“HEIL HITLER!”
The crowd, as one, raised their arms and shouted it. Stirring uneasily in my seat, I wasn’t sure what to do. Should I join in? I was grateful for the bouquet in my arms; bending my head down, I sniffed at the white, starlike flowers—edelweiss, I had been told by the young girl who had presented them to me with a grave curtsy.
I glanced at Charles; he sat next to me, erect as always; never did he wonder what to do, how to act. He was simply himself, immune to persuasion, and once more I had to admire him, even in this throng of spectators. Even with Chancellor Hitler himself standing on a platform just a few rows below us. The red flags with the swastika, that black mark that looked like propeller blades bent backward, hung behind him, before him, over him; they hung from every balcony and banister in the enormous Olympiastadion. The white Olympics flag, with its intertwining rings, was also in evidence, but not in nearly the numbers as the flag of the Nazi party.
Our hosts for the day, Herr Göring and his wife, were seated next to us in a private box; Truman and Kay Smith, the American military attaché and his wife, were with us as well. We’d been in Berlin for more than a week, and today, our last day, happened to coincide with the opening of the 1936 Summer Olympics. Charles had hoped we would be able to speak with Chancellor Hitler himself, but it seemed now that we had to be content with merely sitting near him.
The sheer spectacle of the opening ceremony, of course, would have prevented any meaningful conversation; the fevered crowd, the endless salutes, the songs; I was hoarse from shouting. And I did not speak German well; I found the language harsh and guttural, my ear simply couldn’t find it pleasing, and so my brain refused to try to make sense of it. I’d relied on Kay to translate during our stay.
“Is it not a fine day, Herr Colonel? Is Berlin not a fine city? I trust you have found it so—but of course, you are famous for finding cities, are you not?” Laughing at his own joke, Herr Göring slapped his thigh. He spoke excellent English, although he did so with a thick accent. It was rather a surprise, coming from a man who looked so much like a pig farmer from a children’s book; he was huge, portly, with a shiny, jowly peasant’s face.
Charles smiled politely. “Yes, yes,” he shouted over more cheers from the crowd as another country’s athletes marched into the stadium. “Berlin is quite impressive. We have very much enjoyed our stay.”
“We are so proud that you inspected our Luftwaffe—what you in America would call an air force. As you are a military man yourself, we value your insight.”
“Naturally, I was honored. Although as a military man, I cannot offer any specific insight, you understand. Even if the United States and Germany are allies.”
“Of course. We are simply happy that you have visited at last. France and England cannot have you all to themselves!” And Göring laughed again—it was more like a donkey bray. He was very jovial, very eager to please. Although not very polished; I wondered how he had risen to such a position—minister of the Luftwaffe—in Chancellor Hitler’s government.
His wife smiled indulgently at him; she was a pure Brunehilde, a daughter of Norse gods. Fleshy, rosy-cheeked, with blond hair in a braid atop her head, nearly as tall as her husband. I’d found her very cold, however, to me.
There was another roar from the crowd.
“Oh, look! It’s the United States team!” Sitting up straight, I was proud to see the rows of American athletes, all in white, as they marched by the stand. Proud to see that unlike the other countries, they did not dip their flag in front of the chancellor’s box, even if this drew a shocked murmur from the crowd.
“Charles, didn’t they look fine?” I called over to my husband.
Charles merely nodded, giving no indication he was proud of his country, nor that he even missed it.
I noticed a group of young boys approaching Chancellor Hitler’s box. They were clad in the black shorts and brown shirts of the Hitler Youth organization, but their faces were so young. This group must have been about five or six. Feeling that familiar tug on my heart, I smiled as the smallest bowed, so solemnly.
After more than four years, I still couldn’t look at a little boy without thinking of him.
My husband did not notice them; he was absorbed in his single-minded way with the ceremony unfolding before us. He seemed so relaxed, happy, even; the way he’d been all week. He had responded to Germany by going back in time, I thought; he’d reacted to the polite yet adoring crowds with a gleam in his eye, a surprised, shyly pleased gleam. The same gleam I had first noticed in the newsreels I’d seen of him, after he landed in Paris. Back when his face was open, boyish; back when he did not know the dark side of fame.
Back when I was just a girl in a movie theater, marveling at the hero on the screen.
Stifling a sigh, I turned back to the crowd, many of whom were smiling and waving our way, occasionally tossing bouquets up at us. I wondered who they saw when they looked at me. The ambassador’s daughter? The aviator’s wife?
Or the lost boy’s mother?
