The Good at Heart

by Ursula Werner

  Israel and Miriam. Their children, Isaac and Rachel. Johann had added their names to his prayers when, one morning, he found their bakery closed and saw Regina Mecklen inside taking measurements for curtains. Just like that, they were gone.

  Johann hated making himself indebted to Gisela Mecklen in any way, but he did need her help tonight. “Could you lead the choir after the break? Father Georg asked me to help him in the rectory, and he doesn’t want to stay awake until we are done.”

  Probably Johann did not even need to use the priest as an excuse, because he knew Gisela would not refuse him. Marina had told him that the Mecklen sisters were great fans of his. According to her, they admired men of God, particularly single men of God of the Protestant faith, who were free to wed. Although the older two Mecklen women, Regina and Gisela, were married, the youngest, Sabine, was not. Visitors to the Mecklen household knew that many an evening was spent in discussion about eligible bachelors in the immediate Blumental vicinity and their desirability as mates. Johann had been thoroughly studied and the Mecklens’ unanimous conclusion was that although he was a bit aloof and formal and was, regrettably, not a baker, he would do quite well for Sabine.

  As Johann expected, Gisela smiled at him. She probably intended to appear ingratiating and modest, but the set of her eyebrows and the crookedness of her mouth made it look like she was sneering. “Certainly, Pastor Wiessmeyer. I am quite happy to do any favor you ask.” She paused, then added, “As no doubt you would do for me.”

  The costs of doing God’s work, Johann thought, were often unpredictable. But whatever Gisela had in mind, he felt confident he could protect himself. Tonight, he had other things to worry about.

  – Six –

  The fading summer light lingered over the lake, reluctant to submit to the shadow of night stealthily approaching from the mountains. Colors were beginning to wash away, gradually flattening and dissolving into a monotone shade of gray. The path leading up to Birnau, crowded and dusty several hours earlier, was now completely deserted, a silent, sinuous ribbon of pebbles and sand crowned with the rose facade of the church. It was easy to forget that this had been the site of an attempted execution less than seven hours ago.

  Rosie ran ahead of Marina and Erich, stopping occasionally to examine the snails emerging from their daily slumber in the brush, slithering slowly to the sheep pastures across the path. The one that Rosie eventually picked up was breaking no records for speed. “Can I bring it home, Mutti? Please?” Rosie dangled the snail at arm’s length in front of Marina, who took a startled step backward. “I could put it in one of Oma’s jelly jars and feed it stuff from the garden.”

  “Rosie, we’ve been through this before. Remember last year, when you found that turtle?” Marina knelt down next to her daughter. She did not want to bring up the turtle, which, after its initial novelty wore off, was forgotten by the entire household until the day Marina found its wasted corpse in a cardboard box under Rosie’s bed.

  Rosie showed no remorse. “Petzi was sick, that’s why he died. And this is a snail, not a turtle. And”—Rosie punctuated the air with her snail-laden fist—“I am five now.”

  Marina looked up at Erich, who had covered the lower half of his face with his hand and whose eyes were squinting with restrained laughter. A little help, please? she mouthed.

  “Rosie.” Erich put his hand on Rosie’s small head. “How about you give me your snail and I’ll take care of him for you until we get back home?”

  Rosie looked dubious. “Where are you going to put him?”

  Erich unbuttoned the large pocket on the front of his canvas jacket. “Right in here, and when we get back to the house, you can find a nice place for him in the garden.” Reassured, Rosie was all smiles. She carefully placed her new pet in Erich’s pocket, then ran ahead up the path.

  “Coward,” Marina said, slapping Erich playfully. “Edith is going to kill you.”

  “We’ll see if Rosie even remembers the snail by the time we get back,” Erich said.

