When they went inside to check in, Quentin asked the registration clerk, in fairly decent German, if a festival was going on. The clerk laughed so vigorously that the tips of his curved mustache trembled. “Not a festival,” he replied in English. “A sort of parade. Someone needs to learn a lesson.”
“A lesson?” echoed Martha, but the clerk merely smiled and shrugged.
After arranging for their luggage to be sent up to their rooms, Martha, Bill, and Quentin ventured out in search of supper. The streets were even more crowded than before, and everywhere Martha looked she saw people milling about the square, laughing and talking in the friendliest manner. As the people began lining up on either side of the street, Martha heard distant music and the swelling roar of laughter and cheers. She wove through the crowd and claimed a spot right on the curb, the better to see the parade. She recognized the familiar red glow of torchlight, and her heartbeat quickened as she realized this was likely no festival but yet another Nazi demonstration—and sometimes those turned violent.
She would have backed away, but the crowd pressed in closer, blocking her retreat. Fortunately, Bill and Quentin were right behind her, and Martha knew they would not let her be shoved into the street. She went up on tiptoe, craning her neck as the first rows of marching Brownshirts appeared, banners and torches held aloft. The crowd roared approval as they passed, and here and there people frantically waved small Nazi flags.
The music of the brass band grew louder, but it was nearly drowned out by jeers and coarse laughter. Bewildered, Martha looked past the columns of marchers and saw that following immediately afterward were two very large storm troopers, half carrying, half dragging a small, barefoot human figure between them.
Martha stared, transfixed with disbelief that swiftly gave way to horror. The figure was a woman, her blouse and skirt disheveled, her head shaved and lolling on her shoulder, her face and scalp covered with a white powder. All around, the crowd erupted in an earsplitting barrage of taunts, insults, and epithets.
Then Martha spied the placard hanging around the woman’s neck. “What does it say?” she asked Quentin.
“‘I have offered myself to a Jew,’” he read aloud.
“We have to help her,” said Bill, pushing forward.
Quentin seized his arm and yanked him back. “What can we do? Look at this crowd. We’d be torn to pieces.”
Martha’s vision blurred with tears of outrage as the gruesome parade passed and the crowd surged into the street to follow after. She, Bill, and Quentin managed to avoid being swept along as the shouting, cheering throng continued down the street, immobilizing the few vehicles whose drivers had unwittingly turned into their path. Passengers on the top level of a double-decker bus whistled and shouted, pointing at the girl from above. The two large storm troopers lifted up the semiconscious woman so they could have a better look, so high that her feet dangled lifelessly above the ground.
The parade fell apart into one seething mass of hatred and vengeful glee. As Martha was jostled back and forth by fiercely grinning revelers, she seized Bill’s arm. “Let’s go back to our rooms,” she implored. He nodded, but to their dismay, the large storm troopers propelled the woman into the lobby of their own hotel. The band reassembled on the sidewalk outside and struck up a raucous tune, and as they reached the last refrain, the storm troopers emerged and hauled their victim to the hotel next door. At that moment the band struck up the “Horst Wessel Lied,” the Nazi Party anthem. Immediately the people around them halted in place, thrust their arms into the air in theHitlergruss, and began singing along loudly and ardently.
“I need a drink,” said Bill, his voice low and thick with disgust. Staying close together, they wove their way through the crowd back to their hotel, where they withdrew to the bar and sank wearily down at a table in the corner. Blood pounded in Martha’s ears, and when she closed her eyes she saw the small woman, her head slumping to one side, her arms pale and slender in the storm troopers’ grip, her unshod feet dangling helplessly.
“I don’t know about the rest of you,” said Quentin, “but I intend to get extremely drunk.”
He pushed himself away from the table and went to the bar, where he placed an order and engaged the bartender in a quick, whispered conversation. Martha and Bill sat in silence until he returned with a tray of three foaming beers, a thick loaf of dark bread, sliced cold sausages, and cheese. Though Martha had been ravenous before the parade, at the sight of food bile rose in her throat and she had to look away.
“Her name is Anna Rath,” Quentin said. “She’s a local girl, Aryan, and she apparently intends to marry her Jewish fiancé.”
“What’s the problem?” asked Martha. “Is she already married?”
Bill grabbed one of the steins and drank deeply. “Didn’t you know? The Nazis disapprove of marriages between Aryans and Jews.”
“That’s absurd.”
“It’s a fact.”
Quentin leaned forward and rested his arms on the table. “The press has been reporting Nazi atrocities for months, secondhand tales cobbled together from observers’ accounts. This time I’m an eyewitness.”
“You can’t mean you’re going to write about this,” protested Martha. “That’s not fair. It’s an isolated incident—terrible, of course, but it doesn’t represent the real Germany.”
“You’ve been in the country a month,” said Quentin. “I’ve been here for years. Believe me, this is no isolated incident.”
“Would you condemn all Americans for the violence committed by a few members of the KKK?”
“Sorry, sis, but you really don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Bill. “You should spend less time at parties drinking champagne with aristocrats and more time walking around Berlin, talking to ordinary people and observing what’s really going on.”
“Please don’t file this story,” Martha implored. “When people hear that Bill and I were involved, my father will be dragged into an ugly controversy just as he’s trying to establish his credibility with the German government.”
Quentin ran a hand over his jaw. “Fine. I’ll tell my editor I have two unimpeachable witnesses, but I’ll leave your names out of it.”
Martha knew better than to press her luck. Resigned, she took a drink, sat back in her chair, and said nothing more, wishing she could blot out the image of poor Anna Rath from her memory.
Chapter Twenty
September–October 1933
