The Librarian of Burned Books, page 26
“All right.” Joe leaned on the bar, a rag tossed over one shoulder. “I’ve given you long enough. What do you want with my sister?”
And so Viv explained. About the Armed Services Editions, the Taft amendment, the attempted censorship, even D-Day, and everything she’d heard since.
“I sincerely think she could make a difference,” Viv finished, lamely after the grandiosity of the rest of her story.
Joe eyed her, then walked away. He grabbed a thick pint glass from the hooks and filled it to the brim with frothy beer. He downed half of it in one go and then crossed back over to her.
“You know what my sister has been through?”
It seemed like a genuine question so Viv tried to answer honestly. “Only a guess.”
“I can’t fight.”
Viv didn’t question that admission. People said strange things these days, out of nowhere. Instead, she nodded. “That’s all right.”
“I wanted to,” Joe continued. “But I’ve got asthma of all things.”
“That must be difficult.” She wasn’t placating him. She’d seen what being left behind did to the boys back home. Those overseas, of course, had it much worse. But she would never write off the pain of being the one who couldn’t go over. The one who was stared at by old men and young women who had lost too much. Viv had seen a boy slapped for not being over there, despite the fact that Viv knew he was blind in one eye. Some people wanted them as cannon fodder anyway, some just didn’t know what to do with the sight of a seemingly healthy boy who had it better than someone in their own family.
“Althea hates the Nazis,” he said, in what she was beginning to realize was his way of speaking. Disjointed thought followed by disjointed thought.
“Don’t we all?” Viv asked.
“No,” Joe said, brutal and honest, and Viv couldn’t argue. She was fairly certain that at least some number of Americans secretly agreed with the hateful speech the Nazis spewed.
“Well, I do,” Viv said, watching him. “What do you need me to do to show you I’m earnest?”
“You don’t need to do anything,” he said. “You came all this way. I’ll let you take your shot.”
Viv slumped on her barstool in relief. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me ’til you meet her.” Joe signaled to a pimply boy working the taps at the end of the bar. “Let’s go.”
“Now?” Viv asked but she was already scrambling off the seat, grabbing her bag.
Joe called down to the boy to have him watch the bar, and then they headed back outside. He gestured to the truck and she climbed in once more. The drive was quiet but not tense, both of their windows down. Viv had never smelled the sea before, except when she went to Coney Island, and it wasn’t pure there.
Here she could all but taste the salt in the air, the waves a siren’s call. The road followed the black cliffs, and she could stare out into forever. She wasn’t sure she’d ever felt so small as this.
A cottage stood on what seemed like the end of the earth. Pink, purple, yellow, white flowers surrounded it, looking for all the world like a painting come to life.
“Either have her ring me, or take the bicycle and ride back,” Joe directed with a jerk of his head to the fence where a bike rested. Viv thought about the drive and hoped Althea would at least grant her the use of the phone before kicking her out, if that’s what she was going to do.
“Thank you,” Viv said, before gathering her courage in both hands to get herself to climb out of the truck.
Joe honked once as he reversed, and Viv winced. There was no hiding that she was here now, no hesitating to prepare what she would say. Even as she had the thought the curtain behind the window twitched.
Now or never. Viv walked up to the door, raised her fist, and knocked.
It opened almost immediately.
Standing there was a petite woman with thick hair she wore down around her shoulders. She had a sweet, round face with a smattering of freckles, both of which made her seem much younger than what Viv knew was her thirty-six years of age.
“Whatever you want,” Althea James said, her voice raspy like this was the first time in a long time that she’d used it. “The answer is no.”
And then the door promptly slammed in Viv’s face.
Chapter 41
Berlin
May 1933
The room Althea was taken to was small and windowless, the smell of rot almost unbearable. At the sight of the stark, bare walls, her breath came in shallow gasps, until the world started to narrow into a pinprick.
The men who’d dragged her from her apartment threw her into the single chair, and her body went with the force of their movement, like she was a rag doll unable to resist.
