Beneath the Universe

by Jennifer Gaskill Miller

  “Cora,” her mother called.

  “Coming, Mama.” She checked the street once more down both directions, just in case the car had come at the last moment. Knowing she couldn’t ignore her mother she abandoned her post and found Giselle in the kitchen.

  “Cora, your father will be here soon. Set the table and use the white napkins, please.” Giselle was busy ladling rabbit stew into a long, porcelain serving dish. Other dishes were already made and sat on the breakfast table covered with matching lids to keep them warm. Some of the pieces were ones Cora hadn’t seen before, but they weren’t new. One in particular had a rather long unsightly crack in it and Cora wondered if it had been recently discovered by her mother at an antique shop. She lifted the lid and smelled the kohlroulade inside. The hot cabbage rolls were a tradition in her mother’s family. The warmth of the food and the familiarity of the spices made Cora hungry for the first time all day. Her appetite had been suppressed by her nerves but now that the kitchen was swirling with such delicious aromas she could barely contain her hunger.

  “Cora! Hurry, darling.”

  “Sorry, Mama.” Cora grinned, replacing the lid and did a little twirl on her way to the dining room. She opened the top drawer of the black walnut hutch that stood against the wall. It had been her great grandmother’s and all her life she had been admonished to tread carefully around it, never to run or play next to it. She couldn’t wait to have it in her home someday and to give stern warnings to her own children about being mindful of it. As she pulled on the teardrop iron handles she could feel the left side sticking a little so she held it back and tugged on the right end until both sides were even again about halfway out. The drawer slid smoothly then and she delighted in the knowledge that she knew the secret to using the hutch. She found the long tablecloth with the embroidered edges and the white napkins. She closed the drawer and opened one of the tiny cupboards, sliding out the miniature drawer and selecting silver napkin rings, the ones her father had given her mother last Christmas with eagles stretching their wings around the ring. She put it all to one side of the hutch counter and then lifted the glass cabinet door. It was massive and framed like a window, the hinges squeaking as she lifted it and placed the iron pedal in the groove to hold it up as she pulled out the plates wreathed with forest green and black ivy. She unfolded the tablecloth and waved it like a flag over the table, smoothing it as it settled. Next she set the plates, followed by the silverware her mother had polished and brought in, then the cut crystal glasses her father had surprised her mother with one visit home. It occurred to Cora that her father was often bringing home new gifts for her mother. Perhaps one of these times he’d bring something for her. Finally, she began folding and twisting the napkins the way she had learned, tucking them in and holding them with the rings. She looked at the table, all set with their most beautiful dinnerware and each place completed by a white napkin lily.

  “Oh, Cora!” Her mother gasped. “It’s lovely, absolutely lovely. Your father will be so pleased.”

  Cora hoped that was true. As if summoning him by her thoughts, they heard the car door opening and slamming in the frigid air outside. Cora rushed to the door but stepped back and stood on the bottom stair, waiting to be greeted. It seemed like an eternity before her father opened the outer door and finally the inner glass door. He greeted her mother with a warm kiss and handed her his coat and hat as he looked past them both into the dining room.

  “Everything looks wonderful, darling,” he praised Giselle.

  Cora waited for her mother to correct him but all she said was, “You must be starving. Supper will only be a moment. Why don’t you go relax for a few minutes?”

  At this Cora brightened, perhaps he would relax in his study and see her report right away. But he went instead into the parlor, stretching out as he leaned back on the sofa, his eyes closed. Cora followed him, stood beside the sofa arm and waited quietly. Sensing her presence he finally opened his eyes and looked her over.

  “You’ve grown.”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  Cora wanted to say more but couldn’t think where to begin. She was more nervous than usual. Blaz nodded slowly as if the nodding was part of the conversation and would somehow fill the silence that grew between them. He sighed and pulled out his cigarette case and lighter. She watched the practiced way he flipped open the case with one hand and drew out the cigarette with the other in a single fluid motion. She observed the layers of color in the flame as he flicked the top of the lighter, the blue and white and gold that burned black around the tip of the cigarette. He took a drag and laid his head back, watching the smoke weave towards the ceiling. Cora focused on his uniform, the silver buttons on his cuff and the embroidered insignia on his collar.

