The Good at Heart

by Ursula Werner

  Forty or fifty people were already gathered in the dark room, some sitting on wooden boxes, others on the dirt floor, backs against the cellar walls. A few families had brought flashlights, which cast gloomy beams of dispersed light upon the ceiling. One boy used his to illuminate a path as Edith and Sofia picked their way through the crowd. Edith squeezed herself into a space on the floor between an older man with a mustache and a heavyset middle-aged woman. Nobody else paid attention to them.

  Edith cradled Sofia in her lap and leaned back against the wall. She expected to find the whitewashed stone cold against her skin, and was surprised at the wave of heat that penetrated her woolen coat and silk blouse. Sofia was still, huddled into Edith’s embrace. She did not whimper. Her eyes peered over Edith’s right shoulder, alert to every movement, blinking occasionally to avoid the fine dust that fell from the ceiling as each bomb dropped.

  Edith didn’t know how long they waited in that cellar. It might have been an hour, it might have been several. The steady bombing showed no signs of abating. The ceiling began giving up larger and larger chunks of plaster. A feeling of unease spread through the assembled group. Eventually, one young man, his dark wiry hair speckled with bits of dirt and paper, jumped up. He ran to the cellar door, apparently intending to leave. It would not open. He pushed against it with all his strength, to no avail. A few others lent their weight to his effort but were equally unsuccessful.

  The young man, now wild-eyed, ran to the wall separating the cellar from the neighboring apartment building and pounded his fist against it. “How long will these walls hold?” he shouted. “How long can we stay here before we are all buried in rubble?!”

  An older man with a manicured beard and small round spectacles, who had been sitting with a group of women and young children, tried to calm him and encouraged him to take his seat again. But the fear, once spoken, gained momentum, and soon the cellar was humming with murmurs and whimpers, feigned words of reassurance and sincere prayers for deliverance. When another bomb dislodged some of the bricks in the northeast corner of the room, the young man leaped to his feet again.

  “Are we all just going to sit here? Do none of you want to save yourselves?” He grabbed a thick wooden two-by-four that swung from the ceiling and pulled it down in a shower of dust and plaster particles. “This wall,” he shouted, ramming the wood against the dividing wall at the far end of the room, “this wall is our only salvation now.”

  A stocky man in a frayed overcoat stood up. “He’s right. We can get out through the building next door. If we break through that wall.” He picked up another piece of wood and joined the effort.

  Tension and unease now mushroomed into panic as people realized that they might be trapped underground. Soon several others stepped up, holding pieces of wood or empty barrels, or using nothing more than their strong shoulders. All pushed in tandem against the restraining wall. The room pulsed with each collision, the thick gray air heaved to and fro, the walls reverberated and throbbed.

  Edith had moved away from the wall she had been leaning against earlier, as the heat emanating from it had become unbearable. She now wondered, watching the scene at the far end of the room unfold, exactly what they would find when that other wall was broken.

  “Wait!” The older man with the round glasses stood up hesitantly. “You don’t know what’s going on in the next building! Shouldn’t we—?” But his question was lost. All at once, the plaster from the dividing wall exploded into the adjoining cellar, and a maelstrom of fire and heat sucked everything that was not secured to the ground or walls into the tongues of flame and billows of smoke next door. Cardboard boxes, wooden barrels, an old rolled-up carpet, a discarded broom—all flew into the furnace of the neighboring building. The five men who had been beating against the plaster disappeared in an instant, swept off their feet so suddenly that they had no time to cry out. “Papa!” screamed a young woman to the man with the round glasses. But he was gone.

  Instantly, Edith pushed Sofia to the floor and flattened herself on top of the girl’s body, pulling her long overcoat as far around both of them as possible. There they lay, immobile.

  Edith had developed two important skills during the last war. One was knowing when to keep her eyes shut or avert her gaze—if her daily walk to the bakery happened to take her past the city hospital, she learned to lower her eyes when she got to the brown brick wall of the south gate, where a collection of severed, gangrenous limbs awaited incineration. The second skill was knowing how to erase from her brain those images that had been imprinted there against her will and still occasionally popped up, like the picture of her son Peter’s unnaturally small coffin being lowered into a shadowy grave. These skills served Edith well that November night, for she, like Sofia, had a very limited memory of the events following the collapse of the cellar wall.

  Edith’s instinct now, watching Sofia lost in her daze, was to pull her back from that other world to the present, where there was family, love, kittens, and flowers.

  “Sofia, dear, could you do your oma a very big favor?” Sofia either did not hear Edith or chose not to. Edith walked over to the kitchen table and gently shook her granddaughter. “Sofia?”

  The girl looked up with blank eyes. Her pupils were almost as large as her irises. Edith held Sofia’s hand and stroked her hair until finally Sofia gave her head a little shake and came to. “Oma?”

  “I was hoping you could help me this morning, dear.” Edith opened a drawer in the table and pulled out a pair of garden shears. “We need a big festive bouquet for today’s luncheon, to welcome Opa back. Could you go cut some flowers from the garden?”

