The Chaos Loop

by Peter Lerangis

  As Maria disappeared into the kitchen, Wolfgang obediently reached into a small refrigerator behind the bar. He served Corey and Leila both enormous plates of apple strudel each with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

  That, at least, tasted good.

  Corey kept sneaking glances toward the mysterious guy, who was peacefully reading a newspaper while the restaurant emptied. People stepped up to the bar and said guten Nacht to Wolfgang, leaving him tips. Winking at Corey and Leila, the bartender slipped them another serving.

  Scarfing down more dessert, Corey yawned. It was getting harder and harder to stay awake.

  “Corey . . . ?” Leila said. “Where’s Maria?”

  “Huh?” Corey said, shaking some energy into himself.

  “She hasn’t brought that guy his meal yet,” she replied, gesturing toward the opposite end of the restaurant, “and he’s gone.”

  Corey was wide awake now. He whirled on his stool.

  Herr Elser’s table was empty, as if no one had been there all night.

  12

  The rain had let up. The air outside felt like an Arctic blast after the sweaty, overheated restaurant. Corey shivered as he and Leila crept around the brick building. Their eyes scanned the walls for extra doors, or any method that Georg Elser could have used to enter or escape.

  At the rear of the building, Leila found a wooden hatch with open diagonal doors. Inside, steps led down into the kitchen. “Aha!” she exclaimed.

  “Aha what?” Corey said. “We were sitting near the kitchen and we didn’t see him go in. Maybe he snuck out the front when we weren’t looking?”

  “I had my eye on the front of the restaurant,” Leila said. “I would have seen him. I swear, he never left this place.”

  “We could look at the surveillance cameras.”

  “Ha ha. I have some ideas. Come on.”

  Leila sped back into the Bürgerbräukeller through the front door. She led Corey down the inner stairs and back into the restaurant. A couple of workers were still mopping floors and stacking chairs, and Wolfgang was counting cash at the bar.

  Waving a quick hello, Leila made her way to the stage area and went right to the door behind the podium. “This is where the guy hid from you, right?” she said, yanking the door open.

  “Not so fast—!”

  Corey flinched, half expecting the guy to jump out with a hammer. But Leila stepped inside and flicked on the light to reveal a totally empty room. The piano and chair were exactly as Corey remembered them.

  “Okay, so he’s not here,” Leila said. “That eliminates one possibility. Are there any other rooms?”

  She turned. Directly across the stage area was another door, a mirror image of the one they’d just opened. Leila ran to that one and pulled it open. They both stared into a long, cement-walled hallway that led deeper into the building, in the direction of the kitchen.

  Carefully, quietly, they stepped in, their footsteps rapping sharply against the hard floor. Before long they came to another door. Beyond it were the sounds of clinking glasses and rushing water. Corey pushed it open into a steaming back room of the kitchen, where a team of workers were hand-washing plates and glasses.

  To their right, another flight of stairs led up into the higher floors of the Bürgerbräukeller. It was the same stairs Corey and Leila had taken to get to room 208, Maria’s room.

  “Do you think he went up there . . . ?” Leila said. “It’s all, like, apartments. And he doesn’t live here. Maria said he was staying with people she knew. And when he came in to dinner, he was wet from the rain.”

  “He’s not washing plates down here,” Corey said with a shrug. “So he must be up there. I think he’s hiding, sneaking around. He was here this morning when Maria unlocked the place. The restaurant should have been empty.”

  “Wait, you think he comes here for dinner, hides out in the building until the restaurant closes, and then sneaks out in the morning when the place opens?”

  Corey nodded. “He’s up to something. And if he is hiding out, I’m worried about Maria. He seemed kind of like a maniac.”

  “I’m not liking this one bit,” Leila said.

  “If anything bad happens, I can always microhop and fix it,” Corey said.

  “Now you want to time travel?” Leila looked at him in disbelief. “Curb your enthusiasm, Superman. We have to reserve your powers, remember?”

  Together they climbed the stairs to the second floor and emerged into a long hallway lined with dark wood. It smelled musty and slightly moldy, with an open window at the other end providing the only ventilation.

  At room 208, Corey rapped on the door. “Maria?”

