“Spies?” Johann gave the large rock one final heave, so that it rested directly under the window. He mopped his brow with his forearm. “I haven’t heard about any spies.”
“Well, you wouldn’t, would you?” Max said, quickly climbing onto the rock and standing on his tiptoes to look through the hazy glass. “But if you were a spy trying to infiltrate from the south, this would be the perfect place to hide, don’t you think? Especially since no one really uses it anymore. It’s out of the way. And on a train line. And only two trains ever stop here. One in the afternoon, and the other”—Max lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper—“at midnight.”
“Hmm.” Johann pretended to mull this thought over, trying not to betray the concern he felt at Max’s unwitting insight. “I can see that, I suppose.” Max was surveying the inside of the station from his perch, scanning the room from left to right. Johann decided to keep his tone light. “Well, any signs of infiltration?”
“No, not yet. But they may have come and gone. They might still be out spying,” Max said, face pressed to the glass. “They could come back any minute. Must be vigilant!”
“Indeed.” Johann walked over to the window and put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. Max was a tenacious and imaginative young man, and if he’d taken an interest in spies, it was not one he would abandon lightly. But the semiabandoned East Blumental station played a major role in Johann’s movement of packages from the east to Switzerland, and Max’s innocent curiosity had the potential to greatly complicate that operation. Johann would have to find ways to keep Max otherwise engaged when deliveries were in transit, or find a new safe house. For now, it was enough to send the boy home.
“You know, Max, I certainly commend you for the service you are doing for the community, trying to keep us all safe. But after all you put your dear mother through earlier this afternoon, I think it might be best if you went home for dinner.”
There was no room for dispute in Johann’s voice. Max understood. He nodded and climbed down to the ground. “Yes, sir.” The two of them walked back to the path in silence. Unexpectedly, Max turned to Johann and held out his hand. “Thank you, sir. I greatly appreciate your help. And your . . . your . . .” Max searched in vain for the word discretion.
“I won’t say a word to anyone, Max,” Johann assured him, shaking the hand that was proffered. “And please give your mother my best regards.”
The bells chimed the half hour. Johann headed back up the Stahlberg hill. Thirty minutes until choir practice, and there was much to do.
– Four –
If Oskar was coming home tomorrow, Edith thought, she would have to refill the stove. Oskar at home meant plenty of cooking. She had already decided to go to the market in the morning. Retrieving the tin coal pail from behind the stove, she headed to the cellar.
Edith liked the cellar. The gentle embrace of cool damp and almost total darkness tamped her nerves. The pulse of the house beat quietly and steadily down here, somewhere between the mountain of coal and the mountain of potatoes. Food and fuel, all that was necessary to stabilize the family chaos. This was where she kept her preserves: the cherry jam, apple jelly, cucumber relish, and all the other carefully stored products of her garden’s harvest.
Normally, Edith would have sent one of the girls down for the coal—most likely Lara, because Rosie was too hard to pin down and Sofia had a pathological fear of underground rooms. Lara did not fear the cellar and its darkness, but she was in that stage of life where every request for help from Edith or Marina required, in her mind, some supreme sacrifice or commitment, and today Edith did not want to wrestle with her.
Edith carried the pail down the narrow stone staircase, poorly illuminated by the bare bulb in the center of the ceiling. She placed the pail on the floor and bent down to fill it with coal. Oskar would be here tomorrow. That knowledge suffused her with a warm flush of expectation and bliss. She stifled the nagging internal voice that told her she should use this visit to confront him, once again, with her questions. Questions about his responsibilities, the actions he took on behalf of the Führer. What he knew and did not know about the Führer’s long-term goals. Questions that plagued her when she was alone. But the one time she had voiced her doubts to him, last winter, he lost his temper. They had such limited time together, she reasoned. She did not want to disturb it by bringing up unpleasant and difficult topics.
