“I don’t think Martha wants a roommate.”
“You know what I mean. You could go home to the U.S. and return when things are better here.”
It was true that the harrowing events had intensified Mildred’s homesickness for Wisconsin and her family, but she knew from experience that a prolonged separation from Arvid would be even more difficult to bear. “My home is wherever you are,” she said, kissing him, “and you and your family and our friends are my people.”
And yet, for the day at least, she welcomed the promised respite from Nazi rule. The bloody purge had left her badly shaken, weighed down by a heavy sense of dread. The killings had ceased, or so the public was told, but rumors and revelations about the extent of the carnage heightened her worry that the slaughter continued somewhere out of sight.
Only the day before, the chancellor’s cabinet had enacted a law retroactively making all executions carried out over the weekend legal, as actions conducted “in emergency defense of the state.” Mildred felt as if Germany had crossed into a dangerous shadowland where the letter of the law had never been more strictly enforced even as the rule of law had become arbitrary. The Independence Day celebration would be the first formal occasion after the purge where Americans and Germans would mingle socially. She could not imagine how they would be able to carry on as if their world had not fundamentally changed.
The afternoon was warm and overcast, but Tiergartenstrasse 27a was pleasantly cool as Mildred and Arvid climbed the foyer stairs to the main floor, beckoned by the sounds of conversation, laughter, and music. They found the Dodd family receiving their guests at the ballroom entrance. Mrs. Dodd looked lovely in a long, flowing blue-and-white dress, her hair pure silver and radiant in the subdued light, her voice as ever soft and gracious, enhanced by the notes of her native Virginia. Only the unusually bright flush to her fair skin and a certain keen look in her dark eyes suggested that her thoughts were troubled or that her mind was anywhere but on the pleasant light conversation she made with each guest.
The ambassador concealed his strain better than his wife did. He greeted Mildred and Arvid with affable good humor and just a hint of irony, enough for her to know that he was sincere when he said he was pleased they had come.
Next in the receiving line, Bill welcomed them almost too heartily, his jaw clenched when he smiled and lines of tension around his eyes, but Martha made no pretense of her true feelings. “Lebst du noch?” she asked sardonically as she kissed Mildred’s cheek and nodded to Arvid.
“For now,” said Arvid. “The day is young.”
Martha laughed shortly, but Mildred suppressed a shudder. “You two and your gallows humor,” she said, managing a smile as she took Arvid’s arm and led him away.
The ballroom and reception rooms were beautifully decorated for the holiday, with abundant red, white, and blue floral arrangements and small American flags adorning the tables and mantelpieces. In the ballroom, an orchestra performed traditional American favorites and lively jazz tunes. Mildred and Arvid lingered to listen until tempted away by delicious aromas wafting from the dining room, where they found a banquet table generously laden with plates of enticing food and drink. After serving themselves, they found seats at a table near a window that offered a lovely view of the Tiergarten in one direction and the receiving line in the other. Mildred noticed that on several occasions, a diplomat or a correspondent would draw Mr. Dodd away from the line for a brief hushed, intense conversation, interrupting the flow of arriving guests until the ambassador could return to his place between his wife and son.
Mildred and Arvid had almost finished eating when the stocky blond butler approached Martha and murmured in her ear. After exchanging a quick word with her mother, Martha hurried off down the grand staircase. Mildred assumed her friend was dealing with some calamity in the kitchen, but when she did not promptly return, Mildred knew something more urgent had called her away.
As Mildred kept an eye out for Martha, she and Arvid mingled among the other guests, conversing in guarded murmurs with close friends, limiting themselves to light pleasantries with everyone else. An electric tension pervaded the gathering as the Americans, Germans, and diplomats of other nations wandered about the ballroom and reception rooms, onto the terrace, or through the gardens, exploring the gravel paths and lingering in the cooling shade. The guests chatted and gossiped, enjoyed food and drink, bantered and laughed with such ostensible ease that the scene probably resembled the Independence Day celebrations going on at American embassies throughout Europe—and yet behind their smiles the Germans seemed tense, the foreign diplomats anxious.