  He heard a murmur of voices within. A moment later Maria appeared at the door with a smile. She had changed from her waiter uniform into a plain button-down shirt and a pair of khaki pants. Her room was dark except for a lamp on a desk, over which a sheer scarf had been draped, bathing the room in red. “Willkommen! Come in!” She gestured into the room. “You come to say good-bye? Franz is here?”

  “Franz?” Corey asked.

  “Your Onkel,” Maria said.

  Leila exhaled. She gave Corey a long look and stepped into the room. “Maria, we have something to tell you. I mean, after you finish closing up the restaurant.”

  “My work is done. The others do late work because I do shopping in the morning.” Maria sat, looking at them expectantly. Four tapered candles cast soft light across her face. On her table was a brownish rectangular board. It was covered with letters and mystical symbols. On top of that was a kidney-shaped object about the size of Corey’s hand, supported by four tiny legs. “Please. Sit. I was just about to contact my Horst.”

  “You have a horse?” Corey asked.

  Maria looked at him oddly. “Horst was mein husband. He died sixteen years ago. We talk, through my Ouija board. You know these boards? Very popular in America. Place fingers on the planchette and the dead spell out answers to your questions. The dead, they are still with us, meine Kinder. The past is Jetzt—now. But you sit. They will wait for me. Horst is patient.” She smiled. “You do not think I am crazy?”

  “No. I don’t.” As Corey sat slowly on the bed, he thought about his trip into 1862 Central Park, 2001 downtown New York City, and 1917 Greenwich Village. “Sometimes I speak to the dead too. People in the past.”

  Leila shot him a wary look. But Maria just nodded and smiled. She took his hand and Leila’s. “Ja, I know this about you.”

  “You do?” Leila said.

  “I know too that you do not have this Onkel Franz. Ja?”

  Corey cleared his throat nervously. “Ja.”

  “You are not so good at telling lies!” Maria said with a laugh. “Maria tells you der Wahrheit. The truth. Maria tells everybody the truth. Except, sometimes, foolish drunken German men at the Bürgerbräukeller. So you are to tell me truth, ja?”

  “We . . . can’t,” Leila replied.

  Maria cocked her head. “Warum?”

  “Why? Because you wouldn’t believe it,” Leila said.

  “How do you know?” Maria smiled. “Try me. I do not bite.”

  Leila look uncertainly at Corey.

  “Would you think we were crazy,” Corey said cautiously, “if we told you we’re from the future?”

  “Corey!” Leila said.

  “Was bedeutet ‘future’?” Maria asked.

  “She’s asking what that means,” Leila said. “Zukunft, Maria.”

  “We are from the Zukunft . . . twenty-first century,” Corey continued.

  Maria’s smile fell. She looked deeply into Corey’s eyes, then Leila’s. “Das ist ja die Wahrheit?”

  Leila took a deep breath. “Ja. It’s the truth.”

  Maria stood and turned away from them, her hand on her chin.

  “She thinks we’re loony birds,” Corey whispered. “I knew it. We should have stuck with Uncle Franzy Pants.”

  “Mein Vaterland . . . my fatherland, Germany . . .” Maria blur
ted out. “So much bad things now. Kristallnacht . . . you know this? Last year they take away the Jews, smash their windows, steal everything.” Maria looked pleadingly at Leila, then Corey. “The Zukunft . . . future. Tell me about this. Does these Nazis . . . ?” Her voice drifted off.

  “Succeed?” Leila said. “Take over the world? No. But they come close. The entire world becomes involved in a war. Thousands of soldiers die. Millions of Jews, not to mention Poles, gay people, anyone they hate . . . all slaughtered in cold blood. In death camps.”

  “Ach, mein Gott,” Maria said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “This cannot happen.”

  “You wanted to know why we were here,” Corey said. He took a deep breath and sat up ramrod straight. “The truth is, I have a power. A superpower, really. I can change the past. We came here to stop Hitler. We travel through time using metal artifacts. Like this one.”

  He reached into his pack and pulled out the corroded old metal shank. Maria took it, not knowing what to make of it. “What is this thing?”

  “We think it’s part of a chandelier in the restaurant,” Corey said. “We also found a note from you to someone named Clara. Who is Clara?”

