by Liz Tolsma
“What happened along the way?”
She couldn’t speak of these things yet.
Mutti put her arm around Gisela. “I know. I lived through war too. It does change you.”
They slid the chairs back into place and Mutti began sweeping the floor. “But you like him?”
Gisela set the pot in the cupboard with a little more force than necessary. “Why would you say that?”
“Your eyes soften when you look at him. Your voice changes. It’s almost wistful.”
“We don’t even get along.” Gisela laughed. “Wait long enough and you will see.”
“Be careful. You are all I have left.”
“We have been. We will be.”
Mutti dried her hands on her apron. “There, you see. Now I can leave knowing I have a clean kitchen. If the soldiers search the place during the air raid, they will not find a messy house.”
Gisela wrapped her mother in a hug. “I missed you.”
“Ach, I missed you too, child. You are a gift from God.”
“How long until you’ll be ready to leave?”
“Now. I told you I would go down and I will.”
“Nein, not leave for the shelter. Leave Berlin. Head toward Munich. Toward the Allies and safety. That is where Josep wants to go, to return to the Allies.”
Mutti untied her apron and laid it across the back of the kitchen chair. “Until your vater comes home, I will not leave. I am staying in Berlin.”
Mitch put his hand to his heart when Gisela entered the basement. He had worried her mum would refuse to come, and she would insist on staying upstairs. He shouldn’t care what happened to her, but he did.
The musty basement had an arched concrete ceiling, as if that might stop an Allied bomb from penetrating the area. An oxygen tank stood tall in one corner. They could breathe if they were buried in rubble. What a thoughtful touch.
Benches and chairs occupied much of the space. There were three beds down here, as well as shelves lined with food and water. Cobwebs decorated the corners. A mother and her five children huddled on kitchen chairs in one corner. Annelies and Renate wanted to play with them, but the mother shook her head. The girls came back to him, asking him why they wouldn’t play. Having no other explanation, he told them they were tired. Two older couples mingled with them and now sat chatting with Bettina and Katya about Paris. Audra and Kurt sat silent to his right.
Gisela slipped in on his left. He squeezed her hand. It was warm. “You got your mum to come down.”
“She doesn’t want to leave Berlin.” Pain and fright drew lines across her brow.
“Why not? If this ghastly bombing happens all the time”—the racket of antiaircraft fire interspersed his words—“you would think her eager to leave.”
“She won’t go because of Vater. She wants to wait for him to come home.” The unspoken words if he ever does echoed in the room. He didn’t blame her for not wanting to say them.
“How old is he?”
“Sixty-five.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about your sister?”
Her eyes clouded. “We don’t talk about her much. It’s too hard, even after eight years.”
“What happened?”
She stared at the ceiling for a long moment. “Scarlet fever. I lived. She died.”
For a moment, Mitch didn’t know what to say. He stroked her fingers. “I’m sorry.” This was why she was so eager to get to her mum.
“So am I. And now Vater is gone.”
“Is Hitler out of his mind, recruiting old men to fight this battle he will surely lose?”
“Hush. Don’t speak against the Führer. The POW camp will look like a summer holiday compared to a Berlin prison.”
“It will be hard for you to leave your mum.”
“I won’t go. I refuse to travel on without her.” She set her mouth in a firm, straight line.
Had she gone crackers? “You won’t leave?”
“Nein. I’m all she has left. She lost one child already. Now with Vater gone, I’ll stay. Try to understand. I’ll work on persuading her to come, but I understand why she won’t. What if he comes back and we aren’t here? He would have no idea where to look for us.”
“Leave him a note. Write him a letter.”
“What if he never receives it? Nein, we can’t leave. That is what Ella did for Opa.” A single tear trickled down her cheek. “It is what I will do for Mutti. I will keep the girls with me. You take the others to Munich.”
Munich would be in the direction of the Allies. If he stayed with her, by the time the British or Americans reached the city, the war would be over.
Planes droned above them. Soon the earth rocked beneath them.
Annelies and Renate continued playing with the little dolls Gisela’s mum had given them. Either they were innocent about what was happening in the skies, or they had become so used to the sound of planes and bombs that it no longer affected them. He studied their golden heads, bowed over their dolls.
He watched Gisela watching them. She had a lovely profile, a little upturned nose, a strand of amber-colored hair sweeping her shoulder.
Yes, her Reich was on the verge of collapse. She shouldn’t stay.
He couldn’t.
She must come with him.
Mitch tossed and turned the entire night. At least the part of the night they didn’t spend in the bomb shelter. To be honest, he didn’t know why the decision he faced was so difficult, why it kept him from sleeping. True, Gisela saved his life—twice—and he was grateful. But the time had come to walk away. He had to rejoin his regiment, wherever they might be. While the war was winding down, perhaps he could still fight. Still defend the honor of his country. So Xavier’s death wouldn’t be in vain.
Sitting in Berlin would accomplish nothing.
Yet the thought of not seeing Gisela or the girls tore at him.
He didn’t know her well, so it was madness for him to be thinking this way.
