Pegasus: A Novel Read Online Free Page A

never wanted to see him or the child again. That had explained the
     absence of maternal grandparents in his life, which Nick had never questioned, and
     he had such a happy childhood that, although he missed having a mother, he had lacked
     for nothing and basked in his paternal grandparents’ attention when they were alive,
     and most of all his father’s, who could never do enough for his only son. Paul had
     never remarried, and Nick couldn’t help but wonder why now, since he hadn’t been mourning
     a child bride he had loved. Perhaps the circumstances had been so traumatic and distasteful,
     Nick imagined, that they had cured him forever of wanting to form a permanent attachment,
     although he knew his father had had several long relationshipsthat never led to marriage. He always said that the only family he needed or wanted
     was his son.
    “Now that I think about it,” Paul went on, “I vaguely recall hearing that she married
     a short time later. I think my father’s attorney knew that, after he handled the divorce.
     I was relieved for her. I remember my father saying something about it, but I didn’t
     pay attention. I had you, which was all I cared about by then. And if she did remarry,
     I’m sure she had other children. She was a lovely, healthy girl. But all I ever had
     or wanted is you.” He and Nick exchanged a serious look, and neither man spoke for
     some time.
    Nick was stunned by what his father had told him, and to realize that the father he
     had always believed would never lie, had told him nothing but lies about the circumstances
     surrounding his birth. It was a shock to learn that he had a mother somewhere who
     had probably sold him for a healthy sum. His father hadn’t mentioned money, but it
     was obvious that that would have been part of the arrangement, to induce her and her
     father to agree to their terms to divorce and give up the child.
    “What was her name?” Nick asked in a low voice, suddenly wondering what she looked
     like. There had never been any photographs or portraits of her anywhere, which his
     father had always said would have been too painful for him, and Nick had never questioned
     it for a moment, and respected his father’s feelings about his “tragic loss.”
    “Hedwig Schmidt.” Nick nodded as he felt the name carve itself into his brain. And
     then his father took a long breath and went on. “I am telling you this now because
     I had a visit two days ago from a man I haven’t seen in years. We were friends as
     young men. He went to live in Indonesia, and I haven’t seen him since. He’s a general
     of the Wehrmacht now, and he came to see me as a favor. I don’t knowwhere or how he got it, but he had the record of my marriage, and the divorce, and
     he knew about you. People tell things nowadays that they never did before. There is
     information flying through the air all over Germany, in this very ill wind that is
     blowing from Berlin.”
    Paul looked hard at his son. “My friend Heinrich von Messing tells me that your mother
     was half Jewish. I didn’t know it at the time, and it wouldn’t have mattered to me.
     The circumstance of who she was was enough to make our marriage unsuitable, by reason
     of her birth. Her parents were cousins of our tenants, and apparently, according to
     my friend, her mother’s family were Jews, which makes her half Jewish, and you a quarter
     Jewish, and your sons one-eighth. And according to Heinrich, being even part Jewish
     is very dangerous these days.
    “We’ve all been well aware of that for several years, since the Nuremberg Laws.” Jews
     had been defined as a separate race, and stripped of their citizenship. Since then,
     one hundred and twenty more laws had deprived them of further rights, and having any
     “non-Aryan” blood in one’s ancestry had become a very bad thing. Paul had never imagined
     that the plight of Jews in Germany had anything to do with them, and now it had everything
     to