by Cathy Gohlke
The day after Christmas, Ward Beecham phoned me at Aunt Lavinia’s. “I’ve received a reply. You’d best come by the office.”
Ward reached across his desk, handing me a sheet of embossed ivory letterhead, the name and return address in German, the body of the letter in English. “I was only able to track the address on one of the envelopes. I couldn’t get a return on the others.” The furrow creased between his brows. “I’m not sure if you’ll think this is a belated Christmas present or a lure through a dark tunnel.”
I smiled tentatively, eager and afraid at once.
Dear Esquire Beecham,
I write on behalf of my client Herr Wolfgang Sommer, who is naturally distraught to learn that his daughter, Lieselotte Sterling, is now deceased.
Herr Sommer searched many years for his daughter to no avail and believes now that she must also have assumed he perished during the war. Though he deeply regrets this lonely passage of time, he would be most happy to make the acquaintance of his granddaughter, Hannah Sterling.
Herr Sommer invites Fräulein Sterling to his home in Berlin at her earliest convenience and trusts that she will consider his home as her own. He has instructed me to transfer the amount of five hundred American dollars to your account for her travel expenses.
I must convey to you that Herr Sommer is elderly and infirm. Unable to provide the hospitality he would like, Herr Sommer requires his physician, Dr. Gunther Peterson, or myself to act in his stead.
Sincerely,
Heinrich Eberhardt
Attorney at Law
“Hannah?” Ward Beecham asked. “Are you all right?”
All right? “This says I have a grandfather . . . a grandfather I never knew existed. And he’s German . . . Wolfgang Sommer . . . That’s not even the name on Mama’s marriage certificate.”
“Apparently. Yes, that’s right, on both counts.”
“Everything my mother told me about her past was a lie.”
“We don’t know anything about the man, other than he appears to have money sufficient to buy you a ticket.”
“If he was a bad man, why would she have left me this address to reach him? She never told me about him, but she opened this door for me to walk through—after her death. I don’t understand.”
“Maybe she regretted not telling you, not letting you know about him.” He hesitated. “But she might have been ashamed of him too. She might have had good reason not to use his name or respond to his letter. We don’t know.”
“Aunt Lavinia said people did crazy things during the war. She suspects Mama took advantage of Daddy, that she got him to marry her so she could get away from something bad she’d done.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Do you? She let me believe my whole life that Daddy—Joe Sterling—was my father, and that she had no family at all. That she was Austrian, for pete’s sake.”
“Maybe your father—Joe—wanted it that way. Maybe she thought she needed to protect you from her family or from the American community. We weren’t known for treating Germans—even German Americans—very well, you know.”
“But after Daddy died, she could have—”
“Honored his memory.”
“She didn’t love him! She wouldn’t have put a headstone over his grave if Aunt Lavinia hadn’t shamed her into it. He wasn’t a good husband, any more than she was a good wife. I know that, but he was good to me—as good as he knew how.” Why are you taking up for them? Why am I taking up for him? “She lied to me, and she didn’t exactly make it easy for me to figure out all that we’ve learned.” That truth kept a tornado spinning in my head, and hurt like a rock crushing my chest. It’s like she’s playing games with me from the other side of the grave!
“I’m just saying that your mother must have had her reasons. I don’t know what those were, but I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt and caution you to be careful with this man who claims to be your grandfather. Just because he invites you to Germany doesn’t mean you should go.” He shook his head. “We don’t know anything about him or this lawyer. I need to think how best to proceed.”
But this was the first clue I’d found to my mother’s past and possibly to my own. If I had a grandfather in Germany, might I also have a father there? Could the other envelopes from Germany, the one Ward was unable to trace, lead me to him? Understanding my past might give me a clue to my future. I wasn’t about to let Ward Beecham talk me out of it. “There’s one way to find out, isn’t there? Book my plane ticket.”
Aunt Lavinia fought me every step of the way, begged me not to go, and cried as the taxicab pulled from her drive. Brokenhearted and trying not to be angry with her, I set my jaw, refusing to look back. I wasn’t leaving forever, just for now, for me. I promised to write.
