Under the Moon Gate

by Marilyn Baron

  “It’s the story of a little boy in Dresden,” the man began. “Do you know Dresden, Patience? It’s a city in eastern Germany. Have you ever been there? Of course, you haven’t. Your grandfather would never have allowed that. Surely you’ve heard of it? Dresden was a beautiful city, one of the most beautiful in Europe, before the bombs destroyed it. But I’m jumping ahead of myself.

  “I was about seven then. Too young to go to war. Too young to see and suffer the scars of war when it came to our city. After the military academy, where my father studied engineering and was first in his class, he served on a battleship and then became a Kapitänleutnant in the Kriegsmarine, a loyal Nazi. Next, he worked in intelligence in the B-Dienst. He was a shining star, so full of promise, my mother said, that they sent him off on a secret assignment, which explained why he couldn’t visit us. But she promised me he would come back one day. She told me, ‘He will love you. You’ll see.’

  “My mother said I should be proud of my father. I should be proud of Kapitänleutnant Wilhelm von Hesselweiss. But how could I be proud of a man I had never met? Oh, I’d seen pictures. She kept his picture in a place of honor, on a lace doily on a small table in our apartment. But he never did come home. He never wanted my mother or me. He never wrote to her, never even tried to contact us.

  “I was a handsome boy, my mother said, just like my father. ‘You’re like an apple off the tree,’ she liked to tell me. ‘The image of your father.’

  “So why did the other boys make fun of me and call me the son of a whore? Why? Because my mother never married the handsome Kapitänleutnant. He slept with her, had his fun with her, but then he left her, alone, to raise a son alone in the misery of war. She was a good woman. She didn’t deserve to be treated the way he treated her.

  “My father was an important man, my mother told me. He was doing an important job in the war. He didn’t have time to worry about how we were faring. He was a wealthy man. I can see now how wealthy he was. So why were we starving? Because he didn’t provide for us. When my mother became pregnant, her parents forced her out of their home. So the young boy went to sleep each night with a hunger in his belly so great that he didn’t think he could survive until morning. And a craving for a father that was never satisfied.

  “Never once did my mother speak ill of him. She loved him until her dying day. She waited for him and he never came. His name was the last word she breathed. He was not worthy of her love, and yet, for some reason, she worshipped him.

  “My mother was just a statistic, one of the hundreds of thousands who lost their lives in the Allied bombing raids. The bombs that wouldn’t stop raining down their death and destruction. We were running, but there was no escape from the fire. We were separated by the crowd. My mother tried to hold on to me, but she had to let go of my hand. One minute she was there, the next she was on fire. And I had to watch. I remember wishing I had died with her.

  “Perhaps you’ve read about the firebombing of Dresden? It was worse, much worse, so much more painful than the newsreels and the history books paint it. You are a student of history, but nothing said about it is as bad as living through it.

  “Who cared anything for a lost, motherless little boy, evacuated and orphaned after the war? A boy who had to fight for every scrap of food, every worthless mark. Every kind word. It was an empty life.

  “You, on the other hand, were the pampered, spoiled little princess living in the big house on the beautiful island, with all the pretty colors. Not the drab life I was living. You were the little girl who wanted for nothing. Who worried about nothing. The little girl who had the love of both her grandparents. Yes, you see I know all about you.

  “My mother was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known,” said the intruder, his eyes assuming a faraway look. “She sacrificed everything for me, for my father. And he never cared. I spent the rest of my young years in the orphanage where I was sent. Can you imagine what that was like? I could not get out of East Germany after the war because of the Soviet occupation. And, foolishly, I thought the Iron Curtain was the reason my father couldn’t get to me. I was always waiting for him to come back. I thought he was struggling, all the time struggling, to find me. But even when it was possible to come, I waited, and still he didn’t try to find me, his own son. Finally, I gave up hope.

