by Liz Tolsma
She paused a brief moment, scanned the group, then resumed her work, her only goal reaching her mum.
He met them several meters down the street. “Where were you?”
Audra bit her lip. “You didn’t wait for us like we asked. We’ve been looking for you.”
Bettina patted Audra’s hand. “Ja, she took us up and down the Spanish Steps and around the Piazza Venezia. Oh my, what fabulous Roman architecture. Don’t you agree, Sister?”
Katya nodded.
Mitch pressed the matter. “What about Frau Cramer? Did she go with you?” Audra stared at the building’s ruins, as if seeing the destruction and understanding what it meant for the first time. He reached out to steady her as she wobbled and she clasped his wrist. “She didn’t want to come with us. When we left, she was down there, wringing out the clothes.”
Just as they feared. The same cold in the pit of his stomach that had gripped him as he raced across France grabbed hold of him now.
Kurt scampered over the rubble pile and rushed toward Gisela. She turned at his approach, her eyes wide and wild. Tears traced a path through her dirty cheeks. “My mutti. Oh, my mutti.”
She allowed him to hold her. A hot rage surfaced in Mitch, a jealous possessiveness he didn’t know he had. He pulled Audra along with him and clambered over the debris to Gisela, almost tearing her from Kurt’s grasp. “Let us not waste more time. Start digging.”
The old ladies took their places beside the young sisters, offering them candy they didn’t have.
Night fell. Darkness closed in until they couldn’t see where to dig next. He knelt beside Gisela and spoke to her in English. “We have to stop. There’s nothing more we can do tonight. We’ll come back in the morning and see if we can locate anyone.”
Gisela slapped Mitch’s hand away when he tried to pull her from her digging in the demolished apartment building. Didn’t he understand that she had to find Mutti? Had to help her? She was in that basement. That’s what Audra said. She was down there, perhaps suffocating as they worked.
Why did she leave her? Gisela wouldn’t make that mistake again. “I’m not going anywhere.”
His voice was gentle but insistent. “It’s too dark to see. We’ll look more in the morning. You need to rest.”
She couldn’t. “Where will we go? We don’t have a home. There is nothing to do but continue searching.”
Mitch rubbed the top of his head with both hands, his dark hair sticking up in every direction. “I hadn’t thought about that.”
“Just a small problem.”
“Dearies, there is a nice hotel not far from here. Classy. Attracts the right kind of clientele. Why stay here when we can go there?”
Gisela’s skin itched in irritation. “Get them out of here. Take them all away so I can work in peace. By myself.” She thumped her forehead a few times. Who did she know in the neighborhood anymore? “Mutti’s friend Frau Mueller lives nearby.” She gave him directions. “Mention that you know me and she’ll take care of you.”
Mitch persisted. “You have to come with us. Have a hot meal, wash up, get a little rest. You can’t continue working at this pace. You’ll be no good to your mum if you fall over.”
Gisela leaned on her haunches. “I can’t leave. What if she needs me? What if she did go somewhere and comes back? Then she won’t know where to find us.”
“If the first place you thought to send us was a friend of your mum’s, then that’s the first place she’ll think to look.”
Her exhausted brain attempted to comprehend what Mitch said. Did it make sense? Would Mutti search for them at Frau Mueller’s? Perhaps she was even there.
“I don’t know.” She was giving in to her desire for a bar of soap and a warm bed and hated herself for it.
“Come on.” Mitch pulled her to her feet.
She stopped before they took a single step. Held her breath. Detected a faint cry. “Wait. Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
She hushed him. “A noise. From downstairs.”
They didn’t move for a couple of minutes. She strained to hear that noise again, any little sign that Mutti was alive under this rubble.
Mitch dared not to breathe. A direct hit on a building meant death. Gisela couldn’t have heard a noise there. Could she?
He didn’t detect a single sound. Not a peep. Not a scratch nor a bang. “Gisela, you didn’t . . .”