  “Papa,” she finally ventured, “what do those mean?” His eyebrows went up as he tilted his head towards her. She pointed to the symbols.

  “These are called runes. These,” he pointed to the double lightning bolts, “stand for victory.”

  “What about those?” Cora was looking at the four silver pips.

  “These stars mean I’m a very important person.” He said matter of factly. It was strange the way one of them would say something, carving out room in the fog of silence, but it would just as quickly fill up again as if nothing had been said at all. Blaz sat up, rubbing between his eyes with his thumb, the cigarette held in his fingers. Cora wondered if he ever burned himself when he did that.

  Blaz cleared his throat, “Do you know what I do, Cora?” He looked at her. It was the first time since he’d been home that he’d really looked at her. She had wanted him to, but now it made her feel frightened, tested.

  “You serve the Reich,” she said.

  “Yes. I work for a very specific part of our government. Do you know what I do for them?”

  Cora thought about it. She had heard some things, but she didn’t know if that was her father’s job or someone else’s. She went with the safest answer she could imagine.

  “You make our nation better.”

  He didn’t smile, but he nodded and that was enough.

  “Go help your mother.” He said and then closed his eyes again.

  Giselle was anxious throughout supper, had been in fact for the last few days. Cora knew her mother would be that way whenever her father’s visits were approaching but this was different. Usually, once her father arrived her mother would find her breath at last and everything was calm again, like settling into safe arms after a nightmare. But tonight it was strange, her mother never stopped talking and her eyes would dart about the room, as if following some invisible bird. Cora pretended to observe the conversation, but her mind was on the report that waited in her father’s study. She would glance across the table at him and try to guess what sort of expressions he might have as he read through each paragraph. She wouldn’t try to guess what he would say. She decided it would be better to have no expectations after her brief encounter with him in the parlor. He was a man of few words, after all, at least with her. But he would be proud, even if he didn’t say it. She was certain at least of that.

  “Cora,” Giselle interrupted her thoughts.

  “Yes, Mama?”

  “Time for bed.”

  Cora looked at the clock. It was much too early, she knew. But she didn’t dare argue in front of her father. If she were to be reprimanded it would completely eradicate any sense of pride he might feel when he read the report. Going to bed early was a fair sacrifice if it meant showing her obedience. After all, that was primarily what her report was about. Obedience was loyalty. Obedience was the true love of a servant. It didn’t matter as much how correct her spelling or grammar, although she knew they were perfect, as it did the message. She couldn’t very well expect his regard of her if she was a hypocrite. She slipped out of her chair and took her plate and silverware to the kitchen. As she came back into the dining room she caught a glance of her father leaning into her mother, his hand on her cheek, whispering something to h
er. But he withdrew as she entered.

  Cora kissed them both goodnight on the cheek; her mother offering hers, her father permitting his. Then she went to her room and put her ear against the wall shared with her father’s study and waited to hear the creak of her father’s desk chair. A while later she could hear both her parents as they entered. Her mother was talking.

  “I’ve been desperate to tell you all evening,” she was saying.

  “So why keep me waiting? What’s the news?”

  “I just didn’t think it appropriate to tell anyone else until you’d heard. And Cora will have difficulty with it, I think.”

  “Difficulty with what? Have you taken a position? Because you know how I feel about that.” Blaz was moving around the room. Cora could hear his steps as they went from the carpet rug to the hardwood floor and back again.

  “I should wait to tell you, after what happened last time but I just can’t hold it in any longer.”

  “Darling, are you telling me…” Cora heard his voice stretch with excitement.

