He reaches across her and unlatches the glove compartment. “Mind if I smoke?”
“Suit yourself.” She rolls down the window a pair of inches and thinks, I’ll probably have to kill him. Kill him and steal the envelope and disappear somewhere, start a new life in Canada or Mexico or Australia, all by myself, assumed name, the works. Maybe they’ll write a book about me one day. Pepper: She Really Was That Bad.
All right. Not kill him. She’s not really that bad. But knock him out. How? Well, somehow. Knock him out and steal the envelope and . . .
But they probably have copies somewhere, don’t they? This is not a family that leaves things to chance. This is a family that lays it plans with care.
Damn it. Damn it all. She’s stuck.
She’ll think of something.
She’s stuck.
Breathe, Pepper. The baby needs oxygen. You’ll think of something. You always do.
You’re stuck.
He fumbles with the cigarettes. The buildings thin out, the turn in the highway approaches. Somehow he juggles it all: cigarettes, lighter, turn. Pepper puts her hand on the door handle and braces her feet against the floorboards. He’s taking it a little fast, isn’t he? But the blue Lincoln can handle it.
They straighten out, and a black shape appears before them, stopped in the road: a beautiful swooping Mercedes-Benz Special Roadster, stretched out like a shiny black panther, and a woman slamming the door and turning to face them, arms crossed, eyes fierce.
“Stop!” shouts Pepper, and he looks up from his cigarette and slams the brakes.
Annabelle
GERMANY • 1938
1.
The house was dark, except for Wilhelmine’s feeble flashlight jiggling ahead. My eyes picked out the familiar details: the newel post at the bottom of the stairs, shaped like a pineapple; the worn oriental rug; the elegantly cluttered mantel of the parlor fireplace, as we flashed past the doorway. She led us downstairs to the basement. A child’s whimper floated upward. Stefan pushed past us both and vaulted down the rest of the stairs. When I turned the corner, he was holding Else up to his chest. She was fully dressed in a thick wool cardigan and plaid skirt. His face was buried in her dark hair.
“Else!” cried Florian, and I shushed him, but Else was already wriggling out of her father’s grasp, as Florian struggled from mine.
“They played together so happily when I was staying here,” I whispered to Stefan.
“Thank God,” he said, and his voice was like the crunch of fine gravel. He turned to Wilhelmine. “Where is Matthias?”
“He is upstairs, closing all the shutters. Henrik is asleep.”
“Get him. Get him dressed. You’ve got to come with us, the both of you.”
“But Matthias—”
“Damn Matthias! He is an idiot. There is a mob three streets away. Do you hear me? A mob. They are smashing windows and taking people from their homes.” He spoke in English, crisp and raging.
Wilhelmine’s mouth parted.
“Go!” thundered Stefan, and she turned and raced up the stairs.
“This is unreal,” I said. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
He was pacing along the wall, running a hand through his dark hair. “It is perfectly real. It is exactly what I have been saying for five fucking years. God damn it!” he shouted, and turned to drive his fist against the wall.
Else and Florian stopped playing and stared at him. The light from the single bare bulb cast a harsh shadow along the side of his face, making him look a little mad. “Stefan, the children,” I whispered.
He lifted his eyes to me. “I need a gun. I need a gun to protect us, I need two or three. And do you think the civilized Matthias has a single gun in his civilized house? Of course not. We are left to defend ourselves with our bare hands. Because right is on our side. We can put that on our tombstones, eh? Right was on our side. How—what is the English word?—how very poignant.”
The sound of urgent voices drifted down the stairs, arguing in German. The soft wail of Henrik, awake now.
“Stefan, please.” I knelt down and gathered the children against my legs. “It will be all right. We’ll drive all night if we have to.”
“And how are we going to get across the border, hmm? We will have to swim down the Rhine.”
“I’m an American. We can go to the consulate.”
“But I am a fugitive, remember? There is nothing your Roosevelt can do for me, even if he wanted to.”
The voices were getting louder, strong and male. Stefan and I locked eyes and realized, at the same precise and horrified instant, that the sound came not from Matthias and Wilhelmine, arguing about whether to flee their home or to ride out the storm, but from outside the house. From the street outside the window.
“Stay here,” Stefan said.
“Don’t go up!”
Booted footsteps thundered up the front steps, just above our heads. An instant later came the crash of fists against the door, the shouted demand: Öffnen!
Stefan reached for the chain dangling from the light socket and turned off the bulb. Else cried out. “Shh,” he said, and in the faint light from the stairs he bent down and kissed her head and then Florian’s. “Stay here with your mother,” he said in German. “I will be right back.”
A crash, as the door came open. A flurry of shouts. Wilhelmine screaming.
Stefan was heading for the stairs. I grabbed his arm. “Don’t go up there!”
“Just stay here, all right? Listen to me. If they come down to search, if you hear them coming down, you take that back door into the garden. There is a hidden gate at the end, behind the shed. Do you know it?”
“Yes.”
“Take the children out that way. Find a house somewhere, somewhere to spend the night, and then go to the consulate.”
“Not without you!”
