Nightingale

by Susan May Warren

  His name nearly broached her lips.

  She swallowed it back down.

  Still—did Linus remember the letter, remember the man to whom he’d given it for delivery? Remember what he’d written inside it?

  “I’m sorry, Linus, but—”

  “Don’t go.”

  Linus looked at her, his mouth tight, his eyes glistening.

  “Are you in pain? Would you like some med—”

  He grabbed her arm, right above the wrist. “Please, Esther. Don’t go.”

  She covered his hand. “No, of course not. I can sit with you awhile after I clock in and do rounds.”

  “No, I mean—” He swallowed and met her eyes. She couldn’t read them—or perhaps didn’t want to. But she couldn’t ignore the tug on her wrist, the urgency as he pulled her toward him.

  He slid his good hand up her other arm, his hand cold and soft. “I remember your skin.”

  “Linus—I—”

  His hand wove behind her neck. He tugged.

  Oh no. “Linus, I don’t think—”

  He leaned up to meet his hold on her and before she could stop him, he pressed his mouth against hers, hard, gulping her in.

  She stilled, not sure what to do. Trapped in his grip—his hand on her wrist, around her neck, Linus bruising her lips—No! Please—“No! Linus!”

  She pushed him away, and the force of it made him grunt. But he loosened his grip, enough for her to step away, to hold up her hands. “Not. Yet.” But her voice shook and she turned away, closing her eyes against their burn.

  He said nothing, and she only heard his long thick breaths. Then, finally, “I guess I don’t blame you.”

  What? She turned, her hand on her cheek. “What?”

  “I’m a freak.” He wouldn’t look at her. “I even disgust myself.” He wound his arm over his eyes.

  And then to her horror, his body began to shake. Deep wrenching sobs tunneled out of him, wracking his body.

  Oh, Linus.

  She moved toward him, her hands out, not sure how to comfort him—not sure she should.

  No, of course she should.

  She put her hands on his arm, drew it away. Ran her hand down his wet cheek even as he turned away from her. “Please, Linus… I’m sorry. Don’t… Cry. Don’t cry.”

  He opened his eyes then, and the way his expression reached for her, she didn’t know how to defend herself. So she let him swallow her in.

  “You’re going to stay with me, right? Don’t leave, Esther. Please don’t leave me. You’re all I have left.”

  She sank down on the leather seat of the wheelchair. Pushed that dark hair from his face, pressed her palm against his cheek. He needed a shave.

  “No, Linus. I’m not going anywhere.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Papa, you’re just going to get us all killed.

  The memory visited Peter in the darkest hours of the night, when exhaustion pressed him into his cot, when only his heartbeat reminded him he still survived.

  “Keep your voice down.” His father turned to him, as vivid in his thoughts as he had been—what, already five years ago? His wizened face thickened with age, charcoal hair slicked back against his head, blue eyes growing sharper, it seemed, each day since the passing of the Nuremburg Laws. Peter still remembered the way his father glanced over his shoulder at the two black-capped SS men seated in the café behind them, eating Sauerbraten and drinking coffee.

  Behind them, along the Brühlsche Terrasse, the summer wind coaxed the fragrances of the cedars that sentried the Balcony of Europe. In the Elbe River beyond the green boulevard, boats listed against their moorings, others slipping under the Carolabrücke, the Carola Bridge. Men and women out for a Sunday stroll through the Schlossplatz seemed unaffected by the presence of the new police force, the Schutzstaffel, or perhaps simply chose to ignore the thumb of the Waffen-SS pressing their way through the city. Yes, they’d all shuddered at the brutality of the führer’s decrees. But the baroque Zwinger Palace keep of the kingdom of Saxony, the burnt red roofs of the renaissance buildings that wound throughout the city, and the grandeur of the Semper Opera House beguiled them to believe that this city in the valley of the Elbe would survive the Führerprinzip, the rule of the führer.

  Most simply wanted to expunge the horror of Reichskristallnacht, when the SS smashed the Jewish shopkeepers’ windows and dragged to the street hundreds of able-bodied men, beating them to their deaths, or worse, sending them to the concentration camps.