Minister Göring finally seemed to register my presence; he had not spoken one word to me until now. He had not seemed to notice me much this entire visit; his attention was riveted on Charles, always. Even a man as important as Herr Göring behaved like an adoring acolyte around my husband.
“You like Germany as well, Frau Lindbergh? You see how beloved we are by all the world! Of course, as an author, you might wish to write about us!”
“You are an author?” his wife inquired, with a smirk to her rosy lips. “You?”
“Mrs. Lindbergh is a famous author.” Kay Smith leaped to my defense. Despite her tiny size—she was even smaller than I was—she possessed fierce confidence, hyperarticulate certainty in her own beliefs. I was happy to let her speak for me; I admired and liked her tremendously, even after such a short acquaintance.
“Oh. Famous?” Frau Göring purred. “I apologize. I did not know.”
“Not really,” I corrected her. “I’ve written some articles, and a book about our flight to the Orient.”
“Which became a best seller,” Charles interjected, looking at me sternly.
I nodded but felt my face flush, and I buried it in the cool flowers in my hand; I wished I could claim my achievements with the pride of accomplishment, but I simply couldn’t. Everything I did now seemed shaded by a ghost or a shadow: the baby’s, or Charles’s.
At Charles’s relentless urging—why had I ever confided my hopes to this man who did not believe in hopes, only action?—I had finally attempted to write. I tried to recapture my passion for language, for playing with words almost as if they were flowers to be constantly rearranged into beautiful bouquets. I tried to remember that once I had had dreams of my own; good dreams, not nightmares of empty cribs and open windows. It wasn’t easy; my youthful poems and attempts seemed silly to me now. Reality had so intruded in my life that flowery verse seemed fanciful, foolish, even.
But Charles insisted that I do something with my life other than mourn our son; he insisted it would be good for me. I also suspected he thought it would be good for him; another trophy in the closet—an accomplished wife. First my pilot’s license; now a best seller. It was expected of me.
I obeyed him, as always. My lone defiance of his authority was like a scar on our marriage, but it was a scar I thought only I could see. And I was eager to keep it that way.
Working for months on an account of our trip to the Orient, in the end I still wasn’t satisfied with it; I had found it impossible to capture the innocence of that time before my baby’s death. It had done modestly well, and Charles was proud of it, although I couldn’t help but think that most people bought it out of morbid curiosity. The bereaved mother’s little book—could you read her tragedy between the lines? I’d imagined people paging feverishly through it, eager to find evidence of a splotched tear, a blurry word, a barely suppressed sob.
“Germany is a country of poets and authors, of course,” Herr Göring continued. “Goethe, Schiller.”
“Thomas Mann,” I added eagerly. “The Magic Mountain is one of my favorite books.”
Kay inhaled sharply.
“Ah.” Göring stared at me for a long moment, the genial farmer’s smile still on his face, even as his eyes glittered with some strange warning. “Mann. Yes. But what a pity he married a Jew.”
My smile faded. “Surely that has nothing to do with his books and stories? They’re great literature.”
“They are Jewish propaganda, deranged, and dangerous to the state. Mann is an exile. He is forbidden to return to Germany, as I’m sure you’re aware.”
I was not. I sat blinking at this fat man in a Nazi uniform, smiling dangerously in the bright sun, and I felt like a newborn chick just breaking out of her shell, trying to adjust her eyes to the confusing, blinding assault of life. Instinctively, I shrank back against the cold, hard stadium bench, touching Charles’s arm.
“What?” He didn’t stop looking at the ceremonies, going on below.
“Nothing,” Herr Göring said smoothly. “Frau Lindbergh, are you cold? You look pale.”
“No.” Turning back to the smiling faces, the waving flags, I shrugged off the cool shadow I felt fall on me just then. I let go of Charles and tried to lose myself in the frenzied gaiety of the moment, the proud parade of nations filling the stadium grass, the flags waving, the Germans in the stands cheering lustily, calling out “Sieg Heil!” with military regularity. Everyone looked well fed, clean, and happy. Everyone looked tall, fair. So like my husband, I realized with a start; usually he stood out with his clean Nordic good looks, especially next to my small, dark self. Not here, though; with his Swedish heritage etched in every lean line of his body, every golden follicle of his hair, he would have blended into the crowd of Germans gaily waving those strange Nazi flags.
No wonder he seemed so at home.
HOME. It was a word I no longer recognized.
Four years had passed. Four years, several houses, airplanes, countries, oceans, a passing array of acquaintances, none of whom was allowed to get too close—all were now between us and that gray, weeping spring. At times I felt it had been a lifetime ago; other times, usually as soon as I opened my eyes on a particularly gloomy morning, it was as if it had all happened yesterday.
