Including milk.
Or penicillin.
Or even tickets to America.
But that would come later. After Peter found his mother.
Hopefully, however, Esther forgot him.
One letter. That’s all he needed. Her words etched onto the page, something he could trace with his finger, see her bent over the paper, inking her thoughts.
Why hadn’t she written? Even once. The absence of it had the power of a scalpel, separating his memories into pieces. Had she really stood beneath the light pole at the rail station or had his desperate heart only conjured her? Had she really agreed to wait for him? Or had she simply been appeasing him, afraid of his zeal?
One letter, Esther.
He tracked a Russian patrol cavorting its way down the street. Loud, vulgar. Then, as it rounded a corner and disappeared behind a pile of rubble, he slanted out across the road.
No shouts behind him, nothing to yank him around. He made it across the street, tucking himself inside an alcove. The cigar shop door hung off one hinge, barely open. He nudged it with his foot.
The building resembled a tomb rather than a place of business, with the blackened remains of cigar counters hunched in the middle of the room like coffins. “Hello?”
“Here.” The voice emerged from beyond the main room, into the living quarters, and right behind it, a beam flickered in the recess.
He followed the beam, passed behind a curtain, and behind it found a man. The light in Peter’s eyes obscured the man’s appearance, except for U.S. Army issue boots and the slick gleam of a blade. From the body rose the tangy breath of cigarette smoke.
“Spider?”
“What did you bring?”
Peter untucked the bundle from his jacket. “Cigarettes. Beer.” He held out the burlap bag. Spider swiped it from his grip. Shoved another into his grip.
“Goat’s milk, like you asked. What do you need it for?”
“A baby.”
Silence, probably as the swindler considered his words. Then, “Always trying to save the world, aren’t you, Doc? Just like your old man.”
Peter stiffened, the guttural chuckle finding his memories, rousing the taste of bile. His eyes adjusted then. “Fritz.”
“Peter.” Fritz lowered his light, something in his eyes that made Peter’s gaze flicker to his knife.
Fritz saw it, perhaps, because he put the weapon away, tucking it into his boot. “You made it back. When?”
He hadn’t expected the anger, how it suffused his veins, how he saw himself grabbing Fritz by the throat, squeezing. He swallowed it back down to his belly, shuddering against its power. Kept his voice cool. “About three months ago. I came through Saxony.”
“They held me in France. I escaped.” Fritz’s face lifted up one side into a smile. “’Course, if the army had known it was me that night we bombed the hospital, I wouldn’t have made it back at all. Why did you keep your mouth shut?”
“You—but they only caught Ernst and Hans. Did you go back to camp?”
“I figured that the best place to hide was inside their own stupidity. What kind of country keeps their POWs behind a chicken fence?”
Yes, he would wrap his fingers around Fritz’s neck and—
No. He wasn’t, couldn’t be that man—
“Why didn’t you betray me?” Fritz asked again, opening one of the cigarette boxes, opening a pack for himself, drawing out a cigarette.
Indeed, why hadn’t he? Peter’s silence had burned into his bones, and too often as he’d lain in his bunk in Fort Robinson, or on a ship across the Atlantic, or even in the camp in Sudbury, England, he’d seen himself rising from his chair, screaming out Fritz’s name. Finally dousing the ever-present simmer of doubt—except… Well, he hadn’t wanted to implicate himself.
Which meant he’d bartered cowardice for freedom. Perhaps he deserved to return home to destruction. “I didn’t know for sure.”
“You should have trusted your instincts.” Fritz drew on his cigarette, the ash illuminating his eyes, just for a moment. Shiny black, like charred wood. “Besides, you’re not German any more than I’m Greek. You have American blood inside you.” His voice lowered, raking through Peter. “No wonder you saved that American soldier. Too bad he got your girl.”
The cigarette burned in the darkness, a pinprick of hot light.
Of course Peter had known it all along. Of course Linus had healed, had come to his good senses, had realized the gift of Esther in his life.