He gripped my shoulders with his hands, strong enough that the tears started in my eyes. “Take the children! Please, Annabelle. They are all there is left.”
His face was lurid and anguished. The sound of his whisper was so hoarse, I could hardly understand him.
“I can’t leave you here,” I said.
“I’ll find you. I swear to God I will find you.” He leaned forward and kissed me hard, so I knew without doubt he was lying, that there was no chance I would see him again in this life, and then he ran up the stairs and into the light, and closed the door behind him.
2.
“All right, children,” I whispered in German, because Else’s English was not very good. “We are going on a little adventure. We are going to sneak out through the garden and play hide-and-seek with the rest of the grown-ups.”
My voice was shaking, my hands were cold. I couldn’t see them, because Stefan had closed off the door at the top of the basement stairs, leaving us in a thorough darkness that was both velvety and ominous, a black paradox. I found their woolen shoulders, their silken heads, and herded them to the back of the basement. From upstairs came shouting. Wilhelmine screamed.
“Mama!” said Else, breaking free.
“No, darling!”
Shuffling, pounding. A gun fired, a crack of manufactured thunder unlike any sound I’d ever heard, and then the authoritative thump of a human body falling against a wooden floor.
No. Please. Not this.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee . . .
“Else, come here.” I scrambled after her.
Someone wailed, a voice that was neither male nor female, rising up above the scuffle and the pounding.
. . . Blessed art thou among women . . .
Another shot, rattling the floorboards above us.
. . . and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus . . . Please, please, God, no, not this . . .
My hands found the shoulder of E
lse’s woolen sweater. I dragged her from the bottom of the stairs.
. . . Holy Mary, mother of God . . .
Crack. Crack.
. . . pray for us sinners . . .
Crack.
. . . now and in the hour of our death . . .
I hauled Else back across the basement floor, kicking and wailing. I held my hand over her mouth, trying to stifle her agony so they wouldn’t hear us. Wouldn’t come downstairs and find the children, too.
Crack. Crack. Crack. Now I felt the sound, rather than heard it. My ears had gone as numb as my fingers.
Hail Mary, full of grace . . .
Florian flung himself against my leg as I reached the back of the basement. I fumbled for the doorknob, but my hands were so numb, and I couldn’t see.
. . . full of grace . . .
The door, the door. Smooth brass. The knob. Turn.
. . . pray for us sinners . . .
Crack.
A rush of cold, clear air. Shouts drifting out from the upstairs window. Set down Else, grab her hand, grab Florian’s hand.
. . . pray for us sinners . . .
Running across the damp grass, fighting the moonlight, Else sobbing. The garden wall. Where is the gate? To the right, the right. Lift the latch.
. . . pray for us sinners . . .
Push the children through the gateway, into the empty alley behind the house. Running down the pavement. Which house? The friend, the children we played with that hot August day, which house? Turn the corner. Smell the smoke. Shouting.
A group of men. Uniforms. My God. Stop. Go back.
I turned, saw more soldiers, turned back to the first group, which had rattled to a halt next to a streetlamp, five or six yards away.
Nowhere to go. I clutched the children to my skirt. “Mama?” said Florian, like a question.
Somewhere in the middle of that throng, a figure staggered downward, was hauled up again by a pair of soldiers, flailed, shouted my name.
“Stefan!” I gasped.
A man at the front of the pack stepped forward, immense and dark-coated, into the light from the streetlamp. Beneath the brim of his cap, his eyes were such a pale shade of blue, they were almost white, and I gasped in recognition.
“Frau Silverman,” he said, “you must come with me.”
Pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of our death.
Amen.
3.
The butt of a rifle guided me into the back of the truck. I gripped the children’s hands and helped them up and inside, onto the benches lining the sides. Stefan was thrown in right behind us. I tried to lunge toward him, but a pair of arms jerked me back. In the next instant, something warm and wriggling shoved up against my chest in a shriek of outrage: Henrik. I hadn’t even heard him.
The gears ground, the truck lurched forward. There was now no sign of Johann. Perhaps he was riding up front. I was too sick to feel anger, too desperate to keep the children steady on the bench as we bounced down the road. Too drenched in relief and fear at the sight of Stefan, slumped on the opposite side, his feet a few inches from my feet, prodded upright from time to time by a rifle.
It will be all right, I thought. We will find a way out of this.
I thought, He’s alive. Stefan’s alive. We will live.
In a day, in a week, in a month, we will be safe and free, we will be sailing through an empty blue ocean in the Isolde, pointing out the dolphins to the children, making love all night in the wide white bed in Stefan’s stateroom.
I closed my eyes and whispered in English: “Are you hurt?”
“A little.”
I laid a hand over Florian’s ear. “Where is Wilhelmine?”
“Dead, my heart. They are both dead.”
The children grew magically quiet in the rhythmic bounce of the back of the truck. I wedged the four of us into a corner, to give my arms a rest, inhaling the sweat of the soldiers and the dirty mildew of the canvas top. I thought, I hope it was quick. Dear Wilma. I hope it was quick. Please, God.
Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee.
Was that right? But it was the only prayer I could think of.
Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
I said aloud: “I’m sorry.”
“The fault is mine, Annabelle. They were looking for me.”
“It’s not your fault. It’s their fault. It’s Johann’s fault.”
Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of our death.
I asked, “Did Johann kill them himself?”
“No. He came at the end. To make sure they took me alive.”
The truck squealed to a halt, and then made a sharp turn to the left. Henrik nearly fell from my arms. Henrik, the orphan baby Jew, motherless and fatherless. He began to cry again, and I cradled him up against my shoulder and hushed him softly.
Amen.
4.
The children slept, as children will. The air inside the back of the truck grew humid and stank with human occupation. I nearly fell asleep, too—my brain was so stunned—but I kept awake by pinching myself and by staring at Stefan’s shadow a few feet away. Sometimes a little light came through the canvas, and I saw there was a stain of blood on the shoulder of his jacket, but I didn’t know if it belonged to him or to someone else. It was a large stain, and very dark, almost black.
I didn’t count the hours. How could I? But the night went on forever anyway. We had arrived in Stuttgart sometime after three, and spent no more than twenty minutes inside the Himmelfarbs’ house. Let us say it was four o’clock when we left. Shouldn’t the sun have risen by now? Yet the canvas remained black, the interior of the truck filled only with shadows, the suggestions of men. No one spoke. Just grunts and shuffles, the occasional broken wind. I couldn’t even see what uniforms they wore. Which particular tentacle of Germany’s monster had snatched us.
The truck lurched and then staggered to a stop, in a series of squeals from the naked brakes. Stefan straightened, slumped, and straightened again. I brought the children close. Henrik was damply asleep against my shoulder; Else’s head lay on my lap. Every muscle ached. I couldn’t feel my arms, because of the pressure on the various nerves. My shoes hurt my feet, too tight and too hot.
Could I move, if I had to?
Florian stirred against my ribs.
A metallic bang, and the back of the truck opened up to reveal a forest clearing, trimmed faintly in the pink of a rising dawn. A white young face appeared in the gap.
Aussteigen! he shouted.
Out we stumbled from the back of the truck, blinking and bleary in the gray-pink light. Else ran to Stefan and clutched his leg, and he tried to kneel and comfort her, but the guard wouldn’t let him. So she went on clinging and sobbing, Papa, what’s happening? Papa!, while his large hand cupped the side of her head. The guard turned to me and motioned angrily. I shrugged and gave him a helpless look. I was carrying Henrik in one arm and holding Florian’s hand with the other. The guard’s face compressed with anger, but he let Else stay.
I came up to Stefan and breathed in the sticky scent of his neck. “Where is Johann?” I whispered in English.
“I don’t know. Not in the truck.”
Ruhig! said the guard.
I thought, If I can just speak to Johann. If I can just reason with him.
But I knew, even as I hoped, that this was impossible. That I never would have stood a chance: Annabelle against Johann’s rigid professional duty. I never had. Not even when we were living as man and wife.
So when he appeared through the rose-colored mist, dressed in full uniform, flanked by a lanky adjutant, even more giant than I recalled, I looked into his pale heavy face and my lips moved in prayer.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Johann stopped and took us in, the five of us, Stefan and me and the three children who clung to us.
“Papa?” said Florian, and I tightened my hand around his, and for some reason, perhaps Johann’s splendid uniform, perhaps the faintness of the early light or the stern lines of Johann’s face, my son stayed right where he was, next to my leg.
Johann’s gaze flicked down to Florian, but I saw not the slightest softening of his stiff expression. He turned to the adjutant and muttered an order, and the adjutant turned to the guards and barked in a high and crackling voice, the German words so shrill that I had to pick through them one by one to understand.
By then, the men were already scrambling to obey. One of the guards took Florian by the arm and yanked him ahead, while another prodded his rifle into the small of my back. We stumbled forward. Johann turned smartly and led the way; the adjutant stayed behind with the truck and the other guards. Stefan walked a pace or two ahead of me, limping a little, holding Else’s hand. Her ribbon had come loose, and her dark hair spilled about her shoulders. She clung to Stefan’s hand with both of hers.
“Johann, please,” I called. “The children. For God’s sake. Have mercy.”
But Johann’s massive legs marched on, his field-gray shoulders remained square and polished in the soft dawn. To the right, I spied the familiar lines of the black Mercedes, parked in the mist at the edge of the clearing. The sight made my stomach contract. Henrik’s heavy body slipped downward on my hip. “Please, slow down,” I said, and Johann stopped and, without even turning, pointed to the car and ordered the guard at my back to put the woman and the children inside.
“No!” I shouted, but I couldn’t fight the guard, not when Florian hung from one arm and Henrik lay heavily on my hip. And then I thought, Yes, why not, put the children in the car where they will be safe. Where they won’t see what happens. The guard jerked the door open and pushed the small of my back. Florian crawled onto the seat and found the steering wheel. I set Henrik down with my shaking hands and turned for Else.
Along the Infinite Sea Page 38