To Charles, the events of ’32 were firmly in the past, never to be spoken of again. That’s how he always referred to the kidnapping: “the events of ’32.” As if it were merely a page in a history book, and I supposed by now it probably was. Under the entry “Lindbergh, Charles.” After the paragraph about his historic flight, there it would be: the events of 1932, which culminated in the death of his son and namesake, Charles Lindbergh Junior, twenty months of age.
One day, about a year after the baby was found dead, Charles came across me sobbing behind a tree outside Next Day Hill, missing my son so much I could feel it in every breath. I crept off like this every day, thinking he didn’t know. Yet suddenly he was there, looking down at me with one corner of his lip curled up in distaste. And he tore into me as if he had been hoping for this moment for months; he berated me, calling me weak, less; irretrievably broken.
I am! I wanted to shout. I am broken! Because he’s gone!
“What a terrible waste of time this is,” he continued, in that detached, superior tone of his. “Think of all you could be doing. Instead you’re still giving in to sorrow, letting it consume you, change you. What happened to that book about our trip? You wanted to write a great book, didn’t you? What have you done in the last few years, Anne? What?”
I followed you wherever you went. I brought life into this world. And then I saw it stolen from me. My tears wouldn’t stop; I kept weeping, my head bowed down with every scathing word, every woundingly honest phrase heaped upon it. He was right. I was unable to see past my own personal sorrow. I could never have accomplished what he had accomplished. I would have been too afraid, would have let others sway me as I was letting others sway me now—see how Elisabeth still coddled me, telling me I needed time to heal, to grieve?
I despised myself for letting him talk to me like this, and I never would have, before the baby was taken from me. All the fury I had felt during the ordeal, when I had no problem acting on my own—it was gone, obliterated as thoroughly as my baby’s body had been.
Charles never would have talked to me like this before, either. We were both changed, but at the time I couldn’t see what tragedy had done to him. All I knew was that it had wounded me so that always, I felt as if I was walking about on shattered limbs, held together by only the very wispiest of threads, too fragile to stand up to him.
But I dried my tears, and assured him I would not cry in front of him again. Then I went upstairs to our bedroom and found a suitcase—a blue suitcase, I recall—and methodically, as if I were packing for one of our flights, I began to fill it. First my lingerie, then a few day dresses, a nice suit, three nightgowns. I could send for everything else later; later when I had found an apartment in the city big enough for Jon and myself; big enough for my grief. But too small for Charles.
I would leave him. If fury had deserted me, calm rationality had taken its place. I would leave this cold man, this stranger who mocked my grief. I would start over with Jon, and maybe the two of us would have a chance. I would have a chance to mourn Charlie, which was my only chance to heal, I knew. And Jon would have a chance to live a life not darkened by his father’s shadow. I would find us a place near Central Park, so Jon could have somewhere to play. I would arrange everything myself, for I was a woman who had navigated by the stars; surely I could learn to navigate the subway. I would find just the right school for Jon, I would look up old friends, like Bacon, or make new ones. Friends who would want to know me, Anne; just Anne. I would cry whenever I wanted to. And laugh, as well.
I changed my clothes, put on a pair of black suede pumps that always made me feel taller than I was, and walked out the bedroom door, down the stairs, toward the front door. I would phone Mother later, from the city, and tell her when to bring Jon to me.
“Anne?”
I stopped, my heart racing, my face already hot with guilt. Then I turned around. Charles was before me, a pad of paper and pencils in his hand.
“What are you doing?” He looked at the suitcase.
“I’m—I’m going to visit Con, in the city. Just for the weekend.”
“Oh. I suppose that’s a good idea, to—get away for a little while.” But he frowned, not really understanding.
“Yes, I think so. Would you tell Mother I’ll phone her later?”
“Yes. Now, Anne, when you get back, I have a suggestion.” He held out the paper and pencils, like an offering. “I think you need to start over. I mean the book about our flight to the Orient—start that over again.” He smiled, a coaxing, almost bashful smile I hadn’t seen in years. “I can’t do justice to it, and it should be written about. You’re the only one who can do it. You’re the writer in the family, Anne. Not I.”
Unable to meet his gaze, I looked out a window. Mother was pushing Jon in his pram, up and down a garden path. Even from this distance, I could see Jon’s expansive Viking forehead, his blond hair; just a shade darker than his father’s.
“I’ll think about it,” I told Charles.
“Good. Have a nice weekend.”
