Corridor of Darkness Page 5

  At first sight she knew he was the one for her, and her parents encouraged her choice. The young couple danced that first evening in the fall air, and she charmed him with her wit and shy smile, intense blue eyes, and dark tresses tied up with a yellow ribbon. He wanted to give her hair its freedom and see the black curls drop to the pale skin of her neck.

  Jeanne saw in Heinrich a serious, intelligent young man with the goal of owning a fleet of ships before he was thirty. He already captained a small riverboat and a crew of two, traversing the river from dock to dock with local cargo. The vessel was a meager inheritance from the uncle who raised him after his parents died from tuberculosis in his youth.

  Heinrich and Jeanne married the following spring. Within a year, a difficult birth produced a hefty son, two weeks overdue and christened Reinhardt. Jeanne soon called the baby René, and the nickname stuck. The Great War came and Heinrich was called to the trenches. In his absence Jeanne looked after the business and raised their son, and she herself nearly fell to the Spanish Flu of 1918. Miraculously, her husband came home to her with limbs intact, but errant shrapnel from a British shell meant no future offspring for the couple. With the end of the war, Heinrich and Jeanne built a profitable shipping business, their small fleet of transports and barges plying the waters of the Rhine under the orange-black-white house banner of Gesslinger Shipping.

  The boy spent many hours on the decks and docks with his father, gaining a deep respect for the river and the men who worked it. His parents were generous with employees and town folk alike, and René took their compassion to heart. The Gesslingers were Social Democrats and the first of the local shipping families to encourage unionization of their workers, much to the disgust of the other affluent shipping families. René divided his growing years between the river, his schooling, and exploring the dense woods and fertile fields behind his home. He fished and hunted, and spent long evenings under the stars, dreaming of traveling the world.

  Geography became his favorite subject. His parents hoped he would assume the family business, but René fantasized of destinations far beyond Rotterdam, of taking his own sea-going ships to tie up at New York wharves or drop anchor off Rio de Janeiro and Hong Kong. He read constantly, spending his evenings in the family’s small library devouring tales of international travel.

  This longing was a gift from his father. Heinrich thought his son ready at age fifteen to appreciate the reach of the family enterprise, to experience his first taste of the great world beyond the Upper Rhine. As the early-morning mist rose from the river, they brought their bags on board, and the low-slung, broad-beamed vessel turned its prow northward, roiling in the first surge of spring melt out of the high Alps. They headed down-Rhine toward the great harbor at Rotterdam. René was thrilled by the nautical demands of the beautiful but treacherous Middle Rhine. Later he saw the great industrial cities of the Ruhr, where billowing clouds of soot and smoke smeared across the urban landscape, stinging his eyes and searing his lungs. Finally the Lower Rhine merged with the Meuse, and at the mouth of the great river they encountered vessels of every shape and size: barges and river boats, ocean-going trawlers, small skiffs and lighters, and massive ore-carriers. Heinrich was pleased to witness René’s enthusiasm.

  As evening settled over the vast harbor, huge vessels riding at anchor loomed overhead, the Gesslinger boat a child's toy alongside the ocean-going freighters. Tall cranes, channel markers, and wharves sent light dancing across the water, and unfamiliar music drifted from open portholes. Seagulls rose and fell on the oil-slicked waves, or huddled on buoys bobbing in the wake of the passing vessel. Their transport moored across from the main terminals, and René observed the warm reception his father received from the foreman, and the polite respect from the stevedores.

  While their cargo was off-loaded, the youth tagged behind his father and the foreman as they crossed the tracks to a seaman's dive. In the smoke-laden bar he had his first sip of gin, taken from a greasy shot glass. His inexperienced palate, accustomed to smooth family wines, recoiled at the harsh taste, much to his father’s amusement. Raucous laughter from all sides made it difficult to follow the adult conversation, so he turned his attention to denizens of the bar, an intriguing mix of unfamiliar races, languages and gestures, weathered tattoos, and many a missing digit or limb.

