He was quick on his bicycle, and he was quiet. He didn’t know what he was delivering, and he was never to ask or to look.
Ten years after the war, Frederick learned of his missions. He’d been delivering details of the Final Solution, the answer to the Jewish question, from Western Poland to Berlin. On more than one occasion, he’d unwittingly received papers from SS chief Heinrich Himmler—in charge of the systematic annihilation of European Jews. In Lithuania, he’d known a girl named Nelly. Her family had hidden him after his own family was murdered. She and her family had been part of this terrible solution.
Riding his bicycle across Germany, Frederick carried details about the first three designated killing centers in Poland. Later, he carried information about the success of mobile gas vans, paneled trucks that pumped carbon monoxide into their locked confines. He delivered recorded numbers of dead, details on the evolution of murder from bullets to gas chambers. All the while, never daring to look.
To the Germans and to the world, he was a nobody, a patsy. He was a Lithuanian boy riding a lent bicycle across Germany. It was too dangerous to convey details of the Final Solution via wire communication. What if the plan was discovered and broadcast? How would the average German react? How would the rest of the world react? Hitler couldn’t afford a changing tide. Already, the top SS chiefs knew that it was too psychologically taxing for an average man to shoot a woman or child at close range. That’s where they’d started: copying Stalin’s methods. But they’d evolved. They’d industrialized killing to odorless gas. They were doing the world a favor—exterminating the undesirables. Frederick was part of this master plan because he was nobody. He had nothing. When I think about how meaningless we were to the greater schemes, plans, and solutions, I cross myself and thank God for my son, who brought hope to my world.
Poor Frederick, though. I don’t know sometimes how he has survived day to day with so much regret. For all the years I have known him, he’s carried a sense of worthlessness and guilt. It pained him that he’d been afraid to look at what he was delivering.
Frederick was good to me. He was better than good. Two weeks after we met, my mother and I found out that my father had been killed in Tunisia. Two months later, my brother died in France. Frederick was the confidant I’d anticipated on that sunny June day. He took care of my mother, reassuring her, telling her that everything would be all right. He never believed it, I don’t think, but he was good to my mother.
Sometimes we went to the cinema. My mother was bereft, inundated with medals and letters of gratitude, when all she wanted were her men back. She loved my father and brother so dearly. Frederick could never take their place, but he took my mother to the cinema with us. He patted her hand and said she was beautiful. He praised her garden that she loved.
The neighbor with the four kids was no longer something to laugh about. Her boys were sent to war, her husband wounded. As much as I sensed doom, I didn’t understand what was coming, how things could get even worse. I stayed in school, anxious to treat the injured coming home. At least at the hospital I could do something helpful.
A month before the war’s end, I was inducted into the army. We all were, I think. I was twenty. I remember that I shot a cow. My rifle just went off. “Give a girl a gun,” I told everyone, “who’s looking for a thermometer, and see what you get. I think I shot the beast right where I’d have stuck that thermometer.” I was still using comedy to hide my grief. I had to be strong for Mother.
No one laughed. Nothing was funny anymore.
At night during the blackouts with sirens screaming, Mother tended her roses. She had so many varieties: sweetbriar, tea, and dog roses; the heavy smell of apples from the sweetbriars wafted through the air. In the darkness, Mother pruned and removed the slugs and beetles she could see. These flowers were something bright, something of beauty, something to covet in a world gone mad.
After the war, Berlin was divided among the four Allies: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, Mother and I lived in the Soviet-occupied zone, and even though some of our neighbors had left their homes to stay with friends in the other occupied quadrants, my mother wasn’t going anywhere. “Who’s going to tend the roses?”
Then, with the war over and Germany defeated, everything went from bad to worse. I hadn’t thought this possible. Already, I’d lost my brother and father, but then I came home from working at the hospital to find the lock on our front door busted.
