Daisies Are Forever

by Liz Tolsma

Machine-gun fire punctuated the brief intermissions between the rounds of the rocket launchers.

  She rose from among the kinder and peered through the narrow window above them. Wehrmacht boots and black SS boots dashed past. One shiny pair came to a sudden stop in front of the window, then lurched forward as a Soviet bullet met its mark.

  Gisela turned away, unable to watch more. Kurt stood right behind her and she couldn’t but help fall into his arms. “Come and sit. This is too much for you.”

  She trembled and allowed him to lead her to the cream-and-green davenport they had pushed against the far wall. He knelt in front of her. “There is nothing to worry about. I won’t allow you to come to any harm.”

  “You can’t say that. We’re helpless against this assault.”

  “I won’t leave your side.”

  She tried to take comfort in his words.

  The gunfire ramped up once more, as did the howling squeal of the Stalinorgel, driving away the warmth in her limbs, chilling her all over.

  Annelies covered her ears, missing most of the tale Mitch wove about princesses and castles, dragons and knights in shining armor. Even the beauty of his words could not overcome the ugliness on their doorstep.

  Day turned into night. Neither the gunfire nor the Stalinorgel music stopped for a breath. Those dragons breathed fire and ravaged the decimated city.

  At last, Renate and Annelies and the Holtzmann sisters gave in to their exhaustion and fell asleep on the bed. Gisela knew she would never rest while those monsters stood on the doorstep.

  The thought of a good cry held some appeal.

  She needed a break—a break from the boredom, the anticipation, the dread. She had to see something other than passing shoes—the tall, black boots of German officers, the midcalf brown boots of the field soldiers, the serviceable brown-and-white pumps of women scurrying to stock up on the necessities before the Russians arrived. She slipped from the shelter on the pretense of using the restroom and climbed the steps to the almost-empty second-floor bedroom that faced east.

  Rocket fire colored the horizon blood red. A cacophony of shells and bombs and machine guns composed the strangest music. Explosions, like fireworks, lit up the heavens.

  In a way, she believed this had to be a dream. Events like this didn’t happen to average people. They lived happy lives with family around the table, plenty to eat, and the basics of existence. Not like clay pigeons, targets for whatever aircraft flew in the air. Not like sleepwalkers, passing the dead and bloated bodies of their school pals, neighbors, and family. Not like hungry baby birds, waiting with mouths open for the next morsel that might drop their way.

  She pressed her nose to the glass, surprised that it bore no cracks or bullet holes. She closed her eyes, blocking out the nightmare.

  A tap on her shoulder and she jumped as high as the Eiffel Tower. Clutching her chest, she turned to find Mitch behind her.

  “I’m sorry. I tried to make noise”—he studied his stockinged feet—“but you were in a far-off place.”

  She touched his face, his beard coarse and bristly. “A place where this is nothing but a bad dream. A place where I will awake and find myself in my rose-papered bedroom in California, Margot asleep in the bed beside me.”

  “I have dreams too.”

  “Of flying?”

  He nodded. He understood.

  “Why did you come after me?” He should be with Audra, comforting her.

  “You’ve been quiet.”

  “I don’t want to talk.”

  “What did you mean when you spoke about Audra and me getting married?”

  “Just what I said. It’s a plan you two have, but one that may never be a reality.”

  “I haven’t any desire to marry Audra.”

  She dared to look into his chocolate eyes. They were soft, kind. Perhaps loving. “Not now you don’t want to marry her. When this tragedy finally ends.”

  “Never.”

  Could it be that the love she saw in his eyes was for her?

  “I love another.”

  That, she couldn’t bear. For half a second, she’d had hope. “Let’s count to three and resolve to wake up.” She closed her eyes. “One . . .”

  “Wait.”

  “What?”

  “In case this is a nightmare and we wake up an ocean and a continent apart from each other, I want you to know I love you. That has been the sweetest part of this dream. The part I don’t want to wake from.”

