Saving Amelie

by Cathy Gohlke

  “No,” Lea gasped, not claiming the doll. She hadn’t the reserves to invent anything, had not one more cunning bone in her body.

  The little boy frowned in confusion. “Do you have a little girl?”

  Lea did her best to claim her senses, and shook her head.

  “Mother made my sister one of these before she was born.” Heinrich looked very sad. “But she wasn’t able to play with it. She was too little when they took her away.” He set the doll on the chair, lovingly spreading its embroidery-and-lace pinafore across its skirt. Soberly, he looked up. “Did they take your little girl away too?”

  Lea moaned and tore from the room.

  Rachel held Amelie still in the attic, silently berating herself for not scooping up the child’s new doll before they climbed into the cupboard and up through the wall. A stupid, costly mistake! My only real job is to mind Amelie, and I failed again! Please, please don’t let Oma suffer because of my stupidity!

  Rivka leaned close to the stovepipe, where it was easy to hear everything said below. As she did, Rachel saw the necklace Jason had given her dangle from beneath her blouse—a small diamond cut into the center of a gold oval locket. Rachel closed her eyes and swallowed the burning coal in her throat. Not once had Rivka spoken of any feelings for Jason, though she’d caught the girl’s glazed eyes mooning over something, or someone, far away from time to time. She’s a teen! What is Jason Young thinking, leading on a girl of that age! What does he see in her that he doesn’t see in me?

  When Heinrich Helphman had gone at last, Rachel released a long sigh, her neck and shoulders aching from the tension, and dropped her forehead on Amelie’s crown.

  It was the longest, most tense Christmas Day in Oma’s memory. Both her granddaughters looked very close to tears, one as fractious as the other. Rivka looked as if she’d stepped into a world in which she didn’t belong—and guilty to boot, poor child. Little Amelie wandered sleepily from adult to adult, peering into faces, holding her handkerchief dolly closely, as if it might tell her which of her frowning grown-ups would be willing to play.

  By the time supper was finished and the dishes washed and put away, Oma was ready to lay her weary head upon her pillow. But despite the terrible ordeal of Heinrich Helphman and his twenty questions, Lea was determined that they should light the tree in Friederich’s room and sing the carols.

  It was almost morbid, gathering and singing round the half-dead man in the glowing light of the flickering candles. If only he would die before he wears the very life from her. At least she could grieve and eventually get past grieving. But this living death goes on and on! Oma felt she should regret, repent of such a thought. But she could not.

  Still, she could deny her dear Lea nothing, not this year, not this day. They all dressed warmly for bed and gathered chairs in Lea and Friederich’s room, round the tree. Lea lit the carefully spaced candles. Oma cuddled Amelie in her lap, let the little girl lean her ear to her chest to feel the vibrations as they sang. They all sang carols together, and then Lea sang alone—Friederich’s favorite since childhood, “O Holy Night.” She sang with pitch clear as handbells and the voice of an angel.

  Somewhere during the second verse, Oma reached for the handkerchief in her pocket to wipe the tears of Lea’s song from her weathered face. Amelie slipped from her lap. Oma let the child go.

  Friederich dreamed he neared heaven, the voices of angels attending his journey. The farther he walked, the nearer and brighter the lights grew. Angelic beings, heads wreathed in Bavarian braids and robed white in Christ’s righteousness, sang in harmony. The weight on his chest lightened, returned, then lightened again. He recognized Oma, glad she was there to meet him, though aware his Lea must be terribly lonely without either of them.

  And then the child he and Lea had daily prayed for came to meet him, to run tiny fingers across his lips and pat his face. She looked so much like the face of the Christkind he’d carved, the babe he’d prayed for as he’d worked. He wondered that prayers were answered finally, fully, in heaven.

  The braided angels turned—nearly identical, so like Lea. He’d always believed angels must look like his angel wife.

  The child made a happy gasp, pointing to him, welcoming him, and Friederich smiled wearily. He was so very tired. It would be good to rest from his long journey.

  “Friederich! Friederich!” The angels surrounded him, chorused his name. He felt pulled in two directions—one toward rest and peace, and one toward the voices that grew more insistent.