“Mother,” I called hesitantly, and heard men laughing. I thought about going for help, but there was nowhere to go. The street was abandoned. Entering our formal living room, I saw Mother. She wore a slip, bloody around her unmentionables. I can’t tell anymore about this part, except that one of the soldiers pointed at me. They were going to have their fun with me next.
My mother told me to go. “Get out of here,” she said. “Go now!” She had brown-cow eyes. Big saucers.
“Mutter!” Mother! She was all I had left in the world. I didn’t want to go.
“Du laufe!” Run! she said.
But I couldn’t move. Even knowing the soldiers meant to take me next, I couldn’t leave my mother.
“Du laufe, Inge!”
“Mutter!” I tucked my hands into the pleats of my uniform.
One of the soldiers came toward me. He was eating a slab of some kind of meat.
“Jetzt! Du laufe, Jetzt!” Now! Run, now!
I dodged him. Then another soldier, who’d been sitting on the floor cleaning his fingernails with a knife, crawled toward me. They both spoke to me in Russian. I looked for a way to take Mother with me, but she was not moving. I couldn’t understand the men, but I understood their tone well enough. I knew that I had to go. Fight or flight is something that’s since been explained to me. I flew, and I’m not supposed to feel guilty for it.
Who, I ask, is guiltless?
Instead of heading for the front door, as the soldiers expected, I ran toward the back of the house, through the kitchen, and across the yard. It was pocked with recently dug holes, men searching for valuables, my mother’s roses trampled.
I was being chased and so I ran without thinking. Frenzied, I fell, knocking my lip against the wrought-iron gate; a metallic taste of salt and blood filled my mouth, but I never stopped. I didn’t look back. I didn’t think on it then, but I lost my pretty smile. My tooth was chipped and my lip split. I still have the scar.
It was nearly a mile to the American camp where Frederick sat eating canned meat and crackers. He’d already made efforts to find his Uncle Joseph, to emigrate to America.
“Mutter!” I told him. I kept repeating Mutter and then I added “Russians” and “help.”
Frederick held me tighter than anyone ever had. I remember that I bled on his shirt.
“You’re safe.” He kissed my forehead and cheeks. My front tooth had broken on the wrought iron fence where I’d fallen. He got a cool cloth and pressed it to my mouth. I yanked it away. “We have to do something!” I pulled away from him and, using my best English, begged the American soldiers to help me.
Frederick urged me to stop. “We’ll get your mother,” he said, “but it might take time.” He was relieved that we’d be able to leave Europe and sail to America. His Uncle Joseph would sponsor us. I cared about nothing save my mother. Every time he tried to hold me, I fought him. I followed the American soldiers, who seemed to be standing around, doing nothing, except avoiding me. “No,” they said, under no circumstance could they enter a Soviet-occupied zone.
I would not give up. All around, there were women setting up makeshift beds, men playing cards, children shooting marbles in the dirt. I remember the smell of boiling cabbage. “What if it was your mother?” I demanded of each soldier.
“Your mother . . .”
By the next morning, two soldiers were willing to help. One of them was a Russian transl
ator. He had bribed Soviet guards with cigarettes and Wonder Bread before. He would help me. The other soldier loved and missed his mother. That was his singular motivation. Crossing into the Soviet zone, the American soldiers were understandably antsy. We all were. Thinking back, we were just kids. The Russians who accompanied us to my mother’s house were also antsy because they weren’t taking orders from anyone and they hadn’t been for weeks. Their chain of command, whatever chain there’d been, had broken down. Anarchy reigned, and while it lasted, the Russian soldiers were pilfering money and food and whatever they could find of worth.
Entering my home, I immediately felt the emptiness of the place. I knew Mother was gone. Our family photographs had been smashed, glass littered the foyer. Our pantry door was open, the little food we’d had, gone. The sideboard drawers had been pulled out, piled by the steps. There were bloodstains on the duvet where I’d last seen my mother.