Probably she married him and Peter became a memory, if that. No wonder she hadn’t written.
Peter pushed through the hot band around his chest. “Thanks for the milk. Can you get more?”
“No so fast, Doc.” Fritz edged up to him, the odor of the unwashed thick upon him. “Seems to me that a doctor should be able to get his hands on more of this. Seems as though the Red Cross considers you some sort of hero.”
“I’m not a hero—”
“No. You’re useful.” Fritz drew again from the cigarette. “Always were. The minute I saw those Jews sneaking out the back door of your father’s house, I knew it.”
Everything inside Peter seized, hard, as if a rock had slammed through him. “What are you talking about?”
“I lived there, above you.” He pinched his cigarette, two fingers to his mouth as he finished off the butt. “Watching you. And then, after you left…” He lifted a shoulder. “They were traitors, just like you. And stupid. Your father brought it on himself, you know. Brought it on your mother, too.”
A roaring filled his head—“What did you do?”—and his voice didn’t quite sound like his own.
“I did what any good German would do.”
Peter’s breath left him.
“I watched them. They took your mother out back, put her against the wall. Your father tried to stop them. Like you, he didn’t go easy. They took him away afterward, left your mother’s body in the alley. I hope they gassed him slowly.”
Peter stood there, the roaring so loud now it consumed his lungs, squeezed until he had to reach out, palm the wall.
“I did them a favor. At least they didn’t burn.”
Peter saw himself pressing his thumbs into Fritz’s trachea, watching the breath leak out of him, his eyes reddening. “You—”
Steps, outside. Glass breaking, sharp and crisp, a warning in the night. Fritz flicked off his light, pushed Peter with two fingers to his breastbone against the wall. “Shh.”
Still, the metal door creaked open. “Zdrastvooyta?”
Fritz drew back, and in a second the blade gleamed. He put a finger to his mouth.
Peter stared at the blade, his hands shaking, still caught in Fritz’s confession. Yet he should have moved faster, because Fritz grabbed his shirt, touched the point of his blade to his chin. Heat there suggested he’d nicked him. “Kill or be killed.”
Kill or be killed. Peter sucked in his breath even as he listened to feet scrub against the cement floor, kick out pebbles. “Perestan!”
Fritz laid a finger to his mouth, moved in behind him as the soldier pressed his Mauser into the room, beyond the curtain.
Kill or be killed. Yes, well—
It happened so fast, Peter struggled to know who moved—Fritz or himself. Perhaps his own rabid fury made him grab the wrist of the soldier, shake the gun free, slam his fist into his face. Maybe he had also tackled the man—or it could have been that Fritz pushed him, but in a moment, Peter wrestled with the man on the floor, the soldier writhing, screaming—
Then silence. Wetness, sticky and hot, poured over Peter as the man’s last breath gurgled out of his slit throat.
Fritz released his chin, let the head flop forward.
Outside, more voices punched into the room.
Blood saturated Peter’s shirt, his pants, seeping into his pores.
“Better run, Doc.” Fritz grabbed him up by the collar, half-dragging him away from the body, into the recesses of the shop. “Out the bac
k, and don’t turn around.”
He slammed his palm in the back of Peter’s spine, propelled him out into the street. Shouts from the main room made him stumble, but Fritz grabbed him up again, shoved him hard down an alley. “Laufen!”
Run. But Peter turned, grabbing his arm, tight, wanting to press his fingers right through him. “I have to go back—”
Fritz punched him, a ringing blow that exploded into his head. Peter fell away from him, slammed against a brick wall.
“I dropped the milk.” He heard his words and couldn’t believe they’d issued from his mouth. Milk?
“I’ll bring you more. Tomorrow, before dawn. At the opera house. And bring me more cigarettes.” Fritz tossed Peter away.
He ran, the blood sticky between his fingers, plastering his shirt to his chest, the sickly sweet odor raising his gorge.
