"My father beat-" Wilhelm looked uncertainly at Anton. "Ernst did the best he could, but my father is much stronger than he."

Ernst often came home from school badly beaten. I wondered if one of those beatings came from Wilhelm's father. Ernst never would tell me who was responsible, adhering to the schoolboy honor code.

"Thank you again," I said. "For helping us."

Wilhelm stared at me and shrugged. "You can trust me not to let anything happen to you."

"You are a trustworthy person."

He smiled wryly. "Unlike your brother, I try."

"Choose your friends wisely," I said. "Or you will violate that trust."

We rode the rest of the way home in silence. When we arrived, Wilhelm insisted on paying for the taxi. I let him. Let his Nazi money get us home safe. If the Nazis had not frightened me so, I would have taken the subway.

As Anton and I walked up the stairs to the front door, I felt Wilhelm's eyes on me. Mitzi marched imperiously next to us, flicking her tail and staying one step away from Anton.

"That was an adventure," I said to Anton. "Let's check the mail."

I pried my hand out of Anton's grasp to open the front door.

"We're safe now," I said.

We walked across the lobby to the mailbox. I had not checked my mail for a few days. Sometimes I would receive a check for poems or drawings I had sent to different magazines. When I opened my mailbox a package the size of a brick fell out. Anton picked it up and handed it me.

I had not expected a package. "Thank you." I glanced down at the address written on the simple brown paper. It was addressed to me in Ernst's flowery handwriting. The outside read, "Hold until I arrive."

Oh God. Another package from Ernst. After discovering the ring, I could not stand dealing with one more surprise from him. Still, this package could not possibly be more dangerous than the million-dollar ring. Could it?

17.

I had a strong urge to shove the package back in the letter box and walk away. Instead, I dropped it in one of the shopping bags and led Anton and Mitzi upstairs.

I filled the washtub for Anton. While he splashed around, I put away his new things. He was less interested in the soap than the last time, but he had learned how to scrub himself. His flea bites were healing, and he had no nits in his hair. I might not be a perfect mother, but he was at least marginally better off than when he'd arrived.

"A new nightshirt for you," I said, after I'd dried him off and helped him brush his teeth.

"It's so white," Anton said. "Like new snow."

"It will keep you warm too."

We read the "The Ugly Duckling" from Bettina's storybook. I wanted to stop after a few minutes and open Ernst's package, but Anton was still frightened so I stayed by the side of his bed, reading until he fell asleep. I wanted to talk about the incident at Wertheim, to tell him again that we were safe now-but were we? I had no job. The Nazis grew stronger every day. And both of his parents were dead.

I pulled the coat out of the shopping bag and unpinned the ring and money from the pocket. I'd come close to losing them. For the first time I wondered if Wilhelm had pulled the bag from my hands or rescued it from someone else who had. I wrapped the ring and money in a shabby tea towel and hid them in an iron cook pot before I allowed myself to look at the package.

If Ernst were alive, I never would have opened it, as he must have known. I would have held it until he arrived, as instructed. I looked at the postmark: May 29, 1931. Mailed the day before he was murdered. It must hold something he wanted to keep secret. It could be harmless love letters he'd exchanged with Wilhelm back in school, or perhaps it was a gift for me and he had wanted to watch my face while I opened it. In my heart I knew it was neither. It was something that had frightened him so much that he could not keep it in his own home.

I stared at the package, afraid to know what was inside. Ernst had left the million-dollar ring at his apartment, but had been frightened enough about the contents of this package to mail it to me. I slit the twine with an old kitchen knife.

A heavy, musky scent wafted out of the package. I pulled out a packet of envelopes, tied with a red silk ribbon. The bow was flattened. My shoulders dropped with relief. Love letters.

I glanced at the return address: E. Rohm. I dropped the letters on the table in shock.

Ernst Rohm was the head of the Sturm Abteilung, indispensable to Hitler and, if rumors could be believed, his best friend. Hitler's right-hand man had been writing to my brother.

I touched the letters again with a trembling hand. Rohm held the hearts and souls of more than one hundred thousand men. He was known for his militarism, his brutality, and his flagrant homosexuality. My Ernst must have known him. And known him well. A fling with a teenage boy wearing a Nazi uniform like Wilhelm was one thing, but an affair with one of the most powerful Nazis in the party was another thing entirely. How could Ernst have given himself to such an evil man?

I picked up the top letter. Rohm must want these letters back. If he did, his men would stop at nothing to get them. They roamed the streets at will, beating and killing Hitler's opponents. They would not think twice about destroying my apartment and killing me. Perhaps even Anton. I dropped the letter back onto the pile.