  “Flowers?” Sofia looked at her grandmother as if she did not understand the word.

  “Yes, flowers. Roses and daisies and some hydrangeas, perhaps. Lots of red and white and pink.”

  “And blue?”

  It was hard for Sofia to let go of her other world. “Well, blue too if you like,” Edith said. “You can take some of the delphiniums.”

  “Okay.” Sofia took the shears from Edith and shuffled over to the porch.

  “When you’re done, bring them back here and we can arrange them together.”

  “Okay,” Sofia repeated, stepping out into the yard. She wasn’t wearing shoes, but Edith couldn’t blame her for wanting to bare her feet to the garden on a sunny day like this, summer at its height.

  – Fourteen –

  Johann Wiessmeyer took a seat at one of the outside tables at the Café Armbruster, where he could look out over the promenade and the lake. There was föhn this morning, a dry, warm wind that swept down from the Alps and clarified the air; he could see the entire outline of the mountains beyond the Austrian shoreline. For some reason—perhaps it was the change in atmospheric pressure—Johann always got a headache just behind his eyes when there was föhn. He was hoping a strong cup of tea could knock out the dull pain in his skull.

  A stooped waiter dressed in a worn tuxedo and a sagging bow tie hurried over to Johann the moment he sat down. The waiter deposited two small glasses of water on the table and thrust an old cardboard menu at him, more out of routine than any expectation that the minister would be enticed to order from its faded photographs of elaborate ice cream sundaes in ornate crystal dishes.

  Johann waved the menu away. “Thank you, Gustav, but I’ll have just the usual this morning. Two teas, please. Mine extra strong.” Keeping his head down, Gustav nodded and shuffled away. He was used to Johann ordering two teas even though he was the only one seated. Sooner or later, Frau Thiessen would appear.

  Johann pulled out the mail that Ludmilla Schenk had handed him when he’d stopped by the post office. There were two envelopes, one with the red, white, and blue border of all airmail missives from America. The other was plain brown and opaque, preserving the privacy of a telegram. Johann had immediately recognized his sister Sonja’s handwriting on the airmail envelope. It had been a long while since he had received a letter from her, and even thi
s one appeared barely to have made it past the Frankfurt censors, judging from its worn and heavily inked appearance. He eagerly tore open its top seam. The telegram could wait.

  My dear brother,

  I trust that this letter finds you well. Perhaps I should say I pray that you are well, because I do. I pray each morning and night. And at Berthold’s suggestion, the entire synagogue now prays for the safety of everyone overseas on Saturday mornings. So as you can see, we are doing all we can. You must do your part as well, dearest brother, for my heart is yours . . .

  Johann knew his sister’s synagogue. After her move, he had been able to contrive a six-month teaching fellowship at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He stayed with Sonja and Berthold in their small apartment in Brooklyn, with its tiny backyard in which Sonja valiantly tried to grow vegetables. Every morning, he rose before dawn to walk over the majestic bridge to the buzzing granite island of Manhattan and headed north toward Harlem for his classes. On his walk uptown along Broadway, he was captivated by the kaleidoscope of spiritual denominations—Baptists, Episcopalians, Catholics, but also Muslims, Mormons, Buddhists—and plenty of nonbelievers, some of whom felt the need to challenge him on the street; his collar made him a target.

  What surprised Johann was his overarching sense of oneness in the midst of this variety of religious experience. He was struck not by the differences between beliefs, but by their similarities. Sonja and Berthold’s synagogue on Kane Street, for example. The same God as his own, expressed through different traditions. The choir in his church, the cantor in theirs. The Kane Street cantor, a short, heavyset man, more square than round, more plinth than pillar, his sonorous bass voice, like an instrument of God, surging across the ocean to people of the Jewish faith whose own leaders had been silenced.

  And the revelation of gospel music, in the vibrant congregation of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. How the God of a community could be perpetuated through the vocal cords of its ancestors, even when those ancestors were faced with ungodly circumstances. What an uplifting feeling of freedom the Harlem congregation had given him. It was the closest thing to pure joy he had experienced in years. Reading on, it was as if his sister had anticipated precisely this reaction:

  . . . You will be pleased to hear that I have managed to find the music you asked me for. Your friend Reverend Waters in Harlem was most helpful, and he strongly encouraged me to purchase the Selah Jubilee Singers’ recording of “Take My Hand, Precious Lord.” So now I have it for you. I am hesitant to send it, however, for I fear the album may not survive the ocean crossing. I will keep it here with me, and you can pick it up when you return to us. You are right about that song, Johann, it is very lovely. I listen to it at night and think of you. Then Berthold comes in and tells me to stop worrying and we put on Albert Brumley’s “Turn Your Radio On” and dance until the neighbors yell at us to turn the radio off!