  He loved her? “Do you mean that?”

  “I do.”

  “I do too.” Her heart dreamed along with his. “I’ll be sorry to wake up and find you gone. Promise me you will try to locate me in California.” Her heart pained her.

  “I will. I promise. Will you slap me again if I kiss you?”

  Part of her still didn’t believe she had done such a thing. She shook her head. He leaned in for a kiss that she couldn’t refuse. His lips came to rest on hers, the pressure gentle, soothing. Yet a fire raced through her and she pulled him closer. He held the back of her neck, his probing fingers pulling out her hairpins.

  The passion intensified and he pressed his lips tighter to hers. The breath she drew wasn’t sufficient. His heart beat over hers, their tempos in unison.

  Mitch took her head in his hands and pulled away, his eyes intent on her. “You are the most incredible, beautiful woman I have ever met.”

  “Why did you stop?”

  “Because if the kiss had gone on longer, I’d not have been able to control it. You fill me, complete me. I want you to be mine. I fought for you.”

  This had to be real. “You fought Kurt.”

  “He swung at me. I defended myself. Fought for you. He wants you as much as I do.”

  “No one has ever fought for me.” That only happened at the cinema. It made her dizzy to think about. At the same time, anger surged in her toward Kurt. Didn’t he understand she wasn’t going to be his? Ever? “No wonder you don’t want to be near him. I’d throw him out on the street if it wouldn’t be his death sentence. But he won’t get me. I love another.”

  His smile, his dimples, his love left her woozy.

  He brushed his hand over her lids and she closed her eyes. “You have been the most beautiful dream. One, two . . .”

  THIRTY-THREE

  No. Wait.” Gisela broke off counting, pink rising in her pale, sunken cheeks.

  He held her close in the freezing bedroom even as artillery fire screamed around them. The kiss had warmed him through and through. Almost too much. “Don’t you want to wake up?”

  “No, I don’t.” She slid from his embrace and held his hands, her touch light. “Even if I have to suffer through this nightmare of hunger and fright and death, it’s worth it to be with you. I don’t want to leave you.”

  A shell exploded nearby and the wood floors shook beneath them. Yet another shower of plaster rained on their heads. Mitch had enjoyed their game, but reality intruded. “We don’t have to wake up. Because we aren’t dreaming.”

  “I know.”

  “When the war is over . . .”

  He wanted to commit to her, but she hushed him with a finger on his lips. “If I have learned nothing else from this horror, I have learned not to think about tomorrow. First, we have to survive today. So many don’t have a future.”

  “But a pledge between us will keep us going until freedom comes.”

  “I don’t want to break your heart. You don’t want to break mine. Let’s get through today, then the next and the next. Whatever that may hold for us.”

  He struggled to understand her resistance. Perhaps he had read her wrong. “Do you love me? Be truthful.”

  Her eyes sparkled. “If not for this war, things would be so very different.”

  “Why not take advantage of every moment we have, no matter how few or how many are left? Because of the uncertainty of war, we should grab each second and live as if every tick of the clock was our last.”

  She stepped to
the other window on the wall and stared at the carnage on the streets. A large fissure ran the length of the pane. “It’s dangerous to love me.”

  He went to her and massaged her shoulders, whispering into her ear, “Dangerous to my heart, yes. I’ve lost it to you.”

  She leaned into him. “I would fail you.”

  “Never.”

  “Why did I run from Heide and Lotta? Why did I value my life more than theirs?”

  “You were frightened and acted on instinct. There’s no shame in that.”

  “I knew better. All my life, my parents had trained me to put others ahead of myself, but I didn’t do it that night. Even when I heard their screams, I kept running.” She shivered.

  For a few minutes, he allowed silence to invade them. Just a bit. Gisela relaxed as she rested on his chest, her back to him. Explosions burst in the air along with the constant firing of machine guns.