She turned on him, her light-brown eyes alive with fire. “I did.”
Better not to argue with her. “We’ll dig a little longer. But the night raids will start soon.”
“Take the Holtzmanns to Frau Mueller.”
Mitch climbed from the pile of rubble and nodded to Audra and Kurt. “That would be best.” He lowered his voice. “I will stay and make her go soon.”
Kurt puffed out his chest. “I’ll stay with her. You take Audra and go.”
Mitch looked at Gisela. Her thick brown hair, rolled on top of her head, had come loose from its pins and hung around her face, covered in powder. Dark circles shadowed her eyes. She radiated fear, longing, determination. He couldn’t leave her.
He nodded at Audra. “We’ll come soon. Take Annelies and Renate with you.”
Gisela whipped around to face them. “Nein. You cannot take the girls. They have to stay here with me.”
Annelies and Renate sat huddled together on the step, dust turning their pale faces ghostly white.
“Let them go. Audra can get them washed up and fed at least. You will be there in time to tuck them into bed.”
She directed her gaze to the sky, then to the ground, then to him. “Fine. Let them go.” Her voice was weak, raspy.
Kurt went to her side. “You come too. Let me take care of you.”
“I know I heard a sound. I won’t stop until I reach the person who made that noise.”
Audra gave her a hug and whispered in her ear, then paraded down the street with the two sets of sisters. If not for the fact that they stepped around the remains of buildings, they might have been comical.
Kurt stayed at Gisela’s side and held her hand.
“I won’t leave Mutti.”
He drew her closer. “And I won’t leave you.” He kissed her forehead.
Mitch clenched and unclenched his hands. He wanted to be the one to comfort Gisela. What hurt the worst was that she didn’t draw away from Kurt. Instead, she leaned into him.
After a moment in silence, the three of them resumed their digging. Crazy, really, because they couldn’t see their hands in front of their faces. Mitch moved bricks here and there, mostly listening to hear if he could detect the noise Gisela heard.
Nothing.
A sliver of moonlight cast pale shadows across what had been a building. His hands hurt, still not healed from the last search he had conducted, his one hand still not healed from the Russian’s bullet. Blood ran down them, though they had been callused by the farm work he did during his imprisonment.
His calluses were no match for the sharp edges of glass from cups and mirrors mixed in with the debris. Nothing but adrenaline propelled him forward.
They must have worked for at least an hour. Clouds covered the moon in the thick darkness.
“Josep?” Gisela collapsed in a heap on top of the ruins. Her moan-like weeping tore through him like a bullet.
“I’m here.”
“I don’t think I heard anything. I don’t think there is anyone alive. What am I going to do? What am I going to do?”
He let her cry for a while, Kurt adhered to her other side. Mitch had watched Dad with Mum a time or two. Gisela needed to weep.
When she had spent herself, he helped her sit and Kurt offered her his very dirty handkerchief. The air-raid sirens broke the stillness of the night.
“I can’t go.”
Hoping the family friend she mentioned did indeed live around the corner, he stayed by her side. They would have to leave in a little while. He didn’t want a repeat performance of thi
s morning, but they had a few minutes.
“Is Mutti even here?” She rubbed her eyes with her filthy hands.
“I don’t know. I can’t answer that.”
“I’m afraid to dig.”
“We should stop for the night.” Who knew what they might uncover? He didn’t want Gisela to see the ghastly sights he encountered digging through the neighbor’s rubble. Didn’t want her to find her mum like that.
Kurt helped her stand. “Let me look tomorrow while you stay with the girls. Right now you need a little food in your stomach and a washcloth.”
She allowed him to help her slide down the mass of bricks to the street. An acrid smell filled the air. Fires burned here and there.
The second alarm rang.
Gisela sprung to life. “Annelies. Renate. I can’t be away from them during the raid.”
She stared at the debris, now a coffin for how many? They had been so focused on Gisela’s mum, they hadn’t thought about the other occupants of the building. The mother with the gaggle of children. The old people.