They had been together . . . thirty-five years this September, Edith counted. And she still loved him as wholly and fiercely as the day they had gotten married. This man whom she thought she knew well. A convivial man fond of bratkartoffeln and spaetzle; a courageous and unapologetically patriotic officer whose unremitting sense of duty to his commanders and his soldiers earned him fierce allegiance or reluctant respect; an eager, whimsical grandfather; a warm, generous husband. And, Edith reminded herself with a smile, an extraordinary dancer. Where he had developed that ability, Edith never learned. She decided it must be an innate skill. His favorite dance was the waltz.
Edith herself was not a great waltzer. She had taken the requisite cotillion classes with Frau Winkler only because it was a rite of passage for girls approaching marriageable age in Potsdam. Edith’s mother had insisted on it. She said Edith wouldn’t be winning any suitors with her looks, so she might as well work on her dancing skills. But Frau Winkler made it clear early on and with embarrassing regularity that Edith had no talent for dancing and that she was one of those rare and lamentable girls for whom practice was futile. So during her first spring ball season in Berlin, at the age of sixteen, her spirits shackled by Frau Winkler’s judgment, Edith spent the evenings sipping cider with her aunt at the small café tables set along the edges of ballrooms for spinsters, chaperones, and the elderly.
No one was more surprised than she the night the sandy-haired young soldier strolled purposefully over to her chair. She did not know him, but she had seen him before, at other balls. He was a full head taller than every other man in the room. And if that was not enough to get him noticed, when the music started and he began to move across the floor, his body was pure fluidity in motion, conveying with its dips and turns the lyric grace and swaying strength being sung by the orchestra’s strings. He was unforgettable.
Edith didn’t expect him to notice her. She had no reason to doubt her mother’s assessment of her own attractiveness, especially as the girls around her were whisked off to the parquet floor while she remained seated. Had she and her aunt been at the dance longer than an hour, she would have pretended she had a headache so they might leave. Unfortunately, it was still too early.
But then Oskar asked her to dance. Of all the ladies in the room, he was choosing her. She rose uncertainly, ready to protest until a stern look from her aunt made her bite her tongue, regretting already the fact that her first dance, in the arms of one with such consummate skill, would undoubtedly be her last.
She need not have worried. In Oskar’s arms, and guided by his sure feet, Edith’s own barely touched the floor. He held her tightly, twirled her round and round the room. The other dancers, musicians, and lights all reeled in a multicolored blur. Later her aunt would tell her that their movement reminded her of a comet as they traversed the enormous ballroom space in wide arcs, spinning between and around the other couples in that waltzing universe, the long glittering train of Edith’s dress sweeping through the air behind them like a sparkling tail. For Edith, the dance ended almost as soon as it had begun, and she felt quite dizzy afterward and had to spend several minutes seated quietly, sipping water and looking at the floor.
Never had she felt so completely secure, so completely taken care of, as in this man’s arms. And the way he looked at her when the dance ended—it was the first time Edith felt seen, truly seen. What was still more amazing and intoxicating, though even today Edith did not understand it, was what Oskar told her later, what he repeated with wonderful regularity over the years: he thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
A few years afterward, when it became clear that Oskar was to be a permanent part of Edith’s life, she would take separate instruction from Frau Winkler, who taught her how to hold her head when being spun about, to avoid spells of nausea. Happily, this was a skill for which Frau Winkler determined Edith did have some aptitude, and after several weeks of head-turning lessons, she pronounced Edith an expert.
It had been such a long time since they had danced together, Edith thought, ascending the stairs back to the kitchen. Carrying the coal pail through the foyer, still smiling at the memories of those early dances, she almost bumped into Marina, who was putting on her coat.
“I’ll be back late, Mutti, no need to wait up for me,” Marina said, tying a scarf over her head.
“Late from what?” Edith felt momentarily confused.
“We’re going singing!” Rosie exploded through the kitchen door, dragging her blue overcoat behind her.
“I’m going singing, you goose. You are accompanying me on the walk,” Marina corrected. She knelt down and guided Rosie’s arms into her coat, then fastened it.
“Me and Erich are both ’companying you,” Rosie said.