  “What could you have done to save your cousins? You told me yourself that there was no escape for all of you.”

  “Then why did I go first? Why didn’t I push them ahead of me?”

  “Did they push and shove to get ahead of you? Did you knock them out of the way?”

  Her breathing rate increased and he knew she had traveled to that ghastly night. “I can’t remember. Maybe I did push them out of the way. Maybe, because I went first, they didn’t have a chance. I don’t know.”

  He wrapped his arms around her and grasped her hands. “What happened after you opened the window? Relax and think.”

  Gisela had heard the heavy Russian boots enter the parlor that night. They shouted, “Uri, uri,” wanting the watches. Glass broke on the floor. Tante Sonje would have bent to clean up whatever had shattered.

  Gisela huddled with Heide and Lotta in the corner of the bedroom, behind the bed. She prayed, her lips moving, no sound emanating from her. The Soviets shouted in Russian. What were they demanding now?

  She heard a thud, then Tante Sonje screamed.

  “My aunt screeched and screeched. ‘Get out. Get out.’ ” Gisela shuddered.

  Mitch’s whisper came from behind her, the edges of his voice softened by her vision. “Keep going. To the part where you opened the window.”

  “We didn’t move at that time. More screaming. Crying. Then shots.” She couldn’t block out the sound of her aunt’s body hitting the floor.

  Mitch rubbed her arm.

  “They would come for us. We had to get out, so we opened the window and held it in place with a board my cousins kept in the room for that very purpose.” She paused as the scene played in front of her eyes. She looked across the bedroom at the large featherbed she and her younger cousins occupied. Heide and Lotta’s dolls lay scattered across the pink-and-green rag rug on the floor.

  Her attention returned to the matter at hand. Boots clunked on the stairs. If the soldiers found them, they would kill them too, like Tante Sonje.

  Her heart raced as she knew they had very little time to escape.

  She jolted back to reality and spun to face Mitch. “I remember. Oh, I remember.” Emotions almost cut off her breathing.

  “What is it? What happened that night?”

  “I tried to get my cousins to go out that window. I pulled them and tugged on them. Neither would cooperate.” A sensation of frustration overcame her. “Why wouldn’t they go out that window? Their mother was dead, their father out fighting. But they wouldn’t budge.”

  “You did all you could. You offered them a means of escape, but they chose not to take it.”

  “They told me to get out, to leave. That they would be fine. As they closed the window behind me, the Russians burst into the room.” Her knees went weak. In her head, she heard the Soviets shouting at her cousins. Even when she ran, the sound of those soldiers rang in her ears. “Maybe I should have stayed with them.”

  “So you could be a victim too?”

  “Family doesn’t leave family.” She had left so much family.

  Mitch scrubbed his face. “What else could you have done?”

  She thought and thought. They were determined not to go. They told her to take the only way out. She hadn’t decided for them. They had decided for themselves.

  She left his side and paced the room. “I could have grabbed them and pushed them out of the window like they pushed me. And I never bolted that bedroom door. If we had locked it and pushed the wardrobe against it, that would have bought us time. Time for me to convince my cousins to run.”

  “You could have moved a wardrobe?” One corner of his mouth turned up.

  “Why not? The three of us would have been able to do it.”

  Mitch folded his arms and leaned against the wall. “And then what? Supposing you could have moved the wardrobe.”

  “There were a hundred other things I could have said to make them leave. I was an adult. They should have listened to me.”

  Mitch uncrossed his arms and tented his fingers even as she continued to pace. “Like you are listening to me.”

  She had never met such an exasperating man. “I left them. I left Ella. And Opa. And Mutti. How many more people I love will die when I leave them? And Margot left me.” She covered her face and bit back the sting of tears.

  “God saved you. And the girls and the Holtzmann sisters. All of us. It was nothing we did. On our own, we are unable. It is His hand that plucked us out of our situations and that has sustained us.”

  “This far.”