  His body began to prickle—just a little, but something new. He willed his eyes to open, not believing that they would. Faintly, out of focus, two angel faces hovered over him—two Leas. He couldn’t reach with his arms, but he reached, as far and high as he could, with his eyes, his heart. “Lea,” he whispered. “My Lea.”

  45

  WHEN FRIEDERICH had focused on Lea’s face . . . Rachel could barely breathe. He was a shell of a man, his body broken, one eye lost, but what she saw in his expression was explosive and beautiful and rare. She envied Lea. She wanted what Friederich gave her sister in that moment—not from Friederich, but Rachel wanted . . . oh, how she wanted. She couldn’t articulate it and couldn’t deny it. She’d slipped from the room, pulling a willing but frightened Amelie with her. Rivka, stunned into silence, followed without a word.

  Rachel tucked Amelie into her makeshift bed and climbed into her own pallet, pulled close alongside Amelie’s. For the first time she let the little girl snuggle against her. The kitchen stovepipe, coming up through the attic floor, warmed the room just enough to sleep. Still, Rachel shivered. Amelie’s breathing evened before ten minutes passed.

  Rachel pulled the eiderdown over her head, willing the day to be done. She was sleeping on a pallet in a Bavarian attic with a deaf child and a Jewish teenager. She’d been raised—designed and groomed—to become the elite of society, racially and genetically superior to the masses. The philosophy had been drilled into her since childhood. And yet she felt the least of all.

  Oma and Lea and Friederich got along fine without her, had lived a lifetime without her. Amelie would thrive under Lea’s care. Even Rivka had grown closer to Oma in some ways than Rachel had, than she probably ever could. Oma and Lea appreciated and served those who worked with willing hearts and spirits, but they didn’t seem to understand that Rachel was not raised to serve.

  Changing that was less about participating in physical labor than about comprehending the levels of evolution within the human species. She could never explain that to them. She no longer understood it herself. And for the first time, Rachel wondered if it was true. Could that be one more lie from her father’s lips? And if it was, how would she ever rid her mind, her very marrow, of its deception?

  Rachel rolled over, drying silent tears on the sleeve of her nightdress.

  “Rachel?” Rivka whispered behind her.

  Rachel wanted to ignore the girl. The last thing she wanted to add to this unholy mixture was the adolescent pleas of a girl who’d stolen the one man whose nearness did raise the hairs on her arms—a man she’d finally admitted she never really had in the first place, and one her father had seen as “the lowest of the low,” simply because of his dogged determination to bring the truth to light.

  “Rachel?” Rivka whispered again, this time more urgently.

  “What is it?” Rachel tried to sound as if she’d been asleep and wasn’t happy to be woken.

  “I must tell you something.”

  “In the morning. I’m tired. Go to sleep, Rivka.”

  But Rivka shook her shoulder. “No, it cannot wait. I should have told you sooner. I should have told you today—this morning.”

  Rachel sighed long and loudly, pulling the covers from her head. “What is it?”

  Rachel felt her roommate sit up, saw her faint silhouette against the attic wall as she pulled the long and tangled ropes of her hair to the side and slipped her hands behind her neck.

  “He told me to save
this until Christmas Day, to give it to you first thing in the morning.” She felt for Rachel’s hand in the darkness and pressed the locket—Rachel could tell by the feel of the metal and the shape of the oval—with its delicate golden chain into Rachel’s palm. Rivka closed Rachel’s fingers. “I’m sorry that I didn’t give it to you sooner. Jason said—” and now Rivka’s voice trembled—“to tell you that he wants you to be well and safe and happy . . . and that he will find a way out of Germany for you and Amelie—he promises.”

  Rachel stopped breathing. She pressed her eyes tight, then opened them again, certain she was dreaming, angry in part that Rivka had held back Jason’s gift, that she’d worn for weeks what was intended for Rachel. Still, one thought pushed beyond all the others. He cares for me!

  Rivka lay down and turned her back to Rachel. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I was just pretending it was mine. . . .”

