by Tamar Myers
“You better let me check that,” Gabe said. Men can be such babes in the woods.
Fortunately, my guardian angel had to remove his hand from my mug to examine the wound. I chose my words carefully.
“That’s barely even a scratch, dear.”
Of course I meant to be encouraging, and of course the old crone misinterpreted my tone. “Well, it bled a lot! And I was only slicing bananas with a table knife.”
“Your skin is thin,” Gabe said gently.
“Touché!” I can’t tell you how delighted I was that Gabe had seen right through her.
Alas, my joy was short lived. Gabe, the babe, was definitely lost in the woods.
“No, I meant that literally. When people age, their skin becomes thinner, easier to cut and bruise. But you did a good job of cleaning the wound. It should heal nicely.” He replaced the used bandage which, remarkably, stuck. Only insults seem to stick to me.
“Now you ’re interrupting, dear.”
“Ah, so I am. Please, Miss Yoder, continue.”
“Well, I recognized the boy right away. I know, he’s not a boy now, but he still stands the same way he did all those years ago. Some folks think it’s the eyes that stay the same, but that’s not so. Eyes are like paper—life writes its story on them. Johanne’s eyes told me he had seen things—done things—that no human being should do. He stood the same way, however. Slouched, with his neck kind of sticking out. It didn’t matter that he’d gained a few pounds and lost most of his hair. I can recognize anyone by the way they stand.”
“Ha!” I caught one of Gabriel’s beautifully manicured hands and placed it over my mouth.
“You cut yourself,” he said, seemingly oblivious to the fire in my face. “What then?”
“Well, like you said, I washed the cut. Then I invited Johanne to sit down and have a cup of tea.”
“Weren’t you afraid?”
“Afraid of what? This isn’t Vichy France. This is my turf.”
“Yes, it is. Yet you ended up here.” He gestured with his free hand at the house. “Was that your idea?”
“Actually it was. Johanne said we needed to talk, but my place has turned into Grand Central lately.” Old Irma pointed meaningfully at me with her proboscis, as well as her cane. “So I suggested we come here to talk. I mean, now that the Millers are gone, it’s as empty as Lazarus’s grave. Sure, I know, there is a ‘for sale’ sign outside, but that Earl Whitaker is so lazy, he once got fired from a job testing mattresses.”
“You don’t say,” Gabriel said in his rich baritone. “Well, that’s who I came here to see.”
I pushed his hand gently away from my mouth. “You want to buy the Miller place?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
“Thank you, Lord!”
Old Irma cackled again. “And she thinks I was loose!”
My face stung. I could actually feel the red as it concentrated in my cheeks. “It’s not what you think! I’m just glad someone—anyone—is buying this place. It’s eerie to look over here night after night and see a dark farmhouse. Besides, we were talking about Johanne, remember? This is the same man who is married to a petite piano player named Samantha?”
“He did say he was married to a concert pianist, and that he taught history somewhere. Or was it mathematics?”
“Definitely history, dear. So you came all the way over here to talk about his job and marriage?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Magdalena. We talked about the old days. What fun it was—despite the political unpleasantness.”
“That political unpleasantness cost me ten family members,” Gabriel said much to my surprise. “All my father’s siblings and both his parents died in Auschwitz.” Old Irma swallowed. “Well, that’s why I was there. In Paris, I mean. Don’t forget I was working for our side.”
“While cavorting with the other, dear.”
“Magdalena!” Grabriel said sharply.
I shrunk back, like a chastised puppy.
Gabriel touched the old woman’s shoulder. “Is that all Johanne wanted? To talk about good times?”
“No!” She spit the word out like a rotten bite of apple. “What did he want?”
“Ach, he was full of questions! Who did I see from the old days? How was my German? Still good? I told him— in German—that I could outtalk him any day.”
“No doubt about it,” I muttered.
Old Irma ignored me. Or perhaps she didn’t hear.
“He has a funny accent now, you know.”
“Like from Minnesota?”