  “Yes, this far. Perhaps further. Perhaps not. But it’s not up to us.”

  “I didn’t fail them?”

  Mitch gathered her to himself, his arms warm, his chest firm. “No, you didn’t fail them. You can’t save the world. That is God’s job.”

  Gisela laid on the bed from upstairs. Audra snored softly beside her. Bettina’s snore was a little more raucous. Kurt dozed on the davenport, Mitch wrapped in blankets on the hard floor. Everyone slept but her. The howl in the street had calmed a bit. German soldiers patrolled their neighborhood, not yet under Soviet occupation. But sleep remained as elusive as a butterfly.

  She mulled over her memories and what Mitch had said. “I didn’t fail them.” The words snuck past her lips.

  She had been trying to save the world in her own way. All along, she wanted to be the one to rescue these people. They would hail her for saving their lives. Like she couldn’t save Heide or Lotta. Like she couldn’t save her sister.

  She thought of the scene playing in front of them. Today or tomorrow or the next day, the Russians would take their street and wouldn’t relinquish control. This was what it was like to be in the midst of battle. If only Hitler would surrender.

  And where was Mutti? If she still lived, had the Russians discovered her? What horrors was she surviving? Had she survived?

  Lord, watch over her. Protect her. Bring her back to me.

  She climbed out of bed, careful not to disturb the others. After tiptoeing to her rucksack, she rummaged through the few contents, discovering her Bible in the folds of her sweater.

  She opened to the page with the daisy. Memories of Oma and Opa flooded her. Of good times. Of peaceful times. Times that ended, as surely as daisies faded.

  She went to close the cover when the words of Isaiah 43 caught her eye.

  But now thus saith the LORD that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by name; thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the LORD thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Savior.

  She sat on the cold floor, her Bible in her lap. The screeching, the shooting, the anguished cries faded.

  The words from her Lord seeped into her like the balmy California sun. Warmth spread through her and she could almost feel the soft grass between her toes. She fingered the flower tucked in the pages.
>
  Opa had given it to Oma. And now to Gisela. And this was the passage he wanted her to remember. He quoted from it when she saw him last. “ ‘When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee.’ ”

  That was why he had asked her to put it in this passage. She remembered his words, like he wanted.

  “ ‘Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by name; thou art mine.’ ”

  She bit her lower lip to stem the tide of tears welling in her eyes. God had redeemed her from her wrongs. Getting the girls out of East Prussia hadn’t accomplished that feat. Keeping the Holtzmann sisters together body and soul hadn’t done it. Even if Gisela could locate Mutti, the redemption would not be complete.

  Because it took Jesus to pay the ransom price on the cross.

  April 27

  From the cellar, Mitch and the other residents listened to the rounds of gunfire outside the window. Across the room, Frau Mueller’s lips moved in silent petition. Gisela sat next to him on the bench. He squeezed her hand.

  He hadn’t been this frightened in Belgium or France. Perhaps wanting a future with this woman changed his outlook. Or being responsible for nine others, all of them helpless.

  Yes, helpless. God would have to save them.

  More Stalinorgels. Only God could save them.

  They picked at their food, though they now had a few supplies. No one spoke much. Hour after hour, they sat in the dank semidarkness of the lower level, wondering if they would die in the next instant.

  Renate had never sucked her thumb so vigorously.

  The day wore on. Gisela dozed on his shoulder. He stared out of the window.

  A wild screech, almost like the American Indian calls Mitch had seen in the motion pictures, pierced the air. The style of boots remained the same, though now the pants were greener. A few feet were wrapped in nothing but rags.

  Gisela sat up straight at the yelling.

  A tank rolled past the window, down the narrow street.

  Mitch pushed to his feet and gazed out the small, dirty pane of glass. The faces of the men in the tank were not German. Their greasy hair was black and stuck straight out of their fur ushanka hats. Their dark, slanted eyes gave away their ethnic origin.