  Rachel didn’t trust herself to answer. She closed her eyes and sank beneath the eiderdown. She couldn’t see the necklace, not properly in the dark, but ran her fingers over its every intricacy, again and again. Finally she worked the clasp and fastened it round her neck. She fingered the locket’s shape, imagined that Jason had fastened the clasp himself, that he admired how the locket fell into the hollow of her throat. He cares for me. He’ll come for me. He’ll get me out of Germany—he promised! But how? She could not imagine that.

  It was late. Christmas night and not a reporter or typist in the newsroom. Mark Eldridge had pushed and pushed for a story or a lead at the US ambassador’s house—nearly begged—but it was shut up tight. The ambassador wasn’t about to let reporters intrude on the final hours of Christmas Day with his family. It had been a long shot anyway, but a shot Eldridge dared in order to impress the chief.

  That “Silent Night in Oberndorf” story Young had phoned in was nothing but sap, pure and simple. But the chief was delighted. It seemed that’s what readers wanted this Christmas—something homespun and sappy from Germany. No Hitler atrocities for the holidays, though there was no shortage of those.

  Earlier in the month Young had submitted an entire roll of Christmas market shots—all rosy-cheeked Bavarian girls and long-white-bearded men bouncing delighted toddlers on their knees as they played with carved wooden toys. Enough sap to cover the Zugspitze, tallest mountain in Germany—more than enough to make a guy sick.

  Eldridge needed something fresh, something wholesome for the New Year. He wasn’t likely to find that in Berlin. He pulled out the chair of Young’s desk and flipped through the photos Peterson had left in the top drawer. Extras. Young had already submitted the best ones. Eldridge had seen them in print.

  Frustrated, he slammed the drawer shut. It jammed. Eldridge pushed again, but it wouldn’t close. He pulled the drawer out and ran his hand round the perimeter. Nothing. He tried again. It still wouldn’t close.

  Eldridge knelt down and peered into the space. Something dangled, like bait, near the back and from beneath the desktop. He reached in and pulled the small cylinder, sticky with tape, from its hiding place. Popping the canister’s lid, he emptied the contents into his palm.

  “Well, well, Ace, what have we here?”

  46

  “THE GERMAN PEOPLE did not want this war. I tried up to the last minute to keep peace with England. But the Jewish and reactionary warmongers waited for this minute to carry out their plans to destroy Germany.”

  Rachel switched off the Führer’s New Year speech midstream. She wished the “Jewish and reactionary warmongers”—whoever they were—truly would destroy Germany, or at least the Germany that had emerged since Hitler took power.

  The New Year Sterngang, the walking musicians and choir of villagers led by a lantern star to welcome the New Year, had been canceled to comply with blackout regulations. Even so, Lea insisted that to lift their spirits, they hold their own singing late in the afternoon, before Friederich slept again. So once again they pulled chairs into Friederich and Lea’s room.

  By now, Friederich was sitting up in bed for an hour at a time, at least twice each day, to eat the thick and nourishing soup Oma made, thanks to the meat and fish Curate Bauer brought them. But physically weak and exhausted, tears streaked Friederich’s face over every little thing. He couldn’t sing, could barely speak, but Rachel had never seen a man’s eyes communicate so much—or a woman so easily interpret them as did her sister. Lea sang her heart out in thanksgiving and hope. Friederich drank it in. Rachel slipped from the room when she could take no more.

  But Friederich’s nightmares and bloodcurdling screams rocked the little house and wracked the nerves of each member. Through the attic floor, Rachel could hear Lea soothing and crooning peace to her husband by night. She didn’t understand the words, but she could hear the urgency in Friederich’s long, sobbing explanations.

  Between the holiday break and Lea’s determination not to leave Friederich’s side, the acting and singing classes were suspended for the week between Christmas and New Year, and the week following—all of which drove Rachel mad. She was ready to burst from being shut up inside the emotion-filled house. Jason’s locket somehow kept her sane.

  But Rivka had grown more distant, more despondent since Christmas, and Rachel could only imagine she missed wearing the necklace, or perhaps missed the fantasy the necklace had fostered.

  She shouldn’t have kept it so long. She shouldn’t be fantasizing about a grown man—a man ten years older.