The plane—my first plane ride ever—bumped all the way to New York. Courage waned as my breakfast came very close to revisiting my teeth. But I couldn’t go home or back to Aunt Lavinia, not until I found some answers.
For two hours I wandered JFK’s eclectic airport stores, discovering scarves and sweatshirts and coffee mugs all touting the Big Apple—a world as surely foreign to a Southern girl as Berlin. Boarding took another hour, but at last we pulled to the runway. I sat back, closed my eyes, chewed my Doublemint, and felt the world fall away.
I changed planes in Munich. It was late morning when my plane taxied to the gate in Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport. The little German I’d gleaned from an English-German dictionary on the plane through the night did not help much through customs. Weary and bleary-eyed, I finally stood in the middle of a terminal aisle, doing my best to read signs and thumbing through the book for inspiration.
“Fräulein Sterling?” A silver-haired gentleman of perhaps fifty-five spoke softly.
“Mr.—Herr Eberhardt?”
“Ja, very good, Fräulein.” He smiled.
“Oh, I’m so glad to meet you. How did you know who I was?”
He gestured toward my dictionary, then glanced around the terminal.
No one else looks so green or lost. I didn’t know whether I should be miffed that he’d pointed out my inability to blend in or show my relief at being rescued. I felt very much like Alice having fallen down a rabbit hole. “Thank you for meeting me.”
“You must be greatly fatigued from your journey. Allow me.” He lifted my carry-on from my shoulder—a weight gladly released—and grasped the heavy suitcase whose contents had been rummaged through and turned upside down in customs. Gratefully, I trailed him through a maze of corridors, out the door, into a frigid German morning, and to a waiting Mercedes.
“If it is convenient, Fräulein, we will go directly to your grandfather’s home. I spoke with him last night and he is most anxious to make your acquaintance. Certainly, you are ready for a hot meal and some uninterrupted sleep.”
“They fed us every little bit on the plane, but a hot bath and a bed would be fabulous.”
Herr Eberhardt’s eyes widened, as if I’d said something too personal and entirely inappropriate. I turned away, feigning interest in the passing landscape, realizing that I had a great deal to learn about German men and their culture.
I must have dozed, despite my embarrassment, for the next thing I knew the driver stood by my open door, coughing discreetly. Herr Eberhardt waited on the cobbled walkway with my luggage at his feet. The driver offered his hand, and it was all I could do to let him pull me up from the deep leather seat and the lethargy of plane fatigue.
A low stone fence bordered every front yard or garden on the street—just enough to keep trespassers out and small children in. Or to mark boundaries, territories. The house, of matching gray stone, loomed three stories high and ran narrow for its shape. Daddy would have called it an efficient roofline—“lots of living below, minimal expense above.”
Herr Eberhardt introduced the stocky older woman who answered the front door as Frau Winkler, Grandfather’s cook and housekeeper. Frau Winkler eyed me with more suspicion than welcome,
but hefted my bags up the stairs with a grunt.
“Will you meet your grandfather now, Fräulein?” Herr Eberhardt took on a more kindly, almost fatherly, tone—perhaps to make up for Frau Winkler’s frost.
“Yes—please.” It was what I’d traveled thousands of miles to do, hopeful and glad that someone wanted to meet me—perhaps wanted to claim me as his family. That meant as much as—maybe more than—discovering Mama’s secrets. But now that it was time, my feet dragged like somebody’d stuffed pie weights in the toes of my pumps. What if he doesn’t like me? What if I remind him of Mama? I knew I looked very little like her, though we’d at least shared a resemblance before the cancer. Will he think that’s a good thing or bad? Whatever happened between them that Mama never answered his letter?
Herr Eberhardt knocked softly and pushed open the heavy wooden door, revealing a dimly lit room. “Herr Sommer? Hier ist Eberhardt mit deine Enkeltochter, Fräulein Sterling. Können wir eintreten?”