An American translator said something to the Russians, who shrugged. They had no idea. It must’ve been some Germans or maybe the Poles who’d done this. Probably the Poles. It would do no good to insist that my mother’s murderers spoke Russian.
We found my mother, Emilie Vogel Kischel, in the bathtub. Even though her wrists were slashed, and my father’s razor blade was in her grip, her hand resting on the porcelain ledge, I refused to think that she’d taken her life. I still don’t believe it.
That afternoon, amid the shallow holes pocking our backyard, the two American soldiers and Frederick dug a grave. Hours must’ve passed, but I remember nothing of time, of the sun dropping lower in the sky. The one thing that has always stood out in my memory is the little girl who pushed open our wrought-iron gate just as the last shovelful of dirt was tossed aside. The men were breathing heavily, leaning against their shovels. The little girl came up and pulled at my skirt. “My mother said to bring you this.” She placed a gold foil–wrapped marzipan chocolate in my palm. A cold wind lifted the hem of her soiled dress. As she turned to go, I said, “Thank you,” noticing the grayness of her socks that drooped over untied laces. My mother was dead and my country in ruin.
“Who was that?” Frederick asked. The Americans propped their shovels in the dirt and motioned for Frederick to help them lift my mother’s body. She was wrapped in a quilt that had been her mother’s.
I shook my head that I didn’t know the girl whose dirt-smudged face matched my mother’s grave. Instead, I slowly unwrapped the chocolate, folding the foil into a tiny square, and as my mother was lowered into the grave, I sucked the marzipan from its chocolate shell.
I remember that I wanted to believe that the little girl was sending me a message from wherever the spirit goes when it departs this world. I wanted so badly to believe. All my life, I’ve tried to believe it. I’ve tried to believe in the goodness of life. The marzipan was flavored with sweetbriar roses, just like the ones Mother had grown. I could taste the flowers. Licking my fingers, I cried soundlessly as dirt rained down on her body. The marzipan melted on my tongue. Frederick squeezed my hand.
He is sixty-eight years old this year, and he is a good man.
The year is 1989.
I am going to meet my granddaughter.
7
Prudence, 2005
Last month, two of my colleagues and I were walking home from an early dinner when I spotted a baby house finch, a downy thing with pinkish feathers, teetering on the pavement. As its mother squawked, the little bird attempted to camouflage itself beneath a pile of twigs. I looked around, but I couldn’t spot the nest.
“Someone is going to step on it,” Whitney informed me. She teaches basic zoology.
Her girlfriend, Lenora, added, “That bird’s going to get eaten by a snake or a cat. It’s a goner.” The sun had barely set, and the night had all the makings of a gruesome fairy tale. Being the bird girl, I was supposed to be the savior, but I had a very strong sense that this little finch was not injured, more likely a fledgling fallen from the nest. If I removed it from the twigs, it would never see its mother again.
As the sky darkened, melding from orange to pink, I explained with little confidence to Lenora and Whitney that this fledgling house finch did not need saving. He would fly by morning. They weren’t so sure. As they walked to their car, I took a seat on the winding trail. I planned to keep watch. I was feeling then as I’m feeling now that we’re each as vulnerable as that baby finch, little more than the gnash of beak and crunch of bone, in desperate need of someone to watch over us.
In 1989, the Old Man called and made the most innocent proclamation. “I am telephoning to speak to my granddaughter, Prudence Vilkas. Do you know her? She is my family.”
I knew her. “Yes, I know her. Yes . . . This is she. I am Prudence Vilkas.”
“I am your grandfather. You are Lithuanian.”
I don’t know what my parents said to one another about this initial revelation. It didn’t matter. It still doesn’t. I knew that I had been found. Finally, there was someone to watch over me—not that my father had been entirely absent. Not that Veronica hadn’t tried. She occasionally took me for a pedicure and a fancy green salad. I hate to have my feet touched and I don’t like rabbit food, but I never said anything.
