The Librarian of Burned Books, page 9
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, don’t be. The lover is quite pretty, in a provincial way,” Patrice said. “And she’s terribly good in bed, phenomenal at taking direction.”
Hannah snagged two glasses of something pink from the side table as they started toward the main drawing room. “It sounds like all’s well that ends well.”
“We’ll see.” Patrice graciously took one of the drinks, handing off her empty glass to someone who Hannah thought was a rising poet that Otto always found himself in raptures over. Patrice didn’t pay attention to the poet’s disgruntled exclamation, but that was Patrice. She lived in a world of her own. “The girl is quite silly when we take her about. I’m not sure how long she’ll last here. The city would be eating her alive if not for us.”
Hannah swallowed the crass joke that was probably a result of too much wine too fast, and said instead, “Maybe she’ll surprise you.”
“But then I might fall in love with her, and wouldn’t that be terrible.” Patrice sighed, dragging Hannah down onto a tufted sofa.
“Would it be?” Hannah asked, thinking of her talk with Lucien. “So terrible?”
Natalie herself saved Patrice from answering when she dropped into the seat across from Hannah, the little black bulldog settling into her lap and watching them through beady eyes.
“You have a broken heart,” Natalie said in lieu of a greeting. The expat had come to Paris by way of the United States and hadn’t quite lost her blunt American accent—or her blunt American ways.
In a city of fluttering lashes and coyness, Hannah found Natalie refreshing. That didn’t mean Hannah was ever the type to share her emotions easily, especially to someone who was all but a stranger to her. “It’s the best way to be in Paris, no?”
Patrice laughed and stood. “I have not drunk enough wine for this conversation. Good luck.”
Natalie squinted at Hannah, ignoring Patrice’s exit. “You don’t think it’s best to be in love in the City of Lights?”
Hannah lifted one shoulder, wondering how she’d gotten herself into so many philosophical discussions about a topic she’d been steadfastly avoiding for the past three years. That was Paris for you, she supposed. “If you’re a visitor, perhaps. Or a child.”
“You’ve not been a child in a while, I take it.”
“No,” Hannah said softly. “You only fall in love like that once, and then forever you love with a fractured heart. Healed though it may be.”
“Dire,” Natalie proclaimed, her dog whining in her lap as she lifted her hand in a flourish. Natalie liked the dramatics as much as Otto did.
“Realistic,” Hannah countered. “Do you not have a broken heart?”
“Perhaps,” Natalie said, going back to stroking the dog’s head and watching Hannah speculatively. “Have you heard of the art of kintsugi?”
Hannah shook her head.
“In Japan, when a piece of pottery breaks, the pieces are put back together using gold at the cracks,” Natalie said. “That way the broken object is even more beautiful than the original.”
“Poetic,” Hannah drawled to hide the shake that would have been in her voice otherwise. There was something magical about the idea, yet it didn’t match her reality. Any gold she used in the cracks of her heart would be false and fragile and chip at the slightest bit of trouble.
But Natalie didn’t flinch. “You think poetry and life can’t exist in harmony with each other?”
Hannah thought of Adam’s bruised face as he sat across from her in the stark visitor room in the concentration camp, and then of Althea’s tears and useless apology. “No.”
“What a sad way to live, my dear,” Natalie said, with that brutal honesty of hers. “Life is more than survival. I would have thought you knew that.”
“Why?” Hannah asked, curious that this woman knew anything more than her name.
“Do you not work for that library in Montparnasse?” Natalie asked.
“I do,” Hannah agreed hesitantly, already seeing the trap.
“Is it not poetic to exist solely to save a culture from burning to the ground?” Natalie asked. “Is your little library not a symbolic beacon to the world that words are more powerful than flames?”
“When you put it that way . . . ,” Hannah said with a small smile, easing back from the argument. Natalie was right. Hannah knew she was only being contrary in the first place. But that’s how she got when someone poked her sore spots. And what was her heart but one throbbing bruise?
