The Ambassador's Daughter

  I climb the steps to the train and enter the carriage where Stefan waits. I turn to say goodbye to Krysia once more through the window. Behind her, I glimpse a tall, familiar figure behind one of the stone balustrades. My breath catches. Georg. He is wearing civilian clothes publicly for the first time I’ve seen, an attempt perhaps to remain unrecognized, though I could pick him out of a mass of thousands. Our eyes meet and I hold my breath, waiting for him to run up and declare his love and beg me to stay. But he remains in place, hidden from sight and a second later he is gone, swallowed by the crowd.

  Stefan is by my side then, his arm tugging me downward, urging me to take my seat. “Come, darling,” he says, and I fight the urge to scream, knowing that the nightmare I’ve lived a thousand times in my sleep has at last come true.

  Part Three

  Berlin, August 1919

  Chapter 16

  “More coffee?” A footman hovers expectantly to my right.

  “Bitte.” A hint of pomade from his trim blond hair mixes with the aroma of the coffee as he bends to pour. I gaze beyond the head of the table, where Papa and Uncle Walter are debating something in low voices, through the French doors. The terrace behind the villa leads down to the lake, the late-summer water still as glass. A swarm of gnats hovers above it.

  It has been over three months since we returned from the peace conference. We had no other choice but to come home. Papa’s visit at Oxford had “concluded without possibility of renewal,” according to the letter he’d received while we were in Paris, and other universities were similarly unaccommodating. Living abroad had become prohibitively expensive, anyway, and Uncle Walter had informed Papa that he could no longer afford to support “our lifestyle.” I had boiled with anger when Papa had shared that conversation with me, thinking of the long hours Papa kept at the conference, taxing his health and energy to the brink. We had not been on holiday, but in Paris at Uncle Walter’s request.

  So we had returned to Berlin, or more accurately to the villa at Grunewald. Our own house was in disrepair, Papa told me. Though the bombings had left our neighborhood intact, the gangs that had taken to the street after news of Germany’s

  defeat had broken the windows and looted everything. Papa had been evasive when I’d asked about the extent of the damage, or a possible date by which we might expect to return. Instead, he talked about the difficulty in getting the roof replaced, given the lack of young men able to do that sort of work, as well as the scarcity of lumber needed to repair the rotten floorboards.

  I’ve not been into Berlin proper since our return and after more than four years, I’m eager to see it. But Papa forbade my going, even arranging a separate car to take Stefan home from the station the day we arrived so that we could proceed directly to Grunewald. “It’s dangerous,” he replied with uncharacteristic bluntness, refusing one of my repeated requests to go into the city. “There are riots and strikes.” The country, angry at a government that betrayed its own people, is tearing itself apart, like a dog gnawing off its own leg to get free from a trap.

  Not that one would know it from Uncle Walter’s house, I reflect, as the smaller china dishes are set for the sweets course. The sprawling lakeside mansion on the water is worlds away from the chaos of Berlin, a perpetual holiday. The newspapers depict lines at the markets for food that would never come, buckets of deutschmarks that will not buy a loaf of bread, ration cards that might as well be burned for fuel. But here the food approaches a prewar bounty, as evidenced by the fruit stacked high in a bowl at the center of the table, the soups thick with meat.

  My gaze drops from the terrace to the far end of the table, where Papa and Uncle Walter are speaking loudly now, debating something political. As Papa takes off his glasses and rubs at his eyes, my concern grows. Papa returned from the conference a broken man. He once believed in a brotherhood, that his common interests with other scholars would prevail over militarism and national identities. But that belief was shattered by the betrayal at Versailles. We are still—and presumably always would be—the enemy.

  Our return to Berlin has been equally unsettling. There is disillusionment about the people here—they understand now that it was not a war of self-defense, but one of aggression. But instead of blaming the government that had lied to them, people have improbably reserved their bile for those who negotiated its end. Papa’s position at the university was filled, he was told, a rare exception to the life tenure that should have rightfully been his. So he potters about the house at Grunewald, organizing his notes and talking about writing a book.

