Nightingale

by Susan May Warren

  “I do see you.”

  “No…not really. You may want to, but…” She touched his chin, turned his face. He cupped her hand in his. “I can see her in your eyes, you know. She’s there, a distant flicker of longing. Of hope. She’s the reward you’re holding out for.”

  He pulled Rachel’s hand from his face, held it a moment before giving it back to her. He couldn’t meet her too-kind eyes. “I met her in America. In Wisconsin. She was a nurse, and I had no business falling in love with her. I’m not even sure it was love, now. Maybe just that thing that keeps the embers inside stirring. Maybe she simply believed in me, and that was enough.”

  He put his hand to his chest, pressing against his sternum.

  No. He had loved her. Enough to taste the promise, enough to linger and nourish and hold him. Enough to wait.

  “I haven’t heard from her in more than two years—since I left Wisconsin. I thought she would write, but… I’ve been so many places, how would she—”

  “Oh! Peter, the International Red Cross catalogues the addresses of refugees, sends letters to the centers located around Germany.” Rachel gave him another of those wavering smiles. “I—I found a box when I was searching for your mother.” She turned away, toward his bed. His burlap bag of rations lay there. “POW packages and a bundle of letters I discovered with your name.”

  Letters.

  He looked at the bag then to her. She held her hand to her mouth then swallowed, whisking a quick tear from her cheek. Tall and thin and regal, she could have been easy to love. Had he been a different man.

  “I’m sorry, Rachel. I never meant to hurt you.”

  She touched his hand, one feather-light caress. “It’s my guess that you would never want to hurt someone.”

  Oh… Well…

  Then she pressed her hand to his cheek. “Ana’s baby is surviving. Thank you for the milk.” She stepped away from him. “I’m leaving in the morning. My replacement is already here. I told her to expect the Nightingale.”

  He barely felt his breath in his chest.

  “Don’t stay here, Peter. They’ll find you. Come to the hospital. At least there we might be able to hide you.”

  She waited a moment—probably for his response. When he walked over to the bed and dumped out the burlap sack, he heard her slip away into the night.

  February 1947

  Dear Peter,

  The New Year was met with a band and glorious speeches of endurance and bravery.

  Of course, I thought of you.

  Sadie turned four and has entered preschool, already learning, thanks to the tutelage of Rosemary, who has become, unexpectedly, a close friend. She has forgiven me, it seems, although I’m sure the presence of her own curly-haired daughter, Agnes, helps in the healing. Nevertheless, Linus has found the father inside him, and with Agnes’s birth finally realized how to love his daughter. Sadie cherishes him, and we’ve both agreed, despite the ache in my breast, that she should attend Roosevelt Grammar.

  Meanwhile…I can admit I long for another child, to be living my life like the nurses around me, caught finally in the arms of their beloved. I, like Annie in the musical I saw last weekend, might be able to stand alone, but it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want someone beside me, reminding me of your words: God loves you more than you can imagine. Perhaps.

  It’s because you gave me this tender hope that I discovered how to take the steps toward the woman I am today. I once told you that I was lost. You told me to let God find me. To be found in Him. I’ve discovered that the finding is not to find myself—but to find Him. To discover, step by step, His grace, His forgiveness, His courage, His strength, His hope, His love, His peace, and finally His joy.

  I have truly found myself…in Him. And finally can look in the mirror and see a woman I want to know.

  It’s because I am no longer lost, no longer thirsty that I am drawn to Dr. Casey’s proposal of marriage. I have grown quite fond of him, and while his brilliance at surgery draws me, it is his kindness, the way he wraps me in his coat while we are catching a cab from the theater, or perhaps the way he addresses me as Nurse Lange, a flavor of respect in his voice that tells me that I will never want for compassion.

  And, when I stand at the window, watching the wind as it stiffens the hedgerow outside the residence hall overlooking the hospital, the room I share with Maude Fisher, sterile despite the picture of Gary Cooper she has pasted to her wall, I know the truth.

