The Ragged Edge of Night
Page 28
Hofer and Janz mutter their agreement from the sidewalk.
“This is a simple piece,” Anton says. “We’re working up to more complex music. Besides, one can’t march to Wagner. It’s not the right kind of music.”
“I thought this band of yours was going to provide a way for Unterboihingen to honor our dear leader, the great values of the Party,” Möbelbauer says. “That’s what we agreed to. But you seem more interested in playing your Catholic tunes and this American-tainted filth. What am I to think of that? Eh? Answer me that, Anton: What am I to think?”
Even the children in the band have begun to shift uncomfortably. Anton raises a hand to settle his students, to calm their fears.
He longs to say to Möbelbauer, You thought this band would raise you up, so Hitler could see you and honor you. Or if not the Führer, then some other man of great power. And why not? I told you to expect as much. But I’ve played you, better than I play the church organ. This is my band now, my group. And I will keep these children safe.
But then he remembers Elisabeth, her desperate plea never to cross the Party again. He’s already walking a thin line, where his wife is concerned. If she decides the band is too dangerous, she’ll convince Anton to stop, one way or another. He knows when Elisabeth delivers her final ultimatum, begs him earnestly to give it all up, he won’t find it in his heart to deny her again.
“What about ‘Horst-Wessel-Lied’?” Möbelbauer demands. “‘The Flag on High,’ our Party’s anthem? Surely that song is not too complicated for loyal German children to play.”
“If you want to hear us play good German music, approved by the Party—by the Reichsmusikkammer itself—we will be happy to oblige.” Anton lifts his baton; the instruments snap to position. “‘Emperor Waltz,’” he calls to the children, and before they can collect their wits, he counts them into the piece.
The arrangement of the Strauss piece is far more complex than the tune they have just played, yet not nearly as difficult as the children make it seem. They understand the importance of playing poorly now—such is the connection between a leader and his band. We anticipate one another; we carry our friends. With one mind, one body, we move. The children honk and chirp through the waltz, each losing time and picking it up again, careless and unconcerned. The display of ineptitude draws a satisfying cringe from Möbelbauer.
When the band has struggled through a few more terrible bars, Anton cuts them off. His back is turned to the gauleiter; he winks at the children, and slyly, his band smiles behind the bells of their horns.
“As you can hear for yourself,” Anton says, “we need more practice before we’ll be ready to do justice to real German music—the great old classics in particular.”
Again Möbelbauer spits. He slinks back to his friends, back to the lair of his shop. “I hope to see some improvement soon, Herr Starzmann. Otherwise, I’ll be forced to believe you never had any intent of making music to honor the Führer. You should know by now, I don’t consider liars to be my friends.”
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A week later, the band assembles again outside St. Kolumban.
Father Emil, leaning against the graveyard fence, calls out to Anton. “Your musicians have come far, my friend. The whole village is impressed.”
“Not quite the whole village, I’m afraid.”
Emil chuckles. No need to specify who is dissatisfied. “But will they be ready for the parade?”
Young Erik answers in Anton’s place. “We’ll be ready, Vater—just wait and see!”
“I have every faith in this group,” Anton says. “They’ll do Unterboihingen proud.”
The band’s marching skills have certainly improved. They can step along to the music with a respectable degree of coordination. At least they no longer run into each other; he’d begun to fear for the safety of his brass. Too many dents, and the sound will be affected forever.
Facing the band, walking backward, he counts the children into their song, and they begin in near-perfect unison.
“And here we go,” he chants, in time to their music, “and left, and left, and—”
The band hasn’t progressed more than a few yards when the horns stutter to a stop. One awkward crash of the cymbals rings out and is hastily silenced. Anton spins on his heel to learn what has distracted his students—and freezes, disbelieving what he sees. Beside the old church, the ivy curtain on the hillside wall shivers and stirs. The steel door creaks, groans, and then screams on its hinges as it opens. Emil staggers back from the fence into the middle of the street.
