Salka’s house, on a steep wooded road dropping down into Santa Monica Canyon, was modest, a doll’s house compared to Lasner’s. The guests were many of the same people who’d come to Danny’s funeral, and they greeted Ben like an old friend with the fast hospitality of exiles. Brecht was there again and spent most of the time arguing with someone in a corner. Lion Feuchtwanger, interrupting, playing peacemaker; Fritz Lang, with a monocle. Thomas Mann had not come this time, a social deference, not wanting to eclipse the birthday honoree. Kaltenbach wore a suit that needed cleaning.
Ben noticed scarcely any of it, preoccupied, the German toasts droning in the background, Liesl down the table, her face half-hidden by one of Salka’s flower arrangements. Did she look different? Did he? Could anyone tell? If he looked down at the lace tablecloth, blotting out the rest, he could see her last night, riding him, her breasts bobbing, and he smiled to himself because no one else knew, their secret. Maybe this was the excitement spies felt, sitting down with the enemy, knowing something, holding it to themselves, while no one else had the faintest idea. What was more secretive than sex? Kaltenbach stood up to make his toast. Ben glanced down again at Liesl, this time meeting her eyes, amused, talking to him in code, just the two of them.
When he went out to the kitchen to open more wine she followed, standing behind as he pulled the corkscrew, putting her hand on his waist. He turned, their faces close.
“Somebody’ll see,” he said quietly, glancing toward the dining room, the angle of the table.
She pulled at his shirt, moving them away from the sink, the open door.
“No, they won’t,” she said, urgent, her eyes darting with excitement. “Not here.” Kissing him then, her lips warm, unexpected, alive with risk. From the dining room there was the tinkle of glass, and they kissed harder, racing ahead of it.
He pulled away, breathless. “They’ll see,” he said, already hard, his face red with it, unmistakable.
“I don’t care,” she said, eyes shiny, still moving, then leaned forward again. “I don’t care.”
Not really meaning it, playing, but the words flooding into him like sex itself, rushing, wonderful. Then there was the scrape of a chair and he turned back to the counter, grasping the wine bottle, and she slipped over to the refrigerator, opening it with a faint suppressed giggle, kids stealing cookies, waiting to be found out. He took a breath to calm himself and started in with the wine. But when he saw that the chair belonged to Ostermann, standing to respond to a toast, he glanced back at Liesl, a complicit smile, something they’d got away with after all.
After dinner Salka led the party down Mabery Road to the beach to watch the sunset. Ben had volunteered to drive Feuchtwanger home, a cliffside house on a twisting Palisades road that would be treacherous in the dark, so he was late joining the others on the broad beach. People who’d come earlier for the day were still in bathing suits or sweatshirts and stared openly at Salka’s group in suits and ties. Liesl took her shoes off, but the men didn’t bother, formal even in the sand. The light on the water had already begun to turn the deep gold just before orange.
“You know I was twelve before I saw the ocean?” Ostermann said to Ben. They were walking with Dieter, the others straggling behind. “Fifty years ago. More now. The Nordsee. Absolutely gray. Freezing. Rocks for beaches. But my father had paid for the week, so we had to stay.” He made a mock shudder at the memory.
“So, something else good here,” Dieter said, indicating the white sand.
“Yes, but shallow. You have to walk far before you can swim. That’s why they build the piers.” He nodded to the amusement pier farther down the beach. “Me, I prefer lakes. Of course, it’s what I knew. The Wannsee. Anyway, Liesl’s the swimmer, not me. From a child, always in the water.”
“Yes. She loves the pool,” Ben said, seeing her gliding underwater, parting her legs. Everyone thinks it would be easy in the water, but it’s not. Preferring a chaise.
He looked over at Ostermann, suddenly embarrassed. Change the subject.
“She told me about Die Verfuhrung, ” he said. “I’ve never read it. Is it in a collection?”
“No, alone. Quieros did it in Holland. A small edition. It was not so popular, you know. Not even the emigres liked it. Anti-German. Me, anti-German.”
“It’s a German failing,” Dieter said. “Thin skin.”
Kanon, Joseph
Stardust
“And thick boots,” Ostermann said. “A wonderful combination. Anyway, no one read it. I thought they might buy it for the title,” he said, teasing. “They would think it’s something else. But no one did.”
“You always write about Germany,” Dieter said. “Everybody knows that. And this time-be fair-a fatal flaw in the blood, an insult.”
“No, not in the blood. That’s what the Nazis believed, things in the blood. Destiny. It wasn’t like that. A whole country seduced. Led into a dream. You have to make that happen.” He raised his finger, a classroom gesture. “But they have to want the dream. The master race. Imagine-to believe that. If it’s German, it’s better. Well, the French, too. Maybe everyone. Look at them here. ‘The Greatest Country in the World.’ What does that mean? Great how? But they believe it.”
“It’s not the same,” Dieter said. “What happened there was unique.”
“You think so? Well, let’s hope. It’s not so hard, you know. Give them something to be afraid of. Someone else. The process is the same.”
“Did Danny ever talk to you about this?” Ben said. “Liesl said he liked to talk to you.”
“About this?” Ostermann said, confused. “The story? He said it was different here.” He nodded to Dieter, a point. “He said they were already seduced. By the movies.”
“Ha,” Dieter said. “He was serious?”
Ostermann shrugged. “Well, an idea. To make talk. That was his world, not politics.”
“He never talked to you about politics?” Ben said.
“Maybe I talked enough for both of us,” Ostermann said wryly. “Of course you know he worked against the Nazis. To get people out of France. But I think that was for the adventure. He had that spirit. But here-”
“But someone told me last night he was a Communist. You’d think-”
“People are always saying such things now,” Dieter said. “Every day in the papers. How many could there be? Just for signing a petition.” A glance to Ostermann.
“No, the woman knew him. In Berlin. She said he worked for them.”
“In Berlin?” Ostermann said. “But he must have been a boy.”
“Old enough. He helped my father.”
“What woman?”
“Fay Lasner’s cousin. Genia. She was in the camps.”
“To survive that,” Dieter said, impressed. “Genia. A Polish name?”
“Originally. But she knew him in Berlin.”
“But saying such things at dinner. To accuse-”
“She wasn’t accusing him of anything. She was one, too.”
“And he never said anything to you?” Dieter said. “His brother? It’s her imagination, I think.”
“What did you think when you were eighteen?” Ostermann said gently, putting a hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Do you remember? I was for the Kaiser. A young man’s ideas. Things change. Maybe he changed, too. A flirtation and then you want to put it behind you.”
“Especially now,” Dieter said. “The way things are. Even at the school. Checking on everybody. So strict. What do they think we write on the blackboards?” He nodded toward Ostermann. “Maybe you can help me persuade The Conscience of Germany to keep his conscience to himself a little. It’s not a good time to show these opinions.”
“When was the good time, ’thirty-three?”
Dieter gave Ben a see-what-I-mean? look, then turned to the water. “Look, it’s setting. At the end, so fast.”