The Good at Heart

by Ursula Werner

  – Ten –

  Despite the darkness, Marina decided to return home through the forest, as Erich and Rosie had. She followed the path into the ink of silver firs and pines. The canopy of trees filtered out all but the most persistent sunbeams during the day and now forbade passage to the hesitant moonlight. A layer of pine needles carpeted the ground between looming sentries of towering tree trunks. This was the kind of wooded environment that inspired the Brothers Grimm in their tales, but Marina didn’t find the atmosphere menacing. Rather, she found herself breathing more freely with each step, the musky, loamy air slowing her pulse and relieving the tension in her body. Here, she embraced a sense of expansiveness and possibility, mystery and magic. She could more readily imagine a tribe of golden-haired elves hiding behind the trees than a pack of snarling wolves. If only that were true outside the forest as well.

  These woods were wilder and less cultivated than Grosswald, the park Marina so loved in Berlin. In all the time Marina spent exploring Grosswald’s sprawling grandeur, she rarely encountered debris of any kind. As a natural extension of Berlin’s city limits, the park was carefully maintained—branches and trees felled by wind and storm were quickly cleared away by rangers. In Birnau’s forest, by contrast, fallen limbs lay where they dropped, rotting slowly into their surroundings, nature undisturbed and timeless.

  Suspended in time. What a blessing that would be. Marina could not say time had been her friend. Certainly it was not her friend now, as Oskar’s impending visit was about to coincide with one of Johann’s smuggling enterprises. From the beginning, Oskar’s position in Berlin had made the group wary of Marina’s involvement, fearful of her motives. Even after Marina had won Johann’s confidence, Ludmilla was cautious and begrudging around her. Marina was surprised that Ludmilla had not questioned her tonight about Erich Wolf, had not asked Marina why she appeared to have such a close friendship with a high-ranking military officer. Had she been asked, Marina was not sure what she would have said. That Erich was a family friend, perhaps. Oskar’s protégé. Her adopted brother.

  But Marina had never thought of him as a brother, though she knew Edith loved him as a son. When he came to live with them in Berlin, Erich took over the small room on the third floor of the apartment. For the young Marina, he was a favorite playmate. He was gentle and kind, and he often smiled slyly at her, as if they were in on a secret no one else knew about. More than any other adult, he was willing to enter Marina’s reality. He knelt when he spoke to her and sat on the floor rather than on a chair when they were together.

  Over the next decade, Erich became an ideal older friend for Marina. He wasn’t young enough that she experienced the embarrassments and annoyances of early manhood that she heard her girlfriends with brothers complain about: the smelly discarded socks on the kitchen floor, the shaven hair stubble circling the bathroom sink. Nor did he tease her, as other brothers mercilessly did, about her body once it began to develop. No, he was always the perfect gentleman, always treated her with respect. And she adored him.

  So did her friends, once they all entered adolescence. How could Erich, a cavalryman, not inspire their budding female fantasies? Their girlish love of horses mixed with a burgeoning interest in boys settled naturally on Erich’s equestrian grace. Later, fed on Goethe and Schiller in school, the girls debated whether Erich more closely resembled Faust or Don Carlos. Marina did not participate in these discussions, for in her own mind at that time, Erich was still a fraternal figure. Until he left the house.

  He spent the years immediately after the first war training cavalry regiments, but the modern military machine had no use for horses. Steel tanks and armored cars sent them all trotting off to pastures. Erich’s own beloved Arrakis, Loki’s successor, went to a stable in Ludwigsfelde, an hour’s drive from Berlin. At thirty-one, Erich found himself militarily obsolete. Urged by his superiors, he applied to the prestigious Prussian Military Academy, whose graduates became officers of the Prussian General Staff, the military’s highest rank. To no one’s surprise but his own, he was admitted.

  The day Erich moved out of Oskar and Edith’s home was the day after Marina’s sixteenth birthday. He had delayed his departure deliberately, he said, to help Oskar and Edith chaperone the celebration the night before and to ensure that all of Marina’s male admirers controlled themselves. Marina came downstairs that morning wearing one of the two new dresses Edith had sewn for her. This one had a fitted lace bodice with puffed cap sleeves that Marina had seen in a Paris fashion magazine. Its light-blue voile skirt flowed, Marina hoped, suggestively but demurely around her hips, and she descended with full self-awareness, swaying her body gently back and forth to create the desired air-sweeping effect.