  “The Jews are giving them ample fodder by allying with the communists,” Uncle Walter declares, straightening the pince-nez that balances precariously on his wide nose. It is an argument I have heard him make a dozen times. “We need to be part of the system in order to reform it.”

  In sharp contrast to Papa, Uncle Walter is looking better than ever, a new ruddiness to his cheeks and girth to his waist beneath the white linen suit. Uncle Walter had been one of the engineers of the war effort—his great skill in maintaining supply and production lines kept the German army going longer than anyone thought possible. Without him Germany might have surrendered two years earlier and thousands of young men might still be alive. Yet he had come out without blame, more powerful and successful than ever, a key player in the Weimar regime. Some talked that he might attain a cabinet post.

  “Walter, I’m not sure that even if we completely assimilated they would be ever...” Papa corrects gently. “If you read...”

  Uncle Walter raises his hand. “Nonsense. Of course, as an academic, you would take that theoretical view.” The two men eye each other icily. My mother’s older brother had made it clear from the day she married Papa that the professor from the Jewish quarter was never going to be good enough for his sister and that the situation could not end well—a prediction which he now viewed as having come true. He blames Papa for the unhappiness that had caused her to leave, and now that he does not need to maintain a charade for my benefit, his disdain of Papa is less veiled than ever.

  “What a lovely bracelet,” Tante Celia observes from my left side, trying to break the tension. She touches my wrist. I cringe at the attention she has drawn to Georg’s gift. I have worn the bracelet constantly since our return to Berlin, taking comfort from my one last link to him. Neither Papa nor Stefan, who is seated passively beside me, would have noticed on his own.

  Now all eyes are upon me. “Just a trinket I picked up at the market,” I lie. Celia’s brow furrows. She, above anyone else, knows jewelry and does not believe my explanation. I hold my breath, waiting for her to challenge me, but she does not.

  Celia followed us back from Paris just days after we left and has been around nonstop since our return, occupying her own suite of rooms at the villa where she had grown up. It is not just her desire to be close to Papa, but also my wedding preparations that draw her like a moth to flame. I had wanted the wedding to be small, a ceremony down by the lake if the weather permitted, or perhaps in the gazebo if it did not, with a modest reception on the terrace. Just close family and friends. To do more felt garish in light of all the suffering that remained from the war—and I wanted to spare Stefan the embarrassment of trying to limp his way down the aisle and navigate a crowded reception.

  But Uncle Walter had insisted that a real wedding was needed. “We owe it to the people to show that Germany remains strong and keep the spirits high.” It feels like a farce, Marie Antoinette telling the starving proletariat to eat cake. The elaborate wedding is not about German morale, but Uncle Walter, announcing he has reached a certain political station. With Celia behind him, though, and Papa too distracted to weigh in, I had not been able to fight. The wedding has ballooned to three hundred people, including the prime minister. Celia has taken on the role that my mother might have had, planning the shower tea and ordering the invitations and registry—the things that make me want to scream and crawl out of my skin. It is the wedding and the daughter
she’s never had all at once.

  I should be happy that Celia does not choose to press about the bracelet and retreat gracefully. But Uncle Walter’s last jab at my father still stings. “Papa’s work at the conference was hardly theoretical,” I say, unwilling to be dissuaded from his defense.

  “Liebchen...” Papa says, his voice carrying silent warning. Though this is my ancestral home as well as Uncle Walter’s, we are still very much his guests here.

  I am too far gone to stop, though. Now released, the words pour forth unabated. “The war was a disgrace,” I say. “I have seen the destruction at Reims, the debilitated young men on the Parisian street corners.” Only one such as Uncle Walter, who has not seen the devastation up close, could still think there had been a purpose to it. “So many lives lost.”

  “It is pacifist views like yours that cause the German people to distrust the Jews,” he retorts.