  You are not coming back to me. Either by will or by fate, our moment has passed, and while it nourished me, I cannot hold on to the hope that you will disembark on one of the troop trains, that I might find myself in your arms.

  However, I do know our love was not a lie.

  It lies in my pocket like a star, a treasure forever in my clasp.

  Esther

  Peter smoothed his hand over the letter, the indentations in the paper like creases in his palm. Six months ago she’d penned this. Six months…

  He’d still been slogging his way home through Holland, then Germany, hitching rides on transports, counting the pinpricks in the sky.

  Six months.

  He closed the letter. His hand shook as he fought it back into the envelope. Then he brought the flap to his lips and ran it over his skin, a whisper against time.

  His throat tightened as he gathered the letters together, stacked them into a pile. They made for a thick wad that he could barely grip in one hand.

  He stood there then, scanning the room. His dirty bedroll, the tin pot that held his fire, the bag of hospital supplies, the box of food from desperate patients. The CARE packages.

  May your God whom you serve continually deliver you.

  He picked up his medical bag, dumped the contents out onto the bed. Then he opened the CARE package, took out the candy, the coffee, the corned beef, and the chocolate. He shoved these into his bag, on top of the letters.

  Then he folded the bag under his arm, grabbed the other over his shoulder, and slipped out into the night, leaving the door ajar.

  He didn’t even bother to hide himself as he made his way to the grocery, didn’t care that he passed at least three Russian patrols. Perhaps he’d already vanished—he’d certainly lost hold of himself, of even knowing how to describe the terrible whooshing in his chest.

  He managed to steal his way to Elise’s shabby quarters, dropping the remains of the CARE package into the room. He said nothing to Ana as she lay in the bed, cast his gaze briefly over the baby kicking in a cotton blanket next to her.

  She roused just as he left. He didn’t look back even as she left her question in the darkness.

  The hospital lay under guard—two brown uniforms, the scrubby faces of boys smoking cigarettes, their laughter, their language curdling the night.

  He watched them, too long perhaps, but let himself linger in memory inside the corridors of the hospital, smell the sting of rubbing alcohol, the brisk iodine, hearing his father’s voice resonate from his office, seeing his white coat, tasting the thick, deep satisfaction of saving a life.

  Then, as the night turned thin, Peter fed himself into the shadows of the city.

  The Elbe had turned to silver in the moonlight, and he found a spot beneath the bridge, enclosed in shadow. On the beach the spiny branches of a linden tree waved, as if beckoning him near. The wind shivered off the browning leaves, dropped them, glistening like monocles upon the water.

  He stayed in the muddy shoreline, under the canopy of the Carolabrücke. It reeked of fish and the foulness of humanity, as if not too long ago it sheltered bodies.

  Tonight it hid only Peter as he drew out the letters.

  One by one, he dropped them into the river. Square airmail leaves, like the linden tree, littering the water. The moon turned them to stars as they floated away.

  He stayed there, the wind lifting his collar, the breeze carrying the lick of the coming winter, until the darkness devoured the last of them. Then, leaving his bag behind, he crept out of the
alcove and back to the boulevard.

  It didn’t take much effort to find a patrol. He gave them no fight as they wrestled him to the ground, pressed the cold muzzle of one of their Kalashnikovs to his ear.

  “I know who killed your soldier,” he said in German. Then in English, just in case. He tried Russian, the little he knew. “Ya zniaio….” I know…I know.

  A thicker man, built like the Kremlin, pulled him from the dirt, shoved him against a building. “What do you know?”

  German. Spittle edged the soldier’s mouth, vodka washing into Peter’s face—yes, he’d found the right patrol.

  “I know who killed your countryman. That soldier—by the black marketer. I know where you can find him.”

  He took a breath, let the rage nourish him. “But only if I get the reward.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Peter always loved watching the night separate from the day. How the sun dented the darkness, piercing it, its rays bleeding color into the sky. How, as the sun rose, it carved out the horizon with fire, toppling night from its moorings until finally the light burned it away, leaving only the bruised sky to heal in the morning.

