Prisoner of Night and Fog Read Online Free PDF Page B

She clutched the knife handle more tightly.
    As the man grew closer, recognition arrowed through her. A fedora was pulled low over his face, leaving only an impression of olive-tinted skin and a sharp jaw. But she knew the shape of that wide mouth, and the curve of those broad shoulders.
    It was the stranger from outside the alley.
    He wasn’t a man, then, but a boy hovering on the brink of adulthood, perhaps eighteen or nineteen to her seventeen.
    She darted from the shadows. On the sidewalk, the boy paused, glancing at the number on the skinny stone boardinghouse. She moved so close only an inch of space remained between their bodies, and his scent of oranges and soap washed over her. Before she could lose her nerve, she pressed the knife’s tip into the small of his back, just hard enough that he could feel the prick of metal through his clothes.
    “You wrote Gretchen Müller a letter,” she said. Her voice sounded strong and low, a stranger’s voice to her ears.
    “Yes.”
    He started to turn around, but she said, “Across the street. Into the Englischer Garten. We can speak there.”
    “I had hoped we could speak like civilized people in the beer hall down the street.” The boy sounded half-amused, as though he wasn’t taking her seriously. His sharp Berlin accent laced each word.
    She could only imagine what the other diners might say if they recognized Uncle Dolf’s favorite pet sitting with someone who was an enemy of the Party. “No. Into the park.”
    The boy heaved a sigh, as though he found all this tiresome, but he didn’t argue. They ran as the neighbor’s dog had, zigzagging between the automobiles and buses and horse-drawn carts. By the time Gretchen reached the sidewalk, she had lost track of the boy. Panic seized her heart. He had gotten away.
    But then she saw him, waiting at the park entrance. He had pushed the fedora back, so she could see his face clearly for the first time. A handsome face, but she had been right—there was something dangerous about it. His eyes weren’t black, as she had thought, but dark brown, the irises encircled by gold.
    “We mustn’t speak here, out in the open,” she said.
    His hard expression didn’t change. “Very well.”
    They walked quickly, stepping onto one of the flower-scented paths that wound through the Englischer Garten. She hid her hand among her skirt’s folds, concealing the knife. Its sharp hilt dug into her palm, but she was too nervous to put it away.
    At this hour, the paths were crowded with workers returning home, their faces exhausted, their pockets jingling with the stingy groschen they had been lucky enough to earn today. When Gretchen and the boy reached a cluster of pine trees, by silent accord, they moved off the path. Needles sighed underfoot as they walked deeper into the dark woods. The trees’ tops bent closely together, partially blocking out the sun’s fading rays, enclosing Gretchen and the boy in a pocket of green-tinted shadow.
    His face was all angles and planes: a strong jaw, high cheekbones, a razor-sharp nose. There was nothing soft about him, but his eyes, when they met hers, seemed kind and earnest.
    “How about an exchange of information?” he proposed. “I’ll tell you what I know about your father’s death, and you tell me why you found it necessary to greet me with a knife.”
    An unfair trade. His side would contain lies, and hers, memories no outsider could understand. Papa’s death protected her family. If he had died during the Great War, or from influenza, his widow and children would have been quickly forgotten. Bundled off to Mama’s parents’ farm in Dachau, perhaps, to live in creeping poverty.
    Instead, they were protected. An old Party comrade had found Mama the boardinghouse manager position. Another had paid for Gretchen’s piano lessons. At Christmas, she and Reinhard received dozens of boxes of chocolates, and when she was a child, she had gotten a china doll whose eyes opened and