by Andy Andrews
Helen leaned forward in her chair. “Who is Tatiana?”
Josef answered politely, but deliberately: “Tatiana is my wife.”
“Rosa?”
“My daughter.” Josef watched Helen carefully. He had seen her blink at the acknowledgment of his wife and child. Some of the venom had disappeared from her eyes. Now Josef asked a question: “May I ask how you know their names?”
Helen didn’t answer at first. She was trying to regain the aggressive posture she’d felt slip at the mention of Josef’s family. For some reason, it seemed beyond comprehension that this monster might have a connection to people who valued him, who loved him. “I knew their names,” Helen began slowly, “because you have talked to them for two days. You have called out those names again and again.”
Josef dropped his head and stared at his hands. After a bit, Helen rose and went into the kitchen. When she returned, she dropped Josef’s submariner’s pack into his lap. “This was in your pocket,” she said without sympathy, but also without the anger that had been there moments before. “Nice picture of you in there, I suppose, and I don’t care for the one with Adolf at all, but in light of what you just told me, I am assuming the third photograph is of you, Tatiana, and Rosa.”
Josef nodded as he opened the pack and removed the family picture. Blinking back tears, he confirmed Helen’s assumption and remarked, “When it was not in my uniform, I took for granted that it had been lost in the water.” He added, “I don’t mind that you went through it.”
Helen cocked her head. “You don’t mind? That’s big of you.”
Josef smiled shyly. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he said.
Helen almost smiled in return. “I know.” She took a deep breath. “We have to change the dressing on your shoulder. Do you have the energy to get up?”
“No, but I will do it if you tell me to.”
Helen raised her eyebrows. “Really? You will do whatever I tell you?”
Josef hesitated, then answered affirmatively, but with a slight question in his voice: “Yes?”
Helen motioned with her hand. “Then do it.” She didn’t help him as he struggled to his feet, but when he finally stood, she gestured to the bathroom. “Go in and take your shirt off.”
Helen stepped to retrieve a clean cloth from the kitchen, but turned around when she realized he had not moved. He was pale, she saw. “Are you sick?”
“No . . . I . . .”
Helen furrowed her brow. “What?”
Josef indicated the bathroom, and Helen understood then that he was not sick, but embarrassed. He spoke barely above a whisper: “You want me to go into your private area . . . with you?”
Helen shook her head and smiled in disbelief. “You’re married? My God—a half-drowned, shot-up Nazi who is a prude. You are something else.” She pointed. “Go. These aren’t the Middle Ages, Adolf.”
HELEN READ AS JOSEF SLEPT THROUGH THE DAY ON THE COUCH. Redressing the wounds had drained him, and this was the first time Helen had seen him sleep peacefully. She was exhausted, too, though not in the same way. Fear had done Helen in.
She had spent both nights locked in her bedroom, awake, listening to the ravings of a madman, terrified that he might suddenly beat down the door and strangle her. She was mortified that she had not immediately turned him in, was incredulous that she had not, and was now beyond any idea of what to do besides kick him out. Then, there was the offhand possibility that the army might suddenly appear, surround her cottage, and shoot them both.
I could kick him out, Helen thought as she watched Josef snore softly, but when he is caught—and he will be caught—the trail will lead right back to me. Who cleaned your wounds? Who fed you? Who gave you shelter? Me, me, me. In the absence of any concept of what to do or which way to turn, Helen made the de facto decision to do nothing.
Earlier in the day, as she worked on his shoulder, Josef had asked her name. After only a brief hesitation, she obliged him and gave it. In for a nickel, in for a dime, she had grimaced later, thinking it was becoming less and less likely she would be able to extricate herself from this incredible mess.
Helen opened her eyes. It was almost dark in the living room, and she realized with a touch of panic that she had fallen asleep. The book was on her chest. She looked across it to see Josef still lying prone, but awake and watching her. She coughed and straightened, unsure about whether she should blush or scream.
