by Cathy Gohlke
“Anything that declares our need for anything beyond the perfect Aryan man or woman or recognizes any savior but Hitler is frowned upon.” Curate Bauer and Rachel glanced at the door and the agent leaving, writing in his notepad. “We must be careful, very careful.”
The gild was off the lily. Rachel smiled mechanically at the parents who thanked her, the children who reached their arms to hug her on their way out the classroom door.
She’d written the play from the best that was in her. She’d believed that the Passion Village powers that be would love it—love her for it. Now, to be reprimanded for doing the first truly good thing she could remember doing—for sharing, in her way, what she’d been given—was a slap in the face.
And where was Jason? Rachel had heard he was in Oberammergau, conducting interviews. She was sure he’d hear of and come to the play, that he’d find a way to visit her at Oma’s one evening after curfew. She’d wanted him to see what she could do, had hoped it would relieve his unspoken anxiety as to the state of her eugenics-drilled soul. But he hadn’t come.
When the room was empty, she packed her bag of scripts and collected the small hand props to store, tossing them into the box with more energy than necessary. She swiped at tears that sprang unbidden.
“Frau Hartman?” Maximillion stood at the classroom door, his hands behind his back. “You are crying.” He was across the room and at her side in a moment.
“No.” Rachel blinked her eyes and dried her face. “Just something in my eye. I’m quite all right.”
Maximillion pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. “Allow me, please.”
Rachel smiled, self-consciously, trying to decide how Lea might behave in this situation. Would she be meek? Appreciative? Standoffish? Rachel couldn’t decide, and allowed the teen to brush the last of her tears away.
“There. Is that better?”
“Yes,” she sniffed. “Thank you.” She turned away, but the boy took the liberty of pressing her arm.
“Perhaps these will cheer you.” He handed her a lovely, mildly fragrant bouquet of hothouse flowers. “I grew them myself.”
“They’re lovely, Max!” Rachel meant it. It had been ages since she’d seen flowers, even longer since she’d been given a bouquet.
Maximillion smiled. “Max—I like that. Always call me Max.”
Rachel blushed, realizing she’d betrayed her American penchant for nicknames. “It suits you.”
He stepped closer. “I heard of the priest’s reprimand. That was not warranted.”
“You saw the play?”
“No, I am sorry; I did not. I was on duty in the hallway. But I’m certain that whatever you did was in the best taste. You’ve given so much—music, singing, and acting classes for the Kinder. The priest should be grateful. He should not question you.” He pocketed his handkerchief. “I’ll be sure to check my duty roster the next time your class performs. I will not miss it again.”
Rachel’s heart was warmed by his righteous indignation, though she knew he was just a boy adoring a teacher. “That’s very sweet of you, Max.” She touched his face, just as she’d seen Lea do to Amelie when the child had especially tried to please her. “I look forward to that.”
But Maximillion did not respond gratefully in the cherub-like manner of Amelie or her students. His eyes lit with a lust Rachel had seen only in grown men. He covered her hand, clasping it to his cheek. Too late Rachel realized her mistake and tried to pull her hand away, stepping back. But Maximillion was not put off. He grabbed her hand and stepped forward, too near, inches from her face, his eyes riveted on her lips. Rachel’s heart gripped. She realized for the first time that the boy was at least three inches taller than she and a good thirty pounds heavier. She had nowhere to go.
A loud knock at the open door intruded. Jason Young stepped into the center of the room. If disgust were a lance, the Hitler Youth would have been impaled. “Frau Hartman, I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about the children’s skit for the newspaper.”
Maximillion turned, his cheeks a furious shade of red, frustration shooting from his eyes.
Rachel nearly sank to her knees in relief. “Yes, yes, Herr Young. Gladly.” She straightened, pulling her hand away and regaining her composure. She placed the flowers on the table beside her. “You must go along now, Maximillion.”
Maximillion, still shooting daggers at Jason, didn’t move.