Desperate to ground herself to reality, Althea counted her fingers where they clenched against her thighs. One, two, three . . . This was real. Not a horrific nightmare.
All at once, she saw that man tied to a Saint Andrew’s cross in the middle of the square, unconscious as the woman wept at his feet, his blood spattered across her face.
There had been no mercy in the Nazi’s expression.
Althea’s forehead pressed against the cool metal of the table, everything in her aching.
Diedrich prowled into the room, a vicious smile twisting his features and making him ugly in a way she could never have predicted.
“You think you can humiliate me?” he asked, his voice pitched low and even, all the more frightening because of its control. “You. A plain, ignorant American woman.”
Althea tried not to flinch. She’d known he’d never really been interested in her romantically; that had all been a lie to keep her compliant. Still, the ghost of those butterflies from those first days acted as a harsh reminder of her own foolishness. She looked away and gritted her teeth.
“I was so kind to you,” Diedrich continued, pacing the space, his hands locked behind his back. It took him only a stride or two before he had to turn, which would have been comical had Althea not been trying to hold herself together at her rapidly fraying seams. “I showed you everything you could want in life, things you could only dream of attaining.” He paused then gestured to himself. “People you could only dream of having.”
“I would never want you,” Althea managed, proud of herself for being able to form words, let alone spit the insult at him. Her hands trembled, but still, she’d done it.
He was on her in a blink, his thumb and forefinger pinching her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. “Oh, pet,” he all but purred. “We both know that’s not true.”
Maybe yesterday, she would have cowered. But something had bloomed within her last night. A power she had never known she had caught fire, and the flames burned away the fear that she had been coming to believe was one of her foundation stones.
“My head might have been turned by the pretty mask,” Althea said, trying to lace as much acid as possible into the words. “But we both know the monster beneath is hideous.”
Diedrich laughed as if she were a child lashing out with ineffective fists. He continued as if she hadn’t said anything. “And how did you repay me? By cavorting with that Jewess whore.”
Althea sucked in a breath. “She’s a hundred times the person you are.”
Diedrich gripped her face harder, and she saw the rage simmering beneath the surface. But to her surprise, he let her go and stepped back enough so that he was leaning against the wall.
After an unbearable silence, Althea glanced at the door. Was this when he called in those thugs of his to beat her senseless? Her stomach rolled as she imagined her body bruised and bloody on the ground. Or worse. They could do something much worse to her. “What are you going to do to me?”
That question seemed to be what Diedrich had been waiting for. A slow, disturbing smile spread over his face that looked skeletal now, his evilness shaping his features into a macabre facsimile of amusement. “Absolutely nothing.”
His reply should have been a relief. But Althea’s entire body tightened, as if waiting for a blow he was promising wouldn’t come. “What do you mean?”
“We would never hurt one of our friends from America,” Diedrich drawled. “You will leave here without a single scratch on your person. And you can tell your embassy that when they ask.”
Althea shook her head, the lurking sense of danger refusing to fade. “I don’t understand. Why bring me here, then?”
She recognized the look in Diedrich’s eyes when he’d seen Hannah standing behind her in the apartment. That anger had gone beyond politics. Men like Diedrich did not take kindly to being humiliated. He wouldn’t let her just walk away now.
This wasn’t a social call. This wasn’t just a slap on the wrists. But the fear had muddled her mind. Althea couldn’t see what Diedrich had planned.
“I thought about throwing you to the men,” Diedrich said, casual contempt in every word. “But I have to admit, this will be more fun.”
“What do you mean?” Althea called as Diedrich tossed her one last grin and then headed toward the door. She tried again, though she knew he wouldn’t hear her. “What do you mean?”
Only the echo of her own voice ricocheting off the tiled walls of the tiny room answered her.
THEY KEPT ALTHEA for eleven hours.
She was given a piece of bread and a glass of water and was escorted to the toilet twice.