  After a greasy meal of pork sausage, cabbage and fried potatoes accompanied by several beers, Heinrich and son left the crowded bar. They passed chandler’s shops, still seedier dives, and deserted shipping offices, until Heinrich found a certain narrow alleyway sharp with the odor of saltwater and urine. A well-weathered sign distinguished this passage from the others, its image of a man paddling a red canoe directing knowledgeable visitors up the alley. They entered the courtyard of De rode Kano, a surprisingly well-kept three-story tenement.

  Beneath the rosy glow of lanterns a dozen or so women waited, some leaning with a foot propped against the wall, others smoking or chatting softly in small groups. René gaped at long legs in mesh stockings, ample exposed flesh, heavy rouge and lipstick and dark mascara. Heinrich put his arm around René’s shoulders, gave him a solid hug, and said, “Son, this evening you’ve finally experienced a bit of the wider world, and now it’s time to learn what it is to be a man.”

  The father singled out a pretty girl, perhaps eighteen, slender in the hips, small in the bust. Dutch with Dutch East Indian, he surmised. She offered a grin of complicity when he gestured to the young René, and her dark eyes flashed in the soft light. Her skin was smooth and dusky. Heinrich negotiated quietly while René tried not to stare. Anxious, he worried how he would conduct himself once alone with the girl. Terms were settled and a few small bills changed hands. Then Heinrich handed his son a tiny package. “Don’t worry; she knows how to use it. Just relax and have fun.”

  The girl, so exotic to a youth whose only prior experience of non-Europeans had come from books and magazines, led him up the stairs. His eyes followed the sway of her hips as she ascended the stairway a step or two ahead of him. They entered a tidy but cramped room, one of several lining the dimly lit hall. It held only a neatly-made cot, a scarf-draped lamp on a side table, and a simple wooden cross hanging above the bed. A narrow window with open lace curtains stared out to the dark night beyond. Her smile was reassuring.

  For twenty minutes his father kept silent watch in the courtyard, smoking his pipe, politely declining invitations to go upstairs, remembering his own first time with a woman.

  By 1934 René’s chest was broad and his arms powerful. His unconscious attempt to hide his height gave the illusion of clumsiness, but few at the university knew he had perfected his balance on the rolling decks of river craft and was quick and agile despite a somewhat lumbering gait. And those who underestimated him in the past had quickly learned to respect the power of his frame and the speed of his responses. In Kehl more than one bully had been sent home bruised, wishing never to have provoked the shipper's son.

  René had chosen the Philipps University at Marburg for its admired school of economics and business. He might have preferred a nautical trade school, but accepted the obligation to carry on the family concern. His parents encouraged him to pursue scholastic studies in the hope that he would build Gesslinger Shipping into something even greater. Almost immediately he was drawn to the camaraderie of student life, alternating lectures and seminars with frequent social gatherings to belt out drinking songs and down huge mugs of beer.

  German fraternities, arising out of the independence movement of the early nineteenth century, consisted of Corps and Burschenschaften, some committed to German idealism, others to political activism, anti-elitism and abolishment of the aristocracy. After his first year of study, René had applied to one of the fraternities still dedicated to traditional academic fencing, a rigid form of stationary dueling in the name of honor and courage, and he was welcomed into the fellowship. As most such fraternities became fervently National Socialist, he found a few brothers in his own Corps who s
hared his social consciousness in the face of growing fascist sentiment.

  He practiced extensively in the cellar of the fraternity house, mastering technique and delivering impressive strikes to the head of a mannequin. In his first match facing an actual opponent he acquitted himself well and in subsequent contests he became ever more skilled. A respectable mesh of scars on cheek and forehead soon won the admiration of his brothers-in-arms.

