The German Woman

Paul Griner

Description

“A gritty, unsentimental story of love and loyalty played out across Europe during the two World Wars . . . Fans of Graham Greene or Alan Furst will want to take a look.” —Publishers Weekly

This riveting novel introduces us to Kate Zweig, the beautiful English widow of a German surgeon, and Claus Murphy, an exiled American with German roots—two lovers with complicated loyalties. In 1918, Kate and her husband were taken for spies by Russian soldiers and forced to flee their field hospital on the eastern front, barely escaping with their lives. Years later, in London during the Nazis’ V-1 reign of terror, Claus spends his days making propaganda films, and his nights as a British spy worn down by the war and his own numerous secrets.
 
When Claus meets Kate, he finds himself drawn to her, even after evidence surfaces that she might not be exactly who she seems. As the war hurtles to a violent end, Claus must decide where his own loyalties lie, whether he can make a difference in the war, and what might be gained by taking a leap of faith with Kate.
 
The interwoven strands of Paul Griner’s plot offer up “[an] unsentimental and realistic look at the fallout of war”—both physical and emotional (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel). Louisville’s Courier-Journal called The German Woman “Griner’s masterpiece” and praised the novelist as someone “who can take you absolutely anywhere, never wastes a sentence, and, most impressive of all, understands the beating heart of a woman.”

Sujets

• London Blitz
• Love Story
• Espionage
• Spy fiction
• World War II
• Battle of Britain
• Star-crossed
• World War I
• Wartime Romance

Informations

• Publié par: Open Road Media
• Date de parution: 09 juin 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780547488479
• Langue: English

Extrait

Contents
Title Page
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Acknowledgments
PART I
Wilno, East Prussia, January 5, 1919
January 7, 1919
Hamburg, March 25, 1919
PART II
London, June 14, 1944
June 16
June 21
June 23
June 25
June 26
June 28
July 2
July 7
July 9
July 14
July 17
July 21
July 23
July 24
July 25
July 27
August 4
About the Author
Connect with HMH
Copyright © 2009 by Paul Griner

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [e-mail] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

www.hmhco.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows: Griner, Paul. The German woman / Paul Griner. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-547-05522-0 1. Man-woman relationships—Fiction. 2. Cinematographers—Fiction. 3. Spies—Fiction. 4. World War, 1914–1918—Fiction. 5. World War, 1939–1945—Fiction. 6. Patriotism—Fiction. 7. Loyalty—Fiction. 8. Historical fiction. I. Title. PS 3557. R 5314 G 47 2009 813'.54—dc22 2008053286

e ISBN 978-0-547-48847-9 v3.0417
IN MEMORY OF Miriam Griner and Virginia Mahan, deeply loved and greatly missed

AND FOR Kerry, Trevor, and Tristan: the sun, moon, and stars of our little solar system
If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.

