Page 137 of Hell to Pay

“And how is it going?” I asked.

She shrugged.“Na ja,it’s very different. But then, you’ll know, as you went to the United States. But yes, I feel some pride in repopulating Germany with my Jewish self. We weren’t so easy to kill off after all.”

“No,” I said, liking her. “Hitler failed in that as with everything else.” I didn’t put a hand on her arm, but I wanted to. “I’m very glad you came to see me, and so happy to hear the news of your family. Your grandfather was a brave man. Very brave, and very kind. Amensch.”I laughed a bit. “You see, I married a Jew also. But you know that. It’s odd to put so much of oneself out into the world. I keep forgetting I’ve done it.”

“Yes,” she said. “Grandfather told us often of your bravery, too. But I didn’t come merely for that.”

“No?” I asked, taking a sip of tea. “Tell me, then. Whatever questions I can answer, whatever I can do to help, I will.”

She smiled, though it was a bit forced. “When my Aunt Andrea became ill, I sat with her sometimes. We understood each other, she and I. We both kept most things inside. She charged me with a most important task, which so far I’ve been unable to fulfill. She didn’t remember your married name, you see, or know where you’d gone.”

My heart had somehow begun beating harder again. It was the intensity in her eyes. “And what was the task?” I’dforgotten to translate long ago, and I spared a thought for the others, then dismissed it.

Dr. Levy said, “I’m going to ask you to try to understand what you perhaps can’t. She was angry, Aunt Andrea.”

“At—at me?” I was puzzled. “Why?”

She shook her head. “Not then, but when she was young. When you were escaping the fire. She was angry, and confused, and hurt, and …” She stopped.

“I find I can understand a great deal nowadays,” I said. “That’s the one consolation for becoming so old. One has seen so much, you see, including one’s own imperfection. So please. Whatever it is, tell me.”

Dr. Levy didn’t, or not exactly. She opened the clasp on her pocketbook and took something out of it. Something in a black velvet bag. Something … round.

My hand was shaking when I took it, when I released the drawstring. I reached inside and pulled the thing out.

A circlet of the most beautiful mellow gold. Emeralds the size of robin’s eggs, surrounded by diamonds that flashed in the light.

It was the tiara.

I wore my black evening gown to the opera.

The enormous stone building glowed gold in the evening sun. Sebastian, dressed in a dinner jacket I hadn’t realized he possessed, had me on his arm, and I walked up the stone steps, one hand holding up my skirt, like a queen.

Inside, then, through passages with their columns of marble and their exquisitely painted ceilings, in the glow of chandeliers. Another corridor, and a door leading to a box. A man waiting outside, stout and bespectacled and wholly German.

“Your Highness,” he said, and took my hand gently in his. “I am Helmut Larsen, mayor of Dresden. Would you do me the honor of joining me in my box?”

And so I stepped into the Royal Box, with its red velvet draperies, and sat down in the light of a chandelier as big as a house, wearing my mother’s earrings and her tiara.

When you are a beautiful young lady, you will wear silk and pearls and sit in the royal box at the Semperoper.The orchestra was tuning, and Alix had my hand in hers. My hand with Joe’s ring on it, the one he’d given me after the colonel had granted us permission to marry. A great emerald with a baguette diamond on either side, which must have cost him the earth, and also must have cost such a pang to the one who’d had to sell it.I’ll look after it for you,I’d promised the unknown seller that day,and I’ll treasure it. I know what it’s like to lose everything that’s most precious to you. I hope you’ll be happy again, as happy as I am today.And below it, the ring of simple gold that Joe had put on my finger on the day we married. In the Registry Office, in my yellow dress with purple flowers and my ugly BDM shoes, with the Beckers and the Adelbergs and Frau Neumann and even Frau Lindemann in attendance, and some of Joe’s comrades, too. When we put aside all that divided us and celebrated what united us. Flowers and children and books and music—and, always, good bread. A love of life, and a life of love.

“L’chaim,”I whispered to Joe. He was gone, but he was so fully here in my heart.

To life.