  “Are you all right, dear?” Edith asked, observing her. “You look a bit unsteady.”

  “Ah, she probably just drank too much champagne last night,” Oskar joked. “Takes a while for the center of balance to right itself again.”

  “I did not drink too much champagne, Vati,” Marina protested, reaching the first floor. She twirled around the foyer a few times, testing the horizontal reach of her skirt. “I am just trying out my new dress.”

  Oskar looked skeptical. “Well, try it out any more than that and you won’t have to bother wearing it.”

  Erich stood silently by the front door, his army trunk, rucksack, and assorted books piled next to him. “Well, Erich,” Marina said, dancing around him, “what do you think?”

  “You look beautiful,” he said. He caught her in midswirl and held her at arm’s length. Marina watched his eyes move over her, slowly wandering upward, from toe to head, resting finally upon her face. She watched his eyes trace the outline of her brow, her nose, her lips, and at last her eyes. There he lingered, and then he quickly dropped his hands and kissed her forehead. “But then you always have,” he whispered. Ten minutes later, he was gone.

  Marina did not expect to miss him as much as she did. She did not expect his departure to plunge her into a state of loss and longing. She did not expect to wake up each morning, wrapped in her comforter, waiting to hear his footsteps overhead, or to dread the moment every day when she came home from school and walked into the house to find the sofa where he used to sit empty. Though Erich still joined the family for dinner from time to time, these isolated visits proved more painful to Marina than his absence. Each time he came to the house and then left, she was reminded of the fact that not long ago, he had not left.

  Grosswald alone brought her solace. It was an easy trip on the S-Bahn, and Marina visited the park almost daily. She explored the vast expanse of its endless meandering trails and footpaths, traversing the banks of the Havel River and the Wannsee, hiking around the muddy shrubs of Rechte Lanke and past the tall pines of Schildhorn. Within six months, she had navigated almost every acre of land within Grosswald’s boundaries. Then she met Franz.

  She was walking along the shore of a small lake, collecting pinecones for Edith, who liked scenting them with cinnamon for her potpourris. Bent over and shuffling slowly forward, eyes fixed on the ground for right-sized cones, Marina did not notice the young man in khaki shorts and suspenders who stood on the trail and watched her approach. Hearing a laugh, she abruptly straightened up. A tall, thin man, or perhaps still a boy, was staring at her out of cornflower-blue eyes.

  “What’s so funny?” Marina demanded.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, miss, nothing all that funny, really.” The young man backed away from her.

  “No, you were definitely laughing.”

  He swallowed and wrestled with the muscles around his mouth to stop himself from chuckling. “It’s just that you looked like—like a giant anteater.” He loudly guffawed. “With your arm hanging down and your torso sweeping from right to left, you could be a giant anteater vacuuming up . . . What are you gathering?”

  Marina grasped the canvas satchel that was slung over her shoulder and held it before her defensively. “Pinecones,” she answered tersely. “I’m gath
ering pinecones. Is that a crime?”

  “Oh no,” he said. His look was sincere and apologetic. “At least I wouldn’t think so. Of course, if everyone was allowed to pick up every pinecone they saw, I suppose that might be a problem. Though now that I think about it, I don’t know why that would be a problem. It probably wouldn’t be. And, you know, definitely not a crime.”

  Marina listened to his verbal gymnastics with amusement. He was unaware of how comical he sounded and looked, with those suspenders and dark socks, and that tweed cap topping a pair of very protuberant ears. But she did like his smile, shy and hesitant, offered like an invitation he expected to be refused. She extended her hand. “Well, if you’re thinking of turning me in to the authorities, I shouldn’t be telling you my name, but you seem trustworthy. Marina Eberhardt. Pleased to meet you.”

  He shuffled toward her quickly, grabbed her hand, and pumped it up and down. “Thiessen. Franz Thiessen. I am honored to make your acquaintance.”

