She poured herself a cup of water and finished it in seconds. She put the cup back down and placed a kitchen knife in her pocket. The door to the bedroom she’d slept in last night was ajar, the bed stripped, the covers stacked at the end in a neat pile. The bed represented an impossible luxury, everything she could possibly have wanted in that moment. She knew what her resting would mean for the man in the snow. She closed the bedroom door and walked out the back and into the night once more. The firewood she’d gathered the week before sat untouched, speckled with a light coating of snow blown under the awning that protected it. She eyed the sled she’d used to drag the logs back from the forest. It was sturdy, well able to take his weight. She dragged it around the side of the house before going inside again.
The cuckoo clock on the wall struck 5:00 a.m. The two-inch-high figurine of a man emerged and struck the bell five times with a hammer. Fredi, her brother, had loved that clock. The joy that stupid clock gave him had been the only thing that had stopped her from smashing it. Everything he’d loved, anything he’d touched, was pure gold now.
“Fredi,” she said as the man disappeared back inside the clock. “You see what I’m doing, don’t you? I need you with me. I need to feel you with me. I can’t do this without you.”
She hadn’t said his name aloud in months, hadn’t allowed herself to. It had been too much. It was best to forget—to ignore the past in order to control the agony. But she needed him now, needed to feel love again. She tried to remember the love she’d felt, tried to draw it from deep within her like precious water is drawn from a desert well. She balled her hand into a fist, took a heavy breath, and opened the front door.
The wind was gone. The air was as still as death itself. She grasped the cord attached to the front of the sled and set out across the snow. Her footprints were still visible and would remain that way until the next snow came. Anyone would be able to follow her. The blanket of night would hide them for another couple of hours, but after that they’d be visible to anyone out for a morning stroll. How would she explain hauling a prostrate Luftwaffe airman through the snow on a sled? She’d think of those lies if she needed to. For now, the only thing that mattered was putting one foot in front of the other.
The fear that he would be dead haunted her for the entire journey back. What if the Gestapo had been tracking him? What if they’d seen his parachute and hadn’t had the chance to capture him during the storm? Surely they’d be on their way up to the field now. Savage memories came to her of interrogations, of jail cells, of the cold gray eyes of the Gestapo man who had questioned her. Relief only came as she sighted the field. The pressing matter of evading detection drowned out her thoughts.
The field was empty, as she’d left it. She listened. No sound. The silence of the night had a story to tell. The trees were still, the snow dense and heavy. She waited two minutes but then realized she was wasting time. No one had seen him, but someone would unless she acted soon. She peered around the tree she was hiding behind and made her way across the field toward the snow cave. Seeing that the entrance was only a few inches wide now, she knelt and cleared it out. The man was still lying on the sleeping bag she’d taken from his backpack, his chest still moving with his breathing. He was still unconscious.
“Hello?” she said. “Are you awake, sir? Can you hear me?”
Her voice seemed to echo through the vacuum of night. The man didn’t stir. She reached down and poked his shoulder—still nothing. The sun would be up soon. It had to happen now. She took the nylon strands of the parachute and pulled until they were taut against his weight, then dug her feet into the snow and heaved. The man’s body inched up the ramp and out of the snow cave. She collapsed, gasping beside him, her heart pounding. He was out. Now all she had to do was get him onto the sled and drag him two miles back to the cabin. That was all.
She lay on the snow, staring up at the flickering stars. Exhaustion was taking hold—the desire for sleep was overwhelming. Nothing could have been more wonderful than to close her eyes and succumb to it. Her body ached; her shoulders and arms still burned from dragging the man out of the snow cave. But she had to keep on. Stopping now would mean failure. She wouldn’t accept that. The sled was four feet long. He was about six. If it weren’t for his broken legs, she would have pulled him behind her, letting his limbs drag on the snow as they went. She could hardly let his head flounder over the end of the sled, could she? She brought the sled alongside his body. It was his only chance. If his legs had to drag, so be it. Perhaps there was a way she could make him more comfortable.
The man’s backpack was still in the snow cave, and she went back inside to retrieve it. The rope she’d seen earlier was coiled at the bottom. She drew it out. It was too long, but she had the knife she’d taken from the house. She cut six lengths, each about eighteen inches long. This was going to take a few minutes, so she took the brandy from her pocket and, reaching down, opened the man’s lips to pour it into his mouth. He spluttered it back up at first, but she lifted his head and noted with some satisfaction how he swallowed back at least some of it. She took some herself, feeling the heat of it all the way down to her stomach.
It took her about two or three minutes to collect several sturdy branches, each about three or four inches in diameter. She dropped them down next to the airman’s body in preparation for what was going to be the hard part. She took off her gloves. The cold seemed to attack her hands, but she ignored the pain, focusing on what she had to do.