  “I’m pregnant. And this time is different. I think it’s really going to happen. I can feel it.”

  Cora’s eyes widened in horror. She stepped away from the wall, tripping on the lamp cord. She tried to steady it, but not before it had tugged the tall lamp, sending it crashing against her headboard.

  “What was that?” Her father bellowed.

  “I’m sorry, Papa!” Cora answered through the wall. “I just tripped. Nothing is broken!”

  She waited a moment before returning her ear to the wall.

  “But why should it bother her? It’s wonderful news. We’re finally a family!”

  “Well, aren’t we a family already, darling?” Giselle asked.

  “You know what I mean. Oh, this is wonderful! Absolutely wonderful!”

  “You said that already.” There was a clear smile in Giselle’s voice. Her parents were both so happy and it had nothing whatever to do with her.

  “What’s this?” Blaz asked, his desk chair creaking. Cora stared at the wall. At last he’s found it, she thought.

  “What?” Giselle asked. “Oh, it looks like Cora’s school paper. I wonder why it’s in here.”

  Cora bit her lip, her canines digging into the flesh.

  “Hmm,” Blaz was saying and Cora thought she heard the flip of paper in the air. “What are some names? What about Victor? Or Heinrich? We haven’t had a Heinrich in the family yet!”

  “Oh, darling, don’t use that. That’s Cora’s report. She worked so hard on it.”

  “What difference does it make, it’s already been graded. See? Come on now, help me with some names.”

  “Well, I do like Victor,” her mother was giggling. They both were. But Cora had stopped listening. It must be a nightmare, she thought. I must have been so excited today, I didn’t realize how tired I was and when I came to my room, I fell asleep. My mother is not having a baby. And my father did not use my paper to scribble names. He hasn’t read it yet. Or maybe he’s reading it right now, as I sleep. He’ll see me in the morning and ask me how I slept and I’ll lie and say I slept perfectly. And then he’ll look at me and we won’t have to say anything. He’ll be so proud and I’ll just smile and eat my toast.

  But no matter how hard she tried to believe it, Cora knew the truth. She had been passed over again by someone who wasn’t even there yet. When she did sleep, she dreamt that she had a child and her father was busy thinking of names for it too.

  CHAPTER 8

  March 1944

  Blaz

  He stood on the rock’s edge listening to the endless sound of the sea. Paradise, he thought, is always illustrated as a glistening white shore with palms and sunshine. But this is honest paradise. It’s stark. It is bleak. It is beautiful. Not quite heaven, nothing like hell, too strange and different to be considered part of the long waving mass called Earth. This place, he thought, is somewhere else. It was what it was; the black and blue boulders stretching out, one above the other like shallow steps down to the waves that crashed and frothed with great white gulps. Across the inlet a cliff stood immoveable, a castle made of stone and moss. And above it all, a gray soaring sky that breathed with every movement of the wind, heaving as the smoky wisps of cloud slid along the horizon.

  There was no sunlight and no shadow to warn him, but Blaz could feel the presence of someone on the rocks above him.

  “Everything is different now,” Blaz heard the man say.

  “Indeed,” Blaz replied, turning. “More so than I ever thought things could be.”

  Earlier in the day Blaz had been waiting outside a grocer for that week’s supply of onions and potatoes. The SS had had trouble with its past vendors. The system was being abused by those greedy or stupid enough to use black market produce. Rations were being totally disregarded and in a time of war, that meant there were lives at stake. Soldiers were starving even as they fought for their people. As a result, the lawbreakers ate and the law abiding citizens went hungry when there wasn’t enough to go around.

  This new vendor came highly recommended, although it was several hours from the camp. Blaz would be sending someone else to collect their order in the future but for now he wanted to examine the business himself. It was then that he had seen a familiar face on the opposite side of the street, carrying a bundle of some kind. Blaz had stared, frozen by surprise.