I thought about burning them unread, but what if Rohm was looking for them? Had Rohm quarreled with Ernst? It would be so like Ernst to anger the leader of the most powerful private army in Germany. He would toss off a rude comment and wait for the result. That's what he learned from Father-how not to fear physical pain or death. Just have a witty retort. Deep in my heart I felt proud of his audacity, but practically I wished he had been more wary. Perhaps then his photograph would not be hanging on the wall in the Hall of the Unnamed Dead. And Anton and I would not be sitting in this shabby apartment, waiting for someone to kill us over the ring, or these far more inflammatory pieces of paper.

I took a deep shuddering breath. I had to read the letters. Part of me said that I needed to know what they said to keep us safe, but another part suspected it was journalistic curiosity. They started early in the year, soon after Rohm returned from Bolivia, and continued right up to two weeks ago. About six months. Around that same time Ernst had become more distant toward me. I ordered the letters by postmark. It seemed important to read them in the same order they'd been mailed. To better understand their story.

Dear Bootsie, Now I knew where the ring came from. I was even more frightened, if that was possible. Rohm had given my brother a million-dollar ring. They must have been lovers. Close lovers.

How I miss the sight of you marching around in my jackboots, swinging your long hair and your cock back and forth.

I put the letter down. I covered my face with my hands and took a deep breath. I knew that Ernst loved men, but I did not know these details. I picked the letter up again and read. Even my journalistic side did not want to know these details. I skimmed the sexual parts. I gleaned that Rohm had met my brother at the El Dorado and quickly become infatuated with him. One of the letters contained a sonnet entitled "Ode to Bootsie's Cock," which extolled Ernst's unflagging duty to cock and country.

Rohm claimed to love every single thing about Ernst, from his physical appearance, scrutinized down to the smallest detail, to his performances at the club, to his views on politics. I did not know Ernst had views on politics, let alone views that the number-two Nazi would appreciate. I disliked the thought of it, although it sounded as if Ernst had talked about Socialism. Socialism, after all those years of teasing me for being idealistic. He'd listened more closely than I knew.

One letter talked about the ring, the Burmese Python, given to Rohm by a count because he saved his life in the Great War. Rohm actually sent Ernst the ring through the mail. One million American dollars trusted to every postal clerk between Munich and Berlin. The navete was staggering. How could he have been so foolish? But perhaps Rohm was unaware of the value of the ring when he sent it. And, of course, it did work out in the end. The ring came through.

Later letters talked about trysts on trains, at cottages, in dark rooms, at party headquarters. They had spent a great deal of time together. Did Rudolf know? I thought not. Rohm was certainly more of a threat to him than Wilhelm.

I hurried to the letters at the end. Rohm listed all of the men in his battalion who did not survive the war and described the manner of their deaths. No one had ever told me what happened on the front, not like this. Men with no faces, men with no heads, blood spurting from friends, from lovers. In spite of his warrior demeanor, these deaths bothered Rohm, even though he kept repeating how important they were for the Fatherland. But even now, thirteen years after the end of the War, he had trouble sleeping and when he could not sleep, he wrote to Ernst.

Mitzi jumped onto the table. I started. "What are you doing?"

I pulled her into my lap and stroked her soft fur, my heart slowing.

I set her back on the floor and crossed to the window. When I peeked through the curtain, the street below seemed deserted. If Rohm's men lurked outside, they were well hidden. There was no going back now. Anton and I were stuck right in the middle of this until it played out.

I stared at the letters spread across my simple wooden table. No letter contained a cross word. They had not quarreled. In the most recent letter, Rohm asked to meet Ernst at his apartment the next Sunday. That was the same day that Rudolf had told me to bring the package to Ernst's apartment. Rudolf and Rohm must be connected. Were these letters the package he wanted?

These letters could imprison Rohm for breaking Paragraph 175 of the penal code. When Ernst was fifteen, I'd read the law to him to impress upon him the seriousness of his choices. "The law forbids an unnatural sex act committed between persons of male sex and is punishable by imprisonment; the loss of civil rights may also be imposed."

Rohm was certainly familiar with the law as well. His war hero background might save him in a trial, but the publicity would be horrendous. Everyone knew he was queer, but flaunting it in such detail! I shuddered. Ernst could have brought down the leader of the storm troopers with these letters.

I pulled the painted lead soldier out of my satchel and unwrapped her from her red silk. "Why did he send these to me?" I asked the soldier, as if she knew the answer. Ernst must have been afraid that someone would find them, perhaps Rudolf or Rohm himself.