“You were very tired,” Josef said. “I thought it best to let you sleep.”
“At least you didn’t crawl over here and cut my throat,” Helen said. “That’s something, right?”
Josef frowned. “May I say something?” he asked.
“Certainly,” Helen answered, placing her book on the floor beside her and folding her hands in her lap. “After all, it is a free country, and although I am sure you have never experienced anything like it, while you are a guest of sorts here in America, you might as well take advantage of our customs.”
Josef shook his head and sighed. “That is exactly what I wish to comment on.”
“What? A free country? You know, if you would—”
“Excuse me,” Josef interrupted. Helen’s mouth closed. “What I wish to say is this: I appreciate your help. Your actions have been very kind. Your sarcasm, however, is beginning to offend me.” Helen angrily sucked in a breath and was about to fire back, but stopped as Josef held up his hand.
“Wait!” he said. “Let me talk for only a brief moment. Then, if you wish, I will go.” He paused to begin again in a calmer voice. “What I mean for you to hear is this: I have no intentions of cutting anyone’s throat, I am not a Nazi, and I don’t appreciate being called ‘Adolf.’ I despise the man. I do not understand why I am here, in this country . . . a country that, by the way, I have always admired. It was nothing I planned or anticipated, and I am sincerely sorry for my intrusion into your life.
“If you wish, I will obediently leave and never acknowledge your help. But if I am to stay . . . that is, if you allow me continued refuge until I heal, I humbly request that you refrain from comments about my dark intentions. I have none. I am not a professional military man, despite what my uniform and circumstances would have you believe. I am a high school history teacher, who wanted only to raise a child with my wife.
“I did not choose to fight for my country. And never wanted to fight yours. I was forced to do so. God forbid that you and your countrymen should ever be placed in the position to do the bidding of a madman.” Josef relaxed his posture. “Once more, I thank you. Now, do you wish me to leave?”
Helen looked evenly at the man before her but said nothing. She knew she had no intention of throwing him out, yet she was reluctant to let him know that. “You may stay for the time being,” she said slowly. “I will avoid commentary, as you have requested, but I still have questions . . . As for your remark about my country doing the bidding of someone like Hitler . . . don’t worry about us. It could never happen here.”
Josef nodded, but couldn’t resist a response. “As I said, ‘God forbid,’ however, as history tells us: He sometimes does not. In other words, with all due respect . . . don’t be so sure.”
A WEEK PASSED. JOSEF’S SHOULDER WAS HEALING, AND THOUGH the pain and stiffness had not abated to any great degree, he sensed progress. The wound on his leg, while sore, now amounted to nothing more than a long scab. Even his facial cuts and bruises were clearing.
Helen, Josef worried, had abandoned her social life since he had arrived. It was apparent to him, he said one day, that she did nothing beyond the café and home. He urged her to be careful not to alert anyone else to her change of schedule. She had laughed and told him that she had no social life to abandon, a statement Josef accepted, but found hard to believe.
After all, she was beautiful, Josef admitted to himself, even if she had been frustratingly rude, mean, and generally difficult to like. Over the past few days, however, even that had changed a bit. Helen no longer snarled
at him with every sentence, and they had begun to have tentative conversations about their lives, nothing serious, but cordial. Helen’s questions no longer came wrapped in an accusatory tone, and for that, Josef was grateful.
So far, he had not left the house. He still wore his uniform—Helen washed it every other day—but he removed the ribbon and U-boat badge, placing it in a buttoned pocket with his Iron Cross and ring. Helen asked to see the items one day, and he let her. “What does this say?” she asked, pointing to the script that wrapped around the ring. They sat, drinking tea, at the kitchen table.
“We sail against England,” he said. “The ring was a gift from my best friend, my commander, Hans Kuhlmann, when I came aboard his boat.” As Joseph talked, Helen traced the letters with a fingernail. “We grew up together, Hans and I. He is a good man. Hans loves the Kriegsmarine—navy to you—and is about the business for which he was born, but shares my dislike of Hitler and his so-called High Command.”