  “Would having no views make our position somehow more tenable?” I demand. Uncle Walter’s eyebrows rise. He has never approved of a woman’s forthright speech. But this is more than my former childish impertinence. There is a quiet confidence to my argument now, as if I am channeling Krysia’s style in debating with the artists at the café in Montparnasse.

  “I’m only saying...” He pauses, thrown back on his heels. “Until things settle down, neutrality may be the wisest policy.”

  I meet his eyes levelly. “A great pity, then, that you didn’t discover that four years ago. Hindsight must be lovely,” I add. “Especially for those who stayed in Berlin.” I can hardly believe my own nerve. I stand up. “Excuse me.”

  “That is the problem with how you have raised her,” I hear Uncle Walter say as I walk from the room. “And now with women’s suffrage passed...”

  “Indeed,” Papa replies. “To have my daughter vote will be the proudest day of my life.”

  I flee down the corridor, shaking. Why hadn’t these things bothered me so before? Or perhaps they had and I just hadn’t noticed. Just like Georg’s experiences on the ship had reshaped him, I was also changed by my time abroad, unable to fit back into the old forms and strictures.

  My heels echo against the marble floor of the high-ceilinged foyer. The house is quiet as I climb the steps beneath the somber oil portraits of our ancestors, set against dark wood paneling, and walk to our apartment. These had been my mother’s rooms as a child, a cavernous space occupied by her and a governess, though the girlish pink decor has been repainted a suitable beige and the furniture replaced. The ivory lace wedding gown hangs on the armoire, having arrived from Paris two weeks earlier. Looking at it now, my stomach sinks.

  I drop onto one of the velvet-covered divans in the sitting room, still seething from my encounter with Uncle Walter. More so than his conservative politics, it is his constant obsession with assimilation that infuriates me. It is as if he would like us to forget we are Jews entirely in order to fit in. My mind reels back to a Friday afternoon shortly after our return from Paris. I’d come downstairs to the dining room, expecting to see the usual Sabbath preparations, the table set with a fresh white cloth, candlesticks polished. But the air was dry, the smell of freshly baked challah conspicuously absent. I’d made my way into the kitchen. “Elsa...”

  “Ja, fraulein.” The sallow-skinned maid did not smile. There had been a thinly veiled resentment among the household staff since our return, I assumed. Was it because we had not been here during the war and did not share in the suffering?

  “What time is Sabbath dinner? I thought it used to be at seven...”

  But Elsa shook her head slightly. “I’ll have a tray sent up to the apartment of anything you would like. But Herr Rappaport is away in the city for meetings.” Meetings. On a Friday night, that hardly seemed plausible. “There hasn’t been a proper Friday dinner in over a year,” Elsa added, her voice a note lower. Sabbath dinner at Uncle Walter’s had never been a particularly religious affair, a quick lighting of the candles and blessing over the wine and challah before sitting down to a sumptuous roast turkey repast. Afterward, there were glasses of schnapps and conversation long into the night. He used to say it was a break from all of the noise of the week. “It’s like that all over the place,” the maid added, forgetting to guard her speech. “My brother says it’s because of the war, the Jews being ashamed at their part, not fighting.”

  My anger burned white-hot and I wanted to tell her then about Stefan and the terrible price he paid fighting for Germany. But there was no conviction in her words; she was simply parroting what she heard elsewhere.

  “Not anymore,” Papa replied when I ran to tell him about the lack of a Sabbath dinner. “Jews like Uncle Walter just want to fit in, to have people forget. They consider themselves Germans first and Jews a distant second.”

  Are you German or Jew? Krysia’s words haunted me. There was an otherness now to our lives in Berlin, in the way people looked at us, that made me understand what she was talking about. We were somehow being asked to choose.

  “Surely you don’t feel that way?”

  He pressed his lips together. “No, but everything has changed. Jews here seem to be either Orthodox, more separate than ever, or assimilationist, like your uncle. There’s no middle anymore.” He brought his fingers to his chin, deeply troubled. “I just don’t know what our future looks like here. I’m too old of a man to relocate permanently. Of course, if you and Stefan want to go to Israel or even America...” I heard the conflict in his voice as it trails off.