She placed one hand on the man’s left ankle and pushed her other hand up inside his pants, feeling for the bone. It was broken a couple of inches below the knee. Ideally, she would have set it as soon as she’d found him, but she’d had more pressing matters to deal with at that time. The man grimaced under her touch, but she pressed on, lining the bone up under his skin as she applied a slow, strong pull to the bottom of his leg. The bone moved back into place, and she took two branches and tied one to each side of his leg with the rope she’d cut. The leg was set and immobilized—as long as the rope held. She checked the lengths again. They were tight. It was as good as she could have expected. Now she had to do the same for his right leg. She reached under his pants leg again, feeling for the bone. This break didn’t seem as severe. She set the bone in place and tied the branches to each side of his leg.
She stood still for a few seconds. “Who are you?” she whispered.
She waited a moment, as if he was going to sit up and answer her question. But there was no sound from his lips, just the whine of the wind as it began to swirl around them once more. It had to be almost seven. There was no time to waste. She took his backpack on her shoulders and slipped him out of the parachute, its purpose served. She couldn’t leave it on him: It could catch on the ground. It was heavy. People had been executed for being caught with less. Even if the Gestapo wasn’t looking for him, someone finding a parachute up here would lead to questions that would lead to him. She could risk bringing it, because if they were caught, there would be no explaining him away, with or without the parachute. She folded it up as best as she could, getting it down to a manageable armload of nylon before placing it on top of him. She took the remaining length of rope, around twenty feet, and looped it around the sled, securing him to it, and the parachute to his chest. She pulled the rope tight but allowed the man space to breathe. Then they were ready.
She took the tie at the front of the sled and pulled. The sled moved along the smooth surface of the snow, and they set off. The first few hundred yards were relatively easy as they made their way across the snowy meadow, but the fastest way back to the house involved moving through some trees and across a frozen stream. That wasn’t going to be possible while pulling the man behind her. She was going to have to stick to the trails, and that increased her chances of meeting someone. She thought of whom she might meet, and of the deficit of trust the Nazis had created among the German people. The pistol still weighed heavy in her pocket. She had forgotten to take it out of
her coat.
For every easy downhill slope, there was another uphill to negotiate, and the steep climb to the cabin at the very end of the journey awaited her. She would be at her absolute weakest then. She kept on, though her muscles were beginning to fail. She could feel the strength leaking from her. Her breaths grew deeper and more pronounced. Sweat began to freeze against her exposed skin. She knew how dangerous that was, how frostbite could follow, but she didn’t stop. There could be no stopping. She kept on as the sun peeked over the horizon. There was no joy in its coming, no comfort in the dawn. She was almost a mile from the cabin, and the cloak of night was unraveling by the second.
The sound of footsteps came from in front. It was hard at first to tell quite where from. She stood silent, her pulse racing. Her ears were attuned to the silence, and she could clearly make out the sound of approaching footsteps along the trail. She looked back at the man on the sled. It was hard to tell how much time they had, but she doubted it was more than a minute. The trail curved ahead, which meant that the person approaching would be out of sight until it was too late. She pulled the sled off the trail and down behind a line of trees. She did her best to hide him, covering him with some loose branches. The tracks they’d made along the path itself were still visible. Anyone could have noticed where they’d stopped. She pressed her hand over her mouth to stop the sound of her breathing.
A minute dragged by, the noises getting ever louder. The figure came into view. She recognized the man and almost laughed as she shook her head. It was Herr Berkel, her ex-boyfriend’s father. She knew without hesitation that he would report her. Daniel was in the Gestapo. Nothing would have given Herr Berkel more pleasure. He was about sixty feet away now, ambling along the trail, walking stick in hand. It had been years since she’d spoken to him, back when she and Daniel were together. He was a gruff man, lacking any charm or refinement. He lived close by. This was probably his morning routine.
He was a large man, well over sixty years old. Her hand went to the gun in her pocket. What was she prepared to do to protect a man she’d encountered just hours before, one whom she’d never spoken to? She probably didn’t even know his real name. Looking at Herr Berkel brought back clear images of the evils that had swallowed her country. She moved her eyes to the man on the sled and felt every bit of hope left within her. He had already saved her life, just as she had saved his.
Berkel stopped on the trail about twenty feet short of where they were hiding. He leaned back, stretching out his lower back, and retrieved a cigarette from his pocket. He placed it between his lips, struck a match, and inhaled the smoke. She could just about make out his face from where she was hiding. His eyes appeared to focus, and he began to walk again, although more slowly this time, while staring down at the trail. He looked right and then left, within a few feet of where they were hiding. He stopped, and her heart almost stopped with him. Her finger was on the trigger. She was ready. She was prepared to draw her gun on a man she’d known for most of her life to protect a man she’d found only a few hours before. Where would she hide the body? She had to make sure it didn’t come to that. Herr Berkel shook his head and resumed along the trail. He moved past where they were hiding and kept on, seemingly unaware of their presence.