“Lord preserve us,” Anton mutters.
The priest makes a hasty cross over his chest.
In the sunstruck metal doorway, a man appears. He staggers into the churchyard on legs as weak as a newborn colt’s, one arm thrown up to shield his eyes from the pain of sudden light. The man breathes hoarsely; Anton can hear the rasp of his lungs from where he stands. The newcomer is wearing a brimmed helmet and the unmistakable green-gray uniform of the Wehrmacht. A soldier.
A soldier, come up like a demon from the depths of the earth.
As the man stands panting in the graveyard, wiping sweat from his brow, another appears in the doorway. Then another. The hill disgorges them more rapidly by the moment, two by two and three at a time; they scramble to get through the door, clawing at its steel jamb, tearing at one another like rats. They fight their way out of the tombal earth into fresh, clean air.
God have mercy, what are they doing here? Will Unterboihingen soon be overrun with soldiers? The Wehrmacht has resurrected the warren of tunnels, the passages that have laced the unseen depths of Germany since the time of kings. If this village becomes a regular hub for the transport of soldiers, the town will lose its precious invisibility. The bombs will find us, without fail.
Anton can’t allow himself to fret about it now. There is no time for fear, no time to stand and wonder. His mind leaps into action, seizing the strange opportunity God has presented. In the unexpected appearance of the soldiers, Anton finds his chance to put Möbelbauer in his place—to disorient the gauleiter and prove to the man that his band must play on. As the soldiers assemble in the churchyard, awaiting the emergence of their commander, Anton lifts his baton again. His students, well trained, raise their horns in response, though they can’t take their eyes from the spectacle unfolding outside St. Kolumban.
“‘The Flag on High,’” Anton calls.
“But we stink with that piece,” Denis protests. The other children mutter agreement.
“Time to stop stinking. Come on, now—” He flicks the baton, setting the rhythm, and the band begins to play.
And they play well—as well as one can hope for, considering Anton has allowed only the most cursory rehearsal of the nation’s new anthem. The soldiers mass together in the shade of an oak, milling between the gravestones. They stare at the band, transfixed, as more of their number struggle up from the tunnel. Tentative smiles appear on a few soldiers’ faces. The music is already making them forget the horror of the tunnels, the groping through cold and damp, the weight of the unseen earth bearing down from the blackness overhead.
But the soldiers aren’t the only ones drawn to the band. A handful of spectators arrives from the center of town. They had thought to cheer the children on as they marched—but when the villagers see the Wehrmacht soldiers pulling themselves up from the earth, they stop and stare, disbelieving. They whisper behind their hands. What does this mean?
“Keep playing,” Anton calls. The children’s eyes dart about, and a few notes land false, sharp from tension. But they trust their conductor. They keep the rhythm. They do as their leader tells them and play on.
When the children arrive at the anthem’s bridge, Anton hears a rumble on the road, feels it pulsing against the beat of the song. He knows the sound of that truck’s engine. He heard it on the first day he came to Unterboihingen.
Anton glances over his shoulder. Möbelbauer, the only man in town who could possibly have kno
wn the soldiers were coming, scowls at Anton as he cuts the engine, gets out, and slams the door of his truck. Anton pins the gauleiter in place with a challenging stare. You thought you had me, Herr Franke, but here’s the proof you wanted. Here: my band playing the National Socialist anthem, even though it kills me to glorify those devils. But better this than Hitler Youth. Better this than all these boys’ minds and hearts rotted by your poison. You thought you could put me out of the way—and punish Elisabeth for rebuffing you—but I’ve outwitted you. Now, even Wehrmacht soldiers believe I’m loyal to the cause. You can’t touch me. The Red Orchestra will play the final chord. We’ll outwit the whole damned lot of you.
Möbelbauer’s face darkens; it’s as if he can hear Anton’s thoughts, as if Anton has shouted the words for the whole village to hear. Then, with a toss of his head, Möbelbauer breaks Anton’s stare and reaches into the bed of his truck. He lifts something long and black; it cleaves the air in a terrible, slow-motion arc, and comes to rest on Möbelbauer’s shoulder. A rifle.