  “Have you no pity, Rachel?” Oma asked one morning when Rivka left the breakfast table in tears after Rachel’s chiding. “The child has no family left, no idea what has become of them—if they’re even still alive.”

  “That’s not my fault. My father was taken away too.”

  “You know that’s different.” She leaned across the table toward Rachel. “You have me and Lea and Friederich.”

  That was true, but Rachel was tired of Oma taking everyone’s side but hers. “She’s not like us; she’s Jewish,” Rachel whispered. “What do you expect? Even Friederich can barely look at her.”

  Oma stood abruptly, knocking her teacup over, so horrified that Rachel thought she might slap her. “Friederich remembers the horrific things his unit did to Polish Jews. He’s ashamed.”

  Rachel felt the warmth spread across her face. “I see that, but Germany’s at war, Oma. That’s what war is,” she defended. “You can’t stop it. Friederich couldn’t stop it. I can’t stop it—it’s everywhere! So please don’t blame me.”

  Oma straightened, her mouth trembling in fury, and left the room.

  Rachel rolled her eyes. Oma would not stay and fight with her, and Rachel itched for a good fight.

  She knew she should treat Rivka better, that she was being nothing short of a brat to her and sometimes to everyone in the house. But everything she’d said was true—none of them could stop Hitler’s madness.

  Still, Rachel knew that fueling her desire to squash Rivka’s fantasies of Jason were memories of her father’s tirades about Poles, Jews, Slavs, Negroes, and Asians—how they cursed the world by being and breeding, how they must be contained before they further weakened society, dragging it down to their level. This cleaving—sterilization at the very least, he’d declared—was truly a mercy, and for the good of mankind.

  Rachel bit her lip. She knew the idea was madness—as mad as anything Hitler had conceived. She could never admit such dogma to Oma, or that she’d once bought into it. Even now, knowing eugenics was a crock, it was too easy to think of herself as better than the others. So much craziness, so many lies to sort out, and all of them woven, like plaits, into her mind.

  47

  CURATE BAUER knelt for morning prayers beside his bed. He prayed that God would blind the eyes of the Gestapo and—God forgive him—Father Oberlanger to his Munich activities with Jews and political dissidents, and to his trading for food on the black market to feed them.

  He prayed God’s protection on Mayor Schulz and the couple the mayor had recently ille
gally wed, Jewish Zebulon Goldmann and Aryan Gretel Schweibe.

  He prayed for Administrator Raab and the two junior monks who’d recently begun a weekly religious discussion group for boys in Raab’s home, under the guise of a Hitler Youth program, ostensibly learning and developing signal skills.

  He begged God to help Friederich Hartman accept the forgiveness offered him. Such atrocities as he’d known in the Polish campaign could break any man. The heart of the gentle woodcarver was not made for such evil.

  He prayed that Jason Young would find a way to tell the world Friederich’s story. He thanked the Holy Father for the spirited young American, for his steadfast heart and crusader nature. He could not ask for a more determined partner in resistance or a more passionate brother in Christ. His ability to move freely within the country, to collect forged papers and passports, was indispensable in helping Jews to safety.

  And Lea Hartman and her sister . . . The curate laughed in the midst of his prayer. He’d not known whether to believe Frau Breisner when she’d finally confessed to him there were two. All three of them were good enough for the stage! But it had explained so much—why Frau Hartman had suggested performing the Passion in an odd year, how she’d bloomed with newfound confidence and boundless energy and talents, why she could be shy and demure one day and nearly flirtatious another.

  He shook his head. Herr Hartman must grow dizzy with two such beautiful women beneath his roof. If he didn’t miss his guess, Herr Young would happily relieve him of one of the twins. Please, Lord, let them go on fooling us all.

  He’d passed Jason’s copy of Nachfolge to Rachel. Herr Young had such hopes for the Fräulein’s heart. But Curate Bauer wondered. She’d been reared in the haughty spirit of eugenics. Faith in the One who so loved all the world that He’d offered Himself as a ransom for sin was a humbling journey. Heal and mold her heart, Holy Father.