The form in the bed did not move or speak or snore. Herr Eberhardt guided me to the bedside, then crossed the room to pull back the curtains, allowing the late-morning sun to pour in. The white-haired and bewhiskered man in the bed moaned softly, turning his head from the light, though his eyes never opened. There was nothing of Mama in his face, not that I could tell.
“That woman! She has not even roused him for the day,” Herr Eberhardt hissed.
A tray of cold, half-eaten food sat on the bedside table. “It looks as if he’s eaten,” I offered.
Herr Eberhardt picked up the plate and sniffed. “Stew, I think, from last night. This is no way to treat an employer. He should be shaved and dressed by now. She knew you were coming. Dr. Peterson must be informed.” Herr Eberhardt set the plate quietly on the tray and motioned me toward the door, pulling me into the hallway. “He will not want you to meet him like this.”
“I don’t mind, really. I took care of Mama in her last weeks. I know what sick old people are like.”
“Herr Sommer does not think of himself as a sick old man. He wishes to welcome you to his home—your home—as your grandfather. We will do him the honor of granting that wish. I will make certain Frau Winkler has your room ready. You may rest and refresh yourself, enjoy a meal, which I trust she has prepared. I’ll return later today and make proper introductions. Herr Sommer’s use of English is . . . limited.”
Eager as I was to meet my grandfather, I wasn’t sorry to see him as a pitiable old man without his knowing. It quieted some of the percussion in my stomach, made me feel even more kindly toward him. I nodded. At that moment anything leading to a hot bath and a warm bed suited me just fine. But at the door I turned and took one last look at the sunken man beneath the eiderdown. I hoped I could make up to him whatever Mama had done.
Frau Winkler, in her broken English, told me that Grandfather had insisted I stay in Mama’s girlhood room on the third floor, that he was certain I’d want that. I wasn’t sure I did. But I was curious, just the same.
To sleep in my mother’s bed from a time when she was younger than me, to see the pictures she’d hung on her walls and set on her dresser and even the German scrapbook on her closet shelf gave me a glimpse of Lieselotte as a girl. Still, it seemed more eerie than wonderful. The only thing familiar was an old copy—on closer look, an 1843 first edition—of A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. In English, of all things. I’d always loved that story. Inside, it was inscribed, Zu meine Lieselotte, mit Liebe, Vater, November 1938. I thumbed through my dictionary to translate each word, then sat back in wonder. Such an inscription, such a gift! He surely sounded like a man who loved his daughter.
It was as though Grandfather had kept Mama’s room as a shrine—or he expected her to return at any moment, just as she’d gone and at just the same age. The styles and fabric of the dresses hanging in Mama’s closet all looked like they’d stepped out of an old Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman movie—Casablanca, maybe—only for a younger woman. I’d have loved to try one on, especially a rich teal satin, surely a party dress, but it seemed too much like walking over a person’s grave. I shuddered and closed the closet door.
Something inside me stirred, unsettled. Surreal. Everything, surreal. Snare drums from the marching band rolled, but no cymbals this time. I ran a hot bath, much to Frau Winkler’s dismay at my American extravagance in the middle of the day, and nearly fell asleep in the tub. When I finally climbed between the bottom sheet and eiderdown, I blocked out everything before me and fell fast asleep.
8
LIESELOTTE SOMMER
SEPTEMBER 1939–APRIL 1940
The Führer swept Poland in less than a month. People in the street stood in shock and uncertainty while others reveled, drunk with victory. The Führer claimed it was our right, that Germany had been provoked.
My father drank more and stayed out late at political meetings with Dr. Peterson and their friends. Rudy, sixteen, begged to enlist, but Vater ordered that he wait for his eighteenth birthday. The row that followed beggared description.
I wanted only to remain invisible. I kept up my schoolwork, but lived for Sundays—Sundays, when I attended church with the Kirchmanns. Sundays, when I glimpsed Lukas at the far end of the pew.
I turned fourteen in October, and Vater ordered me to join the League of German Girls—the Bund Deutscher Mädel. I didn’t want to join, couldn’t imagine myself running races and hiking and camping with the other girls. I felt so much older—as old as the Alps—since Mutti passed.
