Phyllis Jordan

Assignment No. 3: Opening pages of my novel Is there a moment in the life of every woman when she asks herself: Who is this man I married? A boorish comment, a longing glance at another woman, a slap across the cheek, a single moment can reveal the rot beneath a husband’s charming veneer. For me, the signs were all around, but I refused to recognize them. Until I opened my eyes, and they were all that I could see. Perhaps it had something to do with our unusual courtship. I had known Hans since childhood, when he came home from boarding school with my older brothers and spent summers at our lake house near Berlin. After he arrived at the German embassy in Washington, he would invite me down from New York occasionally for a dance or a formal dinner. As a Wall Street banker, I was the most respectable girl he knew, he liked to say. This was hardly the stuff of romance. So I was surprised when he called a few days after the attack at Pearl Harbor with a proposition. “I think you should marry me, Klara.” “Why would I do that?” I asked, a trace of humor in my voice. “We’re not in love, at least not that I know of.” “Speak for yourself, darling,” he responded, then turned serious. “You can’t stay in New York anymore, now that Hitler has declared war on America. It’s not safe for any Germans. And I can’t stay in D.C. In a matter of days, they’re shipping the whole embassy staff off to a detention center God knows where. You’re much safer coming with us than trying to get home on your own.” “So you want a wife to keep you company in your cold, dank jail cell?” “Trust me, it won’t be cold and dank. We’re holding their diplomats in Berlin until we can arrange a swap. They can’t afford to treat us too badly.” I told Hans I would think about it, but as soon as I hung up, I realized that the idea made sense. New York had soured on the Germans. My landlord had already told me he wouldn’t renew my lease for the new year. There was an ugly scene in Washington Square where an angry mob was burning Hitler in effigy. A colleague of mine had gotten himself mixed up in a spy ring and was now sitting in jail. I had never done any spying, but from my perch at the Chase Bank I’d moved plenty of the Reich’s money to accounts in South America. Who was to say when someone would decide that was a crime? Then there was the matter of returning home. Errant bombs had already forced my parents out of our home near the Tiergarten and into suburbs. There was no coffee to speak of anywhere in Berlin. And no chocolate. Beyond that, Hitler made clear his views on the role of women: “Kinder, kirche, kuche,” was his motto. Children, church, and kitchen. After a decade of working in New York City, where would an independent, single woman fit into this new German Reich? Wouldn’t it be better to come back as the wife of diplomat than as a spinster moving back in with her somewhat overbearing parents? At 32, I’d given up the notion of a love match. Hans was pleasant, respectable and reasonably attractive. I could do worse. Our wedding was small and simple, just Hans and I in the living room of the minister’s home. I wore a white suit I found at Bergdorf Goodman and a hat with a bit of netting. My brown hair was swept up in a chignon. Hans wore his best suit and tamed his reddish-brown hair with a dollop of Brilliantine. Our only guests were the FBI agents who had been tailing him everywhere. Two weeks after Pearl Harbor, they could hardly let a German diplomat wander around Washington on his own. Hans, charming as ever, had managed to enlist the agents in his wedding plans. They found the minister and arranged for a cake and some champagne. “You’re going to love the honeymoon,” the tall, dark-haired agent said as he drove us to the train station. And we did, for a while. We were still fizzy from the champagne as they escorted us through Union Station’s marble vestibule, loud with the clatter of dozens of German diplomatic families and servants boarding the train for our detention center. American agents checked everyone’s name against a master list. Ahead of us, a nanny—a pretty, blond teenager—was struggling with two small, blond children, while their mother wept on her husband’s shoulder. “Erich and Katrina Stromberg!” a man in uniform called out as the family moved toward the train. “Two children and a servant, is that right?” “Hans Hausmann and Klara Saxe-Merseberg?” he asked us, as he scanned the list. “Klara Hausmann as of about two hours ago,” Hans corrected, and we boarded the train. As we left the city, I watched the landscape streaking past our window. I knew from earlier trips that we would pass through Baltimore and Philadelphia if we were headed to New York. But the scenery outside the train window grew more and more rural. The brick row houses outside of Washington gave way to rolling green hills and then hazy blue mountains with