—E. M. FORSTER
Acknowledgments
My editor, Anjali Singh, helped me discover the real novel inside my manuscript, with a deft touch, smart questions, and excellent suggestions. It’s a much better book because of her. Nicole Aragi continues to be an agent without peer, a wonderful reader, friend, and advocate. Chris Kennedy, as always, made early and helpful suggestions, and Anna Klobucka, Chris Fox, Kathryn Griner, Austin Bunn, and Rob Terry helped as the book moved along. My father answered endless medical questions with great care and detail, a further sign of his longtime support. To all, a profound thanks. And to my wife, Anne: without you, this book wouldn’t exist, nor would I awake each day feeling the luckiest man on earth.
PART I
Wilno, East Prussia, January 5, 1919
J OSEF WAS BEING DIFFICULT; he wanted Kate to stay. After marking his temperature, she let the chart fall against the brass bed frame and tucked her cold fingers under her smock. “There are only a few patients here,” she said, “but I’m afraid I can’t read to you. You’re forgetting I have others to care for in isolation.”
Josef smiled and patted the bed. “Sit here and tell me about them, Nurse Zweig. ”
She sighed, her exasperation both mock and real. He was a child, really, and his youthful enthusiasm was infectious, but it was late and she was tired and he, even more than she, needed sleep. She had come only to check on him and to change his bandages. “Father Thomas is on night duty. Perhaps he can read to you.”
“Very funny.” Josef’s breath smoked in the frigid air. “Whistle, perhaps, but not read. Now come closer.” She did, because she had to, and he dropped his head. “Do you see?”
In the lamplight his ghastly purple wound looked infected. A shell splinter had pierced his helmet and ripped a furrow across his skull, tearing away skin and muscle and bone, and now the exposed brain pulsed with the beating of his heart.
“Look closely,” he said. “You’ll see an image of a beautiful nurse. My own personal stigmata! You’re all I’ve been thinking about this evening. And if I could see your brain, I’m sure I’d see an image of me.”
She stilled his heavy head with her palm and raised the lamp, scrutinizing the throbbing brain before bending to sniff it. Nothing, save perhaps a faint lingering odor of rancid lamp oil, but no infection; she realized she’d been holding her breath only when she felt herself exhale.
“I’ve told you.” She lowered the lamp to the bedside table. “All I can see is healthy new pink skin and a few words about President Wilson.”
Which was the truth, or a version of it. Josef had arrived with his wound dressed in newspaper held in place by a boot string, and some of the reversed newsprint still showed on the uncovered tissue. So far, the wound’s only adverse effect had been a series of nighttime seizures, pronounced enough to rattle his bed, and she was glad that they’d stopped, that she no longer had to restrain him, though the raw wound on one so young distressed her. But the dura was slowly regenerating, and soon he would be ready for the insertion of a metal plate.
She changed the bandage on his arm, using a crisp new Austrian army armband in place of the old linens, and scolded him again for his foolishness. Josef and another boy, hearing a shell fly over their trench and explode, had argued over how far away it was. The other boy had said ten meters, Josef thirty, and Josef had decided to pace it off. The second shell came over while he was measuring.
“I was right, though,” Josef said, smiling, as Kate pinned the brassard tightly above his biceps. “I’d got to twenty-two before the second one hit. And the greater fool was Krilnik. He stayed behind and was hit by the mortar. I scraped him up with a spoon and buried him in a tin pot.”
The brassard’s imperial black eagles flinched when Josef clenched his fist. He watched them and said, “Stupid Pole.”
“I thought you were a Pole,” Kate said.
“Yes, of course. But a Lithuanian Pole.”
“Ah, I see. I hadn’t realized there was such a difference.”
“You needn’t play dumb with me,” Josef said. “All the world knows there is.”
It pained her to think of the future he would inherit, even more to imagine the future he and other young soldiers—creations of the recent past—might construct.
The tin roof vibrated in the buffeting wind, moaning like a violin, and her eye followed the noise down the length of the ward. Rubber hot-water bottles hung from the rafters, and copper pots boiled atop the brick stoves. Once again they had a small supply of coal for the stoves—like the armbands, it was an unexpected gift from an unexplained source—and on a brutally cold night like tonight that would keep the patients alive, but the steam was melting ice that had formed on the ceiling and she would have to push beds aside to keep patients dry.
She was about to go when Josef pinched her sleeve between his bony fingers, not wanting to be left alone. She couldn’t blame him; a line of folded-over mattresses and piled clean linens stretched into the darkness beyond the few other patients on the ward, all of whom were sleeping, and the lack of human voices made their presence seem an oddity, but she couldn’t stay; she was tired, she had other patients to attend to, she was afraid and didn’t want her fear to show.
The approach of Father Thomas spared her the embarrassment of pulling her arm free. Their other orderlies had either deserted or been moved north and west during the past months to staff new British hospitals along the fluctuating front—victors in the recent war, the English now told the German army and its field hospitals what to do—but Father Thomas had argued that his throat wound should keep him behind. Not from fear, Kate knew; it was because he didn’t want to abandon them. A hinged metal pipe inserted into a hole cut in his throat, held in place by surgical tape and a small paper disk, its opening covered by a square of sterile muslin; he would have looked ecclesiastical with all that white at his throat even if he hadn’t been a priest.
He entered the circle of lamplight, air clicking and whistling through the pipe as he walked, and gestured that he’d watch over Josef and move the beds.
“Thank you,” Kate said.
No, he signed, thank you.
She looked puzzled and he made the sign for a plate, breathing deeply in appreciation, his pipe whistling.
“Ah, yes,” she said, understanding. Supper. “The eggs were good, weren’t they?” She decided not to tell him that, lacking lard, she’d had to cook them in Vaseline. Their newfound supplies, though bountiful, were a bizarre mixture of the practical and the useless.
As he bent over, his crucifix swung free, nearly striking Josef’s chin, and Josef swatted it away. “Don’t bless me, Father,” he said, “I haven’t sinned.” He smiled with youthful pleasure at his joke.
Here, then, Father Thomas signed, removing his crucifix and giving it to Josef. Take this.
“What? Why?”
Kate translated his signs: Those who feel they’re without sin are in the greatest danger of all.
Josef made a face but slipped the chain around his neck too quickly to be anything but pleased. Father Thomas folded his hand over Josef’s, and Kate squeezed Josef’s other hand before dropping it and hurrying off, briefly elated by her certainty that Josef would be fine. But her own echoing footsteps down the long empty ward discomfited her.
At least during the war she’d known what to hope for, and her fears, though deep, had been mostly dormant. They’d waited years for peace, and when it had finally come they’d celebrated even in defeat—a last saved bottle of plum brandy—and yet now they were waiting once again, though she couldn’t say with any certainty for what.
Even before the Armistice, they’d lived through outbreaks of civil war in Germany, Russia, Poland, and the Ukraine, and in the months since they’d moved their hospital a half a dozen times to either escape from or assist in a series of seemingly never-ending engagements, all at the behest of their new English masters; Germans and Poles versu