  “Oh, she’ll remember.” Marina watched her daughter skip back and forth across the path, singing an atonal ditty about a frog and a snail that she was clearly making up as she went along. How she admired Rosie’s toughness, a surprise to her after Lara’s and Sofia’s more mild-mannered and meek responses to the world around them. Of course, all children were different, but Marina was convinced that the war had done much to shape her own. Lara and Sofia knew peacetime and missed it; Rosie did not. A significant consideration in Marina’s decision to leave Berlin had been the desire to shield the girls as much as possible, not just from air raids and firestorms but from the daily confrontations with loss and despair. Like the teenage soldier they saw one winter afternoon at the café in the Kaiserallee: He had been sitting at a table by the window, presenting only his right profile to passersby because the left side of his face had been shattered by a grenade. Lara flinched at the sight of him, Sofia buried her face in Marina’s skirt, but Rosie, just three years old, stood still, looked squarely at him, and smiled. Wartime was everything Rosie knew. An atmosphere of fear was normal for her, and she was a child bent on having a childhood.

  Erich interrupted her thoughts. “So how long have you been in this choir? I had absolutely no idea that you could sing.” He stopped to look at her. “And I thought I knew everything about you.”

  Unexpectedly, Marina felt herself blush. Then she laughed, gesturing toward Rosie, whose alternating flat and sharp notes colored the night air. “I sing about as well as my daughter, I’d say. Thankfully, Johann Wiessmeyer isn’t too picky. They’ve tolerated my presence for almost a year. I stand in the back, next to the very loud Elle Benz, who makes sure that I cannot be heard.”

  “Ah, you and the famous Johann Wiessmeyer. The relationship everyone is talking about, apparently,” Erich said. Was he teasing? Or did she detect a note of hurt?

  Marina reached for Erich’s hand, bent his elbow so she could walk arm-in-arm with him. “We’re friends,” she said, leaning into Erich, his solidity. She relaxed into the warmth of his body. “He’s my . . . Well, I suppose you could say he is my spiritual advisor.”

  Erich raised his eyebrows. “ ‘Spiritual advisor’? I didn’t know you needed one.”

  “I didn’t.” Marina suddenly felt tired. “But it’s difficult here. The atmosphere is very conservative, very Catholic. Just because we don’t go to church with our neighbors, we are suspect.” Marina would never forget the first few months in Blumental, a complete culture shock. She was not used to minute scrutiny of her behavior by people whom she barely knew and who came to troubling conclusions about the family’s innocuous—but in hindsight, perhaps ill-considered—activities. The first summer they vacationed in Blumental, for example, before their more permanent move south, Oskar suggested they celebrate Midsummer’s Eve by burning a witch. He pulled out an old broom, some balloons and streamers, paper, and—the crowning touch—a few fireworks. The girls happily crafted an exquisitely misshapen and brightly colored crone whose straw head they adorned with pansies and hollyhock blooms. Right before he lit her Roman candle arms and sparkler hair, Oskar gave the pagan queen a reverent kiss. Then they all stepped back and watched her magnificent explosion. That little stunt, along with Edith’s and Marina’s failure to appear at mass on Sundays, placed the family, in Blumental’s eyes, in a category only slightly above Gypsies. Edith had worked hard since their move to redeem their reputation.

  Marina was less concerned with public opinion, but she valued the pastor’s friendship. “Johann is a good person to talk to. And I don’t have that many choices around here. It was his suggestion that I join the choir. It’s supposed to be nondenominational, though as far as I can tell, he and I are the only non-Catholics. But at least this way, we have some presence in the church community. It makes us look slightly less dangerous.”

  “It’s hard to see how anyone could think of your family as dangerous,” Erich said. “But I understand what you’re sayin
g, Marina. I wish I could help.”

  “Oh, you helped tremendously today. Your appearance this afternoon, the way you rescued poor Hans Munter . . . Captain Rodemann is so hated by the town, I think everyone wanted to invite you to dinner after that. And you chose us.” Marina’s good humor was restored as she remembered the look of horror on Rodemann’s face. “Our standing has increased a thousandfold. Good sir”—she curtsied deeply and bowed her head—“I feel honored to be in your presence.”