the sun setting behind them. We were headed west. “What is west of Washington?” I asked Hans. “Virginia, I think, And then West Virginia. After that, I’m not sure. Ohio, maybe. Let’s see what we can find out.” We headed to the dining car in hopes of gathering some intelligence, or at least getting a drink, and ran into the Strombergs’ nanny and her charges. Hans introduced me to Anna and young Gabi and Willi. Anna looked like a picture-book image of a German maiden: tall and slender with a plait of honey-blond hair down her back. Her eyes, a deep blue-green shade, seemed to match the mountains at sunset. “Frau Stromberg is very overwhelmed,” Anna told us. “We’re going to look for the doctor.” Willi grabbed Hans by the hand and asked him, “Are we prisoners?” “Where did you hear such a thing, little one?” Hans responded, patting the boy on his head. “Mama said it to Papa. I heard her,” Gabi piped up. “Then she started to cry.” We moved along the crowded corridors until we reached the club car, thick with cigar smoke and the smell of beer. Anna spotted the doctor toward the back of the car, hunched over a chessboard. She left the children with me as she and Hans made their way through a throng of young men. One of them yanked on her blond plait, then pulled her toward him. “Hello, my pretty maiden,” he said, wrapping his arms around her waist. “Have you come to join me for a beer?” The young man leaned in and glimpsed down her blouse, then smiled at her. “Leave her alone, Fritz,” Hans said as Anna squirmed out of his grasp. “She’s Stromberg’s nanny. He won’t want to hear that you’re harassing her.” Anna straightened her blouse and shuddered. “Can you come now, Doctor Schneider?” she called out. “Frau Stromberg is quite upset.” “Certainly, Anna,” the doctor told her. “I suppose a sudden evacuation can be rough on the nerves.” When she and the doctor left, Hans sidled up to Fritz, the drunken fellow who had just grabbed Anna. “What do you know about where we’re going?” Hans asked. I remembered Fritz from embassy functions, a diplomat’s son who always seemed to have a pretty, young woman on his arm. He also had a lazy eye that trailed to the right, giving the impression he wasn’t paying attention to anyone. “Do you mean what does my father know?” Fritz responded. “Actually, we haven’t been told, but it appears we’re headed for the mountains. I love the mountains in the wintertime, don’t you?” When we walked back to our seats, we came across the scene playing out in the Stromberg compartment. “I don’t know where I put my jewels,” Katrina Stromberg wailed, her eyes red from crying. “They gave us no time to pack, no time, no time at all. And now they’re dragging us off to some Godforsaken prison. Do they know who they’re dealing with? Do they know my father is a count? And that Erich is an attaché? A diplomat. They can’t treat us like this,” she said, weeping into her hands. “Now darling, you know they don’t dare treat us poorly,” Erich reassured his wife with an awkward pat on the shoulder. “We have their diplomats captive in Berlin. They harm a single hair on your beautiful head, and the whole American legation will suffer.” The doctor give Katrina’s hand a gentle squeeze. He felt her pulse, took her temperature, and gave her two tablets with a glass of water. “Is that the right medicine?” Erich asked, as he stepped back into the corridor with the doctor and Anna. “Her physician in Berlin….” “Her physician in Berlin was a fraud who was giving her laudanum for anxiety,” the doctor told him. “All she’s getting from me is a sedative. Opium is for serious pain, not for an overwrought countess who can’t cope with her gilded life.” “She wasn’t always like this,” Stromberg said, grinding his teeth. He had the look of a military officer, with hair so short it seemed like the bristles on a hairbrush. He turned abruptly on his heels, stepped back into the compartment and slid the door shut. “He’s right,” Anna said, turning toward us. “I knew her years ago in Bavaria. My mother was her music teacher. Katrina glistened like a jewel. And she was happy, always smiling and singing.” “I don’t think this is the life she would choose for herself,” the doctor said. “For that matter, I’m not so sure this is the life I would choose for myself: physician to the German embassy. But I suspect it will look pretty good once we’re back in Berlin.” Hans and I spent the rest of the trip in our compartment, gazing out the window as the train appeared to slice through the side of a mountain. The evergreens on the steep slope and the remnants of the sunset reminded me of ski trips to Switzerland or Bavaria. In my ten years in the States, I had never been to this part of the country. At last, the train lurched to a stop. Beyond a row of ornate horse-drawn carriages, beyond a station marker reading White Sulphur Springs, stood a gleaming white building.