  “Hello, Franz.” Marina gave him the smile she had been practicing in her mirror, the one she copied from Greta Schröder in Nosferatu—a combination of warmth and beguilement that required a certain elongation of the neck for maximum effect. Franz stood before her transfixed, still clutching her hand. “So what are you doing in Grosswald?” she asked, gently untangling her hand from his.

  “Oh, sorry.” Franz shook his arm as if he had been electrified. “I’m, you know, just walking. Walking and watching. Bird-watching.”

  “Bird-watching?” Marina noticed for the first time the small pair of binoculars hanging around his neck. “I’ve never met a bird-watcher. Fascinating. What sorts of birds do you watch?”

  “Oh, whatever’s out there. In the air, you know. Or the trees.”

  “Yes, that makes sense. That’s where they usually are. But how do you find them? Do you look at the sky or the trees through those?” Marina pointed at the binoculars.

  Franz shook his head earnestly. “No, that wouldn’t work. I mean, not that that’s a bad idea, you know, it might work for some people, maybe. Certainly you could try that.” He paused. He was trying so hard not to offend her.

  He went on. “What I do is, I listen for bird songs. For ones that I know. And if I recognize one, then I try to locate where it’s coming from—you know, a tree nearby, or maybe a lake or the river. And then, when I sort of narrow that down, then I use the binoculars.” Franz grasped the tubes of his binoculars with both hands and began twisting them back and forth on the central shaft.

  “You must know a lot of bird songs.”

  “Not a lot. The usual amount. Enough.” Franz was rotating the binocular tubes back and forth with such vigor, it was possible he might break the apparatus entirely. His anxiety was both painful and amusing to watch. Marina decided to try to make him more comfortable.

  “What are your favorites? Birds, I mean.”

  “Oh, that’s a difficult question to answer. I have lots of favorites. I mean, you know, there are just so many. Like the song thrush, this little brown-speckled bird, you know? Very tiny, really, but it has a loud, I mean a really loud song for its weight. Like, you know, it’s amazing how such a little bird can make so much noise. I’d love to know if it has oversize lungs or something. I should make a note of that.” Franz pulled a small notepad from his back pocket and scribbled something with a pencil that had been tucked behind his ear. “And the green woodpecker, that’s a beautiful bird. It has a red head and a green body, really very pretty, very lovely. But also, you know, the reason I like the green woodpecker so much is that its call sounds like a laugh. You kind of have to smile when you hear it. And it doesn’t migrate. It’s a sedentary bird. It likes to stay close to home. I can relate to that.” Franz suddenly became quiet and looked down at his feet.

  If only Franz had been able to stay close to home, Marina thought now, nearing the edge of the Birnau forest, where the sheep pastures bridged the gap between wilderness and civilization. Franz was a good man, thoroughly honorable and kind. Marina loved his goodness, loved the fact that the world could still produce such a man. Such men should never see war; such decency should be preserved at all costs. Marina wondered where in Normandy her husband was without allowing herself to ask whether he still was. If his regiment had been repelling the Allied invasion on the beaches—Oskar could not determine, from the confused information that came to Berlin, which German troops had been stationed where—Marina hoped that he would have been in the rear. She hoped he had crawled behind a dune or found a large clump of grass for cover. She wished him that “pocket of comfort.” That was the phrase Franz used to explain how he had survived Stalingrad: by thinking of her and the girls, or of his wanderings in Grosswald. She hoped he could find those pockets now.

  Marina walked beneath the railroad underpass and turned onto the little lane that wound around the Eberhardt property, allowing her to enter from the lakefront. She opened the gate and carefully closed it behind her. The house stood at the top of a slight hill that sloped down to the expanse of lawn she stood on. From this distance, it looked very small, like the garage it was originally meant to be, but it was solid and sturdy, and at the moment it sheltered almost everyone dear to her in this world.