“I believe you heard the lady.” Jason stepped closer, pulling a notepad and pen from his coat pocket, never taking his eyes from the Hitler Youth.
Maximillion grabbed the cap he’d tossed to the table, defiantly placed it on his head, and marched past Jason, his shoulder brushing hard against the journalist.
When he was out the door, Rachel slumped against the table, heaving a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”
“Looks like you have a problem on your hands.”
Rachel shook her head. “Lea cautioned me, but I thought he was harmless. He’s just a boy.”
“A big boy,” Jason warned.
“Yes.” Rachel swallowed. “A big boy.”
Jason looked about to say more but stopped. “It’s good to see you.” A smile lit his eyes.
“And you, Herr Young.” She grinned.
He reached for her hand, froze, and glanced quickly back at the door.
“I guess you’d better stay on that side of the table, and I’ll stay on mine,” she whispered.
He pouted. “What fun is that?”
“None,” she said, meaning it. “I’ve missed you.”
“You have no idea,” he lamented. After a moment he straightened. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
Her brows rose expectantly.
Jason pulled a magazine from his coat pocket and plunked it on the table between them. The cover—graced by a stunning Rachel, smiling into the camera with a winsome Amelie clasping her face—took Rachel’s breath away. “You took this.” She picked up the magazine. “I remember when you took this. But you published it?” She felt the room sway and the floor drop beneath her.
“No.” Jason frowned. “It was on a separate roll of film—just those couple of pictures I took of you and Amelie.” He tossed his fedora to the table. “It was stupid, foolish, I know. And selfish. I just wanted your picture, and Amelie’s—I never thought anybody’d see them. I didn’t even develop them—didn’t dare.”
“Then how—?”
“Check the attribution—the name at the bottom of the photograph.”
She squinted to bring the fine print into view. “M. Eldridge. Who’s M. Eldridge?”
“My archrival, a guy in the Berlin newsroom who’s made work a living nightmare. It’s a race for every story, the Indy 500 for photo sales. He must have been snooping in my desk.”
“You left my photograph in your Berlin desk?” She couldn’t believe such stupidity.
“I left the cylinder of film there, taped to the inside, sure nobody would find it. And they wouldn’t—couldn’t—if they weren’t looking for something.”
“And you didn’t think after being interrogated and beaten by the SS looking for me that someone might go snooping through your desk?”
“I said it was stupid on my part. Taking the picture in the first place was stupid, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Rachel.”
“Is this on the newsstands in Berlin?”
“No. He sold it to this rag in New York. Berlin’s not likely to see it.”
“Not likely? This could get us killed!”
“I don’t think anyone would recognize Amelie. She looks like a boy—is dressed like a boy.”
Rachel wondered if he’d lost his mind. “How did you find it?”
“I searched the newsroom—Eldridge’s desk. He was evidently proud enough of it that he kept it in his own desk drawer—stupid move number two.” He leaned forward. “The thing is, if anybody in the Party sees this—”
“Gerhardt.”
He nodded. “If Schlick s
ees this, he’ll think it’s Lea.”
“Does this look like Lea to you?” she demanded.
“No, it doesn’t,” he confessed. “But she’s dressed like Lea, and a case can be made. You’d better warn Lea to own it, to make up some story about the kid she’s holding.”
Rachel felt like tearing her hair out. After having been so careful so long . . .
“The German censors keep tabs on all the foreign newspapers and periodicals. They’re bound to see it, and eventually somebody’s gonna realize this is the spitting image of the missing Kramer woman.” Jason sat on the table’s edge. “We might get lucky where Schlick’s concerned. We might not.”
“If he realizes this is me . . .”
“He’ll be back. Maybe not soon.” He almost smiled. “I think that nearly letting the Führer get blown up—all for chasing the ghost of you through this remote Alpine village—has convinced him to toe the line in Berlin for a while.”
“How do you know?”
“Sources.” He sobered. “If there were a safe way to get you out of Germany right now, I would. But the borders are locked down. Trains, roads, waterways, ports, checkpoints—drum tight. Getting out through Switzerland is our best bet, but even that . . .”