Mitch slipped from under his blanket on the couch. The bed in the guest room wouldn’t accommodate Frau Cramer, Audra, and the two old ladies, so Mitch insisted on sleeping on the couch so Frau Cramer could share her bed with her daughter and the Reinhardt girls.
He found Gisela sitting at the small kitchen table sipping her ersatz coffee. “How did you sleep?”
“I didn’t. I hope you did.”
“Not really.” He pulled out a wobbly kitchen chair and sat. “We have to talk.”
“I know.” She traced the rim of her cup with the tip of her finger. “I know what you’re going to say.”
“After all those years in captivity, I’m free. Free to fight for my country.”
She got up to pour him a cup of hot coffee. “I understand.”
“I need to rejoin my regiment.”
“You don’t need to tell me these things. I know. How will you get back?”
Funny, in all of those hours of wakefulness during the night, he hadn’t developed a plan for that. “It should be easy enough. If I get stopped by the Germans on the way, I’ll say I’m returning to my post after an extended illness.”
“You have no papers.”
“Do you think they care about that now?”
She nodded. Her hair hung loose about her shoulders, tangles knotting the curls. “They always care about things like that.”
“Then I’ll pretend I’ve just lost them.”
“And you’ll say all of this in your flawless German?”
“Ja.” He smiled but couldn’t get her to crack a grin. “Perhaps I won’t get stopped.”
“And when you reach the line, you will be shot on the spot by your countrymen because of the uniform you wear.”
“I don’t have that anymore, remember?” Gisela’s mum had spent a long, long time combing the nits out of his hair. His uniform, they burned, and she gave him a couple of her father’s pants and shirts.
“You are out of your mind. Crackers, as you say. Your plan will never work.�
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He downed the contents of his mug in one gulp and stood to put it in the sink. “Thank you for the vote of confidence.” The view from the third-floor window was dismal. Much of the grand city lay in smoldering ruins. Why would anyone want to stay here?
“Mutti knows that you’re British and that we’re not married.”
“Will she keep the secret until I leave?”
“Ja. I had to tell her. I wasn’t going to keep lying to her.”
He hoped she was right. At this moment, he had no other choice but to trust her. In a little while, he would be gone. He turned to face her. “And what about you? What are you going to do?”
She stared at him, her light brown eyes searching. “About what?”
“Your mum.”
“There is nothing to do. She won’t leave.”
“Are you sure?”
“I know my mutti. Once she makes up her mind, she will not change it. Ever.”
“Your Führer won’t save you.”
“My Führer?”
“Yes. Your Führer.”
“What makes you think he’s my Führer?”
He sat up straight. “You were in the Hitler Youth.”
“So was everyone else in my class. It was a club. We got to go to the mountains.”
“What about your father?”
“I don’t know. He is a difficult man to figure out. I believe he came here hoping for better than what America had brought him. He’s fighting not for the Germany of today, but for the Germany of his youth.”
He clasped her hands. “Then come with me.”
A small cry came from the back of the apartment.
“I think the girls are waking.” She rose and left her coffee on the table. He followed. Just when the time had come to leave, he discovered her to be different than he thought.
Gisela’s mum sat in bed, cradling Renate in her arms.
Gisela stepped forward. “Is she frightened?”
“Nein. She has a fever.”
TWENTY-ONE
Mitch leaned against the doorjamb, his fingernails digging into the trim, watching as Gisela took Renate from her mum’s arms. The child’s cheeks were red. Annelies stirred in the bed and whimpered. The color in her cheeks matched that of her sister’s.
He took two steps toward the bed.
Gisela turned to Annelies and touched her forehead with the back of her hand. “They must have caught the sickness from the children on the train. We should have found somewhere else to stand.”
He sat beside her and pulled Annelies into his lap. Heat radiated from her small body. “What can I do?”
Gisela bowed over Renate, her brown hair falling about the child. She kissed the little girl on the forehead. “We have to fetch the doctor.”
Frau Cramer nodded. “Dr. Liebenstraum will come.”
Gisela stared at her mum, eyes wide. “Dr. Liebenstraum is eighty years old—at least.”
“Many of the other doctors are off fighting or are so busy with the casualties, they cannot take care of the kinder. He will know what to do. He took care of you.”
“And Margot. Even then he was old.”
“He was around before this medicine that we cannot get now. He knows how to deal with having very little. I trust he will take care of them. They only have colds. It’s not like with your sister.”
Gisela massaged her hands together. “We don’t know that. Maybe we should take them to the hospital.”
“Is that necessary? If your mum thinks they have colds, there is nothing to worry about.”
Frau Cramer shook her head. “Many of the hospitals have been bombed. Every available bed is taken with the injured. Unless you are missing an arm or a leg or have a hole in your body, they will tell you to go home.” Gisela’s mum wrapped her in a hug. “Trust me. Ella’s girls will get the best care available from Dr. Liebenstraum.”
Gisela looked at him, her mouth pinched.
“I don’t know much about sick children, but your mum is far more experienced than either of us. Take her advice.” He held her hand.