He found an old fountain, moldy standing water reflecting the wash of moonlight. He broke the reflection, pressing his hands into the dank water, scouring the blood from his hands, his neck. He stripped off his shirt, doused it in the water, over and over, washing until, under a slice of moon, the water sluicing off it seemed clear.
But later, after he’d slunk home, after he’d pulled the sopping shirt off and hung it to dry, the carnage glowed red in the candlelight. Indeed, blood sheened on his skin, creased his pores.
He didn’t bother to scrub it away as he lay on his bed and snuffed out the candle.
CHAPTER 19
October 1946
Dear Peter,
One hundred and forty-five letters. I did the math and figured out how many I have written to you over the past fourteen months since that night you left.
I fear they are simply being dumped in some waste bin on the far side of the ocean.
I have other fears too, but they are too terrible to voice. The greatest of these, of course, is that you were swept into the rage of influenza.
In yet another nightmare, you never made it back to Germany but died in a transport ship.
Perhaps you are languishing in a French labor camp, like so many other soldiers I read about of late. It seems the French are not quick to forgive the memory of Hitler marching down the Champs-Élysées and are anxious to repay the marks of their captivity on the backs of the returning POWs. The stories from my fellow Red Cross workers who’d attempted to administer aid to the returning POWs, of escapees who dragged themselves across swamps and countryside, their bones razors through their skin by the time they reach refugee centers, can turn me inside out in my dormitory bunk.
Yes, I’ve joined the Red Cross, although for now I am stationed in Milwaukee, awaiting orders. I am living on the third floor of the nurses’ residence of the Milwaukee County Hospital, working as a superintendent. We rise at five forty-five and by our seven a.m. shift, I must have my room in order, including dusting. Then we meet at the piano in the library before breakfast for our morning hymn. It’s become a moment I cherish, because as I lift my voice with so many other women, I hear yours also. I haven’t forgotten the tune I heard from you when I passed by your room after we’d said good-bye during your recuperation. I so often stopped beyond the door, longing to put a name to the music, finally discovering it at the piano in the library. “A Mighty Fortress Our God.” The words have since embedded in me.
And though this world, with devils filled,
should threaten to undo us,
we will not fear, for God hath willed
his truth to triumph through us.
I am often threatened to be undone. Waiting for you, missing you with an ache that burns through me, razoring my throat, rends my heart if I let it. Sometimes it’s the errant laughter of a patient following me down the hall. Rich like coffee, so that suddenly I must duck into the lavatory and press you away with a prayer for your safety lest the longing for you defeat me.
I wonder sometimes at the power of love, or perhaps the hope of it. For as the postman fails me, day after day, I am coming to believe that the hope of it is what I believe we had. Perhaps not the committed depth of love, but the sweet taste of desire, of belonging, of acceptance. The nourishment of it, so long forgotten, so sweet upon my parched heart, slacked my rabid thirst, and I fear it may have ruined me.
At least for a time.
Perhaps I will always be ruined, for too often I find myself thirsty for those brief moments where you smiled at me. Where, in your eyes, I saw the woman I wanted to be. Where I felt not lost. Even found.
But how long should I wait? I fear the answer, because it drives me back to my nightmares. To counting my letters.
I’ve met a man, a doctor here. Dr. Casey has asked me to marry him. He’s a good man, a surgeon who saw the war and understands the wounded, who has walked in the dark of night of his own mistakes, his own loss. He loves Sadie, also, and can make her a solid home.
He is kind, and I do love him. Don’t ask me to compare.
One hundred and forty five letters.
I pray that my nightmares have not crawled from my breast into daylight.
I am trusting in the triumph of the Lord to hold us both.
Yours,
Esther
“What happened to you?”
He stood at his window, his gaze tracing over the scarred cityscape, the sky bloody as the sun surrendered to the claws of the blackened horizon. Across the street, firelight in the alleyways became specters in the encroaching darkness.