  “Meine Freundin,” Maria replied. “My friend.”

  “Help us, Maria,” Corey said. “I can change history, if I have a plan. But I don’t know what to do.”

  “I—I—” Maria’s voice caught in her throat. Her eyes were drawn upward, to something behind Leila’s and Corey’s shoulders.

  That was when Corey heard the thump of a footstep.

  He whirled around to see in the doorway a scowling woman with high cheekbones and hair pulled back into a ponytail.

  “Clara?” Maria said with a quizzical look. “Alles in Ordnung? Was ist los?”

  From behind her stepped Georg Elser, aiming a pistol at Corey’s head.

  13

  “Do not . . . do anything . . . dumb,” Leila murmured to Corey.

  The only thing Corey was doing was putting his hands in the air. He couldn’t think of anything else under the circumstances.

  Maria, Clara, and Georg were all crowded into the room now, the door shut behind them. They were chattering away in German, their voices hushed and urgent. Corey could swear he recognized the word Zukunft. Georg was waving the gun wildly.

  “If he’s not careful, he’ll shoot the person next door through the wall,” Corey whispered.

  “If he’s not careful, he’ll shoot us,” Leila replied.

  “What are they saying?”

  “The guy is calling us Hitlerjugend. He thinks we’re Hitler Youth.”

  “What?” Corey turned toward the group, waving his hands. “Nein! Nein! Nein!”

  Georg glared at him, aiming the pistol at Corey again.

  “That’s not helping,” Leila said.

  “Elser, du Schwein, steck das weg!” Maria added. “Put it away!”

  Georg’s eyes shifted uneasily between the two women. He scowled at Corey, flipped the safety on, and dropped the gun in a black leather shoulder sack.

  Clara stuck out her hand toward Corey and Leila. “So sorry, bit of a misunderstanding,” she said in a clipped accent that seemed both German and British. “Herr Elser was under the impression that you two were working for the Nazis.”

  “So . . . he and you are like Maria?” Corey said, shaking the woman’s hand. “Anti-Nazi?”

  “Ja. You’d be surprised how many children have been recruited to turn on their neighbors and families,” the woman replied. “Please. Forgive our rudeness. I am Clara Scharfstein.”

  Hearing the last name, Corey’s jaw dropped. Leila’s words were still fresh in his mind. Did you know Opa’s name was Josef Scharfstein, and he changed it to Sharp at Ellis Island?

  “No. Way,” he murmured.

  Leila’s face had gone ashen. Corey thought she would faint. “Of course!” she blurted. “That’s why Auntie Flora had the artifact. It came from you! You’re my great-great-aunt Or maybe great! Of course! I should have known. You—you look like Auntie Flora! I can tell, it’s in the nose!”

  She leaped at Clara. The woman flinched, but she didn’t have room to move away before Leila wrapped her in an impulsive hug, squealing with amazement and joy. Maria’s somber face broke into a smile, but Georg seemed confused and Clara looked trapped.

  “She’s fan-girling,” Corey explained.

  “Yes. Well.” Clara pulled loose from Leila and patted her hand. “Maria tells me you are to be trusted. And so Georg and I will trust you, too. I am the leader of Der Münchenfrauenwiderstand.”

  “Can you say that slowly?” Corey asked.

  “You may call us the MFW,” Clara replied. “It means Munich Women’s Resistance. We will explain why Georg is here. But it is necessary that our secrecy is absolute. You must promise me that with your lives.”

  “Definitely,” Leila said.

  “Yup,” Corey agreed.

  “Because, you know, just now Maria has confided a secret about you, too,” Clara said. “Some rather fanciful things about your visit. An elaborate science experiment, yes? Visitors from die Zukunft? Tell me more.”

  Leila and Corey both glanced toward Maria, but her eyes never wavered from Clara. Corey swallowed, not knowing what to expect. “Uh, well . . . we’re from New York City, in the twenty-first century.”

  Clara nodded. “Did you perhaps . . . emerge from Maria’s Ouija board?”

  “Clara, bitte!” Maria snapped.

