The Ambassador's Daughter by Pam Jenoff
“Straight away, fraulein.”
“Marcin sends his congratulations,” Krysia says when the butler has left. “He would have come but he’s working on a new piece.”
“So he’s composing again?”
“More so than ever. He thinks it’s the peace of the countryside, but I’m sure all of the energy from Paris helped.”
I drink Krysia in, the familiar sight of her righting my topsy-turvy world. With the trains still in disrepair and the border heavily guarded, it was no small feat to get from Poland to Germany these days. No, she had moved mountains to be here. She had come for the wedding, despite knowing that it was a farce—or perhaps because it was a farce and I would need her support more than ever to get through it.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” I say, meaning it. I did not realize before Krysia how lonely for company I was, but since she had filled the space and gone again I’d felt the emptiness acutely. “Let’s get you settled.” I lead her up the stairs and show her to the room closest to mine. “There are grander suites in other parts of the house,” I say, an apologetic tone to my voice. “If you’d like something with a better view of the lake...”
She shakes her head. “This is lovely.”
I exhale quietly. I picked the room because I wanted her close to me. “I’ll let you freshen up.” I go downstairs to the sitting room, sink into one of the plush velvet chairs. It has been a week of reunions—first Georg, and now Krysia. Suddenly it is as if all of Paris has followed me here. I am very glad to see her, though.
Twenty minutes later Krysia comes downstairs, wearing a fresh cotton dress I do not recognize from Paris. “Are you hungry?” I ask.
“No, I tend not to eat much after traveling. But I’d love to stretch my legs after so long on the train.” I lead her through the foyer. “So this is your familial home,” she remarks as we reach the terrace.
“My great-great-grandfather built the original house in the early nineteenth century,” I say, feeling like a tour guide. “And then his sons added to the structure.” The house, built over the course of a century, has a patchwork feel, a variety of architectural styles thrown together at random.
“It must have been a fun place to play as a child.”
Was that true? The house had always seemed so quiet. Uncle Walter, married to his work, had no family. I’d been the only child and I’d had to invent my own games. “There were certainly a lot of places to explore,” I concede.
“Oh?”
“There are underground tunnels, built during the Franco-Prussian War to ferry supplies from market back to the house.”
“How interesting. Are they still used?”
We follow the path around the lake. A brackish smell wafts upward from the murky water. “I don’t know. Perhaps by the servants in winter if the weather is poor. But enough about the house—tell me about Krakow.”
Her face widens into a smile. “It’s beautiful, just as lovely as I remember from when I was a girl. We have an apartment in the city center and then the house in the countryside where Marcin likes to work. I join him there for weekends.” Then her eyes grow cloudy. “Of course, I miss Paris.” She means Emilie. “Nothing is ever quite the same after you’ve been elsewhere, is it?”
I shake my head, recalling my visit to our old neighborhood in the city. The Berlin of my childhood, our town house with its secret corners and garden, is gone. But even if our block in the Jewish quarter had not been marred by the vandals and changed by immigrants, it would not have been the same. There is a hollowness about it now that comes as much from me and the places I’ve been as the things that have happened here.
“And your father, is he enjoying his work away from the conference?”
I stop and turn to her. “Oh, Krysia!” I’d been so overjoyed at her unexpected arrival that I had nearly forgotten the events of the past few days. Quickly I tell her about Papa’s collapse.
“He’s going to be fine,” she reassures firmly.
“I know. He should be coming home tomorrow.”
She puts her arm around my shoulders. “Your father is strong—and he has you to live for.”
Me, I think, and the wedding. My heart sinks. “I just feel so lost.”
“Then so much the better I am here.”
I look down, kicking at a rock with my shoe. “I saw him.”
“Georg? I thought he went back to Hamburg. Does he have an apartment here?”
“He’s taken a room at the Grand. I didn’t even know that he was in Berlin. But he showed up here for a business meeting with Uncle Walter. It’s almost like fate....”
“Nonsense. You can’t attach some sort of higher meaning to it. It doesn’t matter why he was here. The question is what you do about it.”
“I almost told Papa that I was canceling the wedding,” I offer. “But then he collapsed.” There is a plaintive note to my voice, a student asking for credit for an answer that is partially correct.
But Krysia does not award points for effort. “And now?” The fact that I was going to tell Papa means nothing—only the result and how it changes my life matters.
“There’s nothing to be done. I’m marrying Stefan. Or remarrying him, I should say. With Papa recuperating, there’s no other choice.”
She opens her mouth and I brace myself for the lecture. “Perhaps it is for the best,” she says, surprising me. “Georg is surely much changed, after everything that happened.”
I want to tell her that, beneath his disappointment over the treaty and the way I have hurt him, he is still the same man with whom I fell in love.
“Would you like me to play at the wedding?” she asks, before I can respond.
“Oh, Krysia...” I am touched by her gesture, her willingness to support my marriage, even though she believes it is a mistake. “I’d love that. But you’re a guest.”
“Perhaps just a few songs, then.”
“That would be lovely. Though I’d much rather—” I pause “—you stand up with me.” I wait for her to refuse to be witness to the deception.
“I’d be honored.”