  “No,” I said quickly. I could not leave Papa and I felt no connection to those distant lands. But his question nagged. What would my life be like if I stayed here?

  “Would dinner with me suffice?” he asked with a half smile. He was chiding me, reminding me in not so many words of a time when I detested Sabbath at Uncle Walter’s, the long trek out to Grunewald, the formality and stiffness a sharp contrast to our quiet dinners in our house. But it was a part of our old world, the one that seems to have disappeared with the war, and I was digging through the sand, searching for any shred of that old life to cling to, a time before Paris when I didn’t know enough to be unhappy.

  My eyes travel now to the fern from my garden in Versailles, which sits potted on the vast expanse of windowsill. Despite my care, it struggles to survive its transplant to strange surroundings. I water the plant, then walk to the table by the door and riffle through yesterday’s post. I have only heard from Krysia once since our return, a hastily scrawled postcard indicating that she and Marcin had reached Krakow safely. I sent her an invitation to the wedding but, given the unreliability of the post, have no real hopes of receiving a response.

  My thoughts turn to Georg and I see his face as I have so often since leaving Paris. Each day I check the mail as though there might be a letter from him, though, of course, it would not be proper for him to write or call. I have thought about writing to him, but to say what exactly? I cannot stop thinking of the hurt expression on his face when he saw Stefan and realized the truth.

  What would have happened if Stefan had not come to Paris? Would the few happy days Georg and I shared have stretched endlessly? At some point the conference would have ended and we would have had to leave. No, the Fates were decided before we ever met, and those few weeks were a respite, an exception that could not bend the rule.

  Of course, it might have never happened at all. If I hadn’t broken the heel of my shoe and come home early from the party that night, I would not have spoken with Georg. It all seems so random now—a turn to the right instead of the left at an intersection and lives are different than they might once have been.

  Georg would have retreated from Paris now, ostensibly to his family home in Hamburg. I imagine him somewhere close to the water, staring out at the North Sea. He said he would never return to the navy. But perhaps he’s fulfilled his dream to leave and not look back. Does he think of me, and if so, is it with longing or hate? He had looked so sad and disbelieving as he realized I had lied to him. Would h
e even still want me now if I was free?

  There is a knock at the door. “Darling?” Stefan pushes it open and limps through, now using just one cane. I study his face. His eyes are still hollow with the things he has seen, ringed with dark circles from the nightmares that deny him sleep. No group has been more ostracized than the Jewish soldiers, branded traitors who had somehow stabbed their Gentile brethren in the back by not fighting hard enough. I wonder if he minded all of the war talk at lunch, and whether the constant references to suffering and loss were too painful for him to bear. “I wanted to come and see you before I head back to the city, to make sure you aren’t too upset. I just have a moment before the car comes. Your aunt has arranged another fitting for my tuxedo.”

  I smile weakly at him. “Tante Celia has become consumed with the wedding, I’m afraid. You don’t mind, do you?”

  He shakes his head. “Not at all. It is good to give people something to celebrate again. I only wish that I could properly walk down the aisle with you.” He is self-conscious about his limp, but prepared to withstand the scrutiny of our friends and family for the privilege of marrying me publicly.

  I take a deep breath. “But maybe we are rushing things? We could wait until you are stronger. And I was thinking about taking a course in the meantime...”

  He blinks twice. “Here, you mean? Or did you want to leave again?” His voice trembles.

  “No, of course not.” I feel the shackles begin to tighten. “I just thought that some more time for you to get stronger...”

  “Being with you will make me strong. I will be standing for our vows,” he promises, his eyes wide with determination.

  “Of course you will.” I manage to sound convinced.

  “You have the marriage certificate?” Stefan asks, dropping his voice as though we are not alone. “Perhaps we should go to get another just so the dates match up.”