  “We are being honest, yes?” Clara said. “Maria is dedicated to her Spiritismus, I am more a scientist. I have heard Herr Einstein speak on the puzzles of time and space. But time travel?” She smiled tightly. “This is difficult to accept without proof.”

  Corey reached into his pocket and took out his Air Jordans. “Would anyone wear something like this in nineteen thirty-nine?”

  Clara grimaced at the sight of the sneakers. Or maybe the smell. But Leila grabbed the metal rod and the photo from where Maria had left them on the bed. “This stuff was inherited by my aunt,” Leila said, “who is descended from Clara.”

  “I know this design . . .” Georg said, holding the artifact up to the lamp light.

  Clara took the note, but unlike Maria she turned it over to see the photo. She stared intently at the two figures posing. “These women . . .” she said, shaking her head. “They are you and me, Mariaschen. But . . . so alt. Old. And our hair . . . why does it look like that?”

  “Those are you?” Corey slipped behind her and looked over her shoulder. Earlier he hadn’t made any kind of mental connection with that photo. The two women were heavier and much older than Maria and Clara. But now, having met them, he saw that the resemblance was unmistakable.

  Maria came to their side. At the sight of the image, her eyes widened. “Ach du Lieber. That gate. I have seen photos of one like it.”

  Clara nodded. “Auschwitz.”

  “The camps became historical sites,” Leila said softly. “After the war ended. The hairstyle is from, like, the late nineteen sixties or early nineteen seventies, I think.”

  Clara’s hand was shaking as she turned the photo over and read the inscription. “That is Maria’s handwriting. How baffling and strange. Tell me, when does the war end?”

  “Nineteen forty-five,” Leila replied.

  Georg’s face went pale. “Hitler lives?”

  “He dies,” Leila replied. “But not for another five or six years.”

  Corey nodded. “And millions of people are killed. In places like Auschwitz. I want to change that. I have the power to do it. Can you tell us about this piece of metal? We think it comes from one of the chandeliers.”

  “Ja, sicher,” Georg said, placing the shard back on the bed. “It is from the Bürgerbräukeller.”

  “When we first got here,” Leila said, “Corey found Georg sneaking around in the restaurant. So we’re trying to put all of this together.”

  Maria took a deep breath and glanced at Clara. She nodded, as if givin
g Maria permission.

  “All right, I tell you about Georg,” Maria said. “One morning I am opening the restaurant early. Much more early than I always do. I do not expect to see anyone. But there is Georg. He is putting hole in . . . wie sagt man Säule?”

  “Column,” Clara said. “Or pillar.”

  Corey nodded. “Right. Hole in column. We saw that.”

  “Georg was angry! He almost kill me for finding him!” Maria said. “But I talk to him. I know his face. In a few minutes I know why. He and my husband, Horst, they work together many years ago, in woodworking shop in Königsbronn. As I told you, in nineteen twenty-three Horst died, fighting the Nazis— right here in Munich, at the Bürgerbräukeller. They call this fight the Beer Hall Putsch. But the Nazis lose this fight, and Hitler goes to jail. I do not stop crying for a week because of Horst. I hate them for what they did. Still, in those days most people think the Nazis are small group. Crazy monsters. They will go away! But . . .” Maria threw her hands in the air. “They get power anyway, many years later. So Georg knows I do not like Hitler. He does not like Hitler. And we become . . . Freunde.”

  “Friends,” Leila said.

  “Accomplices,” Corey added.

  “In the Nazis’ twisted minds,” Clara said, “this Beer Hall Putsch defeat becomes some kind of great moment. The dead soldiers are martyrs. And now, every year in honor of this battle, Hitler comes here to make a speech. To gloat.”

  “And Georg . . . ?” Corey asked.

  Clara barked a few words of German to Georg. For a moment he glowered at Corey, then gave an uncertain glance back to Clara. Finally, with a sigh, he opened his sack and took out a sheaf of white graph paper.

  Carefully he laid them out next to one another on the floor.

  One of them showed a blueprint of the Bürgerbräukeller building, with all the balconies, doors, tunnels, and inner rooms marked out. Another showed the architecture of the grand hall—the table layouts, the pillars, the chandeliers. A big red circle was drawn on the pillar next to the stage.