Chapter 52 And Then There’s the Truth #2
“And go where?” I asked. “We came to you, disturbing you on Christmas, because there was nowhere else, and you’re not well today, are you? Not nearly well enough to be out in this cold. And anyway, I need to tell you, too. I need the two of you, at least, to know the truth.”
“Well,” Joe said, “what is the truth?” He was holding onto his patience, I could tell.
I pulled out my Kennkarte and handed it to him. He looked at it and said, “Daisy Glücksburg, born in Dresden. Wait—today’s your birthday. Or is it? What about this isn’t true, other than that your name is Marguerite?”
Dr. Müller said, “Ah,” again. As for me, I took out the tiny pair of scissors from my pocket and reached for the hem of the heavy coat. I cut the big, careless stitches with which I’d closed it up this morning, groped around inside, and finally pulled out a battered document.
“I carried it in my shoe for months,” I said. “My real Kennkarte.”
Joe didn’t take it. “You’re a Jew, or more likely from a mixed marriage, with a Jewish mother.
That’s what this is, isn’t it? It all makes sense now.
Why your father didn’t serve in the military but your mother wasn’t sent to the camps, why they hid the Beckers, why you saved me.
Why didn’t you go with the others to Fohrenwald, though?
I’m glad you didn’t, but why not? And why wouldn’t you tell me, of all people?
Also, that makes you more employable with the Army. Of course it does.”
I said, “Look at it.”
He took it, finally. “Oh. That’s not it, then. And your real name is Marguerite von Sachsen. Well, the captain thought you were an aristocrat. So? What does it matter?”
“The birthdate, too,” I said.
He looked at it, looked at me, picked up my forged Kennkarte. “You’re not nineteen today.” He said it slowly.
“No,” I said. “I’m seventeen.”
He didn’t jump up. He didn’t even pull back, but I felt his withdrawal all the same. “So you were sixteen when I met you. Barely sixteen. My God.”
“Well,” Dr. Müller said mildly, “there’s sixteen, and then there’s sixteen.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Joe asked.
Dr. Müller shrugged. “Merely that a young woman who survives the death of her family and friends, who spends months hiding a Jewish family’s identity and keeping them safe and finding a place to stay each night, who takes over a business and works long hours at it, is perhaps not precisely the same as a girl in America who walks to the soda fountain after school with a boy and shares a Coca-Cola with him when he asks for two straws.
” Joe stared at him, and Dr. Müller said, “My wife and I used to go to the cinema on Saturday before the war. To the matinee, you know, which was less expensive.”
“How do you know all that?” I asked. “About the Beckers?”
“Dr. Becker and I became friends,” Dr. Müller said. “I had tea with him many times at this very table. He told me of his troubles under the Nazis, and of you. Oh, don’t worry.” He put up a hand to stop me speaking. “He was very discreet. He didn’t let on.”
“All right, what?” Joe asked. “What exactly is the big secret?”
“It isn’t such a big secret,” I said. “Nothing so terrible. I’m a princess, that’s all, although the monarchy has of course been abolished, so what does it matter?
But yes, I’m the Princess of Saxony. My parents were the King and Queen, and my mother was a princess in her own right.
The Princess of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, which is now partially in Denmark, as it, too, no longer exists as it was.
My real name is, as you see on my Kennkarte, very long. ”
“Marguerite Anastasia Alexandrina von Sachsen,” Joe read aloud.
“Yes,” I said. “And the friends I spoke of who died with my parents were our servants. And you see—” I was shaking again, but this time, Joe didn’t hold me.
“That’s why I can’t return to Saxony, to the Russian Zone.
Before they died, my parents gave me two urgent instructions.
One, to save the Beckers, and two, to leave Saxony and not to return.
So—” I raised both hands in a shrug. “I must make my own way now. And before you say anything, there are two things more. I have over seven hundred American dollars in a tin under my floorboard, and I must get it back today and hide it again. I trust Frau Adelberg, but Herr Adelberg … who knows?”
“You may hide it here, of course,” Dr. Muller said. “We’ll find a place. Alas, I have many loose floorboards.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“But—” Joe didn’t seem to know how to go on.
“But if I have money,” I said, “why have I taken your gifts? Why have I not replaced my clothing? I tried to pay you for the gifts, remember? And there’s almost nothing to buy in the shops, that’s why.
