His Majesty's Hope(72)
“Oh, come now, Elise—I find that hard to believe.”
“It’s true! I want to dedicate my life to Jesus.”
“What about, you know, waiting until you’re older? After you’ve lived a little. Fallen in love.”
Elise shook her head. “I know what I want.”
“Do you think it’s a kind of rebellion?” Maggie cocked an eyebrow over the tortoiseshell frames of her sunglasses. “Against your mother?”
Elise’s eyes followed the flight of a black heron. “I never thought of that. It’s possible, I suppose. But it doesn’t change the fact I love God and want to devote my life to Him. And, of course, I’ll still be a nurse. Maybe even a doctor, someday. After this horrible war.”
“And how does your father feel about your donning a habit?”
“He doesn’t seem to mind. He’s away so much, with the opera.… But you’re right—my mother, she despises the idea.”
Elise fingered the tiny cross on the thin chain around her neck. “It even bothers her that I wear this. She’d rather I wear a swastika.”
Her tone was bitter.
“She’s, um, quite important in the party, I gather?”
Elise gave a snort. “Once upon a time, Mutti had everything—beauty, fame, glamour, handsome men, including my father. He was her conductor, you know. Their love affair made them famous. He divorced his first wife for her. Oh, the scandal!”
Maggie bit her lip.
“But then she had the surgery. And, as a result, she lost her upper range and retired from singing. As you heard, at the party—although she’s not too bad as a mezzo, as long as she isn’t projecting to a large hall. But one of her greatest admirers was Herr Goebbels. Who brought her to the Abwehr, where she’s become a sort of star. I think working in Intelligence has replaced opera for her.”
“I see,” Maggie responded. Substituting one stage for another. Although Clara must have been working for German Intelligence long before she officially went to the Abwehr …
“And she definitely bought into all the propaganda about Hitler. ‘Hitler will save us from the Communists!’ she said. ‘He will restore the glory of Germany!’ I do believe she pictures everything in Wagnerian terms. And she was a favorite of Hitler’s—he adored her in the role of Elsa. Göring and Himmler did, too. Goebbels—well, I’ve always suspected there was, or still is, something between them. They can be loyal and generous friends to people in their inner circle. And they admired her—she brought the Nazi party glamour and culture. Do you think she could”—Elise lowered her voice—“find anything monstrous in such a party, in such men, when they adore her so? Absolutely not. She thinks they’re brilliant and has swallowed their politics whole.”
Maggie felt she had to tread carefully. She and Elise hadn’t talked about politics. “And what about you?”
Elise gave a short, sour laugh. “Well, since my parents ignored me for the most part, I was free to read, free to think, free to make up my own mind.”
As her companion went on, Maggie gleaned the impression of a beautiful but distant and narcissistic mother, who knew very little about her own daughter. And a preoccupied and famous father. It sounded lonely, and far different from the childhood she’d imagined Elise had enjoyed. Yes, she was a smart and capable young woman with high ideals and morals, but she was also the solemn child, who, despite worldly and wealthy parents, grew up very much alone. Maggie felt a warm rush of love and appreciation for her own Aunt Edith.
“What do you think of all this?” Elise asked suddenly.
“I’m … an optimistic agnostic,” Maggie said, knowing she had to be careful. “A secular humanist. And not at all political.”
She smiled. “Shall we swim?”
The next night, Maggie tried the study door again, this time with a long, thin knitting needle. Again, she’d failed. Maggie bit her lip and stopped herself from pounding at the door in frustration.
There was a noise in the hall. Maggie whipped around, hiding the needle behind her back. She knew she could talk herself out of almost any situation, but if not, she knew how to kill with a knitting needle—through the eyeball and deep into the brain, the same technique that could be used with a pen or pencil.
“Mein Gott,” she heard a deep male voice whisper. “Are you a ghost?”
Maggie took a ragged breath. “No ghost, Herr Oberg. It is I—Fräulein Hoffman.”
Herr Oberg, still wearing his uniform, took a few steps closer and appraised her, in her nightgown and robe. The appraisal lasted too long for Maggie’s taste.