“I am always right, my dear,” Natalie agreed, with an imperious nod to show she didn’t hold grudges. “Now tell me about this great love of yours, the one that put that wisdom in your eyes.”
Hannah shook her head. “It wasn’t a woman who did that,” she said, only half lying. “It was a country.”
Natalie lifted her sherry glass in a toast. “One and the same, my dear. One and the same.”
HANNAH STAYED AT Natalie’s too late and drank too much wine, so when she got home she was all but crawling up the stairs to her one-room flat—the little apartment she’d taken at the top of a house on a quiet street in the fifth arrondissement not far from the Luxembourg Gardens.
Her parents had settled out in the country, but Hannah had craved the freedom of city life and could afford it with the small stipend she was allowed each month from her father.
She needed that money, considering the library paid starvation wages. It was a good thing they all found satisfaction in the work, otherwise the place would be hard pressed to staff itself.
Mademoiselle Brigitte Blanchett stopped Hannah halfway up the stairs. Her landlady was a buxom woman with a dark mustache and the steely resolve of someone who’d seen quite a bit of outrageousness in her life. Hannah suspected that she’d made her living working in and then running a brothel from the few hints Brigitte had dropped.
“Mail,” Brigitte barked in French. She seemed to assume, however correctly, that Hannah had little vocabulary in the language and so tended to hold conversations in one-word sentences.
“Merci.” Hannah took the two envelopes, pretending not to notice Brigitte’s nosy gaze. Her landlady wanted her to open the letters in front of her. Hannah on her own didn’t provide nearly enough entertainment for Brigitte, which the woman had told her several times. “Bonne nuit.”
Brigitte glared, her large bosom heaving beneath her silk dressing gown, but Hannah ignored her, trudging the rest of the way up to her place.
She touched the mezuzah that hung beside her door, a recent addition. Despite their more secular bent, her parents had one also, the Hebrew verses from the Torah carefully tucked into the wooden casing. Her family had treated their mezuzah absently, almost as a habit that to them seemed more like a good-luck charm than a sacred blessing.
It’s a statement, though, isn’t it? one of her friends from the library had said when the absence of Hannah’s came up in passing. It says this is a Jewish household. And it’s a symbol we get to decide to put on ourselves.
That sentiment pulled at something in her chest. She had thought about all the ways Germany marked its Jewish citizens so that they would feel less than. The papers, the registries, the graffiti on shop windows marking them as Jewish-owned.
There was power in claiming—deliberately and with joy—a part of you that others wanted you to hate yourself for. Hannah feared a time would come when the mezuzah would be used against her and other Jews, but for now, it was one more way of owning her own humanity.
This was a Jewish household.
When she finally made it inside, Hannah collapsed onto her bed, into the soft embrace of her grandmother’s sunny yellow quilt—the only bit of color in a somewhat drab apartment. She brought her knees up to her chest as she leaned back against the wall, holding the two envelopes.
She chewed on her lip as she touched the return address on the first one.
Owl’s Head, Maine.
The writing was achingly familiar, and her eyes burned. Though she would not cry. Never that.
Hannah hated that she’d had to think of the woman so much in recent days. She’d been better in the past few months, her pain receding until it was small enough to carry around inside of her.
She couldn’t exactly go weeks without remembering what had transpired before Hannah and her family had fled Germany, not when the consequences remained so painful. But more often now she could slide past the memory of Althea herself, pushing it away into a dark corner where she didn’t have to look at it, didn’t have to suffocate beneath the crushing weight of the betrayal.
Hannah tossed the letter aside without opening it. Later she would slot it into the box she kept in the loose floorboard in her closet, the one that held all the letters she’d received and never opened. The one that held that precious edition of Alice in Wonderland with the cat doodles drawn on the title page.
But for now, Hannah turned her attention to the second envelope. She recognized the writing just as easily, and she held the letter to her forehead for a long moment as she tried to get her breath back.