A woman in the crowd screams. Father Emil crosses himself again. The soldiers shout, rip pistols from their holsters; the music clatters to a graceless end. With dull curiosity, caught in sluggish time, Anton watches Möbelbauer point the rifle in his direction. Of course the gauleiter is armed. He is loyal to the Party, and all those loyal to the bleak cause may take lives at will. This is their privilege, power over life and death; this is the banner of terror under which the Reich marches on. Neighbor turning on neighbor, brother oppressing brother. For this power, men like Möbelbauer have blackened their souls. Their hearts are bitter with the stink of burning powder. Anton wonders, Should I duck? Then, with a stab of helpless agony, he thinks of his son Albert, too far back in the ranks of the marching band for Anton to reach him. He can’t protect Al, but he can save whichever child is closest to hand. He moves without looking, quick as a bullet despite the shattered blankness of his mind. He grabs the nearest child by her shoulder and pushes her to the ground—and in that moment, Möbelbauer takes aim and fires.
The shot cracks the air high above Anton’s head; it splits sound, muffles his ears, and an instant later leaves a high, stinging vibration wailing inside his head. But he is unharmed; his chest flushes hot, as if to prove to him that every drop of blood remains inside. He looks up, over the heads of his scattering band, following the trajectory of the shot. When his neighbors gasp, Anton breathes with them, a long, indrawn sigh of sorrow and shock.
The stork on the bell tower has burst. A cloud of feathers curls on the wind. The bird’s body hits the roof tiles and rolls down the slope; where its heart should be, there is a slash of red, dark against white feathers. Its wings spread like the rays of a broken fan. The stork’s body falls into the graveyard below.
The watchers, even the soldiers, give one collective groan of pity. Father Emil presses a fist to his mouth in horror. Children sob; the people of Unterboihingen shout Möbelbauer’s name, clutching their chests in disbelief. The soldiers stare at the gauleiter, wide-eyed.
A few feathers drift down to the earth. They land near the lifeless bird and tumble in the breeze. Cold, robbed of his breath, Anton watches the feathers in the grass. Nothing else moves. The world has gone still.
He finds Father Emil beside him. “Our luck has fallen,” the priest says quietly. “Dear Lord, what will become of us now?”
34
There are no messages to carry. Even if there were, Anton would not take them; he promised Elisabeth that much. If he broke his word and forged on with this doomed resistance, Herr Pohl would refuse to meet him, Anton has no doubt. God has left him to hang at a loose end, restless and irritable, consumed by his own dark thoughts. There must be some reason, some pattern to discern in the Lord’s grand design. But if there is a lesson he is meant to learn, it’s beyond Anton’s means to puzzle it out.
Nothing feels more futile than hope. Armed only with that weak weapon, he marches through his days. He hopes, and he tunes in the radio, searching through the hiss of static for words he is desperate to hear. He hopes, and he scours the newspapers every day. Papers and radio alike are in the hands of the NSDAP, but surely, when our deliverance comes, even the Party will admit defeat. They will recognize their downfall. They will concede. He hopes, and he imagines the headline: Our dear leader has choked to death on his turnip stew; The fury of the Reich has succumbed to his morning tea. Hope is all that remains to Anton, so he plies it with ever greater force. He wields it even as it wanes, as it crumbles in his hand. September passes, then October. News fails to come. Hitler and his men go on, as untouched and untouchable as before. After the briefcase bomb in the Wolf’s Lair, the July attempt that left him scarred but still ruthlessly alive, the Führer has taken to bragging that he is unstoppable. No hand can touch him, not even God’s; no man can take his life. Even as he clings to his fraying hope, Anton has begun to believe the Führer’s tale of immortality must be true.