But Marta joined, and that was something. At least we trooped together. Walking to and from the meetings gave us good opportunities to talk about our brothers. Marta appeared nearly as smitten with Rudy as I was with Lukas. But Marta appeared smitten with so many boys, it didn’t seem serious.
BDM meetings were held weeknight evenings. For that, I was grateful. Nights alone at home loomed long, especially as winter set in.
And I believed it was just a matter of time before Lukas asked me to walk out with him. Surely he’d been waiting for my birthday so I’d seem older, so my father would allow it. I waited, as patiently as I could, through Christmas. And then the New Year celebration arrived and my hopes soared again. But Rudy and Lukas ran out on the town, carousing with their Hitler Youth, never mind the curfew. I told myself Lukas must keep up the ruse, though it was hard to see in him the same person who sat slurping soup with me the night after burying Mutti.
By the late spring of 1940, just after the invasion of France and the one-year anniversary of Mutti’s passing, concern for Lukas waned as worry increased regarding the new woman Vater courted about Berlin.
When Vater shrugged on a new suit coat and announced that he would be out late one evening, I grew bold, asking him where he was going.
“To a dinner party, that’s all.”
“With her? With that woman you saw last week?”
“‘That woman’ is a friend of Dr. Peterson, sister of an important SS officer, and an influential woman in her own right. He wants her to have a pleasant time, and I’m honored to help.” Vater lit his pipe.
“Then why doesn’t Dr. Peterson show her the town? Why doesn’t he take her to the party?”
“Peterson is helping to host the affair, Lieselotte, though that has nothing to do with you. If you’ve finished your schoolwork, you might take up more duties with the BDM. You should spend more time—”
“I’ve plenty to do, Vater. I just think it’s too soon for you—”
“You think? You have no right to think of what I do.” His face reddened.
“But—Mutti. Have you forgotten Mutti?” As soon as the words were out of my mouth I wished them back.
Vater’s shoulders sagged, but nothing compared to the slack in his face. “I will never forget your mother, Lieselotte. She was the best part of me. But she is gone. That part of my life is gone too—over. Peterson encourages me to—”
“Dr. Peterson again! He runs your life, Vater! You don’t have to do what—”
> “That’s enough, Lieselotte,” he ordered, uncharacteristically harsh. “I will hear no more. Dr. Peterson has been kind enough to point out my potential within the Party and see that I meet the right people. We’re colleagues working for the Reich. We must all think of the future. You most of all.”
“What do you mean?”
“You will be fifteen this year.”
“Yes? And sixteen the year after, and seventeen—”
“It is not too soon to consider your future.”
I didn’t want to think what he meant.
“You come from good stock. Your mother’s family line is impeccable, and my—”
“Breeding? You’re grooming me for breeding?” I’d heard the Führer’s talk of the responsibility of German women to increase the population—inside marriage and out. Lebensborn—the Nazi program encouraging young, racially pure women to produce Aryan children fathered by SS officers. There were even breeding playgrounds for the convenience of the SS and Wehrmacht.
“Don’t be impertinent.”
“It’s a question. Can you answer the question, Vater, or should I ask Dr. Peterson? Is this his idea?” I tempted him to slap me.
“Lieselotte, there is no conspiracy afoot. It’s simply . . . expedient. You’re of an age to begin thinking about marriage.”
“I’m fourteen! I’ve two years of school and then university before I think of such things.”
Vater drew back as if I’d hit a sore spot.
I hated and feared the red flags that rose in my brain. “We’ve always talked of this. Mutti, you, me—we knew, always, that I would attend university.”
“Times have changed. You must see that. In the New Germany, strong young women must contribute as—”
“As breeding sows?” My voice climbed.
“It is a privilege—a duty—to increase good Aryan families. If your mother and I could have had more children, we would.”
“So, it’s that you want more children? With this woman?”
“If not this woman, then perhaps another. I am not too old. It would be best if you . . . You’re nearly fifteen . . . It would be expedient if . . .”