A rational person would burn them, of course, but Ernst probably loved to read them. Or maybe he planned to use them to blackmail Rohm, perhaps for money or perhaps for his own safety if the Nazis came to power. Despite what Wilhelm had told me, I knew that the Nazis would eventually destroy queer men. Aryan men had to make more Aryans, just like Aryan women. And Aryan men should not submit, certainly not sexually, even to other Aryan men.

I buried my face in my hands. They smelled like plum tart, from my innocent treat with Anton. What was I to do? If I published the letters, perhaps they could take down Ernst Rohm, perhaps tarnish Hitler. But where should I publish them? Perhaps my friend Ulrich at the Mnchener Post would do it. They still stood up to the Nazis. Herr Neumann would not risk it. The letters were too damning. Morally, could I destroy Rohm for the crime of loving my brother? For feelings and actions that weren't wrong?

But Rohm was evil. He helped Hitler win elections. His thugs beat Jews and queer men and anyone else they pleased every day. If the paper had allowed it, I could have written a story each week about a Communist or a Jew beaten to death by a group of Nazis. The slim stack of paper in my hands could be the means to expose Rohm. Did the ends justify the means? Bringing down evil before it spread was justified at any price. If the Sturm Abteilung crumbled, could the Nazi party go on? Without them, Hitler was only a shrill, screaming man with a tiny mustache and a fondness for brown. And he knew it. That's why he brought Rohm back from Bolivia-because he could find no one else who could control the SA.

I shuffled the letters on the worn tabletop. But the means were horrible: pillory Rohm for something that should not be a crime. It would destroy our family name. Cause a backlash that might hurt all of the queer men in Germany. Rohm's thugs would kill me when they discovered where the letters came from. Where would that leave Anton? Rohm was not a stupid man. He was a ruthless soldier. When Rohm arrived on Sunday, he would want these letters back.

I stacked the letters carefully and tied them with the broad red ribbon. I laid them in my satchel next to the notebook containing Ernst's death photo, and went to bed. How could these letters be related to Sweetie Pie's death? To Ernst's? There were no coincidences. Ernst must have had a reason to mail me these letters so soon before he was killed.

I had to make a decision, and soon: burn them, publish them, or return them to Rohm. I could send them back to him via party headquarters. My head said to publish them, but my heart was not so certain. I tossed and turned so much that Mitzi gave me a baleful look and stomped to the front door. I let her out, glancing nervously back and forth down the hall before closing the door.

Every creak in the building sounded like jackboots marching up the stairs. I waited for Rohm's men to come murder me in my bed. I watched Anton sleep so peacefully. What would become of him? Would they kill him too? If not, Ursula might not even take him in. Bettina was correct about the orphanages. Too many children died there. But where could I put him where he would be safe? I slept little that night.

18.

When the sky turned steel gray with morning, I left Anton asleep in bed and made myself a cup of hot water with honey. I'd gotten used to tea without the tea during the inflation and now preferred it. Or at least that's what I told myself.

I poured the leftover water from the kettle into a basin to wash myself and my hair. I combed the wet strands carefully. Today was Friday, the day Boris had invited me to meet him at the yacht club. I'd never planned to go, but why not? Perhaps I could be a different person today. A person who thought only about an attractive man and his attractive invitation. I knew it was foolish and selfish, but if I was truly threatened with death, I wanted a day to live.

I slid into a light blue cotton dress. Ernst once said that it brought out the washed-out blue color of my eyes. He'd also said that my eyes were the best feature on my face, and I'd do well to highlight them to distract men from my masculine cleft chin. Ernst had often made up his eyes heavily, so that no one would notice his own masculine chin. I buttoned up my dress, wondering what Ernst would think of Boris and what Boris would think of Ernst. Ernst would have been thrilled that I was seeing a man. Any man is better than none, he loved to remind me. How would Boris have reacted to Ernst? He was no Nazi, but he did seem very bourgeois, and Ernst was probably far beyond what he had ever had to deal with in his comfortable banker's life.

I shook my head and quickly finished dressing. I had two days to decide what to do with the letters. Two days before I would confront Ernst Rohm in my dead brother's apartment and make a decision that could change Germany's future. I hoped to find out who had killed Ernst at that meeting, or before, if I could. A step ahead was better than a step behind.

Until then, I had to keep the letters safe. I wrapped them in brown paper and tied them shut with twine. Once again, they resembled an innocuous package. I addressed the package to myself and placed it in the center of the table, holding it by the edges, as if it were a hot loaf of bread. I gathered everything else I had to hide: the ring I pinned in the pocket of my dress and the money and coins I left in my satchel. I finally dropped the letters in the satchel too.

"Indian good morning," said Anton from the doorway.

"Good morning to you," I said. "Ready for breakfast?"