I’ve purchased the fuel oil and wheat flour and other things we’ve needed on the black market, and your Military Intelligence won’t like hearing about that, either.
We’ve been warmer than most, and we’ve eaten, but there’s no housing to be had, is there?
No warm coats, no boots, and no dresses.
There’s not even much food available, especially now, in winter.
I can hardly ride out to the farms and buy vegetables under the table in December.
Meat and cheese and eggs, yes, I can still find a bit of, if I can get there.
In that way, I’m much luckier than most. But when it snows …
” I shrugged. “I can’t push a wheelbarrow five miles in the snow. Not with my condition.”
“Your condition?” Dr. Müller asked.
“I’m a carrier of hemophilia,” I said. “From my mother’s side.” Another breath. “From Queen Victoria. Of England.”
“Wait,” Joe said. “Wait.”
“My grandmother,” I said, “was cousin to the Tsarina Alexandra of Russia, who was also a carrier. You may have heard about that.”
“You can’t be,” Joe said.
“Yes,” I said. “I can. My home was the Residenzschloss in Dresden, which burned in the bombing together with my family’s church, the Hofkirche.
My father refused to fly the swastika at the Palace, that was true, but he escaped imprisonment for years because he was the King of Saxony.
The title has been abolished, but the people don’t forget, and apparently Hitler judged it politically inadvisable to move against him.
He was also a war hero terribly disfigured by his service, as you know, but he was eventually summoned by the Gestapo all the same.
The night of the bombing was to have been his last night with us before being taken for questioning.
He would otherwise almost certainly have been executed, and my mother and I sent to a concentration camp. ”
Joe didn’t ask any of the things I expected. He asked, “What was he accused of?”
“Of being part of the plot against Hitler, for one thing. Operation Valkyrie.”
“The assassination attempt,” Joe said. “Von Stauffenberg.”
“Yes. Another aristocrat. Another Catholic. My father also hid Jews, as you know, and I suspect he did more as well. So to the Nazis, you see, I was very unreliable indeed. To the Russians, I would also be a prize—a prize to say they’d sent to Siberia, since I’m sure they’ve already confiscated all our precious objects and artworks.
They aren’t very fond of royalty, and I’m too well known in Dresden.
The Americans, the rumor says, may try to repatriate Germans back to their native states.
I’m not the only one to have fled the Russians, and everyone knows the Americans have the most food.
I can’t afford to go back, and if I tell them who I am, they may try to make me. And there’s something else, too.”
“Something else,” Joe said. “Besides your name and your parentage and your age. Sixteen. My God. What have I done?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I said, losing patience. “You’ve kissed me a few times, and you’re only twenty. My mother was married at eighteen to a man of thirty, and she’d barely met him before the ceremony. I told you, royalty is different.”
“Ah,” Dr. Müller said again. “One understands your strength of character a bit better now, perhaps.”
“Or my arrogance.” I meant it as a joke.
It fell a bit flat. “I was raised to be a princess, yes, and that doesn’t …
it doesn’t seem to leave, even when the palace and all that goes with it are gone.
And those dollars I have? I sold an heirloom.
” I took two photos out of my pocket and set them on the table.
The one I’d already showed him and his captain, of my parents’ wedding day, and the one of my grandparents.
“My grandmother, wearing the emerald parure that Napoleon gave Josephine at their wedding. And my mother wearing the same thing. The brooch you see here—” I put my finger on it—“is what I sold.”
“Wait,” Joe said.
I didn’t. I felt in the coat lining again and pulled out two more items. A small purple velvet pouch, which I opened into my hand before setting the contents on the table.
“The earrings.” Then I spread out the second thing.
“The necklace. The tiara, I couldn’t take, as I couldn’t hide it well enough, and its discovery would have endangered me.
The brooch was worth thousands—how many, I don’t know—but I sold it to an Army officer in Munich for nine hundred dollars.
Before I did, I tried to sell it on the black market, and cut an American soldier across the face with my knife when he tried to steal it from me.
Something else that I imagine will come up.
I’m afraid I’m a poor liar. Your captain, I’m sure, suspects much of this. ”
“He told me,” Joe said slowly, “that I didn’t have the whole story.” He was still staring at the necklace. Even in the dim light of December, the rich gold glowed against the battered wood of the table, and the jewels were as out of place as a cow in church.