s flat, and he was too experienced a professor not to know when one hadn’t read the material.
I’d tried it once, with a tedious and extremely depressing American play called Long Day’s Journey Into Night—Joe was an expert now in procuring books from his fellow soldiers—and had quickly been found out.
People were being unfaithful in my chapter and planning divorces left and right—this book was nearly as depressing as that play—when angry voices from the shop had me pulling an old cardigan over my dress and hurrying out there.
I found quite a tableau. Frau Lindemann was standing at the counter in a combative pose. Behind her in the queue was Frau Braun from the hotel, and behind her were two soldiers. One was in a peaked cap and had two silver bars on each of his shoulders. The other one was Joe.
Frau Adelberg held a loaf of wheat-rye bread—my contacts with the farmers had come along by leaps and bounds—but Frau Lindemann wasn’t taking it from her.
Instead, she was saying, “Every time I come into this shop, I see Americans, probably the same ones persecuting Germans in the Palace of Justice. We all know that Fr?ulein Glücksburg has no shame, but I’d have thought better of you.
With your husband, like mine, still a prisoner of these people, too!
What must he think of you?” She’d clearly forgotten that Joe spoke German—he’d spoken English in the shop since that first day.
He said it was more interesting that way, as he could hear what people were talking about, especially since they were mostly talking about the trial.
There were over a thousand participants from the Allied nations in the city now, and the news of the trial still dominated the front page two months on.
“She hasn’t written her husband anything about these Americans, I expect,” said Frau Braun. “Na ja, some women no doubt find it more convenient to consort with the enemy.” Her small brown eyes ran over me, her lips thinning as she stared.
I should probably have gone back to my reading. Alas, I was raised to be a princess, and I was tired of the whispers. How could I turn away from a direct attack? I said, “Perhaps you’ll allow me to take over here, Frau Adelberg.”
Frau Adelberg flung up her hands and said, “Here I am, a loyal German, my husband a prisoner, my oldest son fallen at Stalingrad for the Fatherland, forced to carry on by myself. My bread is the best in the city, and what thanks do I get? None. Only abuse. Really, it’s too much.
Working one’s fingers to the bone for this?
” Which was a bit rich. I wasn’t complaining, because my home with her was the best security I could have now, but she wasn’t the one working her fingers to the bone here.
Frau Lindemann said, “You know, this shop is really very well supplied. It’s warmer in here than anywhere else in Fürth, too. Why exactly is that?”
Joe said in English, “Maybe we should come back later.”
“No,” I said in the same language. “Please stay. I’ll deal with this.” I asked Frau Lindemann, “Do you not want this bread, then? If so, we’ll put it back. It’s almost the last loaf, though, and I won’t bake this variety again until Saturday. The wheat always goes the fastest.”
She thinned her own lips at me but didn’t speak, merely grabbed the loaf from Frau Adelberg’s hand and tossed her coins down on the counter. Most impolite.
Frau Adelberg picked up the money, her cheeks flushed, and I became angrier still.
“Is there some problem in particular that you’d like to address with me?
” I asked, keeping my tone icily polite.
“The bakery is warm because our ovens are working for hours each morning—it’s not so pleasant in the summer, I can assure you!
—and Frau Adelberg doesn’t deserve your abuse.
She’s done nothing more than house a baker who spends some time with an American.
If she didn’t house me, I couldn’t work here, and if I didn’t work here, you wouldn’t have bread, so here we are.
I’m sure you’ve recognized my American friend, for you’ve seen him before.
His name is Staff Sergeant Joe Stark, and, yes, he’s working on the trial.
But they’re not trying all of Germany over there, you know.
They’re trying twenty-two specific men who appear to have done terrible things.
If they can’t be proven to have done those things, they’ll be acquitted. Isn’t that how justice should work?”
I’d never been so forceful, and Frau Lindemann didn’t seem to know how to answer me.
Her mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out of it.
Frau Braun, though, said in a poisonously sweet tone, “And how do you come by so much wheat flour, Fr?ulein, when no other bakery has it? How do you find fuel oil for your baking when others do not? You must be very clever.” She had a smug little smile on her lips now that was doing nothing for my temper.
I said, “I sold a valuable heirloom, that’s how.
It gave me pain to let it go, especially as all my family are dead—it was passed down many generations—but it would have given me more pain not to help Frau Adelberg, as she’s been so kind to me.
” I’d never offered Frau Adelberg any specific details about the brooch, or what I’d received for it.
How could I trust her not to mention that I had hundreds of American dollars and a priceless necklace and earrings wrapped up and sealed in tins under my floorboards?
She seemed blissfully unaware—or wasn’t letting herself be aware—that the flour and fuel shortages had only become more dire since I’d taken over supplying us, and that I must be getting supplies by nefarious means.
“A valuable heirloom,” Frau Braun said. She looked at me, then, deliberately, at Joe. “I suppose that’s one word for it.”
I said coldly, summoning as much of my father’s hauteur as I could manage, “I resent your implication. Perhaps I’m wrong, however. Perhaps you’re really angry about something else.”
“Of course I’m also angry about the trial,” she said, flushing. “Every German should be angry.”
Joe had been speaking in a low voice to the officer throughout.
Interpreting, most likely. This must be the captain with whom he worked, then.
How embarrassing for him to find me in the midst of such a quarrel!
I regretted asking him to stay, but did that make me stop?
Of course not. I asked Frau Braun, “Don’t you read the papers, then?
Haven’t you read of the things they’ve already discovered? ”
“How can one trust them?” she said. “Lampshades made of human skin? Is one really to believe such fairy stories? And how they love to show that pile of bodies being bulldozed! That must be their favorite photo, we’ve seen it so often.
How many of our sons and husbands lie in similar mass graves in Russia? ”
The captain said something to Joe, and Joe said firmly, “A moment, please.” In German.
The women turned and stared at him, but they waited for him to continue. In Germany, particularly Nazi Germany, women deferred to men, even if the men were American. Well, unless the woman was a princess, possibly.