‘I hope you won’t mind if I don’t accompany you.’ Annie Krauss gestured slightly towards the velvet-covered table. ‘I require a period of quiet meditation before my next customer.’
Baffled, Hedwig looked at Jochen but he was already moving towards the far end of the house. He had obviously been here before, because he led the way through a kitchen to a cellar door and then down two flights of narrow steps to a low-ceilinged room with bare walls. A single weak bulb illuminated a table on which stood a machine, several jars and stacks of paper.
‘What’s going on? I thought we were going to have our fortunes told?’
Jochen was sorting through a pile of papers on the table with his back to her.
‘I think mine’s already decided.’
Reality was dawning on Hedwig. Hard, unhappy reality.
‘This is to do with the people you were talking about, isn’t it? Are you going to tell me who they are?’
‘I can’t. None of us must know too much. They tell us to think of a stone thrown into a lake. The stone causes circles and then more circles that ripple out to the edge of the lake. We are in one of those circles.’
We? How happy she would have been a week ago, whenever she heard Jochen use that word. How she longed to go back to that time, when her only worry was whether he preferred brunettes or blondes.
‘And is Frau Krauss part of this?’ she said, incredulously.
‘Annie is a very valuable member of our group. She’s well respected in her profession.’
‘Everyone knows that.’
‘Precisely.’
His eyes were shining.
‘Everyone knows Annie Krauss, and that includes a lot of military men. Hard to believe, isn’t it? But the fact is, they flock to her. They like to think Germany’s destiny is dictated by the planets. Remember that quote from Shakespeare? They do teach you Shakespeare at that place?’
She nodded dumbly.
‘The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves. These military men prefer to believe the fault for the Fatherland’s problems lies in the stars, rather than in themselves. Or in that ugly dictator in Wilhelmstrasse. Well, I’ll tell you something. Recently they’ve been consulting her about Hitler’s plans. They say he’s fully intending to invade Poland. They ask, what should they do?’
Hedwig fought the impulse to turn tail and run up the stairs out of the house.
‘And what does she tell them?’
‘She tells them an invasion is a bad idea. The heavens are against them. But she doesn’t say too much because she wants them to keep coming back. Every snippet of military detail they give away gets straight back to us.’
Hedwig picked up one of the leaflets on the table. It took the form of a newspaper front page except that it was much smaller, six inches by ten, and printed on rough, mimeographed paper. A headline read, Germany awake! We are Sleepwalking into War! Resist Hitler! and underneath was the sub-heading: Working for a New Free Germany.
‘Where do you leave these?’
‘Public places: phone books, cafés, doctors’ waiting rooms. We deliver them at night. We make flyers too. And documents. One of our people has a daughter in the Bund Deutscher Mädel, who takes them around wearing her uniform. It just looks like she’s delivering copies of the BDM newspaper.’
Jochen gestured at the mantelpiece where a bottle of cleaning fluid stood alongside a box of matches.
‘We keep these ready so we can burn them at a moment’s notice if we get an unannounced visit.’
Hedwig’s mind was a blur, the words collapsing before her eyes into tiny heaps of soot.
Germany awake! We are Sleepwalking into War!
‘So why did you bring me here?’
‘I was coming to that.’
He put the stack of papers down and perched on the edge of the table, arms folded.
‘That ball you’re going to.’
‘The dance for the Prince?’
‘The whole idea of the evening is to persuade the Prince of Yugoslavia to stand by while Hitler carves up Europe. There will be guests there from all over the world. Influential people from every country. They need to know that there’s some kind of resistance in Germany – that we’re not all on Hitler’s side – and that if he’s given carte blanche to invade Poland, he won’t stop there. The ball is a perfect chance. I have a friend there.’
The way he said ‘friend’ told her everything. There was an undercurrent of admiration. A whisper of enchantment.
‘It’s Sofie, isn’t it? From the orchestra?’
‘She plays in a string quartet that has been hired to perform at the ball. She will distribute the pamphlets.’
‘So what does that have to do with me?’
‘You have access. You need do nothing more than take the pamphlets in. I’d do it myself but there’s no way they’d let me into the Schloss Bellevue.’
Hoping against hope, she raised a protest.
‘What’s the point? What good can reading a pamphlet do? It’s just a piece of paper.’
She seemed to have hit on an important issue. Jochen was suddenly excited, impassioned.
‘Quite the opposite, Hedy! Reading is everything, Goebbels knows that. It’s why he controls everything we Germans can read. He burns books and censors the newspapers, so people can’t find any voices except his. We Germans have always been great readers. Literature is our lifeblood. But Goebbels would rather people sat and watched variety shows or romantic films than lose themselves in books. He knows that if you control what a nation reads, you control their souls.’
A terrible realization came upon her. Had Jochen only met her, had he only ever told her he loved her, because of what she might do for him? Had everything, from their first kiss onwards, been leading up to this?
Hedwig looked at him, a bright sheen of tears in her eyes, and summoned all her courage.
‘Tell me truthfully. Is this why you were interested in me? Because of what I could do for you?’
He ducked his head to evade her gaze, running his finger up and down the table as if the grain of the wood might spell out an answer. Then he stood up fully and put his hands on her shoulders, his gaze frank and unflinching.
‘It’s true. Robert wanted me to get to know you.’
‘Robert Schultz?’
Her childhood friend. A local boy who would scuffle in the schoolyard with a football and whose tawny hair and good looks had sometimes earned him an admiring glance from Lotti Franke.
‘Robert thought you might be useful to us.’
‘In that case . . .’
‘Stop!’
Misery and hurt pride welled in her throat, but Jochen pressed his hands into her shoulders so hard that it hurt and shook her a little.
‘That may be why he introduced us, but that doesn’t change how I feel. I love you, Hedy.’
A sudden ferocity, a mixture of anger and fear, rose in her. She had always been the one longing for his affection, cravenly seeking his love, but now she felt a new strength, born of bitterness.
‘Do you? Really? I’d say if you loved a person, you wouldn’t ask them to do something as dangerous as this.’
‘I used to think the same. But now I think it’s because I love you that I want you to do it.’
Was this what love meant? Being brave, taking risks? Living in fear? She remembered Lotti’s face on the last day she had seen her. Lotti was in love, and love had made her frightened too.
‘Have you gone mad, Jochen?’
‘No. I think we’re the only ones who are sane.’