What, then, became of the Red Orchestra’s plot? Did his contacts mislead him? Were they misled by some other party, a person unknown who has played them all for fools? Little by little, the dregs of Anton’s confidence drain. What’s left to him is a shallow, stagnant pool. It’s an insufficient supply for resistance; soon his spirit will thirst, and he will find nothing there to sustain him. How long now, until the SS remembers Unterboihingen and the two frail rebels the village contains? How much life is left to him?
As autumn gives way to the dark of winter, he turns his full attention to the children. To them, he gives the time he never gave before, the care they should have had from their father. If he had known all hope would shatter, he would have spent more time in their company. He would have built for them a world of warmth, memories to shelter them when harsher winds of war rise. He would have prayed that they might survive this endless winter and know peace someday.
They say almost five hundred thousand have died in the cities, and even in the countryside. Five hundred thousand. He must devise some way to move Elisabeth and the children to safety—to a greater illusion of safety. He must do it before the walls come down; that hope of safety will be the last and most important thing he gives his family. He will place it, tattered, in their hands, transfer hope to their keeping, and beg God that it will be enough to sustain them. Can he wait until after Christmas to send them away? Will God and the Party grant them one last Christmas together before he must tear this family apart?
But Anton hardly dares to wait so long. There is no telling when the SS will come for him. Elisabeth and the children must be gone before the SS arrive; they must be well beyond his enemies’ reach. If any place in this world is beyond the reach of evil.
As the snow falls, muting the earth, he still delays what must come. Grant me one more day of love, God, and one more, and another. One more blue afternoon with my children’s voices filling the sky—this, my only music. One more sight of their breath rising in plumes against the cold, so I may know they’re still breathing. Give me time enough to fix these memories in my heart. Let me write this love upon my soul. These memories will be my only comfort. This is all I may bring with me into the gray camp, and later, the chamber. This love will keep me warm inside my grave.
Now—now that he has made time for them at last—the boys have taught Anton how to use a sling. He has learned the rhythm of the spin and the feel of the stone’s weight departing. He can knock over a little house of twigs from twenty paces, fifty. There is something comforting about the action, something soothing in the way the sling and the stone and the target steal all your thoughts away. The escape is all too brief, but it is an escape. A relief, while the leather whirls in your hand.
On a bright Saturday, when the sun is glaring white on snow, Albert and Paul take him hunting. In perfect silence, except for the slow crunch of their feet on the icy crust, they follow a rabbit’s tracks from the heart of the wood out into the Kopp brothers’ field.
“There he is,” Al whispers, pointing.
Al nudges his father. “You take the shot.”
Anton loads his sling with a stone from his pocket. He spins it until it hums, but when the time comes to release the stone, he finds he can’t do it. He can’t take the rabbit’s life. He looses his shot, but it lands wide, and the rabbit springs into flight. It bounds over the field, swift and afraid but with its life intact. Anton watches it go with a painful sort of satisfaction.
One morning, when the light is gray and low, he walks with the children past the home of the town eccentric, a wild-eyed old man called Eugin. Eugin is seldom seen outside his home, but today he is perched on a tiny stool just this side of his door. Each spring, the swallows nest in Eugin’s eaves—they have done so for generations—and layers of old droppings have coated the ground around the house’s foundation whiter than the snow. The old man’s breath makes beads of ice in his heavy mustache. He is shaving pieces from a chunk of lard, clutched in his greasy hand. As Anton and the children glance his way, Eugin takes the lard delicately from the blade with his teeth. He chews with gusto, smacking his lips in that tangle of beard.
He proffers the lard in his fist. “Want some?”
“No, thank you, mein Herr,” Maria says politely. “I’ve already had my breakfast.”
Anton would laugh at her remark. But now, all he can manage is a faint, disbelieving gratitude that the girl has learned some manners. I have left her something, taught her one good lesson at least. Thanks be to God for that.
The old man’s rasping laughter fades as they hurry past his house. St. Kolumban rears before them, a white edifice in a silent white world. They can see the stork’s nest, a damp, black tangle of sticks piled high with snow. Untouched, unoccupied since the bird fell.