“I will.” Turning to leave, I felt a hand upon my arm; Charles bent down to give me an unexpected peck on the cheek before taking my suitcase and following me down to the car. As I was driven away, I turned back; Charles was still standing with the paper and pencils in his hands, watching me. He didn’t wave. Neither did I.
I was back on Monday morning, exhausted from two nights spent tossing and turning and not sleeping in Con’s guest room, the bed too big for just me. I was back, despite my certainty that never again would I be able to talk about our shared tragedy with my husband, and my uncertainty about what that would mean in the long run. I was back, knowing that I would never be able to look at my son without thinking of his father.
I was back, because of a pad of paper and some pencils.
I knew that Charles thought he was being supportive in his own way, providing me a path out of my maze of grief, and I was touched by that. It was the most he could do for me, and that had to be enough, for now. But it was never over for me; I never quite found my way out. Sorrow was my constant companion, even though I no longer wept. It was the shadow that followed me on sunny days, the weight pressing down upon my spirits on cloudy ones.
I had even seen it, trailing after me while I walked down the gangplank the day we first arrived in England, almost a year ago, now. Jon was only three years old; Charles carried him in his arms while I pushed his pram toward the waiting reporters and photographers. My grief wasn’t the only thing chasing us down that narrow path; frustration, disgust, and horror pushed us across an ocean as well.
Two months before we left America, an intruder had been caught outside Jon’s nursery window, ladder in hand.
Two months before that, I had been besieged when, on a whim, I dashed, unaccompanied, into Macy’s after a doctor’s appointment. Silly, but I’d had a notion that a new hat might perk up my spirits. Just as I reached for a red felt model with a feather, I found myself surrounded by a crowd of shoppers, all staring intently at me, waiting for me to do something—break down, I supposed. Some began to murmur sympathy, others started squealing my name, and even in my fear—for they surged forward, trapping me against the glass counter—I envied them. Passionately. For these were women for whom a new hat—or the sight of a stranger whose face they recognized from the newspaper—might bring happiness. And as the police came to my rescue just as my coat was torn by grasping, seeking hands, I knew that I would never again be that kind of woman.
The breaking point, though, occurred on a parkway just outside of Manhattan. Charles was driving Jon and me back from a pediatrician’s appointment in the city. Suddenly a car pulled up behind us, too close. And then another pulled alongside, before swerving in front of us. Cursing, Charles had no choice but to veer off the road. Our car hit a tree with enough force that I bit my tongue, tasting blood along with fear. The child on my lap was unhurt; Jon started to cry only when I hugged him to my chest, trying to protect him from the men surrounding our car.
With a mad cry, Charles leaped out, swinging at them, and at that moment a flashing light went off just outside my window. Photographers, I realized, bending my head down over my child, and my relief that they weren’t kidnappers was swiftly eclipsed by my outrage at their reckless tactics. Charles shouted at them, asking them if they had no shame, no decency, but all he received in reply were more flashes, strident questions about how we were handling our grief, how we were raising our second child in the shadow of his brother’s death.
All I could do was remain where I was, my arms so fiercely wrapped around Jon that they would have had to rip them off to get at him, while Charles warned that anyone who tried to get in the car would be shot, no questions asked. At one point our gazes locked through the car window, grimly acknowledging the truth; once again, it was the two of us against the world. If grief couldn’t bind us, self-preservation would.
That night, we surrendered. We packed our bags and left in the dead of night for the Guggenheims’. There, we holed up, deep in the bowels of their enormous estate, deciding what to do next. Harry and Carol were sympathy itself, welcoming a squalling baby into their orderly world without a raised eyebrow or shrug. Carol delighted in pushing Jon about her manicured lawns in his pram, walking with me for hours without speaking, her undemanding companionship a balm to my soul.
Despite the Guggenheims’ endless kindness, we knew we couldn’t stay there forever. Finally we decided to sell the house in Hopewell to the state for a pittance. After that May we had tried, halfheartedly, to reclaim it as a home, but there were too many ghosts.
We kissed the Guggenheims and my mother and Con goodbye; we gave Dwight control of our financial interests in the United States. And we booked passage on a freighter bound for England, the sole paying passengers. The night before we sailed, Charles wrote a letter to The New York Times explaining why we were leaving the country for which he had done so much. In measured words nevertheless tinged with anger, he decried the lack of morals, the depravity he saw becoming part of the character of every American. He blamed the press—and those behind it—for our son’s death. He expressed the desire to return to the nation that he loved, but only at such a time when he could once again call himself a proud citizen of a good and useful society.