  Erich reclaimed Marina’s hand and pulled her back up. “The honor is all mine.” Marina trembled slightly; she would always thrill at this man’s touch, this man she had known almost her entire life. Her first impression of Erich, the night Oskar brought him home at the end of the first war, was that he was very quiet. Quiet and gangly, as if he still had to grow into his long arms and legs. Marina was four years old; Erich was nineteen and, she learned much later, newly orphaned. After the signing of the armistice at Compiègne, Private Erich Wolf had been making preparations to return home to Hamburg when he received the news that both of his parents had died in an outbreak of the Spanish flu. Oskar had the grim duty of delivering the telegram to him. With Edith’s blessing, Oskar invited Erich to come stay with them in Berlin until he “found his footing,” as they put it. Erich stayed with the family for twelve years.

  Marina rose from her curtsy, not relinquishing the hand Erich had offered her. They walked together, following Rosie’s voice. Across the lake, the moon rose behind a horizon of treetops, a massive golden globe peering unhurriedly over the water, surveying the damage of the day. “How long can you stay?”

  “A day or two, no more, I think,” Erich answered. “There are matters in Berlin that—”

  “Stop,” Marina said. “I get enough secrecy from my father. If you must have secrets from me, I don’t want to know they exist.” Everything was secrets and duplicity. Marina wondered whether by the time the war ended any of them would remember how to tell the truth.

  They reached the railroad crossing near the defunct platform of East Blumental. For all her willfulness, Rosie still stopped before crossing the tracks and waited for Erich and Marina to catch up with her. Erich grabbed Rosie’s left hand, Marina her right, and on the count of three, they flew her over the tracks while she kicked her legs wildly in the air. At the foot of the hill on the opposite side, Rosie groaned. “Can someone carry me? I’ve already run up there once today. I don’t think . . .” Her voice changed pitch, and Marina heard Oskar’s words uttered in her daughter’s distinctive whine. “I don’t think my heart can take it.”

  “Hmm, five years old and cardiac trouble already?” Erich knelt down and put his ear to Rosie’s chest. “Sounds like your heart is still beating, but we better not take any chances.” He heaved Rosie onto his shoulders. “You navigate with the ears. Pull on the left one to go left, right to go right. But gently, or else this horse will toss you off quicker than you can say heinzelmännchen.”

  Marina watched the two of them gallop up the hill. By the time she herself reached the top, clouds had moved in and partially obscured the moon. Its weakened light now barely illuminated the cobblestones behind Birnau and cast a faint glow over the vineyard that stretched from the plaza down to the lake. Somewhere in the middle of this vineyard, Marina knew, though she could not see it in the gloom, was the old monastery, long abandoned but still intact enough to offer shelter to the seasonal workers who used to harvest grapes here before the war. Tonight the plaza was quiet and empty; all the choristers who had lingered outside to watch the sun set had already gone into the church.

  “Well, this is where I go in,” Marina said, stooping to give Rosie a kiss. “You stay with Uncle Erich, right? No running away and hiding, not at night. And into bed the moment you get home.”

  “The moment I get home? I don’t have to brush my teeth?”

  “Nice try. You know better.”

  Erich looked at Marina. “Let me know what time to come back and get you. I don’t want you walking home in the dark.”

  “No, that’s very kind, but I’ll walk back with Myra. I think I just saw her go in.” Marina smiled as Erich grabbed Rosie’s hand.

  “So, lake or forest for the walk back?” he asked her.

  “Oooooo, forest! It’s so dark and scary now,” Rosie said, her eyes widening. “But you have to tell me a story about a wolf.”

  “Right, a wolf tale it is.” Erich winked at Marina over Rosie’s head.

  “And when we get home, we can make a bed in the garden for my snail.”

  Marina stifled her laughter. She knew her child so well.

  – Seven –

  Erich Wolf did not have far to go to return the mare he had borrowed. The farmer in Schwanfeld had told Erich she could be returned to his cousin, Fritz Nagel, who lived on the eastern edge of Blumental, a short ride from the Eberhardt house. Erich would have been happy to ride all the way back to Schwanfeld just to be able to sit on the back of a horse for longer, but as always, he thought first of the horse’s welfare. He did not want to overtire her. But she’d had several hours of rest in the Eberhardt yard and was happily resuscitated with carrots and clover, so he decided to ride her just the short distance to the Nagels’ at a comfortably slow gait.

