‘Good.’
For the first time since they had entered his office, Bruckner smiled. Liese wished that he hadn’t.
‘I do have one requirement, Herr Wasserman: get Haus Elfmann endorsed by Adefa. Do that and it is business as usual.’
Otto slumped so completely, Liese thought he would slide off his chair.
‘You know that’s impossible.’
‘Then we are finished here.’
Bruckner rose and walked to the door. Liese stared from one man to the other, caught off guard by the meeting’s, and Otto’s, collapse.
‘Why are you doing this? Goebbels praised the collection. His wife ordered at least a dozen pieces.’
Bruckner shrugged as Otto stuttered. ‘And yet it was Reich Minister Goebbels who wrote this report. What his wife does is no business of mine. I appraised you of our position; you chose to ignore it. And now I have more important matters waiting.’
He opened the door, his foot lightly tapping.
Otto clambered up, lumbering like a man twice his age. Liese followed at his heels, with no idea what had happened except that they, and the salon, had been thoroughly insulted.
They sloped back down the busy corridor. No one smiled; no one greeted them. Liese was known to almost everyone they passed and yet no one would look at her.
At the top of the staircase, whose steps now looked steep rather than sweeping, she pulled Otto to a halt.
‘I don’t understand what that was. Bruckner cancelled our contract and said dreadful things, and you let him. You didn’t try to persuade him to change his mind. And what is Adefa? Why did you fall apart when he mentioned it?’
Otto gazed out over the bustling counters. ‘What exactly could I persuade him to change his mind to? That report hardly left me with a negotiating position. And he was right: he had told me his intention; I chose not to believe it. Apparently, there are things even I can’t fix. As for Adefa, you know what it is: the regulatory body for the clothing industry. The Party’s vehicle for ensuring German fashion is German.’
‘But that’s been set up for ages. It’s never been an issue before.’
When Otto turned towards her, his face was so shapeless, Liese wanted to cry.
‘You’re right: Adefa isn’t new, but it has changed. You just can’t hear it. The D doesn’t stand for Deutsch anymore but Deutsch-Arischer. Aryan. Pure blood. No Jews. We’ve created this industry and made it great and now they’re removing us, wiping us out as if our contribution meant nothing.’
Liese’s stomach knotted: his words could have been Michael’s.
‘But Goebbels came. He smiled the whole time.’
Now when she said it, she heard the child’s voice.
Otto started down the stairs, shuffling where he once strode. ‘And then look what he did.’
After the store’s soft interior, the noise on the pavement came as a shock. Liese stepped too slowly into the bustle and was jostled. Her hat was pulled off by a passing umbrella, her chocolate curls sent tumbling. A group of boys milling on the corner started to point and laugh.
‘Get in the car.’ Otto wrenched the door open.
The gang began waving, whistling and catcalling, aiming blue-tinged comments at Liese simply because she was dark-haired, not blonde.
Otto followed her in, his fists bunched, his face puce. The car accelerated past the shouting. The boys’ faces were a blur, but their swastika-emblazoned armbands stood out.
Liese crouched on the seat and tried to focus on the threat to the salon. The Hertie order was one of their biggest, the ready-to-wear collection the business’s backbone. If Hertie could cancel so easily, if the other stores followed…
She rounded on Otto, rattling with questions. All she managed to ask was: ‘What now?’
He didn’t reply.
The journey back to Hausvogteiplatz and the salon nestled beneath the square’s sunburst-shaped clock passed in a series of images that tied Liese in knots.
While they were inside Hertie, the afternoon had eased into twilight, the street lamps lit and casting a yellow-tinged glow. Normally, their light fell like a blanket, blurring and softening. Today, the lamps loomed like spotlights, their stare as harsh and unblinking as Herr Bruckner’s.
Liese tried not to look at the passing streets, but it was as if Bruckner’s cruel dismissal had torn a veil away. Corners suddenly sprouted gangs whose chests puffed with swastikas. Newspaper kiosks bloomed with Der Stürmer’s black-bearded monsters. Splashes of paint reshaped themselves into stars etched onto vulnerably thin windows. Her eyes stretched and ached. Pure Blood, no Jews whirled round her head like a storm brewing.
‘You have to sell!’
Otto was barely inside Paul’s office before he began shouting.
‘I’ve warned you for months the day was coming. Well, it’s here. If you keep on waiting, I promise you: they’ll come in and take it.’
Liese tried to follow him inside, but Otto waved her furiously back. She caught the door as he slammed it, keeping it open with her toe, and pressed into the shadows in time to hear her father snort with laughter.
‘Dear God, man. Have you joined Michael on the barricades? “They’ll come in and take it” – can you hear yourself?’ Glasses clinked; liquid poured. ‘Here, have a drink. Unless that’s the problem and you’ve already been indulging. Hertie’s new chap must be quite a character if this is how he rattles you. What did he do, screw you down on the price? Don’t tell me The Fixer is slipping.’
‘He cancelled our contract.’
Liese waited for a silence, or a shocked exclamation and a torrent of questions. Instead, Paul dismissed Bruckner, and Otto with him, as if he flicked away a fly.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. We’re their biggest-selling supplier. Besides, he doesn’t have the authority.’
To Otto’s credit, he kept his temper.
‘Goebbels does. He gave the order to terminate our business. Our collection is apparently too French, designed for whores, not German matrons. And, no, I don’t want to hear how charming the Minister was at the show in September. I was there. And I was there today. We’re done. They want us out.’
‘Not this nonsense again. Hitler’s vendetta against the Jews.’
Liese closed her eyes and willed him not to say it.
‘I’ve told you: you and me, and our families, we’re different; we’re not the target.’
There it was: the same thoughtless line she’d trotted out to Michael, the line she’d been clinging to until today. Liese forced herself to focus on what Otto was saying.
‘Different? How can you still go on parroting that? I never thought I’d say this, but you’re turning into your father. Is that what you want? To be so buried in the business that you’re blind past the end of your nose? He neglected you, and he neglected your mother. He never noticed she was sick until it was too late. Don’t raise your hands at me – you know it’s true. All the money and the big house and the status he clawed his way up to, and where is he now? Hidden away, eaten up with guilt for the pain Minnie died in. Are you going to go down the same road? So wrapped up in Haus Elfmann and your ego that you forget to look up at the world? That you forget about your wife and your daughter? Liese is already banned from her school. What’s coming for her next? What’s coming for Margarethe?’