That time she heard me and rolled her faded eyes. “A funny German accent. His English is much better now than when we met. We used to speak only in French.”
I slapped my forehead in astonishment. Old Irma knew French? They must have taught that in U.S. spy school, because Hernia graduates would be hard pressed to say bonjour without a phrase book.
Gabriel should have gone into general practice instead of surgery. My doctor has never asked that many questions in the thirty years I’ve known him.
“I heard you shout at him, then he ran out the front door. Why were you so angry?”
Old Irma put down her cane. She attempted to point at me with one of her pretzel fingers, but thanks to sixty years of arthritis, she pointed at the doc instead. “Because he hit her—with a lamp base, no less. Magdalena may be as mean as a stepped-on rattlesnake, but she’s family.”
“I am not!” I wailed.
“Don’t be ridiculous, child. Your granddaddy was my double first cousin, and both your grandmothers were third cousins once-removed.”
“Which leaves one grandparent unaccounted for!” I said triumphantly.
“Yes, your mama’s daddy. We were only fifth cousins twice removed.”
“Aha! You see? We are distant cousins!”
Gabriel smiled, and I had to gasp for breath. “I think I’m going to like living here. Is everyone around here like you two?”
Before I could assure him that there were no other century-old citizens quite as cranky as Irma, a car came barreling up the long Miller drive and screeched to a halt amid a spray of gravel.
“Where’s my husband?” Samantha Burk demanded. If indeed that was her name.
Twenty-Two
“That’s what we want to know, dear.” I looked at Diana Lefcourt, who had driven the motorized chariot. “Where’s the rescue squad?”
“I didn’t call 911 after all.”
“What?”
“I knew you’d be all right, Magdalena. You already had a doctor with you. Besides, you Yoders have heads of stone.”
I ignored the compliment. “Concert pianist indeed!” I said to Samantha. “I should have known you were a fake. Look at those itty-bitty hands—even a possum has a wider span. And a real concert pianist would have been begging me for a key to Beachy Grove Mennonite Church. We may not have a Steinway, but it’s good enough for Lodema Schrock.”
“Ach, Lodema!” Old Irma shook her head. “That woman couldn’t play a radio properly if you gave her a month of lessons.”
“Lodema is not the point,” I snapped. “The point is your Nazi’s wife.”
“Johanne is married?”
“To her!” I pointed at the pianist imposter.
Samantha turned to Diana. “Is Miss Yoder—you know…?”
“She’s a few spokes shy of a chariot wheel.”
“Potiphar’s calling the kettle black!” I wailed. “And you, Mrs. Burk—or is it Burkholder?—have a lot of explaining to do. The C.I.A. indeed! Your husband was a spy all right, but for the Nazis!”
Samantha had a disgustingly pert mouth, which she arranged into a mocking smile. “Has anyone bothered to tell Miss Yoder here that the war is over?”
Old Irma stepped forward with the help of her cane. “Leave the child alone. She’s not crazy, she’s merely flighty—you know, empty in the head. But in this case Magdalena knows what she’s talking about.”
Samantha gasped. “But
that’s impossible! My John was born and raised in Minnesota.”
“No. If I recall right, it was Stuttgart.”
“I’ve seen his birth certificate. It says quite clearly, New Bedford, Minnesota.”
A bell rang in my head. As there was plenty of room in there, it came as no surprise.
“Aha! I remember now! Scott Montgomery, who is a true Minnesotan, says there is no such place as New Bedford.”
“Well—uh, I’m sure he’s mistaken. Minnesota is a large state.”
“Not if you drained it, dear. Anyway, have you been to New Bedford?”
“No.”
“And did you know your husband before the war? World War II, I mean?”
“No.”
Old Irma nudged me aside with a paw as cold as a Minneapolis winter. “Well, / knew your husband during the war. He was a shy young thing at first—until you got him singing. Let me tell you, Johanne could sing those beer-hall songs along with the best of them.”
“My John sang? He never sings for me. Claims he can’t carry a tune.”