We walk for several minutes in silence before reaching the low footbridge that bisects the lake into two ovals. She stops, staring out across the water where a moored rowboat bumps against its docking. “I never told her, before leaving Paris. Emilie,” she adds, though, of course, I knew whom she meant. Her faces searches mine, asking for confirmation that she had done the right thing.
“You did what you thought was best,” I say, offering the absolution that is not mine to give. At least Krysia tried to do the right thing. Did my mother think she had done what was best for me, leaving me to those who actually wanted to raise me? Or did she just not care? Krysia nods, my answer enough.
A few minutes later, as we near the house, a bell chimes, signaling lunch. “You must be hungry by now,” I say.
“A bit,” she concedes. In the dining room, the side bar has been set with cold dishes: cured meats, herring in cream, smoked salmon, freshly cut fruit. We fill our plates and start for the table on the terrace. In the long gravel service driveway that runs along the right side of the house, a truck has pulled up and is unloading tables and chairs from the back. It is only two days until the wedding and the preparations have begun in earnest. My throat tightens.
Uncle Walter sticks his head out of the door. “Have you seen Noel?” he asks, referring to his aide.
I shake my head. “Uncle Walter, may I present Krysia Smok? She’s come from Krakow for the wedding.”
Krysia rises and Uncle Walter takes her hand absentmindedly. “Welcome.” Then he turns to me. “I’m sure you’ve seen that the deliveries have begun.”
“Yes. And the chuppa?” It was one of my few requests for the wedding that we procure the same canopy from the synagogue that I had seen in my parents’ wedding photo.
Uncle Walter shakes his head. “Destroyed, I’m afraid, during one of the ransackings of the Jewish quarter.” He pronounces this last pa
Knowing further political debate is pointless, I decide to focus on the chuppa. “And there’s none other like it to be had?” Uncle Walter hesitates. “It needn’t be a fancy one,” I press. The Jewish wedding canopy need only have four poles, a piece of cloth. But it isn’t about the difficulty of procuring it. He views the chuppa as an embarrassment, a sign that we are somehow different from our non-Jewish friends and that assimilation is not quite complete. Krysia pats my hand under the table reassuringly, signaling not to make a fuss. But I cannot pull back now. “I’ll not be married without a chuppa,” I declare, drawing my line in the sand. This is the last strain of who we are, our lives as Jews before the war.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he says, a tactical retreat. “Though with Celia still at the hospital and your father coming home tomorrow, you’ll have to take more of a role in making sure the wedding deliveries are done properly. The flowers will be here in the morning, so you’ll want to be here when they arrive.”
“But I’m going to the polls tomorrow and I want to get an early start.” Parliamentary elections are the next day, yet another hapless attempt to construct a coalition government among the Social Democrats and their allies. It is the first election since we’ve returned to Germany and my first chance to vote.
“The polls? Surely you aren’t planning to go.”
“Women have the right to vote now.”
“I know. It’s a right that I lobbied for and spent a great deal of time and effort securing.” He sounds as though he is personally responsible for women’s suffrage. “It is a great victory in principle. But you can’t be seriously considering venturing down into that fracas.” He had never understood Papa’s choice to remain in the crowded urban neighborhood where he had grown up rather than at the villa. He has a point, of course—the polling places are dangerous, elections being a flashpoint in an already tumultuous political atmosphere.
“I am not just thinking. I’m going to do it.” I set my jaw stubbornly.
“It’s not as if one vote will make a difference.” Easy enough for a man to say—he has always had the right. But I remember Papa’s words: the proudest day of my life, he had said when speaking of my exercising the vote. I have to go through with this for him as much as for myself.
“I can supervise the deliveries,” Krysia says gently, stepping in. I had nearly forgotten she was beside me. I am embarrassed to have her witness all of this play out. Uncle Walter shrugs indifferently and retreats back into the house.
* * *
The sky is just growing pink over the lake the next morning as I slip from the villa. Outside, I yawn, more tired than I usually am at this hour. Krysia and I had sat up talking late into the night, jumping easily from one topic to the next, making up for all of the months since Paris. I make my way to the train station by bicycle, my growing anticipation clearing exhaustion like a broom to cobwebs. Grunewald is still asleep and even the sellers at market have not yet come to set out their wares. But when I step off the train at Alexanderplatz, the city is at full bustle, as though it had never bothered to rest. Businessmen in suits mix with revelers making their way from the bars to the steam baths or home, dressed in the previous night’s clothes.
It is not yet eight o’clock as I approach the crumbling brick municipal building close to our old neighborhood, my official residence from which I am required to vote. My excitement fades to nervousness. The street in front of the polling place is chaotic—political demonstrators from all parties, held back by police, choke the pavement, exhorting the hordes of voters that shuffle toward the polls to take a particular view. Taking a deep breath, I wade into the crowd, pushing toward the municipal building. I am the only woman, I realize as I join the queue. As I near, the men who had been jostling and talking grow quiet, eyeing me as if I am a foreign creature. For a moment I wonder if I was mistaken about the suffrage bill actually passing.