“This makes leaving less safe.” Rachel wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She’d wanted desperately to leave before, but now she didn’t know.
“It raises awareness again.” He closed his eyes. “Things are closing in everywhere. Remember me telling you about my friend Dietrich?”
“Bonhoeffer!” Rachel remembered the book the curate had passed on to her, the book she’d barely skimmed, then set aside to work on the skit.
“The Gestapo closed down his school in Sigurdshof. He’s no longer allowed to teach ordinands.”
“But why? He’s not militant, is he?”
“Because he’s teaching allegiance to Christ, and because by challenging people to live as Jesus lived, he’s challenging them to think beyond blindly following the dictates of the Reich.”
“Is that what you’re doing in helping the curate, by helping Jews and forging papers?”
He nodded. “Giving targets lower on the Nazi radar a way out of Germany wherever we can. But it’s getting harder.”
“That’s about the most dangerous thing you could be doing, short of raising a coup to assassinate Hitler. I’d have thought reporting real news was risk enough—even for you, Mr. Scoop.”
“Guess I don’t feel much like ‘Mr. Scoop’ these days.” He studied her long enough to make her squirm. “I’ve met someone.”
She sat back, sure she’d been punched in the stomach.
“I mean, I’ve met someone who’s shown me things about myself that I didn’t know before—things about life, the world.”
“Blonde? Blue-eyed? Aryan, long legs?” Rachel couldn’t keep the blister from her voice.
A grin crept up one side of his face. “You sound jealous. It’s not like that.” He leaned forward and took her hands in his. “What do you know about Jesus Christ?”
Rachel pulled away. “So now you’ve decided to become a priest. Where’s the real Jason Young and what have you done with him?”
“I’ve changed—in ways I never imagined.”
“You weren’t so bad the way you were,” she joked self-consciously. “I’m not sure I want you to change.”
“Too late.” Jason’s eyes probed hers. “Did you read the book I sent?”
“Nachfolge? I started it, but—”
“Dietrich wrote it. Read it—in light of what you know about the eugenics movement here and at home, what you know about experimenting on and euthanizing people, all you know about Hitler and his Nazis and this war.”
Rachel sighed. “It’s not exactly a gripping English novel.”
“Better than. It will change the way you think.”
“My father will turn over in his grave. I’m sitting in the middle of the Passion Village teaching church plays.” She shook her head, knowing she’d read the book anyway. “He always said that Christianity is a crutch—”
“For the weak,” Jason finished. “That’s pretty much what the Nazis say. Only now they’re trying to replace Jesus with Hitler as the savior of the people. Hitler’s got it all bound up with pagan rites and blood and soil and nationalism. Sick stuff.”
“I hear parents of the children in my class, when they stop in to pick up their kids. Calling themselves the ‘people of the Passion’ and saying how the Passion rules their lives. And then I hear through Lea how this one or that one turned informer on their neighbor or even their relatives—for privileges, money, rations, or just brownnosing the Nazis. I see kids who’ve copied the adults they hear—yelling that Jews are Christ killers and that the Jews deserve what they get. Their brand of Christianity certainly doesn’t seem to make any difference in how they treat each other or how they talk about Jews.”
“I see it too. They don’t realize how Hitler’s changed the culture, changed their thinking, that he’s doing just what he said he’d do in Mein Kampf.” Jason kneaded the back of his neck. “He’s eliminating the weak and poor, people Christ died for. He’s determined to wipe out the Jews, the very people God chose to reach the world through. The ones He entrusted with His Word. They’re cutting off the arm of Christ and they don’t see it.”
“No, they don’t,” Rachel confessed, uncertain what she thought.
“Most don’t know or care what will happen to those they relocate outside Germany.”
“It’s not their problem—they don’t see it as their problem.”
“It’s only beginning,” Jason warned. “I have a feeling we’ve seen nothing yet.”