  Grey had been about to turn a corner, but looked around as if checking to be sure he had gone unnoticed. He had caught Blaz watching him and was about to run when he recognized the man in the SS uniform. He’d stood on the corner, considering for what seemed a long time to Blaz. Finally, he had come across the street and greeted his old friend the way he would have if they were still teenagers, nodding his head in that absurd confidence of youth. Blaz had turned away from him; certain Grey was stealing or participating in some other illegal act, not wanting to acknowledge familiarity with his childhood companion. When Grey tried to persuade Blaz to talk to him Blaz had held up a hand and said, “Not here.” He had instructed Grey to meet him by the water. As he waited, standing by the sea, Blaz wondered if he had imagined seeing Grey until he stood on the rocks above him.

  They studied one another, the boyhood friends who once shared the world but would never again see eye to eye. Grey was changed, that was to be expected. And yet Blaz could not make the man standing above him resemble the boy he had known. He had recognized him immediately from across the street, but up close Grey looked different. It was as if Blaz were looking at a portrait of a removed ancestor, tiny similarities that announced a connection, but not an immediate one. He imagined finding the slight angle of the nose or the arch of an eyebrow, the fullness of the lip or the bottom curve of the ears, anything to identify the boy he once knew. But even with such similarities, Grey’s eyes were altered; caverns of tragedy, the illustrators of a sad story. His once sandy hair, though clean, seemed dirty. His adult accent pronounced him an enemy.

  “Do you still have your coin?” Grey asked suddenly, letting the wind fill the awkward air between them.

  “I do.”

  “I’m sorry I left the way I did. I wanted to say goodbye, but given the circumstances . . .” His smile was mirthless. He was trying not to sound awkward, but he talked too fast. “I have a favor to ask of you. I know you won’t say yes, but I have to ask. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t.”

  Blaz had not anticipated a request, but he was not surprised either. He fished in his pocket for his cigarette case. When his fingers touched it, he remembered smoking with Grey behind the flat. They had been children, rolling their cigarettes or stealing them a pocketful at a time, never being old enough or sophisticated enough to have monogrammed cases like the one now in his pocket. He pulled it out, thumbing the silver and ivory lines. He took one for himself and offered one to Grey, who shivered and bit his lip before accepting one. Blaz had to climb the few rocks to stand beside Grey as they shared the flame from the lighter. Finally, they s
at down, synchronized as if they did this sort of thing daily.

  “Alright, tell me what you want.” Blaz didn’t like the sound of his own voice as he said it.

  “Blaz, I know what you do. I mean, I really know what you do. I’ve seen it. Not you in particular, but being here, I have to assume. It is Mauthausen, isn’t it?” Blaz continued staring into the water. “I have an acquaintance there. At least I think she’s there, a prisoner taken from Strasbourg. She’s more than an acquaintance, she’s . . . I care for her, very much. I realize there is probably very little you can do for her, but I need to know if she’s alive. I know they kill people there. Often in unspeakable ways,” he stopped, the emotion in his voice making it difficult to continue. “Promise me . . . promise she won’t be one of them.”

  Blaz looked at his friend. Grey talked too fast, the little speech he had probably rehearsed on his way over was apparently too much for the soft Englishman and he was crying the way many soldiers did, hiding their sorrow from themselves, his eyes resolved but the tears flowing just the same.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Blaz said through tight lips as he took another drag.

  Grey closed his eyes, squeezing the tears and changing the way they fell from his face.

  “Please. I beg of you. At least consider it. She’s so young.” Grey was talking fast again, looking out at the sea. He was taking a chance.

  “Her name is Olivia Vrimone. She’s French. She hasn’t been there long, sixteen days maybe. She was taken when they found Jews in her house. Her parent’s house,” he corrected.

  “Is she your lover?” Blaz turned the question into an accusation by staring into Grey’s eyes, judging him.

  “What? No, of course not, she’s only fifteen. I knew her father. He worked for the resistance, procured ink for their literature, transported it from time to time.”