She tugged at the sleeves of her sweater. “What do I do? Where do I go? Mutti? The girls?”
The sun had just peeped above the horizon, painting the world in red and orange, not yet chasing away the shadows. The streets remained quiet, an eerie silence, as Mitch, Gisela, and Kurt walked to the Cramers’ destroyed building from Frau Mueller’s place, a world holding its breath waiting to explode.
Mitch held his breath too.
Viewing the destruction at this hour, from this distance, brought the reality home to him. On block after block, not one stone remained on top of another. Other buildings were burned-out skeletons, dark against the radiant sky.
Twenty-four hours ago, this had been a thriving neighborhood. Today, nothing but ashes. In the distance, a dog barked.
Gisela stumbled as she picked up her pace, nearing what had once been her home. Mitch caught her elbow and prevented her fall. “You’ll get there soon enough.”
While Mitch had been able to tear Gisela away from the girls, promising to return to their temporary home the second the air-raid sirens blared, he could not prevent Kurt from accompanying them. He stuck like wallpaper to Gisela’s side. Wallpaper Mitch wanted to rip away.
“We won’t get there soon enough.” Gisela continued at her breakneck speed. “It’s chilly and Mutti had to spend the night down there, in the dark, in the cold.”
Whether she was a glass half-full sort of person or an I’m-not-even-going-to-look-at-the-glass kind of girl, Mitch didn’t know. She walked erect. Something fueled hope in her.
He wanted to warn her, to prepare her for what they might find today, but without deflating her. When the time came, they would deal with whatever they unearthed.
Digging in the daylight proved to be much more efficient than searching at dusk. They removed a large amount of debris in a short period of time, great chunks of plaster and smashed bricks.
Mitch uncovered a mattress, its top shredded.
And below he discovered a hand.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Mitch stood in the rubble, unmoving beside Gisela. A strangled cry escaped his lips, his face as pale as last night’s moon.
She followed his gaze downward. She gagged. Turning to the side, she fell to her knees and lost her small breakfast.
It was a hand. A human hand, fingers mangled and bloodied, blue and swollen.
He held her shoulders as she retched again, her hair clinging to her cheek.
At last empty inside, she sat back, trembling. She steeled herself for the answer before whispering the question. “Who?”
“It looks like an older woman’s hand. The knuckles are too gnarled to belong to a younger person.”
Mutti had arthritis in her hands, the result of decades of hard work. Her fingers bent and twisted in odd directions. She had been in the basement finishing the laundry . . .
Gisela shivered, unable to control the tremors. Her heart seemed to stop beating and she had to remind herself to breathe. “God, not Mutti. Not her, Lord.”
Mitch kissed her forehead and wrapped his arm around her, helping her to her feet. For a few moments, they stood together and her shudders calmed under his gentle touch.
Kurt arrived next to her and pulled her away from Mitch. She was bereft and reached out for Mitch, the man she knew without a doubt she loved, but the German soldier led her to the stoop. “I will keep digging. You don’t need to see any more.”
She agreed. Never would she forget the picture of those protruding fingers. Already horrific images bombarded her brain. The reality would be far worse.
As the men worked, she chewed on her broken fingernail. Others in the neighborhood came to dig, to try to find missing loved ones in the remains of their homes. She hid her face in the crook of her elbow. The nightmares of this day blended with those of a night not so long ago.
For a long while, she sat and tried not to think. The chill seeped through her bones, deep into her body.
The bricks and debris shifted as someone approached. He lowered himself beside her and rubbed her aching back. No comparison to the aching of her heart.
She didn’t bother to lift her head, recognizing Mitch’s touch. “I don’t want to know what you have to tell me.” If he didn’t speak the words, it couldn’t be true.
He smoothed her hair. “The hand belonged to the old man. His body shielded his wife’s. We found the woman and three of her children. We don’t know where the others are.”