Mildred and Arvid were strolling through the garden when, more than an hour after Martha had broken away from the receiving line, they spotted her on the terrace above, her eyes bright, a slight flush to her cheeks. She caught sight of them, gave a little wave, and descended toward the stairs. Mildred and Arvid exchanged a knowing look and went to meet her.
“Are you enjoying the party?” Martha asked, an ironic lilt in her voice.
“Indeed, as much as we expected to,” Mildred replied as Martha linked arms with her and led her and Arvid to a secluded corner away from the other guests. “How is Comrade Boris?”
“You think I was off on some tryst?” said Martha, wounded. “I went to meet Franzie von Papen. His entire family is under house arrest. The SS is tapping their phones and censoring their mail, and guards have been posted inside and out. They only let Franzie leave so that he could take his final exams. By now I’m sure he’s returned to his prison.”
“How is the vice chancellor?” asked Arvid.
“He’s still alive, but Franzie says the SS have made it clear that he could be shot at any moment.” Martha clasped her shoulders as if warding off a chill. “He’s been charged with conspiring with Röhm and Schleicher to overthrow Hitler. Franzie insists that his father was not involved in any plot. He despised Röhm and mistrusted Schleicher’s ambitions, and wouldn’t have had anything to do with either man. It’s a complete lie.”
“I don’t think the truth matters anymore,” said Mildred.
“Franzie believes that his father would have been executed days ago if President Hindenburg weren’t so fond of him. That friendship is all that shields him from death—”
Martha broke off abruptly as Hans Thomsen strolled past nearby, Elmina Rangabe, the Greek minister’s beautiful dark-haired daughter, on his arm. Mildred was surprised to see theKanzleiliaison there after the way he had rebuked Martha for playing the Nazi anthem at her birthday party, but apparently Ambassador Dodd still considered him a valuable ally.
“The longer they delay Papen’s execution, the more likely it is that he’ll survive the purge,” said Arvid after the couple moved on.
“I hope you’re right,” said Martha. “As for me, I’ll never trust the Nazis again. How deluded I was, thinking their political coup was some noble and glorious revolution. For that, we’ll have to look to the Soviet Union.”
“Then you’re going ahead with your tour?” asked Mildred.
Martha nodded, her gaze darting from Hans Thomsen to other guests in Nazi regalia strolling through the garden, serpents uncoiling in Eden. “If nothing else, it will get me out of Germany for a while. I’ve had enough blood and terror to last me the rest of my life.”
“Haven’t we all?” said Mildred softly, reaching for Arvid’s hand.
Gleichschaltunghad swept over the nation so relentlessly that Mildred feared it would soon demolish every last good and true thing that stood in its way. She and Arvid loved the old Germany of literature, reason, and the rule of law, but Berlin was a diverse and modern city in an increasingly fascist realm. They knew Germany well, but even they were sometimes confounded by the increasingly unfamiliar country that confronted them daily. How much more inscrutable Germany must seem to a recently arrived ambassador and the far-distant president who had appointed him.
Some developments were so obviously foreboding that Mildred could not understand why the American government showed so little concern. Germany had left the League of Nations. The Treaty of Versailles seemed powerless to constrain Hitler’s ambition. And although Hitler repeatedly insisted that he wanted peace and even hinted that he might support a nonaggression pact with France and Great Britain, in the countryside all around Berlin, unemployed men had been hired for vast new construction projects—administrative buildings, airfields, barracks, training grounds, antiaircraft bunkers. Soldiers drilled in the forests and meadows; Hitler Youth marched, trained with rifles, and played vigorous war games that usually ended in bloody fistfights between opposing teams, a quick, efficient means to toughen them up.
Everything pointed to one malignant ambition.
