Table of Contents | Introduction | Historical Notes
I stepped down from the carriage, my hand in Papa’s, and looked up at the house. Three stories with almost every window ablaze, music spilling into the street along with the steady murmur of laughter and conversation. The livery on the footman at the door was immaculate, with gold trim and freshly polished buttons. The Bleichröders had money and wanted you to know it.
Inside, footmen relieved arriving guests of their cloaks and wraps. There were more of them than necessary, stationed at intervals like soldiers awaiting inspection. Flowers were everywhere. On the side tables, banked along the staircase, arranged in urns that were themselves arranged in pairs. Roses in April, which meant expense, which was the point.
At a large gilt-framed mirror, a couple and their daughter were admiring their reflection and picking at each other’s costumes. He wore the blue and gold dress uniform of Friedrich der Große — Frederick the Great, Prussia’s most celebrated king — rendered in such faithful detail that it might have come from a museum. Beside him, his wife stood dressed as Empress Sisi of Austria, the most beautiful woman in Europe and the most famously unhappy. The costume captured Sisi’s famous wasp waist and dark hair with uncanny accuracy. Their daughter stood slightly apart in pale green silk and golden hair unbound, trailing a small silver comb — the Lorelei, the Rhine maiden of German legend who sat upon her rock and combed her hair and lured sailors to their deaths without meaning to. The daughter looked the part and was sure to break many a man’s heart before the night ended.
Two officers in Prussian dress uniform stood near the staircase, apparently having decided that their uniforms would do for the occasion. They were not wrong. Imperial blue coats with gold epaulettes, high stiff collars, boots polished to a mirror shine, the Iron Cross displayed with the careful casualness of men who wanted it noticed but did not wish to appear to want it noticed. They watched the masked guests with the mild interest of people who considered themselves the most important people in the room, which in Berlin was not an unreasonable position.
Papa handed our card to the Haushofmeister, who announced us to no one in particular.
We joined the receiving line. Six couples ahead of us, moving at the pace of polite pleasantries. I watched our hosts, Herr and Frau Bleichröder, greet each guest with identical smiles of welcome. They had known most of these people for most of their lives, and would see them again next month at someone else’s ball. But tonight they acted as though each arrival were a surprise.
Papa had introduced Herr von Bleichröder to several men of influence during the last round of military contracts, the kind of introduction that cost nothing and was worth everything. It was the currency of a world that ran on relationships rather than receipts. Now Herr von Bleichröder threw this ball, which Papa attended, which maintained the connection that permitted more introductions, more contracts, more balls. A perfect circle that required constant motion, or else it collapsed.
The men in this room ran Berlin. No one had explained this to me. No one had to. I had spent eighteen years observing from the edges of rooms like this one, listening to conversations that were not meant for me, and drawing my own conclusions.
I knew enough to understand that Herr von Bleichröder’s bank financed the military contracts my father’s associates depended upon, and that those associates sat on boards of companies that benefited from those contracts. I had noticed that the same families appeared at every gathering. These families hunted together in autumn, took the waters together in summer, and required their sons and daughters to marry with a regularity that could not be coincidental.
Which was why I was here.
I was to find a husband among the sons of this circle. A young man I could tolerate, whose family’s interests would align with our family’s. A man I would have children with, who would marry the children of the other families here. These were transactions dressed as romance, alliances dressed as love, and arrangements so old and so complete that the people inside had long since stopped being able to see them clearly.
I could see the machine clearly enough. I could not yet see that escaping it would bring me more sorrow than I was prepared for and more joy than I had any right to expect.
The line moved forward.
As we reached our hosts, Herr von Bleichröder clasped Papa’s hand warmly.
“Knopf. Good of you to come.” Herr von Bleichröder was a substantial man with a long mustache and bushy sideburns. A pair of pince-nez perched on a strong nose, sharp eyes behind them that missed nothing. He looked the part of the powerful man he was in his black tailcoat, white tie, and white gloves. “You know my wife, of course.”
“Of course.” Papa bowed, taking Frau von Bleichröder’s hand, his lips grazing her glove. “Frau von Bleichröder. You look radiant this evening.”
When Papa released her hand, she looked down at me and took my hand in both of hers. She had the kind of face that made you feel, quite irrationally, that she had been hoping to see you. “And this must be your Emilie. What a delightful costume, my dear. Athena herself.” She leaned slightly closer. “I hope you will enjoy yourself tonight. We have some very interesting young people in attendance.”
“Danke, Frau von Bleichröder. You are most kind.”
“You must meet our son.” She turned slightly, drawing forward a young man who had been standing just behind her. “James. Come and meet Fräulein Knopf. She is just about your age.”
James von Bleichröder stepped forward. He was dark-haired, with his mother’s warm eyes set in a face that a painter would have found worth studying. I wanted to look at him longer. That was unexpected.
He took my hand, bowing slightly. “Fräulein Knopf.” His voice was low and unpretentious. “I hope the evening finds you well.” He held my gaze a moment longer than strict formality required. “I also hope, if you have room on your card, that I might be added to it.”
The dance card request made in the receiving line was slightly forward. Most young men waited until the dancing had begun. But it was done correctly, with a small smile that acknowledged the slight forwardness without apology. I did not mind it.
“I believe there’s room,” I said, and extended my wrist.
He took the card, producing his own small pencil. He was a young man who came prepared. He turned the holder in his fingers before removing the card, examining it with appreciation. It was a small silver case engraved with a pattern of Walderdbeeren, a gift from Papa on my sixteenth birthday.
“The design is lovely,” he said. “Though not as lovely as the wrist it’s attached to.”
Warmth rose in my face. I was glad of the mask.
He returned the card to the case with another small bow, and turned to Papa.
“Herr Knopf. A pleasure.”
Papa shook his hand. “Your father tells me you have developed quite an interest in painting.”
“He is correct to say so.”
“My daughter paints,” Papa said, surprising me.
“Is that so?” James’s eyes returned to me with fresh interest. “We will have to discuss that later.”
I noticed a slight recalibration in the quality of Papa’s smile. Was it recognition of this young man’s interest in me? He was not angry. Nothing so simple as that. More like a man discovering that his principles, as open-minded as they were, had boundaries he had not known existed.
He liked Herr von Bleichröder. He had said so in the carriage, and I believed him. But James, looking at his daughter as a potential suitor, that was another matter entirely.
Perhaps Papa was not quite as modern as he liked to imagine himself.
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