Paul’s understanding of himself and his place in the world had been teetering on the edge for some time, like a porcelain vase at the top of a ladder. That last sentence was the final kick, and the imaginary vase tumbled, shattering into pieces. Paul heard the crash it made as it broke, and Eduard saw it in his face too.
“Forgive me, Paul. Christ help me. You should go now.”
Paul got up and leaned over the bed. His cousin’s skin was cold, and when Paul kissed his forehead, it was like kissing a mirror. He walked to the door, not quite in control of his own legs, only vaguely aware of having left the bedroom door open and of having slumped down on the floor outside.
When the shot rang out, he barely heard it.
But as Eduard had said, the mansion’s acoustics were excellent. The first guests to leave the party, busy exchanging farewells and empty promises as they collected their overcoats, heard a bang that was muffled but unmistakable. They’d heard too many in the preceding weeks to fail to recognize the sound. Their conversations had all ceased by the time the second and third echoes of the report rebounded through the stairwell.
In her role as the perfect hostess, Brunhilda had been saying goodbye to a doctor and his wife whom she couldn’t stand. She identified the sound but automatically activated her defense mechanism.
“The boys must be playing with firecrackers.”
Disbelieving faces popped up around her like mushrooms after a rainstorm. At first there were only a dozen people, but soon more emerged into the hallway. It wouldn’t be long before all the guests knew that something had happened in her house.
In my house!
Within two hours it would be the talk of all Munich if she didn’t do something about it.
“Stay here. I’m sure it’s nothing.”
Brunhilda picked up the pace when she began to smell gunpowder halfway up the stairs. Some of the braver guests were looking up, perhaps hoping she would confirm that they had been mistaken, but not one set foot on the staircase: the social taboo against entering a bedroom during a party was too strong. The murmuring grew, however, and the baroness hoped Otto would not be so foolish as to follow her, as someone would inevitably want to accompany him.
When she reached the top and saw Paul sobbing in the corridor, she knew what had happened without putting her head around Eduard’s door.
But she did anyway.
A spasm of bile rose to her throat. She was gripped by horror and by another incongruous feeling that she would recognize only later, with self-disgust, as relief. Or at least the disappearance of the oppressive feeling she’d been carrying in her breast ever since her son had returned, maimed, from the war.
“What have you done?” she cried, looking at Paul. “I’m asking you: What have you done?”
The boy didn’t raise his head from his hands.
“What did you do to my father, you witch?”
Brunhilda took a step back. For the second time that night, someone had recoiled at the mention of Hans Reiner, but ironically the person doing it now was the same one who had used his name as a threat earlier.
How much do you know, child? How much did he tell you before… ?
She wanted to scream, but she couldn’t: she didn’t dare.
Instead, she squeezed her hands into fists until her nails stuck into her palms, trying to calm herself and decide what to do, just as she had done that night fourteen years earlier. And when she had managed to recover a minimum of composure, she went back downstairs. On the first floor she poked her head over the banister and smiled down into the entrance hall. She didn’t dare go any farther, because she didn’t think she could keep up the pretense for long in front of that sea of tense faces.
“You’ll have to excuse us. Friends of my son have been playing with firecrackers, just as I thought. If you don’t mind I’ll deal with the chaos they’ve caused up there”-she gestured to Paul’s mother-“Ilse, my dear.”
The faces softened when they heard this, and the guests relaxed when they saw the housekeeper following their hostess up the stairs as though nothing were wrong. They already had plenty of gossip about the party, and could hardly wait to get home to bore their families with it.
“Don’t even think about screaming,” was the only thing Brunhilda said.
Ilse had been expecting some childish mischief, but when she saw Paul in the corridor, she was afraid. Then, when she half opened Eduard’s door, she had to bite her fist to stop herself from screaming. Her reaction was not so very different from that of the baroness, except that with Ilse there were tears as well as horror.
“Poor boy,” she said, wringing her hands.
Brunhilda watched her sister, her own hands poised on her hips.
“Your son was the one who gave Eduard the gun.”
“Oh, Holy God, tell me that’s not true, Paul.”
It sounded like an entreaty, but her words contained no hope. Her son didn’t reply. Brunhilda approached him, exasperated, waving her index finger.
“I’m going to call the magistrate. You’ll rot in prison for giving a gun to an invalid.”
“What did you do to my father, you witch?” Paul repeated, slowly getting up to face his aunt. She didn’t step back this time, even though she was scared.
“Hans died in the colonies,” she replied, lacking conviction.
“That’s not true. My father was in this house before he disappeared. Your own son told me.”
“Eduard was sick and confused; he was making up all kinds of stories because of the injuries he suffered at the front. And in spite of the fact that the doctor forbade him visitors, you’ve been in here, making him agitated, and then you go and give him a gun!”
“You’re lying!”
“You killed him.”
“That’s a lie,” said the boy. Nonetheless he felt a chill of doubt.
“Paul, that’s enough!”
“Get out of my house.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” said Paul.
“You decide,” said Brunhilda, turning to Ilse. “Judge Strohmeyer is still downstairs. In two minutes I will go down and inform him what’s happened. If you don’t want your son to spend tonight at Stadelheim, you’ll leave straightaway.”
Ilse paled in terror at the mention of the prison. Strohmeyer was a good friend of the baron’s, and it wouldn’t take much to convince him to charge Paul with murder. She grabbed her son by the arm.
“Paul, let’s go!”
“Not until-”
She slapped him so hard that it hurt her fingers. Paul’s lip began to bleed but he stood watching his mother, refusing to move.
Then, finally, he followed her.
Ilse didn’t allow her son to pack a suitcase; they didn’t even go by his room. They went down the service staircase and left the mansion through the back door, skulking along the alleys to avoid being seen.
Like criminals.