Page 86 of Hell to Pay
DISCOVERY
For a few seconds after I finished reading, there was silence. Then Ashleigh said, “Oh, my God.” She’d begun filming again. Trying to put some distance between herself and what she was hearing, maybe.
“I could say that God wasn’t in that place,” I said, slipping the letter carefully back into its envelope, “but maybe he was. Many of those who survived, Dr. Becker told me later, much as they suffered in the aftermath, somehow retained their humanity and their compassion. They’d helped each other in there, you see, perhaps sharing a blanket, a bite of soup, or even just a kind word, and what could be a greatermitzvahthan that? Joe was haunted his entire life by what he’d seen, but it did help that he’d worked to free them, to comfort them, there at the last. I suspect the guards and officers left those places with their souls in a worse state. How does one atone for such deeds? Does the descent into such a dark place even allow for the recognition of the evil one has done, or does one bury it deep inside, a stone in one’s heart, and simply try not to think of it again? Or does the poison leach out anyway? I’m glad I don’t know the answer.”
Sebastian said, “Thank you for sharing his letter with us.” His face was grave, and he was holding Alix’s hand. My granddaughter, who always has something to say, was silent. Shaken, I thought.
“Well,” I said, and tried to inject some briskness into my tone, “shall we go look for this tiara?”
“I don’t know,” Ben said. “That kinda killed the mood, you know?”
“Oh, I think it’s an essential part of the mood,” I said. “History is a complicated thing, because people are complicated. It’s not just battles and documents and famous men and fabulous jewels, but also the lives of ordinary people doing ordinary things—and sometimes extraordinary ones, for good or ill. The emerald parure, now—Napoleon gave it to Josephine in 1796, when France was in the midst of a mighty revolution. His likeness was painted hundreds of times—who can forget the noble portrait of him, clad in blue and gold, crossing the Alps on his rearing white warhorse? Millions of words were written about him, and he amassed a mighty empire, yet he died alone, in exile, in great pain. He had stomach cancer, and I’m sure it was very unpleasant. He isn’t the whole story of his time, either, just as Hitler isn’t the whole story of his. Millions of people died violently during the French Revolution and the wars that followed, and that is always tragic, but why did it happen, and what came of it? The people wanted a voice. They wanted a state that worked for them, not the other way around, and in the end, by and large, they got it.‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité.’Imperfect, yes, and it still is—violence is never the best way—but a noble ambition all the same that led to a better life for many. Here in Saxony, too, peasants no longer live in poverty so their ruler—who may or may not have been me—can commission more priceless emerald pieces, and I’d call that a change for the good.”
“What’s the wonderful outcome of all that Nazi aggression, then?” That was Alix, finding her voice again. “Because I sure don’t see it.”
“Ah,” I said. “Very true. Revolutions aren’t always for the best, even in the long run. Stalin, Mao—so many examples even in our lifetime. Hitler destroyed a great deal, and if he’d had his way, he’d have destroyed more. He gave an order at the very end, when I was baking bread and hoping every day for peace, that the country be decimated. Every bridge blown, every road mined, every railway and water line destroyed. He believed that a country that didn’t win its wars didn’t deserve to exist—that Germany had proved itself unworthy and must suffer for it. A twisted mind, and a twisted view. Perhaps all we can take from this history is a reminder to—what is that thing they say? To question authority. To retain, as my father advised me, that still small voice inside us that tells us the truth of a thing.”
“Well, that’s something, I guess,” Alix said. “But not very much.”
“Oh, that can be a great deal,” I said. “To remember that an individual still has power, if only to hide a Star of David in a carpenter’s shop or say a kind word to a Jew on the street? Yes, that’s something. Dr. Becker told me that such brief moments—a workman saying, ‘Take heart—this madness must soon be over,’ a shopkeeper slipping him a bit of sausage to which he wasn’t entitled, cheered him immensely, for such kindnesses carried real risk. Otherwise, I think we must accept that we are imperfect beings in an imperfect world, a world of both great beauty and great ugliness. Would my story be compelling to anyone if not for the contrast it offers to my life before? I have only the smallest piece of the parure now, and my house has two bedrooms rather than hundreds and not a single servant to be found, yet I’m surely as happy asa woman has a right to be. And for all that, I’d still like to find my mother’s tiara.” I laughed. “Imperfectandcontradictory. So—shall we go do it?”