50
JASON SAT IN THE NEWSROOM, reading the latest—Germany’s invasion of Norway and Denmark, proclaiming it their duty to protect the “freedom and independence” of those countries from the Allies. Hitler warned that “all resistance would be broken by every available means by the German armed forces and would therefore only lead to utterly useless bloodshed.”
Jason shoved his fedora onto his head and pushed into the cold spring morning. He doubted very much that the flabbergasted Norwegians or Danes saw Hitler’s invasion in such a magnanimous light, let alone the correspondents who were driven from their beds at dawn only to be locked up in the Kaiserhof while their countries were “protected.”
The Swedes were too scared to aid their Scandinavian kinsmen—a decision Jason felt certain they’d rue. But later, over the BBC, Jason heard Winston Churchill vow from the House of Commons that Hitler had “committed a grave strategical error” and that the British navy would now take the Norwegian coast and sink all ships in the Skagerrak and the Kattegat. Jason prayed the British would make good their threat. If they didn’t, what—or who—would stop Hitler from systematically taking over the world?
But just before Passover, British and Norwegian troops were driven from Lillehammer, and Hitler celebrated once more.
Nearly a month had passed since Easter. Rachel knew that Curate Bauer had scrounged and bartered to provide all he could for the Passover feast for Jews in hiding—those who embraced Jesus as their Messiah as well as those who did not.
Once the blackout curtains were drawn, Rachel, Oma, and Rivka carried to the attic napkins and plates, bowls and candles, food and wine needed for the seder. Lea helped Friederich hobble up the attic stairs. The girls spread their pallets and pillows across the floor in a circle, wide-eyed Amelie delighted with the impromptu picnic and eager to help. Rivka placed two candles in the center.
“There’s no lamb and no egg, but we have horseradish root and unleavened bread. Thanks to Curate Bauer, we have wine.” Oma held up the decanter.
“Is it enough?” Rachel asked Rivka, seeing the girl’s sad face.
“It’s wonderful.” Rivka choked back tears. “It’s just . . .”
“The first Passover without your parents?” Oma asked.
Rivka nodded, unable to hold her te
ars at bay. Oma’s hands were full, and Rivka desperately needed a shoulder. Rachel pulled the girl into an awkward embrace, letting her cry. Amelie patted Rivka’s leg, and Rachel stroked the little girl’s hair in return.
Rachel didn’t understand how people, especially those who claimed to be Christian and to follow the Jesus Bonhoeffer wrote about, could stand by and watch as their neighbors were stolen away in the night.
Curate Bauer had shaken his head when Rachel had asked him to explain. “Is there an explanation for blindness, for hatred? For sin? I don’t know the answer. I only know the remedy is Christ’s great love as we’ve been shown in His Passion.”
Rachel thought about that as she held Rivka—Rivka, who’d lost her family at the hands of a madman and a world gone mad.
Rivka pulled from Rachel and wiped her eyes. Rachel drew Amelie to her side as the entire makeshift family settled onto the pillows and pallets, gathering round the small seder plate Rivka had placed on the floor. She set three matzohs on the plate, covering them with the large white linen napkin Oma had provided. Then she looked up at the family, her eyes still glistening. “There was no time for the bread to rise before we fled Egypt, so we baked it unleavened.”
She arranged the horseradish from Oma’s garden and a bunch of watercress Friederich had found in a mountain spring. “Our slavery was bitter—as bitter as these herbs. We’re missing the shank bone, showing the lamb’s blood that marked our houses—our lintels and doorposts.”
“Jesus is our Passover Lamb,” Friederich whispered. “He knows our hearts, and He covers us with His blood.”
Rivka blanched at the notion but continued. “My mother used to let me mix the nuts and cinnamon, the apples chopped with a little wine.” She swallowed. “We’re missing that tonight too, but it represents the mortar used when my people labored so hard to make bricks in Egypt.”
She picked up a little bowl of salt water. “And these are our tears, for we were slaves.”
She touched the four small wine goblets Friederich had filled. “These are for the promises Adonai made to us, of all He would do and be to us.”
