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"Thank you. And now I must circulate. Good talking to you, Woody."
"My pleasure."
Bexforth moved away.
Woody put his drink down untasted. "Fuck it," he said quietly. Then he left.
iv
The first day of September was sultry in Berlin. Carla von Ulrich woke up sweaty and uncomfortable, her bedsheets thrown off during the warm night. She looked out of her bedroom window to see low gray clouds hanging over the city, keeping heat in like a saucepan lid.
Today was a big day for her. In fact it would determine the course of her life.
She stood in front of the mirror. She had her mother's coloring, the dark hair and green eyes of the Fitzherberts. She was prettier than Maud, who had an angular face, striking rather than beautiful. Yet there was a bigger difference. Her mother attracted just about every man she met. Carla, by contrast, could not flirt. She watched other eighteen-year-old girls doing it--simpering, pulling their sweaters tight over their breasts, tossing their hair, and batting their eyelashes--and she just felt embarrassed. Her mother was more subtle, of course, so that men hardly knew they were being enchanted, but it was essentially the same game.
Today, however, Carla did not want to appear sexy. On the contrary, she needed to look practical, sensible, and capable. She put on a plain stone-colored cotton dress that came to midcalf, stepped into her flat unglamorous school sandals, and wove her hair into two plaits in the approved German-maiden fashion. The mirror showed her an ideal girl student: conservative, dull, sexless.
She was up and dressed before the rest of the family. The maid, Ada, was in the kitchen, and Carla helped her set out the breakfast things.
Her brother appeared next. Erik, nineteen and sporting a clipped black mustache, supported the Nazis, infuriating the rest of his family. He was a student at the Charite, the medical school of the University of Berlin, as was his best friend and fellow Nazi, Hermann Braun. The von Ulrichs could not afford tuition fees, of course, but Erik had won a scholarship.
Carla had applied for the same scholarship to study at the same institution. Her interview was today. If she was successful, she would study and become a doctor. If not . . .
She had no idea what else she would do.
The coming to power of the Nazis had ruined her parents' lives. Her father was no longer a deputy in the Reichstag, having lost his job when the Social Democratic Party became illegal, along with all other parties except for the Nazis. There was no work her father could do that would use his expertise as a politician and a diplomat. He scraped a living translating German newspaper articles for the British embassy, where he still had a few friends. Mother had once been a famous left-wing journalist, but newspapers were no longer allowed to publish her articles.
Carla found it heartbreaking. She was deeply devoted to her family, which included Ada. She was saddened by the decline in her father, who in her childhood had been a hardworking and politically powerful man and was now simply defeated. Even worse was the brave face put on by her mother, a famous suffragette leader in England before the war, now scraping a few marks by giving piano lessons.
But they said they could bear anything as long as their children grew up to lead happy and fulfilled lives.
Carla had always taken it for granted that she would spend her life making the world a better place, as her parents had. She did not know whether she would have followed her father into politics or her mother into journalism, but both were out of the question now.
What else was she to do, under a government that prized ruthlessness and brutality above all else? Her brother had given her the clue. Doctors made the world a better place regardless of the government. So she had made it her ambition to go to medical school. She had studied harder than any other girl in her class, and she had passed every exam with top marks, especially the sciences. She was better qualified than her brother to win a scholarship.
"There are no girls at all in my year," Erik said. He sounded grumpy. Carla thought he disliked the idea of her following in his footsteps. Their parents were proud of his achievements, despite his repellent politics. Perhaps he was afraid of being outshone.
Carla said: "All my grades are better than yours: biology, chemistry, math--"
"All right, all right."
"And the scholarship is available to female students, in principle--I checked."
Their mother came in at the end of this exchange, dressed in a gray watered-silk bathrobe with the cord doubled around her narrow waist. "They should follow their own rules," she said. "This is Germany, after all." Mother said she loved her adopted country, and perhaps she did, but since the coming of the Nazis she had taken to making wearily ironic remarks.
Carla dipped bread into milky coffee. "How will you feel, Mother, if England attacks Germany?"
"Miserably unhappy, as I felt last time," she replied. "I was married to your father throughout the Great War, and every day for more than four years I was terrified that he would be killed."
Erik said in a challenging tone: "But whose side will you take?"
"I'm German," she said. "I married for better
or worse. Of course, we never foresaw anything as wicked and oppressive as this Nazi regime. No one did." Erik grunted in protest and she ignored him. "But a vow is a vow, and anyway I love your father."
Carla said: "We're not at war yet."
"Not quite," said Mother. "If the Poles have any sense they will back down and give Hitler what he asks for."
