by Robert Elmer
“A whole can of American Spam meat,” Oma wheezed, “and those berries — ”
“Cranberries,” Erich’s mother told her, picking up the can from its place of honor on the table. “It’s something they grow in America. The sergeant said it is festival food in his country, for their special giving thanks dinner.”
“Cran-berries.” When Oma said the word it sounded more like krrrahn-behr, and they all had to laugh. The problem was, that only set off Oma’s coughing once more.
“Have you been to the doctor again, Oma?” Katarina’s mother asked. Concern wrinkled her round face. She tried to offer a glass of water, but Oma only shook her head no.
“They tell me there is nothing to do about it, but to go home and die.” Oma plucked the handkerchief from the pocket of her apron and breathed through it like a mask. “The young Russian medic even told me to try not to breathe, since that would only make it worse. Ha! Do you think he was serious?”
Even as sick as she was, she could still tell a joke on herself. But Erich’s mother wasn’t laughing.
“I’m serious, Oma,” Erich’s Aunt Gerta said. “The doctors we have over in the American sector are much better. A little medicine could help.”
“Maybe it would. Maybe it wouldn’t.”
Erich knew his aunt could say nothing else to her mother-in-law. They didn’t want to get into that argument again, about leaving this house or this neighborhood. And they would not argue about being friends with the American soldiers, either, not unless they wanted to upset Oma, make her start coughing again.
“So tell me,” Oma began, managing to change the subject. “This DeWitt, he is your friend?”
Erich couldn’t remember seeing his mother turn so red before.
“I don’t think we could call him a friend exactly, Oma.”
That’s for sure, thought Erich, taking a bite of meat and rolling it around in his mouth.
“I don’t want you to think wrongly of me,” Erich’s mother whispered.
“Wrongly?” Oma shook her head and rested her hand on her daughter-in-law’s shoulder. “You’ve cared for your family through all this time, and now you’ve come back to care for me. You will do the right thing once more. Just like Ruth.”
Ruth from the Bible. Naomi had lost her husband and two sons, but her daughter-in-law, Ruth, stayed by her, even when she didn’t have to. Come to think of it, maybe his mother really was like that. But when the subject changed to serious stuff like ration cards and food lines, Erich decided it was time to let the adults talk. After clearing their dishes, he and Katarina headed outside.
“You remember that story too?” Katarina asked as she and Erich tripped down the strasse toward the church.
“You mean about Naomi and Ruth? I’m a pastor’s kid, remember?” And that made him think of something his mother had talked about once, something he’d been meaning to do. He told Katarina his plan and looked up at the Versöhnungskirche bell tower, just around the corner on Ackerstrasse.
“Are you sure you want to go this way?” Katarina asked.
This way would lead them right past Wolfgang’s house.
“He’s just the neighborhood watchdog.” Erich tried not to notice the eyes that watched them go by. “I don’t understand why he cares so much about where everybody goes.”
Katarina shrugged her shoulders. She didn’t seem to mind as much as he did.
“Maybe he’s training to be a Russian spy.”
They both laughed, while Erich looked back once more to make sure Wolfgang hadn’t followed them.
But getting away from Wolfgang wasn’t the hard part.
The hard part was actually making their way through the church building, once they’d pushed open a splintered door, past piles of bricks and chunks of stone.
“Wait a minute.” Erich paused for a moment at the back of the sanctuary, where the late-afternoon light spilled in from above. Even more filtered down around the bell tower, where he could see two of the gum drop parachutes, tangled in the spire.
No one had yet cleared the rubble from this part of the church. Snow and rain from the last few years hadn’t made things any better. It was going to take a lot of work to make this a place where people would come to worship again.
A lot of work. Gaping holes reminded Erich of the beautiful stained-glass windows he’d loved to stare at, back when he was little.
“Erich, I’m totally confused. Do you remember where your father’s study — ”
They both jumped when something fluttered just over their heads, but Erich had to laugh.
“Just a couple of pigeons.”
They watched a pair of birds circle once inside the sanctuary before they found the hole in the roof and disappeared outside. A couple more cooed and purred in the shadows, the way pigeons do. And though Erich had been inside the old church building hundreds of times before, he still paused to find his way.
“It’s weird.” He shook his head. “Everything’s so different from what I remember. Scrambled and jumbled and wrecked.”
“I don’t like it.” Katarina kept her arms crossed as she picked her way over a pile of bricks. Her shoes crackled on the broken colored window glass. “We’re in big trouble if any of the Russian guards find us.”
“Would you stop worrying? They don’t ever come in here.”
He hoped not, anyway. Once Erich had his bearings, he led the way over a collapsed section of wall and down a side hallway. Here and there they had to stop and crawl over piles of plaster rubble and cracked building stones and pieces of splintered beams.
“Careful.” Erich helped his cousin over a pile near the end of a dark dead-end hallway and looked around. At the doorway to his father’s little study, the charred door now hung by just a single hinge. Inside, a half-burned pile of papers and books had been swept into the corner, as if by a giant hand. Pigeons in the far corner stared at the intruders. Only one piece of furniture survived — his father’s solid walnut desk — but it was mostly charred and had been crushed on one side by a fallen ceiling beam.
