“I’ve wanted to do this for months, my darling,” Werner said as he rained kisses all over her face.
“Me, too,” Marled murmured, but all of her words and thoughts ceased to exist the moment his lips touched hers. She was thrown into the sheer magic of love. There was no need for words to express their feelings. Not the good ones and certainly not the bad ones. His kisses were a promise of a bright future, where they could be together forever.
Their first night together was exquisite. Werner was a wonderful lover and she responded passionately to his touch. By the early hours of the morning the champagne bottle was empty and the couple exhausted. Drunk on love, Marlene fell into a deep sleep.
She woke in the morning, surprised to find herself alone in the room. She rolled over to Werner’s side of the bed, but it was cold. Then her gaze fell on the note lying on the nightstand.
“I realize now that passion is not love. It’s not going to work out between us, we are too different people,” the note said. “Please don’t try to contact me again. This is for both our sakes.”
Anger took over and she imagined strangling him after scratching out his eyes. The money he’d left for her on the nightstand made her feel used and dirty. It tainted the wonderful experience of the previous night.
“What a fool I’ve been. How dare you treat me like this?” she shouted at the walls that discretely kept their silence.
The chimes of a nearby clock tower reminded her of the time, and she jumped up and frantically got dressed. Her parents must be worried, wondering where she’d been all night. Her parents!
Sheer panic crept up her spine. If her father knew what she’d done, he’d beat her to a pulp. She needed to come up with an alibi, and quick. Bruni – no that wouldn’t work since her father despised the singer for her lose morals. Dr. Ebert – no, she didn’t want him to lie for her. Zara! Yes, Zara lived nearby in the French sector and despite her father’s newfound hate for Zara’s father, she was still an acceptable character witness.
She rounded the corner into Zara’s street the moment her friend left her house.
“Hey Zara!”
“Hey Marlene. What are you doing here this early in the morning?” Zara hugged her.
“I need to ask you a favor. I… can you… in case my parents ask…” Marlene felt her ears burning with shame.
Zara took one scrutinizing look at Marlene’s face and giggled. “You had a secret rendezvous? Let me guess… with Herr Böhm?”
Heat emanated from Marlene’s face, giving away her secret. “It’s not what you think. We broke up.”
“I’m sorry,” Zara said. “So, what am I supposed to do?”
“Just in case my parents ask, will you please tell them I spent the night with you? Because it got late and I was afraid to return home alone?”
“No problem. And hey, if you want to talk…”
“No thanks. We talked. We quit. There’s nothing more to say.” Marlene would not tell even her best friends about the shameful experience of this morning. Nobody would ever find out, and for all she was concerned, Werner Böhm never existed. Traitorous scum. He wasn’t worth shedding a single tear over.
When Marlene got home she found her mother in tears and her father in a furious rage.
“I’m so sorry. It got late and I spent the night at Zara’s place—” she began.
“Thank God you did,” her mother sobbed. “The Markgraf police came for you last night. Why, Marlene? What have you done?”
“You have to resign from the student board. I allowed you to study, not to meddle in politics,” her father shouted.
“I will,” she said half-heartedly. Right now, she had more urgent problems. Shaken to the core, she rushed to Georg’s place. His sister opened the door, visibly distraught when Marlene asked about him.
“He’s not here. He received a call last night to visit Erich over in Kreuzberg and hasn’t returned home since,” his sister said.
The icy hand of deathlike fear squeezed Marlene’s heart and froze the blood in her veins. “Thanks, I’ll get in touch when I find out something,” she told Georg’s sister and turned on her heels.
What now? Check on Julian? Better not, since he lived in the Soviet sector. The abductions usually took place at night, but even in broad daylight, Marlene didn’t feel safe right now. She decided to pay Lotte a visit. Maybe she knew something.
By the time she arrived at Lotte’s apartment, the grapevine had done its work and Lotte frantically wrapped her arms around Marlene, “Thank God, you’re okay.”
“You have heard?” Marlene asked.
“Yes, it’s awful. In total a dozen student leaders, all of them not members of the SED, have disappeared last night. Julian, Georg, Klaus, and Sandra, among them,” Lotte said in a hoarse voice. “We thought, you too.”
Marlene’s feet suddenly gave out under her and Lotte dragged her inside to flop onto the sofa.
“I… I happened to spend the night at Zara’s because it got late…” A thought entered her mind, but the idea was too absurd to even consider it.
“Lucky girl. Looks like you have a resourceful guardian angel,” Lotte said and brought Marlene tea. “Here drink this for the shock. You had better not go home, at least for a few days until the dust has settled.
Marlene nodded in a haze, her brain not really up to the task of processing a rational thought.
“…and don’t go to university either. Don’t enter the Soviet sector.” Lotte looked at her with a sorrowful face. “You know how wicked the Russians are. They never try an accused person, because the moment you’re accused by the party, you’re already guilty, since there’s no room for error. The only thing remaining is to determine your punishment.”
Completely traumatized, Marlene thanked Lotte for her advice and took a bus to the French sector where Bruni lived. The quick-witted and well-connected woman would know what to do.
It was almost noon when she arrived and Marlene kept ringing the bell until a tousled Bruni finally appeared in her nightgown.
“What the hell, Marlene?” Bruni growled, but stopped when she saw the stricken look on her friend’s face. “Come in. But you better have a good reason for this. If you’ve woken me to whine about a lover’s quarrel, I’m going to kill you.”
Trembling, she told Bruni what had happened during the last twenty hours.
As always Bruni was quick to assess the facts and find the hidden connections. “Wow! Böhm must have known about the upcoming raid.”
Marlene had her own suspicious about this already, but she still denied it. “No, I don’t believe he did. He’s not in the education department anymore.”
Bruni waved her argument away with a graceful movement of her hand. “It’s the only explanation for his otherwise very peculiar behavior. Why else would he show up on your doorstep after spending the day with you, wearing a French beret and taking you to the French sector? Seducing you to spend the night with him? Was he any good, by the way?”
“Bruni!” Marlene protested. “That’s completely beside the point.”
“But I’d still like to know.” Bruni made a dreamy face. “I’ve had many men, but never a German emigré to Moscow. I’d really love to know how they compare. Does he make love like a German or like a Russian?”
“I’m not going to tell you,” Marlene all but yelled at her friend. “Suppose he knew, why didn’t he just tell me? He didn’t have to seduce me just to save my life.”
“Do you ever listen to yourself?” Bruni laughed. “You wouldn’t believed him. You’d have wanted to prove that there’s law and order in Berlin and stayed at home.”