  Peter often rose early when he lived in Iowa to watch the sunrise turn the cornfields to torchlight, and even in Wisconsin, lifting his face to the heat, letting it slide over him like a warm hand upon cool skin.

  He waited for it today, huddled in the well of the bridge where he’d cast away Esther’s letters, where he’d slunk back after his Russian interrogators tired of him. One eye pulsed, thickened by the Russian soldier’s fist. He wiped a hand across his mouth. It burned, taking off a fresh scab.

  At least nothing felt broken. Except, well…

  He hadn’t slept, not really, the images behind his eyes causing him to gasp, to open them in a sort of horror, to hear again his words.

  You’ll find him at the opera house. Early.

  When they’d released him, he’d run the opposite direction. Because what kind of man betrayed his countryman?

  Or his honor? He probably deserved to escape with only his life. Peter ran back to his barter bag he’d hidden, only—for what? He’d held on to the dream of passage back to America so long in the dead of night, he’d simply turned toward it out of habit.

  But, really, what did he have waiting for him?

  He watched the water, his reflection dark, warped.

  He didn’t recognize it either.

  God loves you more than you can imagine.

  He closed his eyes against the words, hating how they found him. Hating how, even now, he leaned into her memory, drew nourishment from it.

  I know our love was not a lie.

  No. He leaned his head back against the gritty, cold cement. No.

  But she’d been wrong about the rest. You are not coming back to me. Either by will or by fate, our moment has passed, and while it nourished me, I cannot hold on to the hope that you will return for me.

  He would have returned.

  He touched his forehead to his knees, clasped them hard, and let the truth wring him out.

  God didn’t deliver. No matter his faithfulness, no matter his sacrifice. God didn’t deliver.

  The thought chilled him through and made him cup his hands over his eyes.

  I’m lost, Peter. I’m lost.

  He understood it then. Understood her expression, the unthreaded fabric of her voice.

  Understood losing himself, the person that he’d always thought he’d been.

  I’m lost, Esther. I’m lost.

  O God, don’t leave me alone in my disbelief.

  He shuddered out the prayer, not even bothering to lift it to heaven. Because how could God hear the prayer of a traitor?

  He got up, slung the bag over his shoulder. Crawled out from under the bridge. The sun had begun to touch the city, women already out, moving rubble for ten cents a day, or hamsters—young men scurrying to find transport out of the city to scavenge for food.

  He made his way, almost by instinct, to the square of the Frauenkirche. Like a dog to his bone, maybe, searching for comfort. But his head spun from the halfhearted beating of his interrogators, and the tugging of a voice, deep inside…

  “God called us back to Germany for a reason, Peter. Who knows but it was for this very season that we are here—”

  His father’s voice churned through him, scrubbing away the darkness, clearing his thoughts.

  “To act justly and love mercy and be servants of God. This is our hope in a world gone mad. How could I live with myself if I didn’t help?”

  Yes, his father had been a nightingale.

  The sun stumbled over the rubble of the Frauenkirche, turning every boulder into bullion. Only the altar and the chancel remained.

  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.

  Her voice, light, soft, bled through him and vanished in the wind, captured in the voice of two schoolgirls standing behind him. “You okay, mister?”

  No. Probably never.

  He nodded to the girls, shooed them away. They backed up, their eyes reflecting a man he didn’t know.

  Pigeons cooed over the square, oblivious of the rubble, and the scent of a wood fire, something cooking, seasoned the air. How long might it take to rebuild such a fortress, such a magnificence as the Frauenkirche?

  Or, maybe next time it might be built stronger, with bricks that might withstand the heat.

  What if God stripped him of everything so that He might rebuild him, one day at time, one forged brick at a time…in Him?

  I once told you that I was lost. You told me to let God find me. To be found in Him.