“Wow. It looks so different in here,” Katarina whispered.
It seemed right to whisper in a place like this, like at a graveyard. Erich nodded then fell to his knees and began digging through the pile of papers and books.
“Your mother has never been back, has she?”
“Are you kidding?” He shook his head no. “Seeing all my father’s stuff like this would kill her.”
And what really was left? Nothing you could call a memory, exactly, not like what he was looking for. Only shredded records and damaged books. As he dug deeper, most of the paper fell apart at his touch. Deeper still, he found a few books that had survived with only a ripped spine or a blackened cover.
“Look at this.” He held up a copy of an old theology book, mostly whole, and another that had been buried. That one had his father’s name in the front, handwritten. He set it aside to take home. And the deeper he dug, the more books he found. Mostly in German, but a few in English, by authors like Dwight Moody and Brother Lawrence. And then —
“Luther,” he whispered, and he held the book up with two fingers. Compared to most of the other stuff in the pile, it still looked okay. He blew the dust off and read the title on the cover.
Dr. Martin Luther’s Sa¨ mtliche Schriften.
Collected Writings, the book his father had talked about just before he died.
But Erich wasn’t sure what he would find inside: A note? An inscription? Maybe nothing but Luther’s sermons. If nothing else, Erich would at least save this one, though it reeked of dust and mildew like everything else in the pile.
“Open it up!” Katarina leaned over his shoulder. Another book for her collection? She’d probably want to read it.
But not this one.
Erich whistled when he opened the book and discovered its hollowed-out insides. But hollowed out on purpose. Each page had been carefully cut, leaving a square hollow in the middle big enough to hide �
�
“It’s a communion cup.” Erich picked it out and held it up to the light. The silver cup looked tarnished and a bit smaller than usual — not much bigger than a cup that might hold a soft-boiled egg. “The kind pastors take with them to visit sick people.”
“But why did he hide it in this book?” Katarina wondered. Erich had no idea, but he noticed something else inside the hollowed-out section.
“A little key!” The kind that might open a suitcase or a jewelry box.
Katarina pointed at it. “Just like in a mystery book.”
“Huh?” Erich didn’t follow.
“You know. The hero finds a mysterious key, and nobody knows what it fits until the end of the story, and then they find a treasure in a pirate chest. But you don’t read those kinds of stories, do you?”
“Nope.” Erich grunted, glancing around. “And I don’t see any pirate chests in here.”
“That’s just in the stories, silly. There has to be a good reason your father hid this key in a place like this.”
“And then he tried to tell my mother about it.” This was beginning to sound more and more like one of Katarina’s stories, after all. They’d have to do a little more searching to see if this key fit anything in the ruined study. But as Erich picked up the little key by its faded blue ribbon, they heard voices echoing down the hallway from the sanctuary.
“Shh!” Katarina tilted her head, as if that would help her hear better. She listened for a moment before whispering: “They’re speaking Russian.”
And they were getting closer.
“You sure?”
“We need to get out of here.”
Erich didn’t argue as he slipped his two new treasures into his pocket. He would come back for the books. But surely no one had seen them sneak inside the church, had they?
Wolfgang!
“This way.” Katarina found her way past the half-crumpled desk and through a gaping hole in the wall of the study, back to the hallway. “Hurry!” Erich looked back to see a Russian soldier catch sight of them as they slipped around a corner. Erich stared at him for just an instant — long enough to see the man’s black eyes and square jaw. He looked more like a shark than a man, and Erich felt more like a fish about to be eaten for lunch than a thirteen-year-old. Well, he had never seen a shark, but he’d seen pictures in school.
“You there!” shouted the Shark in thick-accented German. “Stop!”
Sorry, not this time. Erich and Katarina flew down the hallway and around two more corners, up a short flight of stairs, and right through a flock of pigeons.
“Whoa!” Erich held up his hands as dozens of wings batted him in the face. Katarina did the same, but was quicker to vault over a broken door to a back exit. A moment later Erich brushed the feathers out of his face as they burst outside and sprinted down Ackerstrasse, back toward Oma’s apartment.
He didn’t dare look back.
12
KAPITEL ZWÖLF
EMERGENCY CALL
FOUR WEEKS LATER . . .
“Oh!” Erich mumbled to himself as he opened their front door and stepped back to let Fred DeWitt inside.
Four times in four weeks.
But the airman pretended not to hear.
“Hey, bud!” DeWitt was all smiles, as usual, as he stepped into the tiny living room. And as usual he carried his bribe: another bag of food. “Your mom around?”
Well, that was a dumb question, and Erich let him know as much by looking around the room as if she might be. By way of a short hallway, the kitchen joined the living room, where his mother had set up a sheet curtain around her bedroll for privacy. She had pulled it back neatly before she left, though, and tied it off with a piece of colored yarn. Erich’s blanket lay rolled up in the kitchen next to where he slept on the floor, and the little kitchen stood empty.
So no, she wasn’t home. Obviously.
