The Traitor's Emblem Read Online Free PDF

Every day I have to tie myself in knots to pay their wages, and all they can do is complain. So don’t even think about throwing in my face all the things I do to keep a roof over your head.”
    Alys took a deep breath and again succumbed to her favorite fault: saying exactly what she thought at the most inopportune moment.
    “You needn’t worry about that, Papa. I mean to leave very soon. I want to return to America and make my life there.”
    When he heard this, Tannenbaum’s face turned scarlet. He waved a chubby finger under Alys’s nose.
    “Don’t you dare say that, you hear me? You’ll go to this party and you’ll behave like a polite young lady, okay? I have plans for you, and I won’t have them ruined by the whims of a badly behaved girl. You hear me?”
    “I hate you,” said Alys, looking straight at him.
    Her father’s expression didn’t change.
    “That doesn’t bother me, as long as you do what I say.”
    Alys ran out of the study, tears welling in her eyes.
    We’ll see about that. Oh, yes, we’ll see.

3

    “Are you asleep?”
    Ilse Reiner turned over on the mattress.
    “Not anymore. What is it, Paul?”
    “I was wondering what we’re going to do.”
    “It’s half past eleven. How about getting some sleep?”
    “I was talking about the future.”
    “The future,” his mother repeated, almost spitting out the word.
    “I mean, it’s not as if you really have to work here at Aunt Brunhilda’s, do you, Mama?”
    “In the future I see you going to university, which happens to be just around the corner, and coming home to eat the tasty food I have prepared for you. Now, good night.”
    “This isn’t our home.”
    “We live here, we work here, and we thank heaven for it.”
    “As if we should . . .” whispered Paul.
    “I heard that, young man.”
    “Sorry, Mama.”
    “What’s up with you? Have you had another fight with Jürgen? Is that why you came back all wet today?”
    “It wasn’t a fight. He and two of his friends followed me to the Englischer Garten.”
    “They were just playing.”
    “They threw my trousers in the lake, Mama.”
    “And you hadn’t done anything to upset them?”
    Paul snorted loudly but said nothing. This was typical of his mother. Whenever he had a problem, she would try to find a way to make it his fault.
    “Best go to sleep, Paul. We have a big day tomorrow.”
    “Ah, yes, Jürgen’s birthday . . .”
    “There will be cakes.”
    “That other people will eat.”
    “I don’t know why you always have to react like this.”
    Paul thought it was outrageous that a hundred people should celebrate a party on the ground floor while Eduard—whom he hadn’t yet been allowed to see—languished on the fourth, but he kept this to himself.
    “There will be a lot of work tomorrow,” Ilse concluded, turning over.
    The boy watched his mother’s back for some time. The bedrooms in the service wing were at the rear of the house, down in a sort of basement. Living there instead of in the family quarters didn’t bother Paul that much, because he’d never known any other home. Ever since he was born, he’d accepted as normal the strange sight of watching Ilse wash her sister Brunhilda’s dishes.
    A thin rectangle of light filtered through a little window just beneath the ceiling, the yellow echo of a streetlamp that melded with the flutter of the candle Paul always kept beside his bed, as he was terrified of the dark. The Reiners shared one of the smaller bedrooms, which contained only two beds, a wardrobe, and a table over which Paul’s homework was strewn.
    Paul felt oppressed by the lack of space. It wasn’t as though there were a shortage of spare rooms. Even before the war, the baron’s fortune had begun to dwindle, and Paul had watched it melt away with the inevitability of a tin can rusting in the middle of a field. It was a process that happened over many years, but it was unstoppable.
    The cards, the servants whispered, shaking their heads as