When she finally forced herself to open the damn thing, she realized her cheeks were damp.
“Silly girl,” she murmured to herself, swiping at the tears.
The message was exactly what she’d expected and thankfully not what she had feared.
Heard news of Adam today, poorly but still alive. No progress on his trial.
Will update if anything changes.
She knew the swoopy, sloppy signature at the end to be Johann Bauer’s. He tried to write to her and her parents at least once every few weeks to update them on Adam’s case. Her brother had been a political prisoner at a concentration camp north of Berlin for the past three years, and every single day since his arrest, Hannah had been waiting for news that he’d been executed.
Their only chance was that Johann—one of the few friends who had remained loyal to their family after what had happened with Adam—could pull the limited strings he had left in the government. And he was the first to admit that as a lawyer who’d made most of his connections under the previous regime, he didn’t have many allies left in the city.
Johann promised her that there was still hope. Hannah’s parents believed the lie.
But in the dark of night, Hannah knew better.
Under the Third Reich, hope only existed as a weapon.
Chapter 13
Berlin
February 1933
Deveraux Charles had a private car waiting for her outside Helene Bechstein’s house.
“When you’re the favored pet, you get a gilded cage,” Dev said at Althea’s wide-eyed gaze.
“You don’t like the Nazis,” Althea remarked as they settled into the cushioned back seat.
Dev flicked her eyes toward their driver. “I just tease, darling.”
Althea got the hint and kept her mouth closed for the rest of their ride.
She didn’t know where they were headed, but she found she didn’t care. Her body hummed with an excitement she hadn’t felt since those first weeks with Diedrich, exploring the new city. Her resentment about being restricted took on a new layer.
Your handler.
Almost desperately, Althea tried to parse through what she knew of the NSDAP. Most people whom she encountered on university campuses spoke of the party with a feverish excitement that aligned with Diedrich’s oft-cited statistics about young people’s voting preferences. The communists Althea had met clearly did not like the party, but did she really care what they thought? When they were trying to incite a civil war in the country? When they clearly were prepared to resort to terroristic tactics?
Everyone had strong opinions about politics, it seemed. Althea sometimes wished she could just ignore it all, but that was proving nearly impossible. There were definite sides to be picked, and why wouldn’t Althea support her hosts?
She liked Diedrich, liked especially when he held her hand and smiled at her like she was the most delightful person he’d ever met. Yes, sometimes he could be overbearing, almost militant, when it came to his party and beliefs, but so were the communists Althea had talked to.
She didn’t know Deveraux, but for some reason she liked her, too. Dev hadn’t said she was a communist, but Althea could tell almost immediately that the woman didn’t trust the very political party that was hosting her.
Althea’s head throbbed as she stared out the window at the blurred neon lights of the theater district. The problem wasn’t going to be solved that night. For now, she would just enjoy whatever Dev had in store for her.
The car dropped them outside a club on Marburger Strasse.
Chez Ma Belle Soeur, the sign above the door read.
“‘My beautiful sister,’” Dev translated, hooking her chin over Althea’s shoulder.
“French?” Althea asked as she ran a nervous hand over her hair, such a mousey brown compared to Dev’s sleek strands. At least she hadn’t attempted anything too ambitious, simply pinning back the front and trying to tame the rest into soft waves.
Dev started inside, throwing a wink over her shoulder. “As all good cabaret is.”
Decadence was all Althea could think when they stepped into the nightclub. The decorations leaned toward Grecian frescos, but it was the atmosphere rather than the paint on the walls that turned it otherworldly.
Althea had been struck dumb by Dev’s beauty, but Dev was almost a dime a dozen among the women pressed up at the bar and seated at tables and booths throughout the room. The men were equally stunning, and Althea had never felt more drab.