Now we were renting an estate just outside of London, Long Barn, where it seemed, finally, that we had found peace. Charles could walk the sooty streets of London, only occasionally garnering a startled look. No strangers ever showed themselves at our door; the village constables made it their business to know every car, every bicycle, within miles. I could put the baby to sleep upstairs with the two nannies and three guard dogs, and only feel the need to go up and check on him four times a night, instead of forty.
Best of all, Charles and I took long walks outside in the garden at night, just like we had when we were first married, when he tried to teach me the stars. He didn’t try to teach me anything now, and I was no longer quite so willing to learn. We walked in silence, mostly; afraid, or unable, to share our thoughts but finding a measure of unity simply in breathing the same air, admiring the same moon.
We were always at our best, together, when we were looking at the sky.
His days were still filled with scientific endeavors—working with aviation experts to improve fuel efficiency and range, as well as his continuing work with Alexis Carrel, who followed us across the ocean with his wife, living on a small island in Brittany. And one day I read an article in a magazine about a man named Goddard, who was working on something called a rocket; I showed it to Charles, who was now corresponding with him and helping him find funding.
Eventually the world found him, even in our farmhouse in the English countryside. Invitations blew across the channel from the various governments of Europe to inspect their new commercial airliners and airports, just as he had done in the United States. When he started to accept them again, I dusted off my goggles with a resigned sigh. It is difficult to explain how I could leave Jon behind, after all that had happened, to be cared for by strangers in a strange country. It was fear, I suppose—that powerful emotion that Charles so disdained but which I could not resist. Fear pulled me toward my child, and pushed me away from him, too; fear of getting too attached, of having to lose him. Just as I had lost the brother he would never know.
Fear that, having hidden us away so neatly, Charles might forget to come back.
So, him in the front seat, me in the rear, we flew to every European capital, inspected every airplane factory, every new airport. We even charted a few passenger routes, although more and more, these were already established. The age of the aviator/explorer was over, and nothing was more evident of that than the increasing number of military planes we saw on our tours.
And no country had as many as we’d seen at the Staaker airfield outside of Berlin this week; I wondered if Charles had been as stunned by the display as I had.
“THIS IS AN EXTRAORDINARY OPPORTUNITY,” Truman Smith had said when we first arrived in Berlin, inhaling a cigarette greedily. He snapped the lid on his silver lighter with an expert flourish, and put it in his breast pocket. He was the very image of a military man; it was difficult to imagine Truman out of uniform, and indeed, I never saw him in street clothes. His figure was tailor-made for dress uniform; tall, broad shoulders, slender waist.
“What is?” Kay and I were returning from a quick tour of their apartment, where we were staying. It was on a clean, neat street, just as all the streets in Berlin seemed to be; I’d never seen a city that appeared to be so scrubbed.
“Göring’s invitation to the colonel, to inspect the Luftwaffe. Astounding, really. We may not get another like it.” Minister Göring had met us when we landed and assured us the government was eager to grant us our every wish, even though this was not an official diplomatic visit. He’d even invited Charles to tour their military aircraft facilities, the notion of which seemed to intrigue Truman.
“I’m here at the invitation of Lufthansa, not the Nazi government,” Charles reminded him. His lanky body was folded up so that he could perch on a satin-covered gilt chair; Kay had exquisite, if not entirely practical, taste in decorating.
“Yes, but, Colonel, the Nazi government has not been forthcoming about its military development to anyone. Obviously they’re building it up, but we’ve been unable to ascertain anything concrete. This might be a wonderful opportunity to learn more.”
“I’m here as a civilian,” Charles insisted. “I’m no politician, and I’m not on any kind of military mission.”
“Times are changing. Quickly—more quickly than perhaps you two are aware.” Truman smiled sympathetically at both of us, and I understood what he meant. On our recent trips to the various European capitals I’d felt it, too—that for the last few years Charles and I had been so absorbed with our own lives, so locked together in a protective shell of our own making, the world had passed us by. Changes were occurring, swiftly, even violently. Royalty was out; dictators were in. Mussolini and his Black Shirts controlled Italy—and now Ethiopia, as well. Stalin was making noises about the spread of Communism. Living in Europe, it was impossible not to hear sabers rattling on all sides.
“Colonel, you are in an enviable position. You have no political standing, yet you are a world figure. Everyone still respects your accomplishments, and wonders what you’ll do next. That’s a wonderful passport, you know. You are invited everywhere—even to Russia, I understand?”
“Yes, we are invited to tour their airports,” Charles said mildly, still pretending not to be interested. But he sat up straighter and stopped drumming his fingers on the armrest.