1. Story statement: Survive a wartime lockdown without betraying country or principles Or more simply…. Maintain civility amid chaos and cruelty 2. Antagonist The protagonist, Klara, is a German banker working in the United States who is essentially imprisoned in a luxury hotel after Pearl Harbor with her new husband Hans, a diplomat. She is caught between two antagonists. One is Fritz Grossmayer, a fellow German intent on debauching every woman he meets and promoting the Nazi cause. Her revulsion for him mirrors her growing awareness of what is happening in her homeland. The second antagonist is Sam Cooper, an FBI agent intent on exposing her as a German spy or turning her into an informant for the Americans. 3. Breakout title Taking the Waters (European phrase for visiting a spa) A Season at the Greenbrier (name of the resort where they’re staying) Greenbrier 4. Comparables Bel Canto: Ann Padgett’s glorious 2001 novel follows the fate of a group held hostage at an embassy taken over by Peruvian terrorists. Loosely based on an actual historical event, the book explores the unexpected interactions among the guests themselves and with their captors. Like Bel Canto, my book brings characters face to face with people and situations they wouldn’t typically encounter—and prompts them to re-evaluate past assumptions. A Gentleman in Moscow: Amor Towles’ 2016 novel tells the story of a Russian aristocrat imprisoned in the finest hotel in Moscow after the Russian revolution. The lead character works to preserve his own values and dignity while making a life for himself in his limited circumstances. Like Towle’s hero, my heroine is encased in luxury and forced to find new ways to spend her time and to think deeply about what she values. 5. Primary conflict In the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor, a young German woman is interned by U.S. officials and must navigate a new marriage, Nazi politics, and her growing concern about the direction of the war back home. 6. Inner conflict A loyal German, Klara has nonetheless come to doubt the morality of Nazi policies and the progress of the war in Russia. She questions whether her new husband is enabling a morally bankrupt system. This comes to a head when a witty journalist who’s critical of Hitler files a petition with U.S. authorities to remain in the States. Klara expects her husband, Hans, to support their friend’s request. Instead, Hans remains silent as Nazi leaders insist that the journalist return to Germany. Klara’s anger creates a rift in their marriage, especially after the journalist attempts suicide. It also emboldens her to defy German officials. When a young German nanny falls in love with an American bellhop, Klara orchestrates a plan to help her stay behind--a plan that has tragic consequences. 7. Secondary conflict A secondary conflict is the state of Klara’s marriage. What began as a marriage of convenience—to ensure her safe passage back to Germany—has now become something more. She has fallen in love with her husband but is not sure he feels the same, especially when an old girlfriend turns up at the hotel where they are interned. She also worries that he is too weak to resist the worst of what the Nazis are asking him to do. 8. Setting The setting is an extraordinary spa resort in the mountains of West Virginia. Less than a decade after hosting such luminaries as the Prince of Wales and Bing Crosby, The Greenbrier hotel has suddenly become an internment camp for Axis diplomats, who are waiting there until they can be traded for U.S. diplomats abroad. The well-manicured grounds are surrounded by spotlights, with Border Patrol officers guarding the gates. Inside the bright white hotel, though, the diplomats are treated as guests. Gourmet meals are served under Polish crystal chandeliers in the elegant dining room. Diplomats drink brandy and beer at the polished wood bar in the lobby, while other play chess at built-in tables. A giant ballroom is used to host weekly movie showings and an occasional dance. A smaller room beyond that features a grand piano and a sweeping view of the resort grounds. Children swim in an indoor pool set with Italian tiles, while bored wives soak in the sulphur-scented water of the spa. Elegant suites are assigned based on status at each embassy, and diplomats often host cocktail parties to show off their quarters. Even the chambermaids and nannies have their own hotel rooms with their beds turned down at night. Beneath all this luxury runs a basement corridor where the Greenbrier staff store their supplies, move laundry bins and, on occasion, spy on the guests.