"The brave does not trouble his chief."

I pulled flour and eggs from the cabinets. I chopped the apple I'd bought him yesterday, before I'd visited Herr Klein and found out about the ring. "I am making apple slices. Fried in batter."

"A brave likes to earn his keep."

I turned over an old iron pot and placed it next to the stove. "Stand on this."

Anton climbed on obediently and took the sifter I handed him. "First we sift the flour."

While he sifted I heated the stove and dropped a dollop of butter into the skillet. It was profligate to use so much butter. This was how my life would be if Anton were mine, perhaps with a man like Boris to pay the bills and play the father. Of course, nothing could ever be that simple.

Anton dipped each apple slice in batter, as careful as a banker. He did not spill a drop on the stove. I wondered what the penalty had been for wasting food in Sweetie Pie's household. Something painful, I thought, and reached over to stroke his downy head.

He looked up at me in surprise. "Is my hair in order?"

"It looks very handsome."

I dropped each apple slice in the pan, and together we watched them sizzle. The kitchen smelled heavenly, almost as good as Bettina's. She could not take care of him if I died. Fritz would not allow that. Anton would probably end up with my sister Ursula, the child she could not conceive on her own.

I poured all my sugar and cinnamon onto a plate and let him roll his apple slices in it until there was none left. He ate his fried apple slices quietly, with a look of deep contentment.

After breakfast, I cleaned the apartment, like every other week for as long as I could remember. Anton helped me scrub the floor and wipe down the table. The last time I'd changed the sheets, Ernst had been alive. The time before that, Sarah had been living in Berlin and my identity papers were safe in my pocket. What would my life be like the next time I changed the sheets?

After cleaning, I dressed Anton in one of his bright new outfits, and we took the streetcar to Hirten Strasse. We passed Herr Klein's door and walked farther down the street to Sarah's apartment. I bought things from every poor street vendor we passed. At first Anton feared buying from the Jews, remembering the Nazi protest, but I told him that we must buy from them, to keep the Nazis from winning.

I spent my money because, like in 1923, my money might be worthless by tomorrow. Better to share it now than wait for it to disappear. We arrived at Sarah's apartment with shoelaces and apples and milk and bread. I checked her mail, then let myself in with her spare key, which I'd kept so I could ship her things, if she sent for them.

Sarah's apartment smelled of her; a faint scent of roses and milk that took me back to hugging her good-bye at the train station weeks before. Loaning her my papers had seemed a small risk then, before everything had fallen apart.

"Is this your other teepee?" Anton asked.

"I have only one house," I answered. "This belongs to a friend."

And Sarah was my friend. She was my best friend. Bettina was also a friend, but I had to keep too many things from her, to protect her.

The empty rooms felt so lonely. I had not been here since Sarah and Tobias left. I could not believe I might never see them again. She'd helped me through the worst after Walter's death. Even though marrying him had felt like a duty, I had loved him. He was a gentle man, as unlike Father as another soldier could be. He had offered me kindness and security, and he did not deserve to die in a field of bloody mud, on the bayonet of another man who was perhaps also kind and gentle off the field of battle. Two lives were lost that instant, Walter's and the life I might have led as a wife and mother.

Sarah had helped me raise Ernst, always counseling patience and love. That seemed to be her solution to all problems, except the Nazis.

I looked at the neat table covered with a clean, pressed tablecloth. Sarah could walk in at any moment and hold a dinner party. Each chair was pushed in perfectly straight.

I took Anton's hand and led him into the living room. Morning sun, filtered through lace curtains, shone on the horsehair sofa. "Sit there and touch nothing."

He sat and pulled his feet up to sit Indian style.

"No shoes on the sofa."

I returned to the kitchen and unpacked my foolish purchases. I had no time to take them home. Why had I bought them?

I glanced around the kitchen, trying to decide where to hide Rohm's letters. Surely no one would think to look for them here. But where? I pulled open the drawer to add Sarah's latest mail and saw a package, slightly larger than the one I needed to hide. I smiled.

I carefully untied the twine on the package and slid off the brown paper wrapping. I slid it over the package of Rohm's letters and the envelope of money I'd received for the jewelry. I retied the twine.

I walked into the living room. Anton sat cross-legged on the sofa in his brown ankle socks with his shoes lined up neatly at the end of the elegant coffee table.

"Do you search for something?" he asked. "The brave has sharp eyes."

I walked to the cupboard in the corner and took out a box. It contained sketches of hats Sarah had been working on, scraps of felt, feathers, bird wings, and a hat form. She would not need it again, but I knew someone who might have a use for it.

"Shoes back on," I said. "We're leaving."