“I didn’t he say sang on key. I said he sang with the best of them. Franz and Horst were the best. Sure, Horst had a smoother voice, but Franz had better diction.” “Stop it, both of you! We don’t have time to yap about some drunken Nazis serenading the Fatherland. We need to notify the F.B.I.”
“Ach,” Old Irma said, covering me with spittle, “it’s not the F.B.I. we should call, but the Department of Immigration.”
Samantha blanched. “What for?”
“Because Johanne Burkholder is undoubtedly here illegally.”
“And he was a Nazi,” I hissed. “Who knows what heinous crimes he committed?”
“But that’s just it. Neither of you has any proof that my husband committed any war crimes. And even if he did, he may have just been following orders.”
I nudged Old Irma aside with a paw as hot as Hernia in the summer. “I don’t buy that ‘just following orders’ line, sister. We all need to draw our own lines long before it gets to that point.”
“Hear, hear,” Gabriel said, his face grim. “If decent people had bothered to draw the line at decency, my Bubbe and Zayde might still be alive.”
I nodded vigorously, despite my headache. “Millions of children—not just Jewish, either—would have survived to be alive today. The world might well have been a better place. Who knows, maybe we would already have a cure for AIDS. So you see, dear, following orders is not an excuse. And neither is ignorance. ‘I saw nothing’ is a phrase even the Swiss can’t claim these days, and believe me, that hurts, because I’m one hundred percent Swiss. What’s more, you don’t seem terribly surprised to learn that your hubby was one of Hitler’s henchmen.”
“I am—I mean, I’m not sure he even was. Anyway, you can’t prove a thing. And even if you can, well—I told you I suspected he was up to something. I wouldn’t have brought that up if I had anything to hide.”
“You have a point,” I said grudgingly. “It would have been stupid of you to mention your husband’s weird behavior.”
“Or very smart.”
We all turned to stare at Old Irma. The woman might have been Mennonite by birth, but singing in a Parisian cabaret had drained every drop of humility from her veins. Clearly, she still basked in the limelight.
“I did the same thing, you know—when I was a spy. I joked about being an American operative, just to throw people off my trail.”
Samantha’s tiny hands were rolled into fists the size of Freni’s meatballs. “Well, I wasn’t joking, and I’m not lying now. If my John was a Nazi, and if he was involved in any sort of horrible behavior, above and beyond that of any other soldier, I had no idea. I am innocent. I’m a professional—a concert pianist—I’m not in the business of hiding Nazi war criminals.”
“Yeah, right,” I growled. “If you’re really a concert pianist then I’m a monkey’s uncle.”
“I am!”
“So prove it.”
“How?”
“Play something for me.”
“What? Where? Okay, I get it. I’ll play at your church if that’s what it takes.”
“Forget the church, dear. I want you to play at my sister’s wedding. You do know Handel’s wedding march, don’t you?”
Old Irma waved her arm like a schoolgirl—albeit a very slow school girl. “Can I sing ‘O Promise Me’?”
“Yes, dear. In the shower whenever you please.” I didn’t mean to be cruel—honest I didn’t—but who needs a one hundred-and-three-year-old ex-hussy warbling at her only sister’s wedding?
Gabriel put a guiding hand gently on my shoulder. “Okay,” I wailed, “warble away!”
“I was about to say we have more company.”
Indeed, there was second car barreling its way toward us in a spray of gravel.
“Freni, what are you doing here?”
“Ach! Like I told you, Magdalena, I rode with that couple—the ones with the funny accents.”
“Yes, I know, the Montgomerys. That’s how you got here. But what were you doing at the inn when they returned for a short potty break and found Diana’s note?” The day had warmed considerably and the grass was as dry as my cheeks the day before my Pooky Bear ripped the heart out of my scrawny chest and did jumping jacks on it. Therefore, my elderly cousin—cum ex-cook— and I had elected to walk back. As for my oldest cousin, well, that gorgeous Gabriel had insisted on driving her home, from whence he would personally call the United States Immigration Service. But fear not, I had extracted a promise that he would attend my sister’s party that night, and even the wedding itself the following day. As for the Nazi’s wife, she had taken a shine to the faux pharaoh and was planning to stay with her until the business with Johanne was sorted out.