Some in the crowd had their attention locked on the stage at the far side of the room—where women in skimpy lederhosen kicked like Rockettes—but just as many people chatted away, smoked, laughed, sang their own little versions of whatever the band was playing.
The noise, the music, the smoke, the beautiful women, the beautiful men—all pressed in on Althea until reality went a little blurry at the edges and she swayed into Dev.
Dev patted her cheek and righted her.
“The real Berlin,” she whispered.
Dev proceeded to introduce her to group after group. It seemed like she knew everyone and everyone loved Dev. The brightest star in a constellation of bright stars.
But some were actually interested in Althea, a peculiarity she still wasn’t used to.
“You’re a writer,” they gasped. “Tell us who you know.”
“Well, you might have heard of her,” Althea said to one particularly nosy woman. “Deveraux Charles, an up-and-coming playwright of monumental talent.”
Everyone laughed, and Dev winked and Althea felt light-headed and drunk from the attention.
“Did you hear about Eldorado?” one man asked Dev, whose lips parted in dismay.
“Don’t tell me,” she all but wailed.
“Ludwig handed it over to the SA brutes.” The man—Althea thought his name might be Peter—shook his head sadly. “They’re using it as a headquarters now.”
“Sacrilege!” Dev cried. “Though poor Ludwig, he didn’t have a choice.”
“Not with the crackdown,” Peter agreed. “He was bound to be arrested one of these days.”
Dev turned to Althea. “Eldorado was the cabaret club for people who enjoy the company of . . .” Peter and Dev met each other’s eyes as she paused, and then continued, “Well, it was the club to go to. Such a sad state of affairs.”
“What crackdown?” Althea asked, as confused as if she were a small child begging for adult information.
“I’ll explain it to you later,” Dev said as an aside.
Then they were off to talk to another group, to lament curfews and club closings and the lack of coffee in stores. Althea let it all wash over her, and thought, SA.
The Sturmabteilung. The storm division, the storm troopers.
That was the more formal name for the brownshirts who were such a ubiquitous presence on the streets. There were also the SS, or the blackshirts, who acted more as bodyguards to Hitler and his top officials. But the SA were the ones who Althea saw the most.
Why would they be cracking down on cabaret clubs?
Deviants, Althea’s mind supplied as she scanned the crowd around her. Men wearing makeup and women, with short, slicked hair, wearing suits. Women holding hands with other women, men doing the same with other men. She tried to imagine what Diedrich would have to say about the affectionate displays. He didn’t talk about it much, but she instinctively knew this was who he was referring to when he spit out that word like it was a foul thing on his tongue.
Your handler.
The first rule of the Reich is, don’t question the Reich.
Deviants. Althea might not know much about the world, but she knew she would never call anyone such a hateful term.
Had she gotten this all wrong?
Althea lost track of time watching the dancers onstage. There seemed to be a master of ceremonies who would come out and tell jokes in between the little acts.
“Heil—damn it, now I’ve forgotten the name,” the MC cried to riotous howls and jeers. At one point he brought out framed pictures of Hitler, Goebbels, and a few other men Althea didn’t recognize.
“Now,” he asked a rapt audience, who seemed desperate for whatever the punch line would be as he waved to the portraits, “shall I hang them or line them up against the wall?”
The approving bellow that followed rippled and rolled over even those who weren’t paying attention.
“You’ve heard about what the new master race should look like, yes?” the MC asked the enthralled crowd. They hollered and he nodded like they’d actually said anything intelligible. “As thin as Göring, as blond as Hitler, and as tall as Goebbels.”
The man talking to Dev shook his head. “He better be careful, he’ll get a not-so-friendly visit from Göring at this rate.”
“The Nazis love it, don’t let them fool you,” Dev said, and nodded at his skeptical look. “I think they think of it as a release valve? Toothless criticism that lets people blow off steam. For now, at least,” she added with a shrug.
“You would know, I guess,” the man said grimly. “But it won’t be long that they tolerate it.”