How many opinions I have, here at the end of my life, and how limited the opportunity to express them! We become wise much too late, when nobody cares anymore what we have to say. I’d expressed myself now, though, even if my wisdom ended up on the cutting-room floor.
“Na ja,”I said. “Let’s go do this.” I went to the back wall and tried to crouch down to find the catch, but quickly realized that this was not an image I wished to broadcast. You see—vain once more. Instead, I said, “Alix and Sebastian, perhaps you would start from opposite ends and feel for the catch. It will be beneath the second stone from the bottom, but unfortunately, I have no good idea where. Certainly before you reach the pallets, though, where the children slept; I remember that.”
The search seemed to take forever, though it was probably only a minute or two. I imagined suspenseful music playing—no doubt it would be, when this footage was aired—and didn’t like to admit how hard my heart was beating or how shallow my breathing had become.
When you feel yourself panicking and hurrying, stop and take a breath, then proceed with deliberation,I could hear my father say. That applied even to waiting, it seemed, for when I did it, some of the agitation left me.
Alix found the catch, in the end. Not silently, of course. “Wait,” she said. “Wait, wait … I think I have it. Do you press, or do you pull? OK, pulling doesn’t work, so …”
A crack opened. I could see it even in the inadequate light of the bare bulbs. “Now,” I said, “we push, and then crouch toget through.” Another performance I wouldn’t care to watch. I’mbent,these days, but I don’tbendwell at all.
The interior room was much the same as the outer one: the air nearly cold despite the heat of the day, the stone floor covered with grit and other things I didn’t want to examine too closely. Rats, I was sure, were involved. I could see a hallway, now, to the left—“The cells, perhaps,” I said, pointing. “And a room for the guards, too. Imagine living down here, as Herr Becker and the children did for weeks. And here, you see, is the cistern, where we got fresh water.”
It was almost beautiful; a huge round well of a place with stone blocks of different colors fitted together and mortared, the water inside dark and still.
Dr. Bauer said, “So where is the hiding place?” Impatient with all this delay, clearly.
“Yeah,” Ben said, “where is it? If this were a movie, it’d be hanging by a rope in the hole from the outhouse. I thought of that later. I mean, can you think of a better hiding place than that? Who would ever look for it there?”
“Goodness,” I said, “what a dreadful thought.” It made me laugh, and then it made me laugh some more. “What a trulyhideousthought.”
“Ugh,” Alix said. “I’m not a squeamish person, but—ugh. That’s disgusting.”
“No,” I said. “It’s here.” I walked around the cistern—how to tell where on a circle a certain stone might be, when one has only encountered it in the dark? Then I began pressing again, remembering the feel of the crack between my fingers.
This time, it took longer; more like five minutes, possibly because I didn’t want anybody else to do this for me. I wanted to remember my father standing beside me, trying to give me this last thing, this lifeline, for that was what the parure had been: my golden ticket to a better life, or any life.
When I touched the right spot at last, it was as if a thrillran up my hand, up my arm. The hair prickled on my scalp as I said quietly, “Alix. Come and lift out this stone.”
It came out with a scrape, and there was the cavern behind it. I put my hand in and drew out two things.
A large purple bag made of velvet, worn with age, that had held the necklace. And another one.
Which was empty.
We sat, just the five of us, around a table in the hotel restaurant. The museum board and the TV crew had all departed, bitterly disappointed I was sure, and without much to say. “There are few things,” I said, “thatKaffee und Kuchendon’t make better.” The sweet, buttery base, the sour-cherry topping, the smooth German coffee—what enjoyment there is in such pleasures!