  The cobblestone still ran red, although the city had done its best to wash away the stains. Except his father, it seemed.

  No, Dr. Hess had practically hung a sign over his physician’s office, declaring it a safe house for refugee Jews in need of medical attention and/or safe passage to Israel. Peter couldn’t count how many times he’d come home from class at the university to find his father’s study door closed, only to hear the closet slide shut, the cellar door creaking open as someone escaped onto the shadow-hooded street.

  Peter lowered her voice, leaning over his coffee. “Father, it’s not that I disapprove, but I could clearly see Isaac Fischer leave out the back alley last night. And I suspect Herr Kempler is a member of the KPD. His window overlooks the alley. And his isn’t the only one. What if any of the neighbors—”

  His father held up his hand, met his gaze with eyes that silenced him. “In the face of evil, would you have me do nothing?”

  Peter sat back, ran his finger along the lip of his coffee cup. Around him, school children kicked a football in the shadows of the Frauenkirche, the Lutheran Church of Our Lady. Pigeons strutted across the gray stones of the plaza, sparrows chirruped from the linden trees. No wonder Dresden had been the playground of Bach, Mendelssohn, and even Goethe.

  “Perhaps I would be more discreet.”

  “Discreet. What does that mean anymore, when Jacob Reissler’s son is hung from a government building, his body rotting from a lamppost? There is nothing discreet about what the SS is doing.”

  “Now you keep your voice down, Father,” Peter hissed as the two SS men glanced his direction.

  Still, his father had a point. He well remembered the day in November, only two years ago, when his classmates—two Jewish men studying medicine in the Technische Universität of Dresden—failed to show, a hushed breath falling over the city as the Juden population began to vanish.

  He took a sip of coffee, forced it down, not able to stifle the choking cough.

  Perhaps his father had a point. His version of discreet had been returning home that day to stare out his window, his chest on fire. Except, “Germans are being taken, Father. Disappearing. People like Herr Janssen, the organist. They say the SS took him, sent him to the camps with the Jews.”

  His father ran his fingers along the brim of his fedora, settled upon the table. “If we stare at our fears, we become paralyzed. Pursue faithfulness, son. One day at a time. This is all God asks.”

  Yes, well, sometimes God asks too much of a man. Sometimes a man has to wrangle his own deliverance.

  Or, at least he hoped.

  Peter rolled over to one side, swiping the images from his mind, but they came at him. Perhaps if he’d received a letter from Esther, or a visit, but her absence left him undefended from the voices.

  “Herr Hess!”

  Boots pummeled the narrow stairway as he threw on his pants, grabbed up his white oxford. The SS, like roaches, slammed open his bedroom door, his hand still at his waistband. They lunged at him, and he grabbed the stair rail before he tumbled down into his parents’ parlor.

  The SS officer behind him pushed him to his knees, jammed his Mauser into his skull. “Where is he?”

  Peter glanced at his mother, glued to her antique Queen Anne chair, the one she’d stored in her parents’ attic during their years in America, her face slicked with fear. But her eyes—they bored into him, resonating a strength he hadn’t known she had. She tightened her jaw, and yes, he discerned the slightest
shake of her head.

  “I don’t know,” he ground out.

  He wished then he had spent more time in the fields or fishing than in his textbooks, because he might have been able to stop them—given his father a moment to escape.

  Instead, at the bottom of the stairs, the front door eased open. No!—his father stood in the outline of the hallway light. An expression flashed on his face—not exactly fear. More…expectation.

  Or, determination.

  Peter had cried out, and—

  Peter!

  Father!

  “Peter!”

  Heat splashed across his shoulder—someone slapped him. He jerked, opened his eyes. Arne crouched beside him. “You were yelling in your sleep.”

  Oh. He pushed himself up, scrubbed a hand down his face. Arne settled back on his cot, his hands on his knees, his eyes wide on him.

  “You do that sometimes.”