Edith looked around at the empty room. “He’s meeting us at the path to Birnau,” Marina said, answering Edith’s unspoken question and securing the last button on Rosie’s coat. “He said not to worry about the horse. He’ll take it back as soon as he returns.”
“I’m going to kiss it good-bye one last time,” Rosie said, running out the door before anyone could stop her.
Marina hesitated at the open door. “Thank you for letting Erich join us for dinner. I know it meant a great deal to him.”
“I hope we can all move forward now,” Edith said. She thought back to the fear she had experienced five years ago, that the family would splinter. But that had not happened.
Marina gave her mother a hard look. “It’s only you who hasn’t wanted to move forward.”
Edith bristled. “It wasn’t a move forward, it was—I don’t know, sideways, slantways.”
“You wanted me to keep away from Erich.”
“No, I wanted—” Edith stopped. She didn’t know what she had wanted five years ago. To keep the family together, she supposed. To keep people from getting hurt. The war had effectively dispensed with that wish.
“I’m late. I need to go.” Marina turned her back and left.
Edith slowly pulled the door shut. Her beautiful oak door, intricately carved with fleurs-de-lis and fantastical creatures. A birthday present to her from Oskar. Somehow he had managed to get it through customs. Perhaps because it came from Turkey, where she imagined some wizened artisan channeling Mesopotamian mysticism into his carvings, Edith felt there was some magic about this door. As if it had secret power, and its wooden striations were infused with hidden strength to protect what lay behind it. She ran her hand over the tail feathers of one of the peacocks. Not a bad door to have during wartime, she thought.
– Five –
Johann still experienced a small moment of pleasant surprise each time he entered the sanctuary of Birnau. This rococo church, dressed everywhere in pink and gold, was playful and flamboyant. Worshipping amid the creamy, rose-swirled marble walls and pillars was like being in a roomful of ice cream. Hundreds of blushing naked cupids danced everywhere, from the filigreed balcony that sheltered the tall golden organ pipes to the ceiling of the nave, where they scampered on a frescoed trompe l’oeil tableau of blue sky and puffy white clouds.
What a contrast to the world outside, he thought, making his way up the main aisle. And what a contrast to the dour churches of Berlin. He passed in front of the altar and stopped at the door that led to the Sunday school room. There, he pulled out the large ring of keys that Father Georg had given him. His custody of these keys was another divine intervention in his life. Newly arrived from Berlin three years earlier, Johann had been sitting at a café on the lake promenade, humming his favorite hymn as he considered how to execute his plan. He did not notice Father Georg sitting nearby. But in the next instant, Father Georg joined him at his table and implored him to take charge of the Birnau choir.
“I am honored you would consider me, sir,” Johann said. “You must know, of course, that I am not Catholic.”
“Ach, Catholicism has nothing to do with it.” Father Georg brushed the air with his hand. “You have a lovely tenor voice and you can carry a tune.”
“But—” Johann began.
“But nothing, my boy. You have a gift. You must share it. And the dairy farmers’ wives—whose voices, I must warn you, could pluck the feathers from a rooster—would much rather sing for a beautiful young man than a weathered old goat.”
Yes, God worked in such mysterious ways. This choir had turned out to be the cover he needed for his little group. Johann fumbled through the keys. Over his shoulder, he felt the gaze of the Honigschlecker, a naked babe statue, all creamy and pink with a solid gold cape. His fleshy little body twisted around the beehive that he cradled in one arm while he sucked on a finger that was dripping pure golden honey. Marina had once told Johann that the Honigschlecker reminded her of her baby brother, Peter, and that he smiled at her in merry complicity every time she passed by him. Johann saw his honey-laden finger pointing not toward his mouth, but up to heaven, a reminder that God was always there, that He was present in everything people did.
Until recently, Johann had not doubted God’s presence in his actions. He felt he had received a clear message the night that he watched Sonja and Berthold head over to safety in Switzerland, a message that was confirmed when he was appointed to the presbytery in Blumental. And with Father Georg’s keys in hand, he had been able, relatively quickly and secretly, to execute his plan. Within weeks of Johann’s arrival, Blumental became a haphazard but relatively successful resting stop for refugees fleeing from eastern Europe to Switzerland.