Josef reached for the ring. Holding it aloft, he said, “We sail against England,” and shook his head sadly. “How stupid.” He dropped the ring back into his pocket and buttoned it up. “Especially stupid for me . . . I was at Oxford for four years and love everything about the country . . .” Josef grinned suddenly and straightened his back, affecting a haughty expression and then, in a perfect British accent, said, “Love it, I do. Smashing place, what? Fish, chips, Big Ben . . . bloody foggy on occasion, but then, so’s my disposition . . . all in all, lovely country.”
Helen’s eyes opened wide. “Wow!” she exclaimed and genuinely laughed. “That was incredible! How do you do that?”
Josef smiled. “No great talent, really. I’ve always been able to imitate dialects, sounds, whatever . . .” He shrugged. “If I can hear it, I can do it. Not a useful skill, but it entertained my classmates.”
They sat quietly for a while, and for the first time, Josef felt completely at ease with Helen. He had already heard the story of how she came to own this cottage in the middle of nowhere, and although Helen refused to talk about her husband, she seemed fairly forthcoming about other aspects of her life there along the Gulf coast. Josef noticed, however, that despite Helen’s ability to be polite when she needed to be and present an occasional smile, there was an anger that bubbled just below her calm demeanor.
Absently Josef flipped through several magazines that were in a small wooden rack beside the table. “Does your government require all publications in America to display your flag on the front cover?”
“What?” Helen scrunched up her face in a puzzled expression, then understood. “Oh, I see what you’re asking,” she said. “No. No one has required them to do it. They just did. See?” Helen reached across Josef and drew several magazines from the holder and scattered them about the tabletop. Josef saw Newsweek, Good Housekeeping, Ladies’ Home Journal, Glamour, and Vogue. Each cover featured a flag in a scene or standing alone. Josef also noticed the motto “United We Stand” on every one.
“It’s July,” Helen explained. “This is our country’s birthday month, and obviously we are at war . . . anyway, every magazine, comic book, and periodical in the country—more than five hundred of them—made the flag their cover.”
“Really?”
“Yep.” Helen dug out a few more. “See? Every magazine in America—July 1942—has a flag . . . from Time to Popular Mechanics to Life and Field and Stream. They all did it.”
“Incredible,” Josef murmured.
“It is, isn’t it?” Helen affirmed, a hint of pride in her voice. She allowed Josef time to glance through the covers, then spoke, “I want to ask you about something you said the other day.”
“Certainly.” Josef put down the magazines and focused on Helen.
“You said, ‘God forbid that we—our country—should ever be forced to do the bidding of a madman.’ I said it would never happen here, and you responded with words to the effect of, ‘Don’t bet on it.’ I don’t get the idea you were being a wise guy. I think you were being serious.” Helen left the statement as a query, hanging in the air.
“Indeed I was,” Josef confirmed and, seizing upon Helen’s questioning expression as permission to continue, did so. “History tells us that a democracy is always temporary in nature. It simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. My country is a classic example. And as a humble, but sincere student of history, I sorrowfully expect your country to one day follow suit.”
“Oh, come on,” Helen scoffed good-naturedly. To her, it was a statement of such impossibility that it didn’t even provoke serious scorn.
Josef shrugged. “This is not my idea, Helen. And it is not a new one. In 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, noticed a continuing pattern in the advance and decline of the world’s democracies.
“He stated then that a democracy would continue to exist until such time that the voters discover that they can literally vote themselves gifts from the public treasury. From the moment that revelation is made, the majority proceeds to vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury. The final result is that every democracy finally collapses due to loose fiscal policy. That collapse is always followed by a dictatorship.
“Tyler charted the ages of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history . . . an average existence of about two hundred years. Every single time, these nations progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; and finally from dependence back into bondage.”