  “I know. Sorry I woke you.”

  Arne shook his head, lay back down on his cot. “I can’t sleep. I should be used to the quiet by now, but all I hear is my memories of home. I miss… Did you know that I have seven brothers and sisters? My sister Eva was three when I left. She’s already in school by now.”

  If they even had a school to return to. Peter had his fears that with the Allies defeating Germany, they may have also decimated it.

  He couldn’t let that thought climb through him.

  Yes, I’ve seen him. He’s alive.

  “I lived in Berlin, and the city was never quiet. Not really. Quiet, like this, I got from visiting my grandparents in Lauffen. We’d go fishing in the river, and Oma would make me latkes, and late at night we’d catch fireflies.”

  He could see Arne’s life in his eyes, how the camp along the Baraboo River could conjure ghosts, despite its almost peaceful whispers.

  “The fireflies remind me of home. I hope we return soon,” Arne said quietly.

  Peter stared down at the barracks of men, the silence pressing against him. Moonlight fragmented through the screen windows. The sweat of men and the odors of the camp kitchen stewed in the canvas tent despite the cool of the night.

  He needed a drink. If he were careful, he might get to the washrooms unheard.

  In fact, if he really wanted to, he might slide out into the night, beyond the rickety snow fencing that meant to detour escape, and lose himself between the buildings of Roosevelt.

  Find Esther.

  Five days. Five days since he’d seen her smile fade into the twilight.

  Clearly, he’d been a desperate man, lying to himself. What a fool to think she might want him. No doubt she returned home and shook herself to her senses. What future did a woman like Esther have with a prisoner of war?

  And what had he’d been thinking, anyway? That she’d wait for him? That he could return to her someday, start a life in America? He barely knew her.

  Still, something about her letters made him feel alive. Even… respected. As if she saw past the POW uniform to the man who longed for honor.

  Pursue faithfulness. He let the voice wind through him.

  He got up, stealing to the door, creaked it open, then folded into the night.

  The camp lay sleeping under the scatter of stars, the spill of the Milky Way above. The guard station located at the head of the camp lit up the far end, where, no doubt, Bert and his cronies hashed out a game of poker.

  Or perhaps the guards had just finished off a case of beer donated from the local brewery. He’d seen some of the townsfolk bring it over, a contingent that he hoped Esther had joined.

  No.

  And nothing in mail call either.

  He tried not to let it turn him inside out. Tried not to remember the taste of her lips against his.

  Sometimes a man has to wrangle his own escape.

  No. The guards had learned to trust him. And he’d earned it—which meant he’d earned the right to leave camp, to work on the local farms, to have a decent lunch and live like a free man. More, if he escaped, he’d be shipped to Fort McCoy, or even Fort Robinson in Nebraska, where he heard men lived like true prisoners.

  With good behavior he hoped that maybe the United States would let him stay.

  He’d wait. And hope that Esther might truly want him…

  He crept around the edge of the tent, listened, then scurried across the open ground to the lavatory tent. The guards had drilled a well into the ground for the men to wash up. With the men moving from town to town, they’d learned how to make their prison portable.

  He slipped into the darkness of the tent, tried not to alert—

  “The Janzen girl will be waiting for us. She said she’d have her daddy’s truck down by the Baraboo, at the bridge west of town.”

  Peter froze, recognizing Fritz’s voice.

  No.

  He crept closer.

  “We’ll finish them off and be to the border by midnight. One last victory for the führer.”

  “What about the girl?”

  No. Oh no—Ernst Merkel he’d known from his days in basic training. The fact the powers sent him to Fort McCoy told Peter that Ernst’s Nazi affiliations slipped below the radar, right along with Fritz. Sure, the Nazis only comprised a handful of the 137 men in the camp, but they fed on each other, terrorized the younger prisoners.

  “We’ll get rid of her—”

  The wound in Peter’s side flared as he stepped out of the tent.

  Fritz crouched next to Ernst and—oh no, Hans Vanderburger. They startled, glanced up at Peter, and everyone froze.