The line creeps forward up the damp stone steps to the municipal building. Through the open door, the smell of stale coffee drifts out. Suddenly I am five years old, coming here with Papa to register for school. My stomach tugs with longing. He should have been here with me for this moment.
“Such chaos,” a man in front of me laments. “Not like the good old days.” Inwardly, I laugh. The good old days of totalitarianism, of kaisers and kings. There were people who would always find comfort in being told what to do and in the clear, rigid lines of social division. The world was more chaotic now than it had ever been, but at the same time bursting with possibility.
Behind me, voices rise. Two of the political demonstrators have gotten inside the building and are arguing heatedly with a poll worker who orders them to leave. As they begin pushing each other, the crowd surges backward to escape the skirmish. Strangers press against me from all directions, making it impossible to breathe. I cry out.
A hand grabs me and pulls me through the crowd toward the door. I yelp, struggling to escape, but I cannot wrest myself from the unseen grasp. As I see the open sky, I relax slightly. But I am still being pulled. I wrench away and make it to the street before turning to confront my assailant. Georg stands behind me, breathing hard.
“What are you doing here?” I demand. I find myself staring at his mouth, flung back to our kiss by the pond in Versailles.
“Or, you could say thank you,” he replies pointedly, brushing off the sleeves of his uniform.
Annoyance rises up, eclipsing my desire. “For what? I didn’t need rescuing.” I point toward the crowd at the municipal building, larger than ever. “And now I’ve lost my place in the queue.”
“It was foolish to come,” he admonishes, sounding more like Uncle Walter than I would have thought possible.
“You still haven’t told me what you are doing here. Are you following me?”
“In a sense, yes.” A shiver runs up my spine. “Your father rang me from the hospital, with Celia’s help, of course. He knew you were coming to vote and he asked me to check on you.” So he had not chosen to come after me, after all, but had done so dutifully at my father’s behest. Had Papa softened toward Georg? More likely, he was just concerned about my well-being and saw Georg as being in the best position to help. Georg gazes over the crowd, which has descended into a widespread brawl. “This is madness.”
“I’m still going to vote.”
A faint smile plays around his lips. “I had no doubt. Come with me.” Without waiting, Georg takes my hand and tucks it beneath his arm and walks briskly toward the stairs of the municipal building. I start to protest that I do not need his help. Then, taking in the shoving, fighting men, I decide against it. Georg’s hand is warm around mine as he leads me through the crowd. I wait for my anxiety to rise again, but it does not. Here, in this most cramped of places, I feel comfortable and safe. I understand then that my claustrophobia has not really been about closed spaces at all, but about yearning to breathe freely—something I can do when I am with him.
Inside, Georg waves his government identification card to bypass the queue. At the front of the hall, he stops short of the registration table, gesturing for me to go ahead.
“You voted already?”
“Yes, by absentee ballot in Hamburg. I think that the National Socialists are most promising.” I stare at him in disbelief. Georg had always been a bit more conservative. I notice then that he wears a cornflower in his lapel, the bright blue signaling his shift to the right.
“But, Georg, they’re barbarians.” Suddenly we are back in the study at Versailles, quarreling over politics. “How can you possibly support their position?”
“Weimar is weak. The
future.” He had been so burned by the treaty that he now sees militarism as the only way.
“Perhaps the Americans...” I begin.
“The Americans?” He cuts me off, his voice is harsher than I have ever heard him speak. I glance anxiously over my shoulder. It is not wise to discuss politics loudly in public these days. But he does not seem to care who hears him. “They came and created this mess and then didn’t even ratify the treaty.” He has an undeniable point—the Americans are an ocean away, unscathed by the disaster they left behind.
I struggle to find the words to make him understand reason, but find none. Once I’d been able to help him see the right way. True north, he’d called me. But Versailles had changed him. We are both less open now, calcified in our respective positions.
I present my identification and the woman escorts me to a booth where there are a dizzying array of choices. I punch the slots on the cards for the candidates. This is for you, Papa, I think as I finish.
When I emerge from the voting booth a few minutes later, the melee has mostly cleared, broken up by brown-shirted Freikorps, the burly police who are known to be quick with a billy club. Outside, Georg leads me away from the crowd to the corner where his car is waiting. I wait for him to suggest coffee, anything to give us more time together so that we do not have to say goodbye as swiftly as we did at the villa. “Shall we?” I offer when he does not, gesturing down the wide, tree-lined Unter den Linden. He hesitates and I brace myself for the rejection of his refusal. But then he nods in assent.
Neither of us speaks as we stroll beneath the bowed branches of the chestnut trees in the direction of the Tiergarten. I study him out of the corner of my eye, searching for some sign that he is glad to see me or eager to get away. But his face is impassive.
A few minutes later, I hear the carousel tinkling unseen behind high bushes. We turn into the park, which is speckled this midweek morning with crisp-skirted nannies pushing prams and children playing hoops in the grass. In the brush alongside the path, a man stoops to gather leaves for fuel. We cross the footbridge over the canal, a thin strip of brown water amid two steep dirt banks. Georg turns off onto a side path, shrouded high on both sides by birch trees and brush. Suddenly it is as if we are back in the Tuileries Gardens the night the treaty was announced, alone in a world made for just the two of us.