Perhaps they’d all become specters.
“We were supposed to meet—Peter?”
He didn’t turn, didn’t move at Rachel’s voice. Just drew in his breath, tightened his jaw against her intrusion.
Although he flinched when her hand cupped his shoulder. A soft, gentle hand.
He closed his eyes. “Go away, Rachel.”
The last thing he needed—wanted—right now was kindness. No, he needed something brutal, words that might match the violence inside him that clawed for release.
“No.” But she did drop her hand from his shoulder even as she edged up beside him.
“How did you find me?”
“I looked for you when you didn’t show up tonight. I found Elise. She told me how to find you.”
“You shouldn’t be out. It’s not safe.”
“I don’t care about safe. I care about the fact that you’re in danger. Someone said that a Russian soldier was killed by a black marketer. The Russians have a reward out for his capture.” She pitched her voice low. “Peter, the word on the street is that you were there. That you…did it.” She glanced up at him, and he made the mistake of meeting her eyes ever so briefly. Reddened, glossy—she shook her head, her next words sharp. “I know you didn’t.”
“I might have.” He looked away. On the street below, pack dogs ran into the shadowed alcoves, searching for crumbs. Occasionally one would snarl, snap at its mate. “I should have.”
“You don’t mean that.”
He closed his eyes.
“You were there, though.”
There, and again in the early morning, hoping he might unearth the bag of milk. In the dusty light of dawn he found it in the alleyway, dropped, perhaps as Fritz shoved him away from his crimes. He’d delivered it to the hospital, not sure how he returned to the flat, just remembering sitting in the weeds at the edge of their courtyard, tracing his mother’s brutal murder in the shadows.
“My mother is dead. Shot in the courtyard of our home.” He didn’t know exactly where, of course, but he’d finally wandered the weedy, broken yard. He stopped at the wall, pressing his hand to it while the other covered his face. No wonder he couldn’t drown the echo of her screams, and now the image of her body, ripped asunder with bullets.
He caught his breath, even now. Opened his eyes.
“I’m sorry. I looked for her—I didn’t see her name. Probably that’s why.”
“She died while I was still training to fight for Hitler. She died as I was betraying myself.” His voice emerged distant, almost apart from h
imself. “She died for nothing.”
“Peter—”
“I’m tired, Rachel. I’m tired of faithfulness. I’m tired of being, of doing…of hoping. Of believing that someday God might deliver me. Us.” His last words he may not have spoken aloud, just let them sear into him, because she stayed silent as the dogs barked and a baby from a nearby hovel cried.
Finally, her hand slid over his arm. “What happened, Peter?”
He shook his head.
She said nothing, but as she stood there, her clean scent, something of lavender and vanilla, spoke to him of softness. Of a moment where life didn’t feel quite so brutal.
So he turned, and losing himself a little, he slid his hand around her neck, bent down, and kissed her.
She had soft, pliable lips, and instead of stiffening under his touch, they opened, kissing him back. She tasted of tea, and a hint of citrus, as if she’d eaten an orange, and he slid his arms around her shoulders and curled her into himself.
Kissing her more. Yes.
He slid his hand to cup her face, to trace her cheekbones with his fingertips, to balance her jaw between his fingers. Esther. He kissed her cheekbone, her soft eyelids, that place beneath her beautiful blue eyes, then back to her lips, so willing to give him everything he hungered for.
“Esther.”
She stiffened beneath his touch. Pulled away.
He opened his eyes.
Oh.
No. Oh no.
“I mean…Rachel,” he said, a lame apology that fell away from them into the sufferings of the night.
She pressed her hand to her cheek, where he’d pressed Esther’s kiss. Her eyes glistened even as she forced—it had to be forced by the way it tumbled—a smile. “No, you didn’t. You meant Esther.”
He looked away, clenched his jaw.
“I’m a stupid girl.”
He winced.
“I know you told me, but I thought… I thought you’d still see me.”
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