  The chestnut mare was a compliant, good-natured animal, certainly not as beautiful as his own Arrakis, but then Arrakis was an Arabian and set a fairly high bar against which farm animals should not be measured. This mare was better than most farm animals, though: she was an Oldenburg. He’d recognized the telltale crown branded on her flank when he passed her grazing in a field of tall grasses. It was the brand that led him to commandeer her in the name of the German army, knowing from his cavalry experience that Oldenburgs were peerless in strength and athleticism. She had met his expectations this afternoon, and he was determined to treat her like the equine queen she was.

  Darkness had settled onto the trees and rooftops. No sound but the steady plodding of horseshoes on packed dirt. Erich could not remember the last time he had ridden at night. Could it have been in Stalingrad, a year and a half ago? What a hellish reconnaissance assignment that had been, part of Field Marshal Manstein’s effort to break through the Soviet stranglehold and rescue the German army trapped within the city. That horrific night when his cavalry regiment approached the Myshkova River, under the light of a full moon, a snowstorm had risen up, sudden and unpredicted. They had all drawn closer to await its passing, not recognizing that, as they huddled together on dirt that was slowly being transformed into a reflective white landscape, their dark horses made them sitting ducks for the Russian sharpshooters. Of one hundred pairs of men and horses, only fifteen had returned. Erich reached down and patted the mare on her neck.

  This was why he had joined the cavalry when he’d first entered the army. Somehow Erich knew, instinctively, that he would need the support of another living creature to face the trauma of war, that the rhythmic rise and fall of a smooth rib cage against his thighs would steady his heart and the slap of a mud-encrusted tail dispersing flies would ease his tension as he stood atop a hill waiting for the order to charge. Loki, his mount in the first war, was such a fine stallion—a huge gray Hanoverian, standing seventeen hands and proud of every centimeter. Though Loki could be as mischievous as the Norse god he was named after, he surpassed all other horses in Erich’s experience—before and since—in fearlessness. Nothing terrified that horse, not fire, machine guns, or mortar shells. Loki ran through all of it without hesitation, and his bravado inspired the rest of the regiment.

  Indeed, had it not been for Loki, Erich might never have met Oskar. Erich thought back to the march through Belgium in the first war. They had been camped just east of Mons with the Second Army Corps when Loki became restless. For all his very fine qualities, Loki had a wicked sweet tooth along with an uncanny instinct for sugar, and when both of these were activated, the animal completely discarded the niceties of chain of command. Near their encampment, a lucky scouti
ng party from the Third Army Corps led by Oskar found a stash of sugar and a barrel of apples in an abandoned Norman barn. When Oskar ordered the cook to prepare some caramelized apples for the regiment, it was inevitable that Loki would line up with the men, even though the horse had been tethered to a post outside Erich’s tent miles away. Oskar later told Erich that he was convinced such an enterprising horse must have an equally intrepid rider, so with conviction and curiosity, Oskar personally rode Loki back to meet Erich. Shortly thereafter, Erich and Loki transferred to Oskar’s regiment.

  Riding slowly up the dirt road to the Nagel farm, Erich thought the landscape not all that different from Belgium. On his left beckoned the modest houses of Blumental. To his right was farmland interspersed with the occasional gray farmhouse or barn. Rows of cabbages and potatoes snaked eastward, ending abruptly in a wall of fruit trees, beyond which the Birnau forest stretched its limbs.

  The town that expanded to his left was dark now, no light daring to shine lest an aerial bomber were to seek it out. Only an occasional candle illuminated the whitewashed cement homes. Erich imagined the interiors: Rooms furnished with sofas, probably somewhat worn by the weight of mothers knitting and children scrambling over them. Rooms flush with paintings, perhaps of ancestors, staring down wistfully from their walls. Rooms safe in their day-to-day routines, with feathered pillows and photographs of insistently smiling families. Rooms that were sheltered and vigilant, especially in the evenings, when the round black knob of the cherry sound-box on the mantelpiece was turned clockwise and news from the outside world marched in on muddy boots.