Neither of them said anything for a long, awkward moment. Of course, it wouldn’t have been awkward if the guy would just leave them alone, if he would just leave Erich’s mother alone.
“I guess that’s a no.” The sergeant didn’t seem to let it get him down. “You expect her back very soon? She’s off work, right?”
“She’s out standing in some line to get more of that cornmeal stuff.”
The stuff that made Erich want to throw up. The stuff that answered the question: what’s worse than having nothing at all to eat?
“Oh. Well, listen, I feel bad about that.” He set down his paper sack on the folding card table in the kitchen. “So I brought you some more stuff. Another can of peaches. You like those, right? And some canned tuna. You ever had tuna fish sandwiches?”
Erich stared at him blankly. He didn’t mean to be rude, but he just couldn’t pretend to be this man’s friend, no matter how often Katarina told him he should try.
“Hmm,” DeWitt said and then went on. “Anyway, you just mix it up with some mayo, see?” He paused. “Right; you don’t have mayo. Well, you don’t have to mix it up with anything. You can just serve it straight on a piece of bread.”
Another pause as he thought that one through too.
“Right. No bread, either. Well . . . you don’t need to add anything at all. You can just eat it straight out of the can. How does that sound?”
Erich shrugged and the American smiled.
“There you go. It’s all I could bring you right now, but I’ll get some more on my ration card next week, soon as I can.”
“Thanks.” Erich nodded, still holding the open door, hoping the man would get the message.
Instead, DeWitt crossed his arms and leaned against the wall.
“Listen, I know we got off to a rough start, and — ”
Erich didn’t look at the man. He studied his shoes as DeWitt continued.
“ — and I don’t know exactly what happened here, but maybe we can start all over, huh? I introduce myself, you intro duce yourself, like we never met, see?” He put out his hand. “Hi, I’m Fred DeWitt from Cleveland, Ohio. Pleased to meet you.”
Erich didn’t shake the outstretched hand of the man from Clevelandohio; he just bit his lip and, without thinking, looked up at the photo of his dad on the wall. It looked like the one in Oma’s apartment, only in this one his father wore his pastor’s robe, looking proud and excited and grinning from ear to ear. Erich’s mother had told him it was taken the day his father was ordained as a pastor.
“Ohh, I get it.” DeWitt nodded as he lowered his hand, but he didn’t get it. The American didn’t get anything. “You think I’m trying to elbow my way in here and steal your mom away, is that it?”
Erich didn’t answer. He looked down again and could almost see his own reflection in the guy’s black military shoes. And he kept his arms crossed as DeWitt stumbled on.
“Listen, Erich, I don’t have any . . . That is to say, I’m not . . . I’m just trying to — ”
Trying to what? Erich waited while the American tried to untie his tongue. But it wasn’t as much fun to watch as Erich might have expected. With a sigh and a “Skip it!” DeWitt finally gave up and headed for the door.
“Oh, by the way.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a folded newspaper clipping. “My picture — I mean, your picture, you and your cousin catching that parachute candy that we got Fletcher to drop out of his plane? It got picked up by the New York Times, which, if you don’t know, is a really big deal. Page three” — he tapped the clipping — “right next to the article about how the airlift brings this Cold War right back to the Russians.”
“Oh.”
“Look, I just want you to understand I wasn’t trying to use you and your cousin for a big story. I’m not trying to get you mixed up in the politics of this whole thing. That’s just the way it turned out, and I apologize for making you . . . I don’t know.”
“What kind of politics?” Erich didn’t quite follow.
“Oh. You know, the Russians against the Americans stuff. The Cold War. Well, lo
ok around you.” He pointed out the window at a C-54 dropping from the sky on its final approach to Tempelhof. “That’s the Cold War, right there. Us versus them. Like it or not, we’re right in the middle of it.”
That part, Erich understood. Maybe more than DeWitt knew. But the American wasn’t finished.
“It’s just that the pictures turned out better than anybody expected, and now my editor wants more. A follow-up story on the kids of the Berlin Airlift, right? People back in the States are eating it up.”
Erich had to think about that one for a moment. The sergeant was always saying things in a funny way.
Eating it up?
DeWitt held out the clipping once more. “So, anyway, I thought you’d want your own copy. For your scrapbook, huh?”
“Thank you.” This time Erich forced himself to be polite, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say, and he didn’t have a scrapbook. DeWitt rubbed his forehead for a moment and stepped into the hallway, which turned out to be perfect timing.
“Fred!” When Erich’s mother saw DeWitt at the door, she nearly dropped her little parcel of rationed cornmeal. A smile lit up her face. “I was hoping you’d stop by. Will you stay for din — ”
That’s when she must have realized what she was holding.
“Oh, I mean . . . if you don’t mind cornmeal soup.”
DeWitt glanced briefly at Erich and shook his head no.
“Thanks, uh, but no. Nothing against cornmeal, actually. Just wouldn’t be right to eat your food. And I, uh, I have to get back to the base. But I left a couple of things on the kitchen table . . . thought you might, well — ” He turned again to go, this time for real. Frau Kessler from across the hall poked her head out her door, checking to see what the American was doing. Erich’s mother frowned, mostly at Erich.