None of the lower-ranking men answered her questions, her pleas, her hysterical begging.
The walls pulsed around her, closing in until they all but brushed her shoulders, the sour mildew choking her lungs. In those moments, she closed her eyes, thought of Hannah when they’d danced at the cabaret, thought of her fingers tracing soothing patterns on Althea’s naked back, her eyes quiet and serious.
Althea held those moments tight to her chest, tried to breathe them in, breathe them out.
After what seemed like days, two brownshirts opened the room to her makeshift cell and pulled her out into the hallway.
The darkness threatened at the edges of her vision as her heart tripped dangerously in her chest. A high-pitched siren wailed against the inside of her skull, spots popped into starbursts in her eyes, and she couldn’t feel her feet or hands.
They were going to kill her. She was sure of it.
Flashes of her life played against her eyelids. Her brother. Her cliffs. Those fairy lights at the winter market, the books. That day in the early spring when Hannah had sat shading Althea’s face. Last night, the fire warm against her skin.
She didn’t want to die.
Althea let them take all her weight, making them drag her as she screamed at the ceiling, her throat raw by the time they reached the lobby of the building. And then, they let her go so that she crumpled to the floor from her unexpected freedom, and they turned and walked away without once uttering a word.
She scrambled to stand, her legs wobbly, her head too light, her stomach heaving. Althea stumbled to the door, managed to grasp the handle with unreliable fingers, somehow, somehow, somehow pushed, and she was outside.
Breathing in air not tainted with the rancid traces of fear and torture.
Suddenly there were hands on her, and Althea cowered away.
But the hands were soft, gentle, careful. Blinking, Althea tried to focus on the face in front of her.
All she could see were warm, golden eyes.
Everything in her relaxed, and she exhaled, letting her body sag into Hannah’s sure grip.
“Althea, tell me you’re unhurt, please, tell me,” Hannah said, desperate and urgent, yet still somehow soothing. “What did they do to you?”
Shaking her head, Althea tried to get her numb lips to move, to do something other than mouth useless words. “Nothing,” she finally managed.
“What?” Hannah asked, her hands still exploring, looking for broken bones, bruised flesh, torn skin.
Althea licked her suddenly dry lips, not sure why she was nervous when she answered, “Nothing.”
“That doesn’t . . .” Hannah trailed off like she didn’t believe Althea, wouldn’t take her word for it.
“I don’t know why,” Althea confessed on a whisper, wishing the fog that had settled over her mind would clear. There was something wrong and she couldn’t figure out what it was. Not when Hannah was looking at her like that, with such heartbreaking concern. “You were waiting for me.”
“Of course.” Hannah finally pulled Althea in tight, her steady arms providing the solace Althea had been desperately craving without her having to ask for it. “Once they took you . . . You don’t know how frightened I was.”
Althea buried her face in the warm, soft space of Hannah’s neck, wanting to live there forever, to never have to remember this day, that horrible, overwhelming terror, the nothingness that had followed. “You warned me he would get his revenge.”
“And he didn’t hurt you?” Hannah asked again, a rumble emitting from her chest. She didn’t let Althea go, just let her nestle there, up against her body, Hannah’s palms rubbing slow circles on Althea’s back.
“No,” Althea said slowly. “He said this was more fun.”
“What was more—”
A shout interrupted them. Otto, calling Hannah’s name.
He was still a half block away, but he’d yelled loud enough to get their attention. Althea reluctantly stepped out of Hannah’s embrace as they turned to greet him.
A flush rode high on Otto’s neck and cheeks. His always artfully disheveled hair stood up as if he’d been yanking at the strands. When he reached them, he panted, half bent over.
“Otto?” Hannah asked, a quiet alertness about her. Althea couldn’t help but match her rigid posture. Something was clearly wrong.
“They have Adam.”
“But how?” Hannah breathed out.
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Otto said, straightening, his eyes wide, unfocused.
