Page 4 of Hell to Pay
Except when I needed to be that other person, that princess who expected to be treated as such. There—that was the difficulty. I had to step into that other woman’s shoes now, but shoes don’t fit as well after almost eighty years, it seems.
When Ben took me outside to the car, Alix was waiting to hand me in. I stopped, though, and stared. “What?” Alix asked.
“Nothing,” I said, and climbed inside and let Alix shut the door on me.
That wasn’t the last of it, of course. “What?” she asked again, hopping in behind me and slamming her own door.
“I forgot that the Continental Hotel was destroyed in the bombing,” I said. “It was just here, directly across the street from the railway station. It’s become that hideous block of a thing instead. That will be the Russian influence. East Germany wasn’t interested in architectural perfection, I hear.”
“A special place, was it?” Sebastian asked, slipping into traffic and into a completely unfamiliar series of divided roads.
“Not in the way you mean,” I said. “It was the headquarters of the Gestapo.”
The word didn’t fall with aclanglike one would imagine.Ben merely asked, “What’s that?” Proving that the mists of time close over even the worst deeds.
“The state police,” I said. “Not regular police. Hitler’s police. Secret police.”
“Like with torture and everything?” Ben asked.
“Yes,” I said. “With torture and killing on the least pretense, including for entertaining defeatist thoughts, even when Germany was so clearly defeated. Hanging and shooting and the guillotine.”
“Theguillotine?”Ben asked. “Like, the machine to chop their heads off? I thought that was in France! We read that book,A Tale of Two Cities,in my new English class. It was better than Shakespeare. I could at least understand it. But seriously? Why?”
“I suspect,” I said, “because it made an impression. Separating the head from the body carries a special sort of horror, doesn’t it? It’s supposed to be quick and painless, though, so I suppose that’s a benefit.”
“Wow,” Ben said. “So this was, like, right near your house. Or castle or whatever.”
“Yes,” I said. “And directly across from a very large train station, as you see. The guillotine is quiet, and the torture, of course, happened underground.”
“Like, dungeons?” Ben asked.
“No,” I said. “Like cellars, but with cells.”
“Good God,” Sebastian muttered.
“But right in the middle of the city?” That was Ben again.
“Ben—” Alix began, but I said, “No. We’re here to explore the past, and here the past is. It was always about fear, and Hitler and Himmler knew their business. If you want to keep everyday people too frightened to object to what they see, or even to admit they see it, how do you do that? With informers and secret police who could be anywhere you go, anyone youknow. And if you want to keep newspapermen and priests and professors and judges, people who are used to speaking out, too afraid to do what they know they should do, to say what they know they should say, they must be frightened of something very specific.A place in the middle of the city that people sometimes come out of to tell the tale? To talk of the sound of the guillotine’s blade striking, and of beatings in the next cell? Of days spent under bright lights, without sleep, being asked and asked and asked who else was involved, who else knew, until, in his confusion and pain, the strongest man may break? That’s effective, and so is the knowledge that it won’t just be him facing judgment. It will be his family as well, his wife and children ‘evacuated’ to Theresienstadt.”
“Where’s that?” Ben asked.
“A concentration camp,” I answered. “In the beginning, people sometimes served their sentences and came home. Later, they didn’t come home. We didn’t know where they went, but we knew they never came home.”
Ben said, “That’s really depressing.”
“You think?” Sebastian asked.
“As they say,” I said, “freedom isn’t free. If you don’t pay attention, it can slip away before you realize it’s gone, and it doesn’t come back easily. Alix’s grandfather knew that.”
“Was he in the war?” Ben asked.
“Yes,” I said. “He was never here, though. Here, the Russians came instead.”
It was five minutes, no more, before Sebastian was pulling into a most familiar courtyard. A building rose around it, perhaps three hundred rooms in all,a minor palace only. The windows weren’t arched and grand anymore, but marched along like so many stiff and upright soldiers. Not a very successful restoration, to me.
“Why are we here?” I asked.
“This is the hotel,” Alix said. “TheTaschenbergpalais.I thought it could be a surprise for you, because the palace is right next door. I guess this was a palace too, right? Do you recognize it?”