She shivered as if she had been in an icehouse for hours. “And Mutti?”
“No.” Mitch’s deep voice reverberated in the air.
She raised her head and stared into his compassionate brown eyes. “Not Mutti?”
“No. No sign of her. She wasn’t home when the bombs fell.”
“Then where is she?”
Mitch squeezed her. “You tell us. Think about it.”
“I don’t know.” She forced herself to concentrate, to no avail. Her thoughts whirred too fast for her to catch them. “Are you telling me she is still alive?”
He nodded. “She isn’t here. That much is for certain.”
Across the street, wails rose up from the devastation. Another life snuffed out. And another. And another.
“I have no idea where to look. Her friends—but I’m not sure I remember where they live. Especially with so many landmarks gone, it looks like a different place. Did she go to the store? Which one? No one can give us those answers.”
Mitch ran his hand through his scraggly dark hair and whispered, “You stay here. I’ll see if Frau Mueller has some paint. We can leave a message for your mum so she knows where to find us. I imagine this will be the first place she will search for you.”
Mitch and Kurt moved the bodies from the rubbish heap to the sidewalk and covered them with coats. Then Mitch left to get the paint. Gisela dared to move about, sifting through the rubble, not for her mother’s body, but for anything salvageable.
Not much remained. She uncovered Annelies’s doll and located a few pairs of socks. She gasped when her fingers touched the beautiful gold watch Vater had given her for her thirteenth birthday. The one that matched Margot’s. With tears in her eyes, she slipped it on her wrist. Kurt handed her a pot and a pan along with a few spoons, a fork, and a knife.
He hovered over her as she sifted through their few worldly possessions. “I’m sorry about your mutti.”
“Danke.”
“I will do whatever it takes to find her. I will bring her home to you.”
“If only you could.”
“My uniform will help.”
Gisela shook her head. “Your uniform means little now. The Russians will be here any day.”
She turned her attention to her work. The corner of a book peeked out from underneath a smashed piece of furniture. The wood had splintered but hadn’t caught fire. She tugged and it came free.
Her Bible.
Scars marred the brown leather co
ver, but the pages remained intact. She lowered herself to the step and flipped to Isaiah 43. The faded daisy lay in its hiding place in that passage. She touched the fragile paper. Oh, Opa, I wish I knew what happened to you. But maybe it is best you don’t know about Mutti.
Mitch broke her reverie when he plunked down beside her, a tin of paint and a brush in his hand.
She showed him the watch on her wrist. “I can’t believe it survived. My sister and I got identical watches. She is buried with hers. I thought mine had been buried too.”
Mitch smiled. “I’m glad you found it.”
“It’s my last link with my sister.”
He held out the brush to her. Kurt had moved to the back of the garden, searching the bushes for debris that had blown there.
Her hand quivered. “I can’t do it. I’ll make a mess of it and she won’t be able to read where we’ve gone. And what if she doesn’t come back? What if she was in another shelter that was hit?”
Mitch took the brush from her. “We’ll find her.”
“How do you know that?”
He slapped his thigh. “Listen, I haven’t any guarantees. There are no guarantees in this mad world. Nothing is as it should be.”
An insane mix of emotions surged through Gisela, things she couldn’t explain. “I want you to make everything right again, to wake me from this nightmare, to take me away from here.”
“I can’t. These bodies over here—they aren’t a dream or a vision. They are reality. That’s reality now. This is what Hitler has done for you.” The words were harsh, but his tone soft.
“But I’m an American. I should be safe in our bungalow in California.”
“You should leave Berlin for the west. We all should.”
Screaming, shouting, crying came from up and down the block. The sounds reverberated in her head.
They echoed the sounds from another day.
Gisela and Heide and Lotta shared a bedroom upstairs. They were trapped, not knowing what to do. She wanted to shout for help but didn’t want to draw attention to them. Heide and Lotta suggested hiding in the wardrobe or under the bed. But surely the Soviets would look in those places first thing.