“You are being given an unprecedented opportunity here, because of who you are. I assure you, Hitler wouldn’t do this for anyone else. And you can be of great service to your country by helping me prepare a report about Germany’s airpower.”
“Wouldn’t that be a bit duplicitous? Almost spying?”
“No—they don’t expect you not to report back. In fact, I imagine that’s part of their plan, to show their hand to America and make them take notice. This government—well, I’ll just say that nothing goes on that isn’t absolutely anticipated beforehand. Did you notice there was no press when you landed?”
Charles and I exchanged glances; it was the first thing we had noticed.
“Hitler controls the press,” Kay remarked, as she poured herself a cocktail from a silver shaker. She reminded me of my mother, with her large, owl-like gray eyes; watching, always watching, even as she purred silkily and smoothed over arguments. The difference was that Kay was much more glamorous, with fashionably waved auburn hair and a moss-green bias-cut Vionnet gown, daringly low in the back. Charles would never have allowed me to dress like that. I couldn’t help but feel frumpy next to her, in my modestly cut blue velvet gown bought from a sensible dressmaker on Regent Street. “Hitler forbade the press to cover your visit.”
“Oh, how heavenly!” I exclaimed. Kay’s eyebrow shot up.
“Surely you’re not saying that Hitler’s stifling of the independent press is a good thing?”
“Oh, no—no, of course not. It’s just—it will be very restful not to have to contend with the press for a change.” Again, Charles and I exchanged a look. We could not explain what the press had done to us; no one who hadn’t lived through what we had could ever understand our feeling. The American press had stolen our little boy; it was as simple as that. Printing maps to our house, reporting on our every move—and then, ultimately, taking photographs of his mangled body in the morgue. We had been violated in every sense of the word.
“I’m still not quite comfortable with what you propose, Truman,” Charles protested—rather feebly, I felt, knowing how unmistakably he could make his thoughts known when he wanted to. “What would Lufthansa say?”
“They’ll say what Hitler wants them to say,” Kay replied wryly.
Truman cleared his throat, then pointedly turned to address me, not my husband. “I understand the air force has been experimenting with new engines. The most powerful engines yet, or so it’s rumored.”
I stifled a smile.
“Really?” Charles now stood, going over to pour himself a cocktail—something so stunning that I almost gasped. I rarely saw him drink, only wine at dinner, sometimes brandy with Harry Guggenheim. “I wonder—I would love to see a Messerschmitt firsthand.”
“I’m sure that could be arranged,” Truman replied, stifling a smile of his own. “The Stuka has been improved as well, I hear.”
Charles sipped his drink—dry martinis that Kay had prepared with quantities of gin and hardly a splash of vermouth; his cheeks flushed slightly red, and he grinned. “All right, then. If you insist, I will take up Herr Göring’s offer and help you with your report. Of course, I must comment only on the scientific aspects. Not the political ones.”
“Of course,” Truman agreed smoothly. “No one expects you to understand the political situation—after all, you’re an aviator, not a statesman. Far from it.”
I stiffened, my stomach tightening as I watched my husband. He was staring at Truman, his jaw set, the corner of his mouth curled up arrogantly. Then he took another hefty swig of his martini and set the glass down so forcefully, I was surprised it didn’t break.
You did not tell Charles Lindbergh what he was or was not. After all, everyone had told him he was only a mail pilot, not an explorer capable of a trans-Atlantic flight; I sometimes wondered if he’d have bothered to take on the Paris flight, if so many people hadn’t assured him it was impossible.
Even with the study windows closed, as Kay began to fill in the sudden silence with harmless gossip, I felt a shift in the very air, the currents. Experienced copilot that I was, I didn’t even need to look at my husband to know that I was being pulled toward a different—and dangerous—course.
THE GERMANY THAT WE saw in those days leading up to the Olympics, as we toured factories and airfields and museums and schools, was a balm on our battered souls. True to his word, Chancellor Hitler kept the press at bay; we were able to relax, talk, see, listen, and not be afraid that our every word would be misinterpreted or used against us. There was a purpose, a drive, to the German people that was lacking everywhere else we’d been, both abroad and in the United States; the Depression hadn’t broken down its citizenry, as it had elsewhere. We didn’t see a single breadline or soup kitchen. No protests; no workers milling about buildings with signs or placards; no strident, blaring headlines tearing down one political party or another. No boarded-up storefronts, no farms with foreclosure signs in front, no children playing in alleys with sticks and stones because that’s all they had.