“No one knew where he was,” Hannah said, the words rushing out, as if stating these facts would somehow change the reality. “Did he leave the Adlon?”
“No, he made a scene in the lobby of the hotel,” Otto said, shaking his head. “It’s how I heard about it. They dragged him out of his room.”
“But nobody knew where—”
Hannah cut herself off, shifting her attention to Althea.
Her gaze locked on Althea’s face and then slipped to the building behind them, where Althea had just been held by the Nazis. Then her eyes darted back to Althea, likely noticing once again that Althea was whole, in one piece, without any new bruises or marks.
Althea tripped behind Hannah’s thought process, desperate and anxious, her mind not moving quickly enough for this conversation. “No.”
“You knew where he was,” Hannah said. “I told you.”
Otto’s ragged inhale sliced into the air between them, but he didn’t interrupt.
“No, no.” Althea reached out shaking hands to Hannah, who flinched and stepped away. Althea curled her fists up into her chest, worried her knees might buckle, might take her down to the sidewalk. “Diedrich already knew, he must have known.”
“How?” The question didn’t come like Hannah was giving her the benefit of the doubt. It came like a slap, a judgment already rendered.
Even as Althea’s throat spasmed dangerously, she tried to think. “He said . . .” Her eyes flew to Hannah’s. “He said this was more fun than hurting me himself. He planned this, Hannah.”
But Hannah had been lost to her. Althea could tell from how her words slammed up against a concrete facade. There was no give, no softness, none of the affection that Althea only now realized had been granted to her since the moment she’d met Hannah.
“Please.” Althea stumbled forward, not sure what she was even doing. But again, Hannah retreated, contempt in every line of her face.
“Don’t touch me,” she all but spat at Althea, and Althea thought she might have preferred that. Instead the words landed, cut into her skin, created the very scars she was missing to prove her innocence.
“I didn’t.” It was all she could manage, her arms wrapped protectively around her waist, her vision blurred with the tears she was refusing to let fall. If they slipped out, Hannah might read them as guilt.
Otto finally stepped forward, putting an arm around Hannah’s shoulder, pulling her closer, offering her the comfort Althea wished she could. He pointed a long finger at Althea. “You stay away from us.” And then he called her a name that she didn’t know but which seared itself onto her bones.
Whore, traitor, bitch. A combination of the three? It didn’t matter. Disgust was easily conveyed across languages.
“Come on, darling,” Otto murmured to Hannah, who by now had paled and was leaning against Otto like he was the only thing keeping her upright.
“They have him,” Hannah said so quietly that it was almost just as if her lips moved and nothing came out. But Althea heard her anyway. “I told her.”
Althea took a wavering breath, wanting, God, wanting, to do something other than stand there and watch her world fall apart.
And then she heard Hannah’s voice in her head. This isn’t about you.
Every part of her longed to reach out, to grasp Hannah’s arms, make Hannah believe her, talk and talk and talk at Hannah until she gave in and admitted there had to be another way that the Nazis had found her brother.
But this wasn’t about Althea right now.
So she stepped back, her body collapsing in on itself. “I’m sorry.”
They would both take the apology as an admission, but she didn’t care. She was sorry, sorry about all of this, sorry she’d ever met Diedrich, sorry that she’d ever believed the Nazis’ lies, that she’d accepted Nazi money to come to the city in the first place. Maybe she hadn’t revealed Adam’s location under torture, but wasn’t she complicit in his capture?
Because Diedrich had orchestrated this as punishment, there was no doubt about that. And that started and ended with Althea.
The only thing she wasn’t sorry about was meeting Hannah. Maybe the world was ending, but for once Althea had been able to understand something everyone else seemed to grasp intrinsically. Love didn’t have to be hard. It could be the quiet moments while drinking wine on a café’s patio; the gentle touch of fingers against sweat-glistening skin; the laughter of dancing through the shelves of a bookstore; a shared look of understanding that didn’t need any words to accompany it.