  “Eventually I did get out and began to track my father down. I followed the trail. It wasn’t easy. Wilhelm von Hesselweiss had disappeared off the face of the earth. He thought he could hide from me. But he wasn’t clever enough. He thought his new identity as William Whitestone was a secret. With the inadvertent help of an old friend of his, Karl Krauss, I discovered where he was. Karl was infatuated with my father too, couldn’t stop going on about him. And he had also been in love with my mother. He said he had been looking for me all through the war years and afterward, and had lost track of me. He had wanted to take care of me. But of course, it was too late. He finally told me the story of my father, and I convinced him it was time for a family reunion. He thought he was doing my father a favor.”

  The man rambled on, lost in his story. Patience knew she should try to sneak away, but her heart went out to the little boy who had so tragically lost his mother.

  “Are those tears I see in your eyes, Patience? Tears for your uncle?”

  Patience stuck out her lip. “My uncle?”

  “If William Whitestone was your grandfather, then yes, I’m your uncle.”

  Patience’s head was spinning. There was something about the story that was familiar. Dresden, 1934, the photograph of the boy and girl intertwined in the garden. “Emilie. Was your mother Emilie?”

  “You know of her?”

  “I saw her picture.”

  “A picture of my mother?”

  “Of Emilie. He didn’t forget. He saved her picture.”

  “That’s a lie. I don’t believe you. I didn’t believe him.

  “He tried to embrace me,” the man continued, adding sarcastically, “It was quite a touching father and son reunion. I thought he’d require proof. But when we finally came face to face, he couldn’t deny I was his son. ‘The resemblance is remarkable,’ he told me. I think I even detected some pride and remorse in his voice.”

  “‘You left her, left us, all those years,’ I accused him. ‘Not a word. She loved you. It killed her. She spoke of you often. Never a malicious word. She brought me up to love you. I wanted to love you. I tried to love you. But how could I love a father who left us behind, who abandoned us? In the end, I had nothing left but hatred for you.’

  “‘My son? Emilie’s son? I didn’t know.’ That’s what he told me.

  “‘You didn’t know?’ I said. ‘Am I supposed to believe you? Is that supposed to provide comfort? How many years have I waited for you to acknowledge me? I thought you would surely come home after my mother’s death to take care of things, to take care of me. You are so rich, so powerful. So important. My father. But you couldn’t spare even a handful of marks for your son, your lover. You should have married her. We had nothing, not even your name. You brought shame on her and on me. Living through the war. In poverty. Only the garden. She had the garden and her memories. She died with your name on her lips. I thought you’d want to know that.

  “‘Do you want to know my name?’ I asked him. ‘The name of your own son? It’s Friederich.’

  “He looked at me as if he wanted to speak, to form the words, but he said nothing. My father cried,” Friederich said. “He was bleeding, dying, from a knife wielded by his own son. A son he said he had never known about. If he had only known, he said, he would have gone back. Yes, he definitely would have gone back for his son. For Emilie. I didn’t believe him, of course. He was such a smooth liar.

  “He mumbled something about ‘All this time,’ about how he had been afraid for his family, looking over his shoulder, consumed by the fact that someone would be hunting him, and all this time he should have been taking care of his family in Germany.

 
“‘Patience and Diana are safe,’ he said to me. Then he crawled out through the garden, Diana’s garden, he called it. He went on and on about how beautiful she looked when he first laid eyes on her. And how beautiful she was on her wedding day when they stood hand in hand under the moon gate. All the time he was losing blood and losing consciousness.

  “At the end, he pleaded with me to save him so he could make it up to me, and finally, when he knew all hope was gone, he wanted me just to forgive him.”

  Patience did not believe her grandfather had begged for his life. Her grandfather was fearless.

  “Then I heard your car in the driveway,” Friederich continued. “I had to run, but first, he had to die. The knife wound was taking too long, so I shot him. I barely had time to escape when you came screaming down the steps. So, in the end, his thoughts were of you and of his wife, only of her. My mother meant nothing to him.”