  Perhaps this was what happened when men stood up to darkness.

  Until darkness stood up too. Fritz found his feet. “What are you doing here?”

  Peter said nothing for a beat, just to gather himself, just to confirm that he wanted this fight. But if Fritz and gang escaped, the Americans would batten down the hatches and, well, any hope of seeing—or even writing—to Esther might die with Fritz’s scurry over the flimsy fence.

  Not to mention what would happen to the pretty Janzen girl.

  “Stopping you.”

  Fritz kept his voice low. “I’m giving you one chance to go back. No one has to get hurt here.” His gaze went to Peter’s ribs, and he let a smile slide over his face.

  Peter ignored it. “I’m not letting you leave.”

  Fritz glanced at his comrades. Hans rose, Ernst edged up beside Peter.

  Fritz laughed, a short, quiet huff that had nothing to do with humor. “Come with us.” He stepped close, the cabbage from dinner sliding out on his breath. “You know you want to.”

  Yes. For a second, standing in the dark, the stars a witness, he wanted to. He could find Esther—he’d just track down the hospital. And he could blend in, look like any of the farm boys from Wisconsin.

  Maybe—

  “He won’t. He loves these Americans.” Ernst whispered in his ear. “Don’t you? I saw that fraulein with the blond hair—”

  Peter pushed him back, not hard, with his forearm. “Leave it.”

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” Fritz said softly, that smile still around his mouth. “You want to stay right here, with these Jew-loving Americans. Like father, like son.”

  Everything inside him stopped, as if a hand pressed its fingers through his chest. He tried for his breath, couldn’t snag it even as Fritz stepped up to him, his voice dark and earthy. “And you’ll die here, just like your father. I wonder if he cried out when they gassed him—”

  Fritz didn’t have a chance of seeing his right hook, the way it came out of the darkness. He jerked back, blood spurting from his nose, a guttural oomph of pain punching into the night. Just for a second, a strange, almost patriotic feeling surged through Peter.

  Then Ernst jumped him.

  He slammed to the ground, striking back, hitting flesh, hearing bones crunch—hoping they weren’t his own.

  He threw off someone—probably skinny Hans—but a boot landed in his kidney and white light strobed into his eyes.


  Peter had Fritz around the throat, his leg around his waist, and he held on with everything inside him, even as more boots slammed into his spine, his ribs, his head.

  Sirens, a spotlight, and his vision turned to red.

  Fritz slid out of his arms, and then all Peter could do was curl tight and try not to howl.

  Shouting raked over him, invaded his brain, melting into him, shaking through his body.

  He hung onto consciousness until he heard English voices, Bert, calling out his name. Then darkness sucked him in, and he was, mercifully, lost.

  Even a week after Linus’s return, Peter still walked into her dreams in the fragile light of dawn.

  And when he did, she let him stay there, just for a moment. Let him smile at her, even lift his hand to her face. Let his thumb caress away a tear.

  You’re not lost.

  She let herself hear that even if, now, she had no hope of believing it. She’d left herself so far behind, so long ago, she had no idea what she might have been.

  But, in the dewy moments before she had to be the woman she didn’t know, she tried to put her heart to rights. “I could have loved you, Peter. But I made a mistake.”

  And always, he put his hand again on her face, his thumb brushing her cheekbone. “No, you didn’t. Have faith.”

  But she’d left that too, far behind.

  Then, when she awoke, she lay there, breathing past the jagged edges of her heart.

  How could she have begun to care so deeply for a man she barely knew? Whom she’d met twice, gotten a handful of letters from?

  Maybe because in his letters she’d seen more than just his friendship. Something deeper behind his words had healed something inside. Like walking into sunlight after a long winter.

  She simply couldn’t break free—no, she didn’t want to break free—from Peter. Letting him find her in the cold chill of her dreams to smile at her, to whisper in his low tones that he believed in her, that she could find herself again. No, despite the sweet pain that accompanied his visits, she couldn’t sever him from her life. Not when he was the only one who saw her, and not the girl she’d become.