He sat for a while longer, in silence, waiting for the image he had conjured inside his head to fade.
The little boy lifted the ball up and, grinning, threw it at the camera lens. She leaned toward the flickering black-and-white image, as though she could bring her own hands up and catch the ball.
“You see?” A man’s voice came from somewhere beside her. “He is healthy and happy. Does he not look well fed? You should be proud of such a sturdy lad.”
Marte could barely hear what Joseph said. All her attention was drawn to her son. This bit of him that she was allowed to have.
“His hair is the same color as yours.” Joseph spoke as if the resemblance between mother and child pleased him. “And there – you can see it – just when he turns. His eyes. One brown, one blue.” His voice went softer. “So you know this is your son, don’t you?”
She didn’t need any proof like that. She could feel it inside herself, the drawing short of her breath, the trembling of her pulse. She wanted to cry out to the little boy, and reach through the screen and gather him to her breast.
“Every provision has been made for his care. Both he and his mother – I mean, the woman who looks after him – have been issued supplemental food authorizations. I had my staff make the arrangements; you can be sure that your little boy receives tidbits that a general’s wife would be hard-pressed to find here in Berlin.” Joseph leaned back in his chair, nodding sagely as he placed the tips of his fingers together. “And of course, as you can see, they are billeted far from any city or industrial center, so they are free of any danger from the Allied bombing raids. Where your son is, one could barely tell that we are at war.”
Marte knew that was true as well. There were still places like that. This little film, taken by one of the Reichsminister ’s technicians, without sound – she couldn’t hear her child’s voice or laughter – caught a piece of that other world. Her child had grown older – more than a year and a half, closer to two, had gone by since the consulate official had ensnared her, brought her back here with the only possible enticement. The film showed a little boy growing up, time racing by him as he ran after a bird hopping across the ground.
There had been other photos, images of her child, that had been doled out to her since her return. She had begged for something more, and Joseph had finally relented, and this was what she had been given. Not the child himself, a living form that she could wrap her arms around and hold so tightly that he could never be taken away again, her tears darkening the child’s fine white-blonde hair. But this, a film, a thing of light and shadows. Several minutes of it had gone by already, the projector rattling behind them – Joseph had threaded the machine himself, taking the film from a small metal canister sealed with his security chief’s initials. She wondered how much more of it there was, how much longer it would be before the tail-end passed through and blank light filled the screen.
“I want to see him.” Her own voice, her wish, broke the film’s silence.
“But you are seeing him, Marte.” Beside her, Joseph reached over and squeezed her hand tight in his. “You’re seeing him right now. Look -” He gestured with his other hand, catching a corner of the projector’s beam, throwing a shadow across the bright world. “There he is. Your son. You know he is healthy and happy… and safe. What more do you want?” He sounded genuinely puzzled.
“I want to see him.” She turned her wet-streaked face away from the child’s image on the screen; she couldn’t bear to watch any more of his laughing and playing. “I want to hold him. I want him to be with me.”
“That’s impossible.” Joseph’s voice became stern. They had talked of these things before, many times since she had returned to Berlin and found no child waiting for her. “It cannot be done. I have forbidden it.” His voice softened to pleading. “Don’t you see, Marte? I have made you the queen of the German cinema; every eye gazes upon you. You are one of the most famous women in all the Reich. Do you really think you could have this child with you, a child of… such a background…”
She knew what he meant when he said that. Something that he could never speak aloud: a child, whose very eyes gave away the secret of his Mischling genetics, the scandalous cross between Aryan purity and her alien blood.
“You wouldn’t be able to hide it – we wouldn’t be able to. The scandals would blow up once more. The Fuhrer ’s attention is consumed by the war now, but he wouldn’t be able to ignore what would be told to him by my enemies – and I have many of those, greedy and unscrupulous power-seekers, right up to the top levels of the Reich. Goering and Bormann and all the rest… they would love to see me fall, to no longer have the ear of the Fuhrer, so they could tell their lies to him without hindrance from me. Everyone knows that I brought you back here because I love you, that I can’t exist without you.” Joseph’s voice became even more fervent. “For now, as long as we are discreet, that can be tolerated, they’ll let us have our little bit of happiness. But if the wolves at my heels were to find out your child exists, then they would discover all the rest. The Rassenschande , the crime of racial pollution… and then the wolves would be upon me, they would be at my throat. I would be torn to bits by them.”
She turned from the screen and gazed at him. “You say you love me… that I mean more to you than anything else… and you wouldn’t do that for me?”
“But you don’t understand, Martchen -” Joseph took her by the shoulders, drawing her closer to his face and words. “I am doing it for you. Everything! I must protect you from these people. Himmler… if he were to find out the arrangements, the deals I have made behind his back, with his underlings in the SS… the bribes and favors I continue to bestow in order to keep your child a secret… if he knew, there would be no place you could hide with your little boy. He would find you and destroy you both.” Joseph shook his head, voice turning bitter. “These politics of race, they are just something I have used to achieve power, to make the Fuhrer strong; the people need an enemy, if they are to flock to someone who can protect them. The Jews and the gypsies, and your own people – they are just scapegoats, so that the whip can be placed in the Fuhrer ’s hand for their scourging. You understand, don’t you?” His gaze drew inward for a moment. “My sins may be greater than Himmler’s – at least he believes the things he says. His skin crawls when he speaks of Jews and other creatures. But I… I am just an actor, a traveling player such as yourself; no less so, even if I have written the words I’ve placed in my own mouth and in the mouths of others.” His words had grown softer, his eyes turning away. Suddenly, his gaze snapped back to her; his voice shook with emotion. “You understand, don’t you? – you have to understand. I’m protecting both you and your son. Perhaps later… when the war has been won, and the Fuhrer no longer needs me… then we can be together, all of us. We can go away, you and your little boy… far from here. To the embassy in Tokyo; I asked him before, to make me the ambassador. He’ll do that for me, I know he will… when the war is over…”
She understood. The things that Joseph said, and the things he didn’t; the things inside his heart. A heart that was no different from David Wise’s, or any other man’s. For all his impassioned speech, just like lines from a film – an actor, yes, but a bad one, a scenery-chewer as Herr Wise and the others would have called him in Hollywood; she’d almost expected Joseph to place both his hands over his heart, to swear his undying love – for all the lofty words, she could still hear the silent voice behind them. The one that spoke the truth: that he could never share her with anyone else, not even her own child.
Marte closed her eyes, letting herself fall away from him, into that empty space inside her own heart, where no one else would ever come now. She wondered what Joseph saw on the screen – not this one, with the little boy laughing and running – the screen with her face magnified upon it. Or rather, not what he saw, but who did the seeing. Perhaps there was no one in the theater with him, no human presence, nothing at all. But only him, alone in that dark empty world, where her face was the only light, the moon that he fell toward, as those in dreaming fall from the earth and into the hollow night sky.