  René’s fascination with international travel drew him to the foreign students at the Dr. Karl Duisberg House. He joined a weekly session to hear stories of their distant homelands over beer or schnapps. His new friends included an American Jew from New York with German roots and plans to establish an international business in his ancestral homeland. The resident Parisian seemed intent on polishing the provincial edge from René’s Alsatian French. Besides several other Germans in the group, there was a Spaniard, an Italian, two Brits, and a charismatic American whose language skills were all but perfect, Ryan Lemmon. In this international group—much to the dismay of the Parisian, who found it laughable—René became known as der Franzose, the Frenchman, due to his Alsatian roots.

  Of all the participants in their “Little League of Nations,” René was most intrigued by the dashing American. A few years his senior, Ryan had a worldly air and switched without hesitation from fluent German and French to passable Italian and Spanish. The American had already traveled extensively and done graduate studies in economics, although he now pursued a doctorate in history. Here was someone whose cosmopolitan ways René could emulate. They became solid friends, walking the woodland paths surrounding Marburg, smoking pipes filled with Ryan’s favored mix while discussing international issues, economics, European history, religious themes, anything and everything. René listened and learned, all the while copying the unaffected mannerisms of the American. He even modeled his gait after his friend’s confident walk. Ryan became the brother and mentor he had sometimes wished for in his childhood.

  Unlike his new friend, René was self-conscious with women. The local Kehl girls had actively encouraged his attentions, perhaps because of his looks, perhaps because of his prospects as the son of the area's richest shipper. But in the university setting he felt self-conscious, the female students a bit too self-assured for him to trust his instincts and make a romantic move. He knew he was not unattractive physically, with intense blue eyes set well back under a bushy brow over a strong jaw line. And social gatherings were fine, where women welcomed him without hesitation as a member of the group. But once alone with an attractive girl, he usually fell silent, listening intently but adding little to the conversation, and the relationship went nowhere. His friend Ryan, only too happy to share his knowledge of women, set him up with several attractive prospects, and René gradually discovered his own worldly confidence.

  As ever more brown-shirted uniforms replaced the traditional fraternity garb, the Nazi students began to mock René’s claim to German blood. His hometown of Kehl had often been under French control, although following the war it had reverted to German territory. Official Nazi doctrine maintained that all of Alsace and Lorraine—as well as Flemish lands and the Netherlands—were historically Germanic, so the insult rang hollow.

  Whether the ridicule stemmed from self-indulgent xenophobia or simple disrespect for a competitive member of a rival dueling fraternity, René didn't care. He cherished his mother's heritage as deeply as his father’s. He viewed himself as an amalgam of both nations, stronger for the diversity of bloodlines and worthy of both.

  But he worried that someday he would have to stand up to the arrogance and intolerance polluting Germany, and he vowed to be prepared.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The summer of 1934 was a muggy slog through overcast days with little rain and the rare scorch of the sun to break the monotony. The drought was oppressive, leaving the Lahn River at its lowest level in decades, and the woodland paths through the beech forests prematurely carpeted with leaves. Heat and humidity had tempers flaring. City dwellers slept at open windows, sharing every intimate sound and argument with irritable neighbors. Shopkeepers propped their doors open, waiting in vain for a hint of a breeze, and butchers and cheese mongers spent long months at the mercy of flies and spoiled goods.

  The public pools had been packed daily. But now the enervating heat had lifted, the crowds thinned, and Erika Breitling found room to swim laps again. Mid-afternoon sun finally pierced the cloud cover, and the stranger behind the sunglasses watched her every move, making no effort to disguise his interest. She glanced his way as she took a break, chest deep in the water, her back to the concrete coping. He reclined on a lawn chair several meters distant, his body bronzed, dark hair combed straight back from a high forehead, a pipe in his hand and a book open on his lap. The sunglasses were a rarity in Marburg, usually seen only on dashing Hollywood and UFA types on the town’s movie screens.

  Erika emerged from the pool slowly, pulling the swim cap free of her blond hair. She knew the swimsuit showed off her long legs and the contours of her breasts. She bent for her towel on the grass, then tugged down the back of her suit as she rose. He broke into a broad grin and she returned the smile.