Josef ended and gestured with his hands as if to say, there you are, then added, “Of course, as I said before: God forbid.” Helen simply nodded.
CHAPTER 11
“DO YOU WANT TO WALK ON THE BEACH?”
Josef turned from the window to face Helen, who had asked the question. “May I?” he responded.
“Josef,” she said, “you’re not a prisoner. Not that I really know what you are.”
It was the second week in August, and Josef was becoming restless. The wounds on his shoulder, front and back, were covered with new, pink skin, but the muscle was still weak. Most of the time, he carried his right arm in a sling, more from weariness than pain. He ventured out of the cottage often while Helen was in town, though never farther than the immediate area around her home. Josef had found an old rake in the tool shed under the house and, as best he could with one good arm, cleaned pine straw and brush from the sandy “yard.”
“If you want, I’ll walk with you. We won’t see a soul.” Helen pooched out her lips and looked thoughtful. “Still,” she said with a point of her finger, “you can’t wear that. Even without the medals, it looks like a uniform . . . the wrong uniform. And if we should happen across someone . . . well, your silver buttons give it away.”
She went to the closet in the bedroom and pulled a green canvas bag from its corner. Josef stood at the bedroom door and saw Helen hesitate before opening it. “Do you need help?” he asked.
Helen, on her knees, merely held out her open palm toward him. Be quiet? Go away? What does she want me to do? Josef wondered. Then he noticed her tears and retreated into the living room where he sat down and waited.
Soon, Helen emerged from the bedroom. With red eyes and a sniffle, she placed a pair of pants and a shirt on Josef’s lap. “They were my husband’s,” she said. “He didn’t wear them much . . . and I’m tired of washing your clothes anyway. There’s a whole bag of stuff here. Go through it. Leave his uniform.”
Josef hesitated, then asked, “Are you certain you don’t mind?”
“No,” she replied, striking a somewhat defiant pose, “I am not certain I don’t mind. But do it anyway. My husband wouldn’t mind.” She shook her head. “That was him . . . Captain Mason . . . always wanting to help. He wouldn’t have even been overseas, but he vo
lunteered. Volunteered! Went over to help train British pilots . . .” She shook her head again, a bit more angrily this time. Gesturing to the canvas bag, she indicated her speech was over. “So go through it . . . whatever you need.”
Twenty minutes later, the German sailor and the American widow walked the beach, not exactly together, but at the same time. Not yet truly friends, at least they were no longer enemies. Helen had settled in her mind Josef’s “difference in a German and a Nazi” and was convinced that he hated Hitler as much as any American. In addition, she had come to believe that Josef was a good man. She marveled at his calm and was impressed by his intelligence and his wisdom.
Each, however frequently they talked (and after all, there was little else to do), had kept much of himself or herself from the other. Despite being free to express an opinion openly for the first time in years, Josef still kept his innermost feelings to himself. He answered candidly when questioned, but offered little.
Helen, for her part, could not escape the sensations of fear and occasional anger that ruled her life. She still felt somewhat guilty about keeping Josef’s presence a secret. And even though she had begun to feel comfortable—and strangely comforted—around Josef, her personal history subconsciously cautioned her that he would soon be gone.
Though neither acknowledged the inability to open those final doors to the other’s deepest thoughts, the way they communicated displayed proof that this was so. One might say, “May I ask you a question?” instead of just asking it. Or, “If you don’t mind my being honest . . .” with a pause, as if somehow one’s honesty might not be welcomed or accepted by the other.
For more than an hour, Helen and Josef walked along the shore to the west. Helen pointed out the place she had found him almost a month before. Having grown tired, Josef asked to sit and rest for a bit, and as they did, a final wall between them came tumbling down.
They sat on a dune, silent for a time, each lost in thought. The smell of salt was thick in the warm breeze. Helen was to Josef’s right, several feet away, absently drawing in the sand with her foot and keeping an eye on Josef, who seemed to be watching the horizon.
