The man outside the door was not moved by Marianne’s Russian. He answered her in a short guttural grunt that did not sound like any language Martin had ever heard.

From behind him, a rich and salty smell of bacon wafted from the flat; also the sharp scent of alcohol.

The man rapped on the door, entered, closed it behind him, and then reemerged, opening the door for them. Inside, men clustered around a table, playing cards. Martin did not need to speak their language to understand that they were amused.

Was this where his mother lived? With all these men? Martin was confused. One wall was entirely gone, revealing the beams and brick and pipes, and old bits of newspaper insulation. Water dripped from a corner of the ceiling into a tub. But the smells—bacon, and onions, maybe even butter frying—were of delicacies he had not eaten in years. His mouth watered. Tins of beans and fruit lined the countertop.

But where was his mother in all this? A dreadful feeling grew inside him. Smells of the devil, Frau Vortmuller would have said. There was an old woman at the stove, and a girl with bright painted lips and cheeks stood beside her, wearing only a grubby silk robe that revealed her scrawny chest, the breastbones like a chicken’s.

“Where is Frau Fledermann?” Marianne addressed the old woman, whose expression shifted from hostility to surprise.

“Dear God!” she exclaimed, looking at the children and crossing herself.

On the stove the potatoes began to smoke.

“I’ll get her,” the woman in the robe said. She stabbed her cigarette out on a plate. As she passed, one of the Russians grabbed her wrist and said something that made her laugh.

Marianne was not amused. “I will come, too,” she announced, shooing Martin and Liesel out into the hall.

Back in the darkness, beside the frightening man with the gun, even Liesel did not speak. The electric lamp cast long, spooky shadows.

Finally the door of the flat opened again. The woman who emerged after Marianne was almost unrecognizable to Martin: glassy eyed and thin and smelling strongly of perfume and sweat. She looked panicked and her hands—long, white, and trembling—reached for Martin, fluttering over his face and hair and shoulders, like a blind woman’s.

“My boy! Oh, my boy!” she said, dropping to her knees. “My sweet child!”

Martin wanted to speak—to reassure her, but he couldn’t think how.

“Oh, my boy,” the woman, his mother, repeated, pulling him against her chest.

And Martin could only stand, stiff as a board, trying to keep them both upright.

CHAPTER THREE

FRÜHLINGHAUSEN, MARCH 12, 1938

The day Benita met Martin Constantine Fledermann was unusually warm for March. It was as though they were in Italy or Greece, she kept saying, hoping it made her sound worldly, like someone who had actually traveled to such places, experienced such heat, although of course everyone knew she hadn’t, and they certainly hadn’t been anywhere so exotic themselves, Frühlinghausen being what it was.