  Maybe that was the key. Maybe a man had to lose himself, his pride, his honor, his strength in order to discover himself…in God. Maybe he’d just been serving God because…well, God delivered those who served Him, right?

  No.

  But what if God delivered, not because of duty fulfilled, but rather…grace.

  I’ve discovered that the finding is not to find myself…but to find Him. To discover, step by step, His grace, His forgiveness, His strength, His hope, His love, His peace, and finally His joy.

  Maybe he had lost himself, but he hadn’t lost God.

  Hold on.

  Not to Esther. But to the One who gave him the love he saw reflected in her eyes. Maybe she was right—their love might not have been enough to build a life, but rather only to sustain with the sweet taste of desire, of belonging, of acceptance.

  No. For him, it would have been enough.

  Hold on.

  He closed his eyes to the words, let them find the brittle tendons of his faith.

  Hold on to grace.

  Hold on to forgiveness.

  O God, what have I done? The words shuddered through him as the cobblestone bit into his knees. What had he done?

  It didn’t matter that Fritz had committed crimes. He’d turned Fritz in not out of justice—but revenge. Peter’s hands scraped the cobblestones as he found his feet, and he took off down Augustusbrücke, the streets so cluttered he had to wind his way through the narrow alleys that had made Dresden the perfect target for Allied bombing.

  Around him, the city had come to life, of sorts. Women cleared the debris from the street brick by brick into green-gray wagons provided by the army. Dust churned into the air, the stew of oil and gasoline as Russian Kamaz trucks belched across the morning.

  Russian soldiers, some directing traffic, others drinking coffee, eyed him as he tightened his coat around himself.

  Most of the shops lay empty, although a few opened, with sallow-faced children standing in line, their ration cards in their grimy hands. A woman, well-painted, flirted with a cadre of soldiers seated in the shadow of a café, laughing as they drank tea. She glanced up at Peter, wear in the lines around her eyes, her body too thin for the comfort she peddled.

  He
looked away, cut down Terrassenufer, wanting to run, willing himself to steps that wouldn’t alert. In the building overlooking the river, where the sun poured into the open faces of former dwellings, he saw women hoeing potatoes from dirt piled upon kitchen floors, the grim cultivation of desperation. Or perhaps innovation.

  A soldier—the thin strap of his Kalashnikov cutting into his shoulder—eyed him as he sat on the back end of his Kamaz. Peter ducked into an alleyway, threading his way through the city.

  Faster now in the shadows until he emerged on the Theaterplatz.

  Only the statues of Goethe and Schiller remained to sentry the former grandeur of the home of Bach and Wagner, the Semper Opera House. The haunting strains of Richard Strauss’s Salome echoed over the three stories of wreckage, former Corinthian columns, Baroque statues, Renaissance domes, and aediculae now spilling out across the blackened stones of the Theaterplatz.

  Again, God had pushed His thumb against the pride of Dresden.

  Women strolled by, one pushing a pram filled with rubble.

  He stood at the edge, the wind sharp off the Elbe, lifting his collar as he rehearsed images in his head.

  Fritz, beaten to death, pulpy and broken in some neighboring hovel.

  Fritz, fighting back, his knife serrating another soldier’s throat. Fritz, cursing his name, sending the troops to the hospital in search…

  Rachel. No, Fritz wouldn’t know her, right? But that might not matter. The Russians bore no regard for nationality. For Geneva rules.

  They might simply run every nurse onto the street. And then what?

  He ducked back into the alleyway, his breath corroded with the refuse piled and rotting among the debris. The tinny smell of blood and—

  “Peter.”

  He stilled at his name dragged over gravel, as if forced out on snaggle-toothed breath. “Peter?”

  He turned, searched, saw nothing but rubbish—a broken chair, the curious form of a chandelier still intact on a pile.

  “Over here. Please.”

  Yes. There. Under the cover of a splintered divan, a hand stretched out, its bloodied print on the orange upholstery.