  Patience tried to think back to the day her grandfather had died. “Sun, sun,” she thought he had said, but now she knew he must have meant “Son, son.” And she suddenly understood why her grandfather hadn’t tried to defend himself. Once he got over the shock of discovering he had a son, he never would have raised a hand against his own flesh and blood. She knew it with all her heart. Because that’s the kind of man her grandfather was.

  And when he had asked for forgiveness, he wasn’t seeking it from his wife or from his granddaughter but from Emilie and the son he never knew he had.

  “Auf wiedersehn, Liebchen.” He had gone back to his native tongue, to German, to say goodbye to his darling, his sweetheart, his one true love, Emilie. His last thought had been for her. Patience staggered back from the thought.

  “I can prove that he did think of her,” Patience managed through her grief. “He saved her picture. I can get it. It’s in the study.”

  “Do you think I’m a fool? You’re only stalling. You hope to call someone. But you won’t escape. You won’t get away.”

  “Were you so consumed by hatred for my grandfather and me that you never fell in love, found a wife, or raised a family of your own?” Patience wondered. “Did you waste your life?”

  She saw by his expression that he had.

  “I was alone. I am still alone.”

  “Then I am sorry for you.”

  “Love is not important to me,” Friederich insisted.

  “Love is everything,” Patience disagreed, challenging him in a voice that sounded more in control than she felt. “Your father loved your mother. Don’t you want to see the picture?”

  “Why not?” he said as if it meant nothing.

  Patience got off the bed and stopped at the closet.

  “I’m freezing,” Patience said, teeth chattering, thoroughly chilled from the bath water, the cold air, and the taste of fear. “I need a heavier robe.”

  He rustled through the clothes in her closet and pulled out a thick white terrycloth robe and tossed it to her. She slipped it over her sheer robe and tightened the belt, stuffing her hands in the pockets to seek additional warmth. She didn’t dare risk asking him for panties, but she felt naked and vulnerable with nothing under the robe. He yanked her by the arm and pulled her down the hall, her wet hair spraying droplets in a trail along the highly polished wooden floor, and into the study.

  “No, first, I want you to open the safe and empty the contents into this bag for me,” he said.

  “The safe is in the drawing room.” She led him to her grandmother’s portrait.

  “You’ll have to help me take the portrait down,” Patience said, staring up at her grandmother, looking for guidance.

  “You look just like her,” Friederich commented. “Isn’t that funny? And I look just like him. You have nothing of him in you.”

  She stuck out her chin defiantly. Despite what she had learned about him, she was still William Whitestone’s granddaughter.

  The man removed her grandmother’s picture from the wall, and Patience entered the combination, fumbling with the dial. Finally, the safe clicked open.

  “You can have it all, anything, if you’ll just go,” she pleaded, still shivering. “I won’t report this to the authorities.”

  “No, you won’t,” he agreed. “Unless you can communicate from the grave.”

  He handed her the bag, and she began stuffing jewelry, loose diamonds, and cash into it. There was an envelope, but when she tried to put it into the bag, he grabbed it out of her hand and threw it to the ground. He was only after valuables.

  She picked up the letter. She had never seen it before. It was addressed to her in her grandfather’s handwriting. It must have gotten stuck behind some of the jewelry boxes. She stuffed it into the pocket of her robe.

  When he was satisfied that she had retrieved all the contents of the safe, she zipped up the heavy bag and handed it to him.

  “That’s all of it.”

  “That’s a good start. But it’s just a down payment for all the years I suffered. Imagine, if you will, Patience, what your fancy friends would think if they knew your grandfather’s true identity. The true source of his wealth. Knew how, with his information and connections to the right people, I mean the wrong people, he was singlehandedly responsible for the deaths of—”

  Patience’s eyes blazed. “Stop. Don’t. Don’t take that away from him. My grandfather…your father…was a decent man.”

  “Decent? You know what he was, don’t you? And you’ll do anything, anything to keep the truth from getting out.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Everything you have, but it’s too dangerous. I can’t let you out to go to the bank. I can’t let you out of the house ever again. My father mentioned something about the gold before he died, and I saw the maps on your sea captain’s ship.”

