Blut und Boden

Rudi catches her arm before she can leave, and with the same kind of reluctance that he heard in her voice when he asked her to come to the café with him, she sits down again. She meets his gaze slowly, as if half of her doesn’t want to, as if she’s wishing she’d never agreed to come, never looked up from her book when he called out her name. But she doesn’t try to leave again. What she does is look him right in the eye, and then she says, “It’s Pachelbel’s two hundred and eighty-sixth birthday tomorrow.”

His brow furrows without his consent. “Pachelbel? The composer?”

“Ja.” She takes a sip of her tea, and he can smell it from across the table. He still remembers how she takes it: black, three sugars. Except today she only has one sugar, because sugar is rationed, and she doesn’t have the money for it. “It’s my favourite piece of music, you know. Canon in D.”

“I didn’t know.” He does. But if he’d said that, she’d have accused him of lying. So he says he didn’t know. He sips his own drink, a coffee, and it tastes awful. Probably because the milk is powdered. For a minute, he hates the Nazis. Wants to burn his uniform and shoot Hitler. Aim for the moustache. “Why do you like it so much?” Then Goebbels, grotesque and vapid, limping along. He’d be easy. Slow and cumbersome.

“Because all the way through, no matter what happens, the bass still plays the same notes, over and over again. It’s reliable. Calming.”

He’d go for Himmler next. Shoot him right between the eyes. Knock the glasses off his ratty little face. “I see what you mean.” Then Göring, the fat bastard. Probably have to blow him to pieces to get rid of him.

Rudi takes a breath, and a sip, and he loves the Nazis again.

Astrid finishes her tea and places it back on the saucer, and her smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “Rudi.”

He says her name like he’s always said it – Astrid, emphasis on the first syllable, light, teasing, soft – and smiles.

“Rudi, you have to realise that this… this state… what they’re doing to Germany, it’s wrong. You have to see that.” She leans closer, and a strand of hair squirrels out from her elaborate bun and falls in front of her eyes like the first bar of a jail cell. “You have to help us. You don’t even have to see anyone else. Just me. Just tell me whatever you know, whenever you know it. We’ll protect you, I swear. Rudi, you have to—”

“You know I can’t.” And then it’s him who stands up, and he leans closer to her, and she straightens her back as he says, “Heil Hitler.”

He leaves, and he’s humming Pachelbel’s Canon in D as he goes.