“We have no idea what is even wrong with them. And how contagious it might be.”
Mitch hadn’t thought about the possibility that others might become ill as well. “First things first, then. We will get the doctor and see what his diagnosis is. Tell me where he lives.”
Frau Cramer shook her head. “Gisela told me who you are. To me, you sound very British. Stay here with her. Keep her calm. I will fetch Dr. Liebenstraum.” She stepped from the room and latched the door behind her.
Gisela nodded. “Let me get some cool cloths. I’ll wake Kurt and Audra. They can ask the neighbors if they might allow the sisters to stay with them for a few days. If it is contagious, we should keep them from being exposed.”
Did every woman have this innate maternal sense, always knowing when to send for the doctor and how to care for an ill child?
Gisela laid Annelies beside her sister and pulled the blanket to her chin. “I should have never let them anywhere near those sick children. And we were in such cramped quarters. If I had thought, if I had thought at all, I would have moved to a different part of the train. But I didn’t, and now they are sick. Ella trusted me to keep her children safe, and this is what happened.”
He caught her upper arm. “Children get sick. They get colds. You can’t blame yourself. Much as you want to, you can never keep children from every illness. There may have been even sicker children elsewhere. And you don’t know for sure they caught this from those kids.”
Tears shone in Gisela’s eyes. “If anything happens to them . . .”
He pulled her close to himself, whispering into her hair. “Your mum said this isn’t like what your sister had. We’ll pray and trust the Lord to watch over them.”
She buried her head in his chest and clung to him. “Everything I do, I mess up.”
“That isn’t true. You got them here. So far, you kept them safe. And it’s not your fault they got sick. You could no more stop that than you could stop the rain.”
She melted against his chest, and he never wanted to let go. “Thank you.”
“I haven’t done anything.”
“You have just by being here.”
Her heart beat in tempo with his. “There’s nowhere else I would be.”
“So you will stay with me?”
Audra stood at the Cramers’ tiny kitchen window overlooking the destruction of this once-great city. Much of it had been reduced to rubble. The fronts of many buildings had been sheared away. Entire blocks were flattened. Smoke rose from several spots along the horizon, places where the Allies had recently unloaded their deadly payloads. If the bombings continued much longer, there would be nothing left.
“What is so interesting out there?” Kurt’s voice at her elbow startled her.
“What little is left of this city. I had always heard about how grand Berlin was. What a proud metropolis. There is nothing proud remaining.”
“I wonder if it will ever be the same. I have been here several times, but I recognize nothing.”
Audra turned from the window. She had not noticed the fine lines marring Kurt’s almost-too-perfect face.
“I heard the most interesting conversation yesterday.”
He had her attention. “Ja?”
“It’s as I suspected. There is no German in Josep at all. He was a British POW. The marriage is fake, thought up by Gisela on the spur of the moment to protect him.”
Audra’s mind whirled. “Are you sure about this?”
“I heard Gisela tell her mutti when I came up to use the washroom. There is no doubt. And she’s at least part American.”
“American? She could help me get to Hollywood.”
“But not if she truly comes to love Josep. Then she will go to England with him. And your chance at being the next Marlene Dietrich will be lost.”
“You’re sure about this?”
“I am. I didn’t hear the entire conversati
on. The floor creaked and I was afraid they would find me eavesdropping. But I know what I did hear.”
“So, what does that mean?”
Kurt didn’t try to hide his enthusiasm. “Gisela can be mine.”
“You like her?” She didn’t really have to ask the question.
“I need your help. They have been spending time together, pretending to be married. I am afraid their feelings for each other will become real.”
“How am I supposed to help?” The situation could turn out well for her.
“I will work on wooing Gisela.” His blue eyes had become hard. “You pretend to like Josep. Don’t let on that we know about them. Do whatever you can think of to plant that seed of doubt in Gisela’s mind about him. If she doesn’t spend time around him, it will be easier for me to lure her.”
“You sound like you are fishing.” He didn’t come across very much like a man in love. And if he caught Gisela, she would remain in Germany.
The small clock ticked on the faded yellow kitchen wall.
“Josep and Gisela are in with the kinder now. Frau Cramer has gone for the doctor.”
Kurt’s jaw clenched. “This is just the crisis that might bring the two of them closer. We can’t allow that to happen.”
Nein, she couldn’t allow Gisela to fall for him.
“I will do what I can.”
Gisela and Mitch sat on the bed beside each other, the girls sleeping. Their breathing appeared to be deep and even, but she didn’t dare relax. Not until they bounded from under the sheets and came to hug her legs.
“I’m scared,” she whispered, not wanting to wake them, not wanting them to hear her trepidation.
“I know.” Mitch’s voice was as soft.
“What if I have to tell their mother . . . ?” The thought turned her stomach.
“You won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“They have colds. Nothing more. The trip tired them. They won’t die or anything.”
“And you pretend to know the mind of God?”
“No. But I trust Him.”
Gisela wiped a stray hair from her eyes. “I want to believe. To trust. But what if God is punishing me for leaving Heide and Lotta?”
