“Schönen Tag. Good day, Frau Schnaubel,” he said as Alice and her mother returned to the garage with their cake and bag of cookies. Goebbels began lurching toward them. “I see you have discovered the wonderful Zeiberg’s bakery. A treasure of the city.”
Alice felt her mother clutch her hand. He leaned in for a kiss. She watched his lipless mouth touch each side of her mother’s face. Very discreet, very chaste, and very sickening. Her mother’s grasp on her hand tightened. “And this must be your daughter, who I’ve heard so much about.”
“Ja,” nodded her mother. “This is Ute . . . Ute Maria.”
“And you are at the Haupt Gymnasium?”
“Yes, my first day.”
“I hope it went well.”
“Yes, sir. Very well.”
“And you’ll be competing in the games on our Führer’s birthday.”
“Oh yes, sir.”
“Joseph,” a high-pitched voice trilled. The minister immediately backed away from Alice and her mother. A tall, willowy blond woman swept into the garage. She could have been one of the Rhine maidens from the Wagner operas, one of the nymphs that swirled out of the mists of the river and guarded the gold—except for one small detail.
Alice’s eyes settled on the garment wrapped around her shoulders and felt a shudder pass through her as she saw the beady little eyes of a weasel. Frau Goebbels was wearing a tippet, the latest fashion! It was a fur scarf with the paws and head of a small animal—like a weasel—still attached to its pelt. How could a person wear such a thing? But perhaps a glamorous Nazi wife married to the P of D could. A perfect match!
She looked at them both, this almost-royal couple of the Third Reich. He bent on his slightly twisted leg. There was something unnerving about both Goebbels’s and his wife’s faces. Sharp faces, with chalk-white complexions, and their eyes—his dark, hers a pale gray—had a strange light, glistening and feral. What a pair, Alice thought. The Prince of Darkness and his lovely wife, Weasel Head.
Goebbels’s wife laid a hand on his arm as if to claim him and gave a dark glance toward Posie. “Frau Schnaubel . . . welcome. I see our Berlin food agrees with you.” This was not a compliment. “Aach! And you seem to have stopped at my favorite bakery, Zeiberg’s!”
“Yes, Frau Goebbels, we couldn’t resist.”
“I must! I have to resist such temptations, as I must be fit for . . .” She slid her eyes toward her husband. “For Joseph, my lovey.”
Alice felt that she was witnessing something most unfit . . . unnatural . . . absolutely sordid. It suddenly dawned on her that again she was up against the true challenge of A-level missions, that of disguising her true feelings and learning to live the lie.
There was more small talk. “I have some homework to do.” Alice excused herself from the garage and went up to the apartment and immediately to her small bedroom. She turned on the gramophone and began listening to the Wagner opera Das Rheingold for her studies. She felt like she had just witnessed the opening prelude—with the horns suggesting the depth of the Rhine River, as the first of the beautiful maidens emerged from the mists. And then the arrival of the evil dwarf Alberich who craved the gold. A skewed version of that same scene had just played out in the garage. There was the dwarf in the form of Goebbels, and then his wife, Magda, the personification of a Rhine maiden—guarding her gold (in this case her husband).
While Alice listened to the music, she did several math problems for the next day and then completed a horrible homework exercise that asked her to construct her own racial family tree.
She began with this sentence. “The Schnaubel family dates back to the late fourteenth century in Swabia. The first recorded Schnaubel was a cobbler in the town of Tannheim. On my mother’s side, her maiden name was Olsen. On the racial complexion chart, my mother’s skin registers as a 1.1 in terms of fairness. And my father is a 1.2.”
To complete the exercise, she was required to fill in other information, or “data,” as Frau Mueller referred to it. It was Frau Mueller herself who had devised this exercise, and she had been commended by the department of education for it. It was to be adopted for other biology and racial awareness classes throughout Berlin.
Alice clamped her eyes shut. She realized that she had entered the twilight world of evil, and at its very center was the dark heart of hatred. A hatred that was seeping through everything good, everything honorable. This was to be her mission now. Her war. To find out the secrets of this evil Nazi regime and report them to His Majesty’s secret service.
She stood up from her desk and went to her closet to get her gym tunic. She could take no chances. She must win the games. At Haupt they had all the gymnastic equipment—the balance beams, the mats. They even had a running track. But she needed to build her endurance. She must start running every day now.
She dressed and went into the dining room, where her mother had just put dinner on the table. Her parents greeted her with a slightly astonished look.
“Where are you going dressed like that at this time of the evening?”
“For a run. It’s still light out.” She paused. “I can’t take any chances on not winning.”
Her parents exchanged quick glances. They agreed. Nothing needed to be said. The word “mission” did not even need to be articulated. Rasa families were not mind readers, but they could say much without ever speaking aloud.
From that moment on, every morning and every evening Alice ran. That first evening she could only manage three miles, but by the end of the week she was doing five miles in the evening and three in the morning. In the gym at school, she quickly distinguished herself as someone to watch, especially in the broad jump.
Nevertheless, even Frau Grauber, the gymnastics coach, often had trouble placing her face when she walked into the gym. But finally it would dawn on her. This girl was the air sprite! “Ah, meine kleine Luftelfe!” she would exclaim. My little air sprite. “You sprint like a shadow!”
Nine
Shadow Play
Like a shadow. The words thrummed in her head, coursed through her bloodstream as she ran the short distance to the Tiergarten. Entering the park, she always breathed a sigh of relief. It was as if she had left the evil behind. How could hatred prevail here in this glade of burgeoning greenness of early spring? The late afternoon sun fell like streams of liquid light through the canopy of trees. She accelerated. It was a seemingly endless park, verdant with winding tree-lined paths and broad open spaces. It seemed evil could not touch this place, and yet her teacher Frau Grauber’s words haunted her. You sprint like a shadow!
There was another shadow that she could not banish from her mind. For almost two weeks she had avoided the vanilla-custard house trimmed in whipped cream, the Haus mit Schlag, and the alley behind it, where that other shadow had sprinted. She stopped short now. She knew she had to turn back. The bakery would still be open. She could buy another cookie, but first she would have to go back for some money.
“Back so soon?” her mother called out.
“I . . . uh . . . had a craving for some of those cookies. The anise ones.”
“I was just in there this morning. But I didn’t buy cookies.”