  “What gold?”

  He backhanded her, and she winced from the pain of the slap. Blood leaked from her lip where he had broken the delicate skin.

  “I’ve been watching the house. I’ve watched your sea captain digging in the garden. I don’t think he was planting Easter lilies. It’s not the season.”

  “All right. The gold is there, under the moon gate.”

  “How much?”

  “We only just found it. I don’t know for sure. A lot, I think.”

  Friederich’s eyes sparkled. “All right, then, let’s go. You need to start digging.”

  “Nathaniel will be back soon,” Patience stalled.

  “When he returns, I’ll deal with him. In fact, you can both dig while I watch.”

  “If there’s as much gold as I think there is, it will take a long time to dig it up. How long do you think you can keep me prisoner here without people getting suspicious?”

  “As soon as you dig deep enough, I’ll bury your bodies and no one will be the wiser. I’ll be William’s relative from Switzerland. No one will question me. I look just like him. I’ll simply tell them that poor, bereaved little Patience was overcome with grief and she had to go away on a long trip to recover from the death of her grandparents. I’ll enjoy living in this house. Ironic, don’t you think? I’ll take out the gold at my leisure, sell off your things one by one. I’m entitled.”

  Patience could see the way things were. But she tried to stall the inevitable.

  “The picture. Didn’t you want to see the picture of Emilie? It’s in the study.” He jerked her back down the hall and into the study.

  “Where is it?” he asked impatiently as he dragged her along.

  Her hand paused on the doorknob, remembering the last time she had been in this room to put away the diary and slide the picture of her grandfather and Emilie inside the pages. She’d been avoiding this room as much as possible, and fear threatened to paralyze her as soon as she entered. She felt her grandfather’s powerful presence everywhere. She thought she could see traces of the pool of blood on the carpet, and the pounding in her head returned. She clutched her grandfather’s desk to hold herself upright. Friederich pushed her against the wood until she cried o
ut.

  Patience opened a drawer, shuffled through the diary, and found the picture. She could see her grandfather’s gun sitting in the drawer, gleaming, loaded, waiting, like a viper about to strike. Her grandfather had taught her well. She could shoot that gun in her sleep. She was an expert with a target. But could she shoot this flesh-and-blood man? Her own flesh and blood? The man who had her grandfather’s blood running through his veins? Even if she were successful, how would she explain it? Guns of any type were illegal in Bermuda. That didn’t stop a man like her grandfather from owning one.

  Her hand was shaking as she lifted the fragile picture and handed it to Friederich.

  “She must have been a remarkable woman to have attracted the attentions of your father,” Patience said graciously, and meant it.

  He seemed mesmerized by the image of his mother and father together.

  She’d only have a moment. A moment when he was stunned, focused only on the photo. Conquer your fears, Patience. She could almost hear her grandfather’s voice calling out to her, trying to protect her, even from his grave.

  “So schön, nicht war?” Friederich said to himself, tears sparkling in his eyes as he lapsed into German. “Meine Mutter. So beautiful.” He stroked the face on the picture.

  “Look how they loved each other,” Patience urged. She felt dishonest for encouraging him and, at the same time, a sense of betrayal to her grandmother, because she knew it was true.

  Then his countenance turned dark again. “That’s not love. That’s lust in his eyes. Can’t you see it? He used her and threw her away when he was finished with her.”

  “No,” Patience said, tears slipping down her face. “My grandfather was not like that. He would never have done that. He was a decent man. He would have come back for you, if he had known.”

  Angered, Friederich grabbed Patience by one arm while he turned to throw the picture on the desk. As she saw her last chance slipping away, she managed to snatch the gun and shove it into the deep pocket of her robe.

  In the kitchen, the buzzer rang insistently, a jarring sound that clashed with the music still playing on the radio. The roast was done. Her first meal. Possibly her last.