She waited five minutes until she poked her head out onto the trail. Tears formed in her eyes as tension gripped her. She grasped the rope on the front of the sled and managed to coax her aching arms into dragging the man back up onto the trail. The sun was bright in the crisp blue sky, illuminating the beauty the snows the night before had created. The layer of white was undisturbed except for the trail Herr Berkel had left. She resumed pulling the man along, her thoughts returning to getting him back to the cabin alive.
There were no other walkers out that morning. She removed her hand from the pistol in her pocket and used it to pull the sled. Every thought disappeared from her mind until the only thing she could picture was getting back to the cabin. There was nothing else now. It was all that the world existed for. One painful step followed another until the last hill came into view. She hadn’t taken a rest other than the one that Herr Berkel’s presence had forced upon her, but she sat now, regaining her breath before the final test. She had come so far. There was just this one hill left, and then the house on top held the promise of food, water, painkillers, and, more importantly, sleep.
She looked over at him. “We’re nearly home. It’s just a little farther now.”
The muscles in her legs almost gave out, but she fought the pain and weakness and stood up straight and tall, grasping the rope tied to the sled. She pulled and heaved and sweated and made it to the house.
She struggled for breath as she put a hand on the front door and pushed it open. She dragged the sled inside, leaving a trail of snow and muck that she’d have to clean up later.
He was here, inside the cabin. It felt like a miracle. She dragged him into the living room and left him in front of the embers of last night’s fire. There was just enough wood there to make it up again, and she took a few minutes to light it. Her hat and coat felt like a second skin as she peeled them off. She went to the kitchen and gulped down several cups of water before going to him. She held the cup to his lips, dribbling water into his mouth. He managed to swallow some of it. He was a filthy, stinking mess and had two broken legs, but he was alive, and that was enough for now. She left him there, unconscious but safe, in front of the fire. Then she went to the bedroom, took off her clothes, and was asleep as soon as she felt the pillow against her face.
Chapter 3
The ticking of a clock. The chimes. He blinked his eyes open and found himself lying in a pool of filthy sweat and tied to a length of wood. A stormy haze had settled between his ears, and it took a few seconds to remember where he was, let alone why he was here. The agony in his legs shot up through his torso. He could take pain, but enough was enough, and he looked around the room for an escape. The dying embers of a fire glowed red in the fireplace a few feet away. He was alone. Had he been captured? He could expect no mercy. Where were they? The memory of his family appeared through the clouds of his consciousness. His father, his mother, and his wife—his ex-wife now. The vague remembrance of their divorce was new to him again for a few seconds. Then the letter she’d written him appeared in his mind, and he was back there, hovering above his bunk in basic training, watching himself reading it. Glimpses of his past life appeared and then retreated into the abyss. He tried to recall something about the present, about where he was now. The feeling of hands on his body, of being dragged along—it all came to him more as an essence than a solid memory he could cling to. It was as if he could feel the moment—perhaps even smell and touch it. Picturing it was beyond him. He tried to rouse himself off the wooden platform he was on, whatever it was, but his efforts came to nothing as he fell back onto it again. His eyelids felt like they weighed a thousand tons. He had time just to glance around the room before they shut and he succumbed to the mercy of sleep once more.
The light of the day had dwindled by the time she awoke in the early evening. She sat up in the bed. Her empty stomach growled. The muscles in her arms, shoulders, and back were as stiff as a tortoise shell. She worked her fingers into the grooves where hard muscle met bone and sinew at the top of her shoulders, doing her best to massage away the pain. The living room door was ajar a few inches. She peered out at the man passed out there. She sat still, listening for sounds that weren’t there. Nothing was moving other than the wind through the trees outside. She got out from under the covers and stood beside the bed, almost against her own will. She went to the wardrobe and slipped into a simple gray dress. The cold floor stung her feet, and she put on thick woolen socks before sliding into slippers.
She inched out, a stranger in her own house. The first things she saw were his legs and the splints she’d fashioned on either side of each one. He wasn’t moving. His eyes were still closed.
“Hallo, sir,” she whispered. “Are you awake?”
Nothing.
She took a deep breath, trying to slow down her heart. Sweat was forming on her palms. His short brown hair was thick with muck and still wet from the snow. His unshaven face was scratched and caked with filth. He didn’t seem to have moved. She reached down to check for a pulse. His heartbeat was steady and even. He would survive this. She went to the kitchen and came back with a cupful of water and dribbled some in between his lips. Once again he seemed to swallow some of it between coughing and spluttering away the rest.
She knelt beside him and reached under the sled to untie the rope that held him in place. She thought about slicing the rope but decided against that. She might need it again if he proved unwilling to cooperate. The rope fell beneath the sled, and she moved the parachute aside. She reached for the straps on his shoulders, which had held the parachute in place, and had little difficulty slipping them off. The problem of what to do with the parachute remained. Hiding a parachute was the kind of subversive act that could land a citizen in jail, or worse. Burning it would produce toxic fumes. For the time being, she dumped it in a pile near the back door.
White Rose Black Forest Page 2