It had been mostly Polish, mostly Jewish families, running from the destruction and extermination of their villages. There was no standard route, and the underground trail to Blumental shifted constantly due to the occasional betrayal by informants and the interception of transports. Over the past three years, Johann and his small circle had been able to deliver ten groups of refugees safely across the border. His cousin Gottfried Schrumm in the Defense Ministry had been instrumental in the effort, supplying Johann with official visa forms and government stamps that he could use to forge the paperwork needed to get his charges to safety. And it was Gottfried who had recently provided Johann with another, far more radical, instrument of political opposition—the briefcase that Johann kept in his clothes closet.
He switched on the lights in the children’s reading alcove. Faith is not a light switch, Marina had said to him once. You cannot suddenly turn it on. He agreed—faith was more of a carefully tended fire, slow burning and constant. But the fire of faith had been extinguished in Marina. Johann was not evangelical—he thought everyone should be permitted to believe what he or she wanted. Still, if someone showed an interest in God, as Marina seemed to, he was a ready and compassionate listener.
She had once believed in God, she told him, perhaps as fully as he did. But the war had destroyed her faith. She could not understand how God would allow someone like the Führer to exist, to wield power and influence over so great a portion of the world. Would not God instruct His church, His followers, to rise up against such a man? But the Catholic Church was doing nothing. The Protestant Church was doing nothing. How could God condone this?
Johann had listened to Marina’s reasoning silently, with more sympathy than he was willing to disclose. Of the primary question, the existence of God, he had no doubt. Johann had never questioned His existence, for he was lucky enough to experience God personally and on a daily basis. He simply knew that God was an incontrovertible presence in his life and in the world, and because of this knowledge, he sought as much as possible to live His Word. Yes, the Führer lived in this world too, and war was tolerated in it, but that
was not because God had turned His back—it was because of the timeless and inalterable presence of evil, which, as the Bible made clear, had been with man since Eden.
Shrill laughter pierced Johann’s reverie. Käthe Renningen, the seamstress—it was impossible not to recognize that laugh, so similar in pitch to the woman’s atonal singing. He quickly pulled forward the necessary chairs and reentered the main church. There he found Käthe and the choirmistress, Gisela Mecklen, putting on their choir robes.
“Good evening, ladies. You’re early tonight.”
“My twin baby girls are exercising their lungs,” Käthe said wearily. “I left as soon as my mother arrived to take over.”
“Perhaps they are auditioning for a position in our choir.”
“Goodness, I hope not! This is my only refuge. Promise me you won’t let them in until they are at least thirteen!”
“No, not thirteen,” Gisela cautioned. “There will be entirely different reasons to get away from your daughters when they are thirteen. Twenty would be better.”
Käthe dropped her head in dismay. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”
“Of course she is teasing you.” Johann gently put his arm around Käthe’s shoulders. “Come downstairs to the kitchen and get a cup of tea while we wait for the rest of the group. And Gisela, I remember now that I asked you to come early because I need a favor.”
Gisela’s eyes narrowed like those of a cat sizing up a bird. Johann could almost feel the vibrations of her calculating brain. The Mecklens were schemers. Ever since the disappearance of the Rosenberg family, Johann did not entirely trust them. Though he had no actual proof that Gisela and Regina Mecklen had anything to do with the Rosenbergs’ swift and sudden departure from Blumental, he knew that the Rosenbergs’ presence in town, and their occupation of a prime commercial piece of real estate, had been a thorn in the Mecklens’ side. The Rosenbergs were bakers—excellent bakers—and the Mecklens’ principal competitors for business. The Rosenberg bakery had been located on the plaza just opposite the Münster, the town’s oldest church building. Johann had always purchased his bread from the Rosenbergs, for they could somehow transform even rye flour into tasty brötchen, a feat that the Mecklens decidedly could not accomplish.
The Good at Heart Page 5
