Horst nodded in agreement. It was an article of faith in the west, he’d discovered, that girls had an easier time of it at school than boys. But he had a feeling that it wasn’t particularly true. Girls who failed to conform could expect little better than boys who failed to conform, even though girls had less use for educational certificates than boys. And their parents might eventually be told to make them conform or else.
And now Gudrun is in a position to seek revenge, he thought. He would have smirked, if he hadn’t been trying to keep his face blank. I bet that upset quite a few of her old teachers.
“I can give you a provisional list,” Horst added. “And I can try to slant it, but there will be no guarantees.”
“So you keep saying,” Schwarzkopf said. “Do the best you can. We will act as we see fit.”
“I know,” Horst said.
“And congratulations on your wedding,” Schwarzkopf added. “I trust you will have a pleasant honeymoon?”
Horst laughed. “We can’t get out of the city,” he said. It was traditional for newly-weds to go off for a honeymoon, but leaving Berlin was impossible. “We’ll just have to take a day or two off and pretend we’re in Bavaria.”
“Pathetic,” Schwarzkopf said.
“There’s no way to leave,” Horst said. He moved quickly to dismiss the next possibility, before Schwarzkopf could suggest it. “Even finding a hotel is impossible, these days.”
“What a pity,” Schwarzkopf said, dryly. A hotel would have made an ideal spot for a quick kidnap, although getting Gudrun out of the city afterwards would have been tricky. “You’ll hear from us after the wedding, no doubt.”
“No doubt,” Horst agreed.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Berlin, Germany Prime
15 October 1985
Gudrun stood in front of the mirror and slowly disrobed, removing her clothing piece by piece until she was as naked as the day she was born.
She studied her body as dispassionately as she could, despite the churning morass of emotions that threatened to bubble up into her mind. It was a good body – both Konrad and Horst had said so – and she knew it was satisfactory. Her skin was pale, with barely a blemish; her long blonde hair hung down to brush against the tops of her breasts. She’d been lucky not to have darker skin or anything else that would have suggested that there had been a non-Aryan somewhere within the family tree. There had been a handful of girls who had been darker, she recalled all too well. They’d had papers proving that they met the standard definition of Aryan – no hint of non-Aryan blood for at least four generations – but it hadn’t been enough to keep them from becoming social outcasts. In hindsight, she admitted quietly, she’d treated them as cruelly as everyone else.
Because you didn’t want to be an outcast yourself, she told herself. It was safer to pick on the girls who were.
She cursed the younger person she’d been, then continued to scrutinize her body, her eyes trailing down her legs to her feet. Her arms were strong, but she was nowhere near as muscular as Horst or her father. She would never be, she knew, no matter how hard she exercised her body. Horst had warned her, bluntly, that girls needed to learn to fight dirty, if they wanted to fight at all. A man would almost certainly be stronger and faster than any woman. The only way to win was to fight dirty.
There was a knock at the door. “Gudrun,” her mother called. “It’s me.”
“Come in,” Gudrun said. There was no one else in the suite, but she still tensed when the door opened. “Did you bring the dress?”
“I did,” her mother said, briskly. “Did you have a quick shower?”
“I showered this morning,” Gudrun said, rather disdainfully. Water rationing was starting to bite, even in the Reichstag. A five-minute shower was nowhere near long enough to wash her hair. Some of the maids had even started cutting their hair short to make it easier to wash. “I don’t want to shower again.”
Her mother looked her up and down, then nodded. “You look very much like I did at your age,” she said, as she passed Gudrun her undergarments. “I was expecting shortly afterwards.”
Gudrun coloured. “I’m not expecting, mother,” she said. “Really.”
“You soon will be,” her mother predicted, bluntly. “A virile young man like yours? He’ll want to share your bed all the time.”
“Mother,” Gudrun said, cringing. “Please.”
Her mother gave her a droll look. She’d been remarkably informative after Gudrun had discussed Konrad with her, even though Gudrun still winced at the thought of her parents actually having sex. Gudrun knew she should be grateful that her mother was willing to tell her anything – what she’d learned in school hadn’t been particularly informative – but there were details she hadn’t wanted to know. Man-management was apparently a science all of its own in the Reich, with secrets passed down through successive generations of mothers and daughters. But she really hadn’t wanted to know about some of the problems her parents had faced.
Gudrun sighed, heavily. She was twenty years old. And yet, far too many of her old classmates from school were already married. They hadn’t gone to university, they hadn’t dreamed of an independent career… she’d looked them up, out of curiosity, and discovered that twenty-seven out of thirty girls had married within six months of leaving school. A number even had children of their own now, children who would be entering nursery school within two years. And of the remaining three, two of them were practically old maids.
Twenty years old and yet no husband, she thought, morbidly. Their parents will be pushing them to accept the first man who comes calling.
She pulled her undergarments on, then closed her eyes as her mother lowered the wedding dress over her head. Gudrun had been offered her mother’s old dress, one that had been in the family for five generations, but she’d declined, pointing out that it wasn’t a formal ceremony. Her mother hadn’t objected – Gudrun knew she was quietly planning a huge ceremony for after the war – yet the dress they’d selected in its place was whiter than Gudrun would have preferred. But then, white wedding dresses were often nothing more than polite fictions within the Reich.
“You look good,” her mother said, as she fussed around the dress, loosening some of the seams and tightening others. “Very like a bride on her way to the registry hall.”
“Oh good,” Gudrun said. She knew her mother wanted a formal ceremony, but that wasn’t going to happen until after the war. “That’s the look I was trying for.”
Her mother snorted.
Gudrun hid her amusement with an effort, then glanced at the door. Normally, it took at least a week to get a marriage certificate, but the flood of couples trying to get married had done the impossible and forced the bureaucrats to speed up the process. Horst and her father had flatly refused to allow her to go to the registry hall herself – there was too great a risk of being assassinated or kidnapped – and the register had, reluctantly, been escorted to the Reichstag. The wedding itself would be held in a small room on one of the lower levels…
“This is your last chance to back out,” her mother said. “Are you sure you want to marry him?”
“Yes,” Gudrun said.
She shook her head. Her mother’s words were just as much a polite fiction as the white wedding dress. A relationship that had come so far simply could not be cancelled and forgotten, not after both sets of parents had paid for the marriage certificate and what other pieces of paperwork were required. Maybe a girl who got cold feet could run, but it would be a major scandal and tongues would be wagging for years. Her family would probably disown her, just to make it clear that they didn’t condone her actions.