Freddie sent guitar picks and funny postcards. He came to visit once a year, typically when he was nearby, touring with some band. Veronica would drive me to a Ruby Tuesday or some other strip-mall restaurant and wait outside while my father bought me a hamburger and tried to catch up on the past year of my life.
Mostly, I talked about Wheaton. I didn’t have a whole lot else to say. I was a good student and a bird watcher. My father took note, buying me a pair of high-dollar binoculars.
The fledgling cried out in the night, stirring the twigs. I was worried about a hawk swooping down. If I housed the little finch, he’d be safe for sure, but his mother hadn’t abandoned him. If I removed the bird, she might.
My neighbor Carlos came out to see what I was doing, why I was sitting on the pathway, night falling. I indicated the bird. “But what are you doing, señorita?” he wanted to know.
“Keeping watch.”
Throughout the night, the fledgling’s mother flew down to feed. The baby bird tucked his beak into his breast to keep warm while the mother sang to him.
At first light, the fledgling burst free of the twigs. He kicked his feet like a runner at a starting line, flapped his wings, his head low to the ground, and after three wobbly attempts, my little house finch took flight. I watched his mother and then his father trail his course. I was eaten up with mosquitoes but I didn’t care. I cried. At six a.m., I called Whitney to tell her the news. When I see the Old Man in the hospital, I’ll tell him this story. The Old Man likes a good story.
We’ve been on the plane for forty-five minutes. The scotch has made my pilot neighbor loquacious. He doesn’t like flying planes for rich people. He’d like to be rich. He’d like to have his own plane. I understand. I’d like to have my own boat, but I don’t see it happening any time soon. I had wanted silence. I didn’t want anyone telling me their problems. I have my own. But Sam Kirk is better than sitting beside Veronica. Like I said, his hair reminds me of Wheaton’s.
8
Freddie
As a boy, Freddie Vilkas did not understand what his father knew implicitly, with every breath, with every pull on his cigar: that “family is most important.” Freddie was a dreamer, and despite his father’s tales of murder and mass graves at the hands of Joseph Stalin and his Cossacks, Freddie was an optimist.
In the 1960s, Freddie tried to tell his father, “The times, they are a-changing,” and the Old Man laughed at him. “You’re a fool, son. Nothing is changing until I can breathe in a free Lithuania. Stop being a hippie.”
Born in 1951, Freddie could’ve been a hippie, but not in his father’s house.
The Old Man pointed his finger, yellow from cigar smoke, at his only son. “I
was born Frederick. My mother was loony-gooney because she was crazy about big birds, birds she read about in books. Birds that can fly for thousands of miles.” The Old Man showed Freddie the sole remaining photograph of his family.
The picture had been taken two months before his family’s demise, when his sisters were sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen. Daina was untamed with a penchant for tree climbing. The older girls were more serious, bookworms, studying medicine, playing bass and flute. All three were headstrong. The Old Man remembered his former self as protective of his sisters and his mother. When his father traveled, he was the man of the house. “It is not easy to be a survivor,” he often said, “to be the one left behind.”
Music was as much a part of the Old Man’s childhood as his nightly meal. Music was a language kept and cherished. In music, there was history and joy. He could hold back tears. He could press his palms to his eyes and pretend he was blind and that the world was less ugly. In music, he could put aside the worst of the horror and eke out something beautiful, remember his youngest sister’s face as she played violin, the concentrated gaze of a not-so-serious girl. Her name, Daina, meant song.
The Old Man hadn’t protected anyone like he should have, but he could save the music. He tried to do this with his son. Freddie was born with a violin lodged between his chin and collarbone, made to practice two hours a day, the Old Man’s wrist gliding the air like a maestro.
Brought up in the Catholic Church, Freddie suffered through public high school in high-water denim, his hair shorter than everyone else’s. The girls laughed at his musty, ill-fitting jackets, his white tube socks and scuffed loafers. The Old Man told his son, “You complain about being bullied? You don’t know what it is to be bullied. You know nothing. You understand nothing.”
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