“Risqué?” Alice offered. Risqué was her mother’s favorite word for indecent displays.
“Uh, worse . . . bawdy. Dancing ladies and drunkenness.”
“So why do I have to go?” She had left David earlier to get some medicine, but a message had come through to the garage that her presence was required at the Führerbunker. “Rats!” she muttered, but tucked the bottle of cough syrup into a pocket and headed toward the Führerbunker. She would have to go to David later.
As she stepped into the kitchen to find Frau Weissmann, she saw the woman hovering over a platter of hors d’oeuvres.
“Oh, thank goodness you came.” Frau Weissmann looked up. “The Führer’s secretary says there is talk about a performance here in the bunker tonight. So I put your costume out for you, but first, can you go over there, to the grand reception room? They need extra help for passing food, and I just made up two more trays of the little sandwiches.”
“I’ve never served before in the chancellery. It’s much more formal than the Berghof. What do I do?”
“Not formal anymore, with questionable women prancing about. There’s nothing to serving. Just go up with the tray and say, ‘Pardon me, would you like a canapé?’” She giggled. “And then you can say, ‘Please keep your cleavage out of the caviar.’”
“All right.” Alice laughed. She couldn’t help but think that in many ways there was more to Frau Weissmann than met the eye.
But why did she have to serve tonight, of all nights? David seemed so ill. This morning she was sure he had been running a fever. She wanted to get back one more time before it was dark. Nevertheless, she returned to her quarters and dressed in her uniform. Her white apron was a little less than crisp.
“Shouldn’t I iron this apron?” she asked as Frau Weissmann handed her the tray.
“No, never mind! They’re in a hurry. The people have already started arriving—early!”
Was this a sign that they were getting desperate? The war had started to enter a new and critical phase. Things had not been going well since July, when the Red Army had established bridgeheads on the Vistula River. They were pushing, and pushing fast, toward Warsaw, and after Warsaw it would be a hop, skip, and a jump to Vienna, and after Vienna . . . well, no one wanted to think about it.
A sort of manic frivolity was beginning to build, in indirect proportion to the decline of the German front. On October 21, the Red Army had taken Nemmersdorf, a German city in East Prussia that was not far from the Wolf’s Lair. It had been a massacre as the Russian slaughtered their way westward. So what else would one do in the face of a massacre but throw a party?
Alice stood in the arched entrance to the grand reception room with her platter of canapés and observed the manic festivities. It was more than unbelievable. It was fantastically incredible as she watched people throwing back their heads, gulping glass after glass of champagne. A flash of white, and she quickly spied Fritz, who had dispensed entirely with his glass and was swigging directly from a bottle as he pointed to something at the center of a clot of people. At the edges of the crowd, a man was playing the trombone. Alice recognized it—
It was the music for the Charleston.
With her platter of sandwiches, Alice edged toward the fringes of the crowd. She was within inches of Fritz’s elbow. He turned to get a canapé, and handed the bottle of champagne to the fellow next to him.
“Isn’t she a marvel?” he exclaimed. “Look at her! Just look. No one Charlestons like Helga.”
Yes, thought Alice, no one does Charleston like Helga . . . except for Louise. And it was Louise who was doing the manic fast step, kicking her feet, both forward and backward, swinging her arms and tossing her head back with gales of laughter.
Alice turned to a man with a silvery handlebar mustache. “Here, sir.” The man was startled as she handed him her platter and dashed out into the circle and began dancing side by side with her sister, who did not blink an eye. Alice knew all the steps—the Shorty George, where you kept your knees almost touching and stepped forward on the balls of your feet. Spank the Baby, where you slid forward with one foot, slapping your butt with your opposite hand. Apple Jacks, with knee slaps and cross touches. You name it, the sisters had it down pat.
Soon the people were cheering, “More, more . . . those girls can dance!” They had been dancing for three or four minutes. Smiling at each other, kicking forward toward each other until they were just a foot away and slapping each other’s hands in the cross touches. Then stepping back and doing the knee knocks where they would crouch down side by side, each knocking her knees together and then crossing her hands. Idiotic looking but oh so fun!
But did Louise ever betray even a glimmer of recognition? Never!
But there was one person who did seem to have a trace of dim recollection. The Führer had stepped up to the edge of the circle. His eyes were fastened on Alice. He tipped his head toward his minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. Alice felt their eyes on her now. A dread began building in the pit of her stomach. He had never recognized her before, except for that night in the kitchen at the Berghof. But she had been wearing her Valkyrie braids then, certainly a memory prompt. Maybe he was recalling that night in the kitchen and not really seeing her but the Valkyrie Brünnhilde, that he had imagined her to be in the kitchen that night as she cut the apple cake. The Führer cake.
Fragments of the kitchen conversation came back to her. The Führer had said, Mit den Zöpfen . . . . Brünnhilde! You have come to save me, you dear child. Dear Brünnhilde has come to save me with some apple cake. She could not let him observe her a second longer. “Bye-bye, Helga! It’s been fun.” Alice shimmied away from the center of the circle and retrieved the platter of canapés.
Five minutes later she was back in the Führerbunker.
“I’m afraid I have to go home, Frau Weissmann. I’m not feeling well at all. I think I might be coming down with something. I wouldn’t want to infect our dear Führer.”
“Of course not, dearie. You probably just got sick watching those goings-on.” As she frowned, the lines in her face suddenly collided. “You run along. Would you like me to fix up a thermos of beef broth? I have some on the stove right now.”
“Oh, that would be lovely, yes, please do.” When she had raced out of the chancellery to the bunker, a shroud of snow had been falling on the city, and all she could think of was David. Beef broth and more warm clothes would be perfect. She would go straight to the whipped-cream house. He’d been good about sleeping in the trash can. She hoped he was there tonight.
The swollen moon was just a smear behind the scrim of snow that began to fall more heavily as she raced toward the alley. There seemed to be no separation between the skin of the earth and the grayness of the starless sky.
Thirty
Winter Bloom
She turned into the alley and ran through the nearly blinding snow toward the overturned trash bin.
“David!” she whispered as she approached. But there was no answer. No cough. Indeed, there seemed to be an odd hollowness that greeted her. She stopped a few feet away. She knew before she looked into it that the bin would be empty. There was not even a blanket, nor the old thermos she had brought with hot chocolate.