“Ach, Magdalena, why make such a federal box out of it?”
“If you’re going to use Susannah’s phrases, then at least get them right, dear. Now out with it.”
“I came to ask for something.”
“What’s mine is yours,” I said foolishly.
“Barbara doesn’t want me in the house.”
“What do you mean she doesn’t want you there? It’s your house.”
“Yah, but she thinks I get under her foot.”
I looked down at Freni. Barbara, like me, is vertically enhanced. Freni, on the other hand, is vertically challenged. But Freni is a heavy woman with an enormous bosom. She quite makes up for her lack of vertical visibility with her horizontal presence. It was unlikely Barbara literally stepped on her.
“So, you feel you are in the way in your own house? Is that it?”
“Yah, I make a simple comment, and this is the thanks I get.”
“What comment was that, dear?”
“Nothing.”
“Out with it!”
“Ach, it was not such a big thing. I just told her that now—since she is in the family way—there was no reason for her and my son Jonathan to be—well, you know.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Ach, so dense, Magdalena. They were—you know.” Freni rolled her eyes.
“That? How do you know?”
“I have ears, Magdalena.”
“You could hear them?”
Freni shook her head miserably. “Every day—sometimes more than once.”
I clapped my hands over my ears. This was not a proper conversation to be having with someone Freni’s age. With anyone of any age, for that matter.
“So what is it you want? Do you and Mose want to move in with me? Don’t think I wouldn’t like to help you, but this is where you need to put your own little foot down. It’s your house, after all.”
We walked in silence for few minutes. There is nothing quite as pleasant as a pieless pasture on a sunny spring day. My once-broken but now-healed heart wanted to soar with the chicken hawks, to sing with the starlings.
Leave it to Freni to intrude on my joy. “Ach, Magdalena, it’s more than you-know-what.”
“Wh
at is, dear?”
“My problem.”
“Ah, that. Well, Sam sells the solution in a little tube. It will shrink those suckers in a New York minute.”
“Ach!”
“Trust me. They’ll practically disappear overnight.” Freni wrapped her stubby arms as best she could around her chest. “You always were jealous, Magdalena, but this is going too far. I’m happy the way God made me. I certainly don’t want to look like you—flat as an ironing board.”
“Hemorrhoids! I thought you were talking about hemorrhoids!”
“Yah, sure you were.”
“But I was. And I’m not jealous. I wouldn’t want— never mind. What’s the favor?”
“My job.” Flies landing on pudding are louder than that. “You want your job back?”
“Are you deaf, Magdalena?”
I tossed my head. “Give me one good reason I should take you back.”
“Ach, and this from the child I practically raised?”
I bided my time before responding. “I tell you what. I’ll give you your job back, if you come clean with me.”
“Such riddles, Magdalena. Of course I’ll clean with you. Don’t I always wash the dishes?”
“I want you to be honest with me about something. I’m going to ask you a question, and I want the truth, no matter how much it hurts.”
Freni’s beady eyes darted nervously from side to side behind her thick lenses. “So ask, already.”
“The day Mama and Papa died in the tunnel—”
“Ach, a terrible day!”
“Yes, but whose fault was it?”
“The Lord numbers our days, Magdalena. You know that.”
“Even so, we have free will, right? Did Papa do something foolish? Was he driving recklessly?”
Freni was as mum as Diana’s mummy.
“He was driving recklessly, wasn’t he?” Dim memories drifted back of Papa flying down the road, of Susannah and me huddled in the backseat as mailboxes fell like dominoes.
“Yah.”
“Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“Ach—what was there to say? That your papa drove like a maniac? Everyone knew that, Magdalena.”
“Yes, but I didn’t.”
Freni stared at me. The thick lenses needed a good scrubbing.