Indeed, all the people we encountered fairly glowed with good health—plump and rosy cheeks, white teeth, shining hair. Precious little girls in dirndl skirts, contented matrons with well-fed babies in their arms. The Hitler Youth—the young men in brown uniforms—patrolled the streets like well-mannered Boy Scouts, picking up litter, carrying shopping baskets for the elderly. I toured nursery schools—kindergartens—where the children held hands and sang songs praising Chancellor Hitler. “Herr Hitler loves children,” one teacher explained to me. “Healthy children are the future. He encourages those of pure race to have families.”
“Pure race?”
“Those who are not genetically sick. Or genetically inferior.”
I nodded, and was reminded of something Charles had said once, about our children being pure. But what did “genetically inferior” mean? I had my suspicions and was about to ask, but then I was whisked away to my car, and taken to lunch at a biergarten.
Charles and I were seldom together during the day; he toured military and airplane factories, while I toured schools and museums. But something happened between us at night; something that hadn’t happened between us in a very long time.
Passion. Passion was rekindled in Germany, of all places. Charles was rejuvenated, pulsing with hope and optimism in a way he hadn’t been since before 1932. All the wandering, the tinkering, the move to Europe—none of it had satisfied him. I could see that now. Once again, he could barely wait for me to remove my silk stockings at night, to step out of my slip. With hungry hands, seeking lips, he filled me with his hope and optimism, as well. Our bodies hummed and throbbed, electric; I felt light, ethereal, a wisp of smoke that only his hands could catch.
“We should move here,” Charles said, the evening before we were to leave. “Make our home here—maybe not in Berlin but somewhere in Germany. Munich, perhaps. It’s prettier, they say, in the mountains.”
“Really?” I pushed myself up on my elbow; we were in bed, the sheets tangled around us. My mouth felt deliciously bruised and ripe.
“Anne, there’s no other country in Europe right now that can be compared to Germany. Hitler has pushed his nation into the modern age—think of it, compared to England! England, with its ancient empire and outdated navy—how absurd! It’s all about airpower now, and Germany is clearly in the lead, not that I believe Hitler has ideas of war. In fact, I sincerely hope he does not. But this is a technological country, not merely an ideological one. Ideas—what are they unless they’re backed up by technology? That’s the wave of the future.”
“We’d be left in peace,” I mused, reflecting on the freedom of these last few days, when I never had to wonder if some photographer was hanging around, waiting to catch me doing something awkward or—heaven forbid, for then they’d make up some ridiculous caption!—ordinary. I couldn’t imagine being chased down roads by anyone here; I could even allow myself to picture putting my child to bed at night with open windows, so that he might breathe the fragrant night air. “Think of it, Charles! I’m sure we could have a lovely little house right in the center of town—we wouldn’t have to be on any remote island or isolated farmhouse. I could go to the theater! Opera! Shopping!” Saying the words out loud, I realized how much I had missed doing these things—missed culture, art, people. It was as if some deadening, numbing medication was wearing off; I hungered for all the things I had been denied. All the lovely, silly, soul-preserving things that other people did without thinking; popping into a shop without calling ahead and having to slip through the back door after-hours. Attending the symphony without wearing a disguise. Meeting friends for lunch in restaurants. Pushing my baby in a pram out in the open, watching him play with other children in a public park.
“And no one would bother us—Chancellor Hitler could see to that,” I continued, playing with the fine blond hairs on Charles’s forearms, watching his face fight the urge to give in to ticklish laughter. “Imagine having a public official on our side, protecting us! But, Charles, it’s such a step—we don’t really know the language, of course. We haven’t seen everything—only what the chancellor has wanted us to see. You know that.” For even in my excitement, I couldn’t ignore the feeling that I’d had all week—the suspicion that the Germany being shown to us was like one of the little villages we’d seen in our flights to South America, particularly in the Andes. On certain cloudy days, you could walk the pleasant, ordinary streets and never see the mountains, but still you knew they were always looming, barely kept at bay by the swirling gray mists on all sides. I had the same sense here; that there was something hidden, something suppressed—yet always close at hand.
“I suppose so,” he admitted, leaning back with his arms behind his head. His chest was so lean, yet muscular; there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him still, nearly ten years after his flight to Paris. He was so obviously no longer a boy, yet he did sometimes still have boyish ideas—I understood this about him but could never let him know. His view of the world tended to be more simplistic than mine; this was what frustrated him about me, and me about him. He always saw the clearest, straightest path to any solution, and was mystified when others could not. Politicians, for example; he had no patience for the murky ways of compromise, of weighing issues, of giving some importance, dismissing others. There was only good and bad, right and wrong, to Charles Lindbergh.