  Tendrils from the garden brushed Marina’s skirt. The scents of honeysuckle and rose invited her into the arbor. Looking around at this horticultural Eden, Marina admired the depth of her mother’s dedication and hard work. Finding plants and flowers had been a challenge in those early wartime years, but Edith’s calculated admiration of her neighbors’ flower beds led to their willing donation of cuttings and bulbs. These she augmented with plants from her garden in Berlin. Now the yard was festooned with spring daffodils, tulips, wind anemones, hyacinths, summer trees laden with cherries, shrubs covered in strawberries and gooseberries and blackberries and red currants, flower beds overflowing with pansies and hydrangeas and roses. The roses were Edith’s gardening triumph. She had experimented with rose varieties over the years, hybridizing them in the kitchen, trying to cultivate only the most fragrant blooms. She did not believe a rose deserved its name unless it had a scent. The result was magnificent—her rose garden was a small oasis of perfume: pillows of fragrance rose slowly from each open bloom and drifted through the air, swirling around and through one another in an olfactory kaleidoscope.

  Walking through the arbor up to the house, Marina breathed it all in. Pockets of comfort, she thought. She had to take them where she found them.

  Day Two

  * * *

  JULY 19, 1944

  – Eleven –

  The Wednesday-morning market in Blumental always assembled in the Münsterplatz. This large plaza was at the center of town, right next to the defunct church that Hans Munter referred to as “our historic Münster,” and that less civically minded individuals disparaged as “that crumbling pile of rocks.” Before the war, the bürgermeister and his forebears had tried to extricate money from the Blumental citizenry to repair the four-hundred-year-old sanctuary. But the few families with disposable income gravitated toward the more gilt-edged and ornate Catholic faith. And the handful of people who eschewed Catholicism worshipped not at the Münster but at Johann Wiessmeyer’s smaller Protestant chapel on the western edge of town. Nevertheless, the Münster remained a sturdy and reliable landmark, with its somber Gothic arches and stained-glass windows.

  This Wednesday morning, Hans Munter, still somewhat shaken from his recent near-death experience, ambled toward the modest collection of vegetable crates and sun umbrellas assembled in the shadow of the Münster bell tower. He mourned the prewar markets that had teemed with farmers and trucks, bakers and cakes, butchers and sausages. Back then, the plaza had been in full bloom with food, with farmers arriving before daylight to claim the prime real estate on the plaza’s eastern perimeter, where the bell tower’s shadow offered a welcome patch of shade in the summer. But with the arrival of war, and the Führer’s regular confiscation of local harvests for his armies
, the market stalls had dwindled drastically in number, and those that remained were now so sparsely stocked that customers arrived early to ensure first pick of whatever might be available that day, for it would not be available long.

  This morning, because of Captain Rodemann’s food-commandeering over the past few weeks, the market had even less to offer than usual. By 8:15, when Hans made his way through the Münsterplatz, several vendors were already packing up. Most of the women who had come to do their weekly foraging for food had given up, and many of them had gathered around the Mecklen bakery stall, where they shared the week’s gossip near the vigilant ear of Regina Mecklen.

  Hans edged his way around the circle of ladies, all of whom were abuzz about the previous day’s drama. Had the Mecklen pastries not been calling to him, he might have avoided the stall altogether, for he didn’t want to call attention to himself, though he blissfully couldn’t remember much of yesterday. Marina Thiessen, standing nearby with her mother, was about to speak out in greeting, but he put his finger to his mouth, silently begging her not to.

  “ . . . unconscionable, really! I mean, right during our afternoon quiet period,” Anne Nagel said as Hans approached. “Although I suppose that was lucky because at least Fritz was inside resting. If they’d come any other time, he would have been outside clanking away at that truck of his, a sitting duck for all those bullets.”

  “At least the children weren’t outdoors playing,” Regina Mecklen said, to the earnest nods of several mothers. She took a basket from one of the women and handed it back to her sister Gisela, who counted out a dozen rolls from the bushel of rye flour brötchen that sat at the back of the stall. Beyond the stall, in the distance, Hans could see Johann Wiessmeyer stepping into the plaza. The pastor was just starting to head across when a young man came hurrying up to him. Though the man was not from Blumental, Hans was sure he had seen him before. He was from Meerfeld, Hans thought, had some sort of job in the writing profession. A printer, perhaps? For a moment, Hans was awash in irrational fear about the man’s purpose, but he waved it away. The doctor had warned Hans that he might be subject to sudden bouts of anxiety after his trauma yesterday.