  “I couldn't help noticing your tan,” she called out. “Rather selfish to use more than your share of sun, considering most of us spent a miserable summer here in Marburg.”

  “Had I known we were to meet, I’d have brought back a little extra.” He removed the glasses and rose from the chaise.

  “Italian Riviera or Côte d’Azur? Certainly nowhere north of the Alps.”

  “Nice guess! Villefranche, near Nice, two weeks with friends.”

  “Well, next time consider the less fortunate before hogging all that tan for yourself.”

  Erika casually dried off, one foot resting on the end of his lawn chair. She smiled into his blue eyes, prolonging her introduction.

  She offered her hand. “Erika Breitling.”

  “Ryan Lemmon. A great pleasure.” He held it a fraction longer than necessary.

  “Your German is excellent,” she said. “Without the interesting name I would have placed you for a Berliner. Are you English?”

  “American.”

  “And a student?”

  “History under Professor Engels. The dissertation’s printed and orals only a few weeks off. And you?” He flashed that warm smile. “What—besides swimming laps to brighten my afternoon—brings you here to Marburg?”

  “This semester will be my third year in medicine; gynecology.”

  “I’m surprised we’ve never met.”

  “Most days I’m stuck in the Frauenklinik. Unlikely I'd see you there.” She wrapped the towel around her hips. “In fact, I’ve met very few Americans. Is it true what they say: you’re more relaxed than German men, not quite as rigid?”

  “Have a beer with me and be your own judge of that.” He reached for his book and pipe, not waiting for her response.

  Minutes later they met outside the changing rooms. Erika liked his casual look in a loose pullover with jacket and tweed cap set at a jaunty angle. She assumed that Speedo and book remained in a rented locker in the bath house. She wore her pale-green summer dress, the hemline short enough to reveal her legs as she moved. She had brightened her cheeks with rouge and added some lipstick.

  The couple crossed the river and climbed the stone stairway past the old Dominican cloister, now serving as the heart of the university. Marburg ascended steeply from the Lahn River valley, its narrow streets, stone stairways and half-timbered structures staggering up to the stately castle at the crest. The steeples of medieval churches and facades of Renaissance buildings punctuated the picturesque Old Town. On the main market square the city hall clock struck four, startling the pigeons.

  They seemed at ease with each other almost immediately. Ryan shared his expectations from a planned teaching career in America, where a Midwestern university had just offered him a position. He spoke of his early travel misadventures, leading a gr
oup of co-eds on their first European Grand Tour, of Harvard Business School and a brief stint as a banker on Wall Street before making Europe his home.

  “I’ve only traveled as far as Frankfurt with some friends, and once by train from East Prussia with my parents, but I was quite young then. Pretty pitiful in comparison with all your adventures, isn’t it?”

  “You come from East Prussia? What does your father do?”

  “Professor of Internal Medicine. My mother also practiced briefly, but now she volunteers in the clinic.”

  “Did they meet at the university?”

  “An unusual story, actually. They grew up in the same household as siblings. You see, my father’s adopted. He studied at Königsberg, and then my mother came there to study, as well, and they spent time together as adults and it just happened. So in the end, I guess medicine brought them together.”

  “I hear that all students will soon have to take at least one semester in East Prussia.” Ostpreussen had been landlocked from the heart of Germany by the Polish Corridor since the end of the war, and Hitler wanted to draw attention to its isolation. “Why’d your family leave?”

  “My parents weren’t fond of our friends to the east.”

  Ryan knew the danger. The Soviets had no hesitation about forcefully absorbing their neighbors.

  “Well, I’m glad your parents made the move here. Otherwise I’d never have had this afternoon with you.”

  Erika was used to being noticed for her looks. A casual walk through town often drew the attention of men, and not infrequently the disapproving glare of matrons. More than once her mother had warned her of the malicious gossip of neighbors. But surprising to her was Ryan’s obvious interest in what she had to say, something she rarely experienced, so she found herself speaking openly about her life and her dreams.