“But we’re here, Anne,” he mused, looking up at the ceiling, covered with gilt panels. “We know what we see. It angers me to think how the newspapers in America and England depict Hitler—as a clown, a buffoon. It’s the Jewish influence, of course. They hate him for the Nuremberg Laws. And while I may wish that Hitler wasn’t quite so strident, I can’t fault his logic, because obviously, it works. Germany is a remarkable nation, strong, forward-looking. Hitler is simply thinking about what’s best for his country, and he has the courage to do it. Unlike these other so-called leaders.”
“You sound very political,” I teased, leaning my head against that lovely chest. “Very statesman-like.”
“I have been reluctant to assume that mantle, but as Truman said, the times are changing. Look at the war in Spain—that’s an air war, the first real one. Countries with airpower, like Germany, like the United States, need to be very careful, for in the future civilians will be casualties. Perhaps I can be a voice of reason. And really, Germany isn’t a natural enemy; the northern races should never fight each other. The Asiatic nations, like the Soviet Union—that’s the true enemy, not Hitler. But people like Chamberlain and Roosevelt don’t realize it. They’re grumbling about Hitler because the Jews are pushing them, making more out of the situation here than there is—and what a tragic mistake that will be.”
At this new mention of the Jews, I disentangled myself from his arms. And a question I had wanted to ask him for years could no longer go unasked.
“Charles, what about Harry Guggenheim? You know he’s Jewish, yet he’s been such a great friend to you—and me. Sheltering us, after the baby, after all the chaos. All the money he’s helped you find for funding, not to mention—well, back in ’thirty-two. The guidance, the support. What about him?”
“The individual Jew, I have no problem with. Harry has been a good friend, and I won’t deny it. It’s the overall influence, particularly on the press and the government. Roosevelt is surrounded by Jews, and one of these days, I’m afraid he’s going to listen to them. And that will be tragic, and one reason is that no country can stand up to Germany in terms of air superiority. That is one thing I’ve learned this week that Roosevelt has not.”
“Then, I suppose you need to speak out,” I said slowly—reluctantly, wondering how we could reconcile this development with the dream of living, forgotten, in Germany. I had seen how politics practically killed my father. And I feared the singular glare of the political spotlight; it was much more unforgiving than even the one we had been under. “I suppose that’s the right thing to do.”
“Of course it is. As Truman said, I’m in a unique position. I have a responsibility to the world now.”
He said it so matter-of-factly. I remembered that drive back through the city the night he proposed, when I had first heard him talk in this manner—this calm recognition of the unique position he was in, and the responsibilities that came with it. I had chided him on it, but I could afford to then. I was young. Untethered. My entire life ahead of me.
I couldn’t afford to now. I was too dependent on him, too wrapped up in his life, too marked by it. And at thirty, I could no longer imagine what lay ahead of me, because of the tragedy of all that was behind. So I didn’t speak out; I didn’t question him. Not then, not later. I sat by and watched the untouched boy of ’27 become someone else; something else.
And I allowed him to turn me into someone else, as well. Someone who could sit, beaming, just a few rows up from Adolf Hitler while he received the straight-armed salute of the Nazi Party. Someone who could eagerly look forward to the next time we visited Germany, in 1937, and again in 1938, when we actually started looking at houses, even after the Anschluss and Czechoslovakia. Even after I understood that Thomas Mann’s wife was not the only Jew who was not welcome in Germany.
Someone who could smile and nod when Minister Göring presented Charles with the Order of the German Eagle, on behalf of the Nazi Party and Herr Hitler himself.
Yet for all my smiling and nodding, my eyes were shut; shut deliberately to a truth I didn’t want to see because it interfered with my dream of an untroubled life with my children; a stable life, for if Charles was content, maybe he wouldn’t keep asking me to fly off with him. With every leave-taking, now that Jon was growing into his own little, absorbing person—so different from Charlie, and now I could rejoice in it—more and more of my heart was left behind.
Were we to live in Germany, one of Hitler’s aides promised us at a private meeting, Charles could have his pick of jobs with the Luftwaffe. We would have complete shelter from the press, and government guards posted around our house at no cost to us. Jon could attend school, just like any other child.
However. I wasn’t so changed, so dazzled by promises and dreams of a real home, a real family, that I couldn’t hide a grimace after Charles placed the heavy iron cross in my lap. He scarcely looked at it, so used was he to medals and awards.
But I did; I fingered the cold, raised Nazi insignia on the medal. And I whispered, more to myself than to him, “The Albatross.”