  The rest of Sonja’s missive resonated with her squeaky-sweet chatter: I made the most abysmal streuselkuchen the other day, rock hard, almost inedible. . . . Do come back next summer to see the garden we’ve started, we grew a lovely tomato and next year perhaps we’ll have two! If only he could go visit Sonja again; he missed her so. Perhaps next time he would stay. But the instant that thought entered his head, he shook it back out. Not yet. He still had work to do here.

  Johann used his thumbnail to tear open the telegram. The message inside was from Eva Münch. Eva lived near Regensburg, northeast of Dachau, and it was her contacts who had initially sought Johann’s help in their fledgling underground movement. Her message was characteristically brief: 2 pkgs. arr. Thu. 10:30. Thursday. Tomorrow. Sooner than expected, though not impossible. But the reduction in number from five to two . . . Johann pressed on his temples with his forefingers and said a silent prayer.

  Gustav arrived with two steaming cups of tea and placed them on the table just as Marina walked up. Bowing slightly, the waiter quickly pulled out a chair for her. She smiled her thanks and sat down, setting her market basket at her feet.

  “I was early, as always,” Johann explained. “So I ordered for us both.”

  “Excellent. After all this morning shopping, I need some sort of stimulant before I launch into the cooking phase of the day.” She took a generous sip. “There. I feel vastly improved already.”

  “And I am improved simply by your company,” Johann said. It was true; he had felt disheartened after reading the telegram, but Marina’s arrival made it easier to bear the news. It was not the first time he had felt better in her presence.

  “Now, Johann, you must save your compliments for Sabine,” Marina teased.

  “On the contrary, I fear I must be quite careful with what I say to Fräulein Mecklen.” Johann blushed. He was not oblivious to the Mecklen sisters’ hope that he would join their family. Regina and Gisela had invited him to their homes for dinner several times, with Sabine of course always in attendance, dressed in her finest gown and spewing forced laughter across the table at him. It was not that Johann disliked Sabine; he just didn’t like her. If pressed on this point, he would have said that he didn’t really know her, despite all the occasions on which they had been thrown together. Her adoration and overeagerness to win his approval caused her to affect a meek femininity that didn’t suit her. Johann had heard the story of Sabine’s engagement, several years earlier, to a journalist who had come to the Bodensee for the summer and managed, in four short weeks, to win her heart and, apparently, her virginity.

  “And then, just like that, poof! He disappeared,” Regina had told him at one of those dinner evenings. She had waited until Sabine was in the kitchen to share this confidence.

  “It might be just as well,” Gisela opined from another corner of their living room. “He was probably a Communist.”

  “She was heartbroken,” Regina said, her own eyes tearing slightly at the memory. “Standing on the steps of Birnau in Mutti’s wedding gown, crying . . .”

  “Good riddance, I say,” Gisela said.

  Right now, Johann didn’t have the luxury of seeking a spouse. He did want to get married someday, to share his life with another human being in the most intimate way possible. That was, however, an aspiration for peacetime. Now he was grateful that he was single, for he had to be able to engage in his activities without worrying about anyone else. But if and when he did look for a life partner, he would want someone who was honest in her self-presentation. Someone sure of who she was and what she wanted. Someone, well, like Marina. From the first day he met Marina Thiessen, he had been drawn to her sincerity. She had introduced herself after one of his Sunday services, said she was considering a new approach to God. It was Johann’s suggestion that they meet for tea, hers that they do so regularly. He found himself looking forward to these meetings and was hesitant to admit how much he enjoyed her company.

  “I truly do not want to give Sabine any false impressions,” Johann said.

  Marina shook her head. “I fear she will take her impressions as she pleases. But you can’t help that.”

  “Short of being rude or impolite . . .”

  “ . . . and you could never be that . . .”

  “ . . . and I could never be that,” Johann agreed, smiling at their repartee. He took a sip of tea and relaxed into the thin cushion on his chair, willing his headache to lift. To the southeast, he could see the Insel Hagentau. According to local history, the Swedish prince who owned the island had given up his claim to the throne in order to marry the commoner he was in love with. They had celebrated their union by planting gardens, and now the island, abandoned during the war, was a bower of untended flowers. Just past that, farther south on the Hagentau road, he knew, was Switzerland. Which, with any luck, would soon increase its population by two, at least temporarily. Johann took out the telegram and read its brief contents again, double-checking the number. “I received a message.” He glanced up at Marina. “We need to be ready tomorrow at ten thirty.”

  “Have yo
u found space for them? Five requires some room—” Marina started.

  “It’s two, not five,” Johann interrupted. Better tell her quickly, to get it over with.

  “Only two?” Marina’s voice cracked.

  “Two.” They were both silent. Johann thought back to the last time he was in Berlin, in April. His cousin Gottfried had insisted that they meet for coffee on Bendlerstrasse, near his office in the Defense Ministry. The brown leather journal Gottfried had pushed carefully across the tablecloth that day was a meticulous documentation of all the crimes perpetrated by the regime that his office had information about, information it kept highly classified. A written catalogue of evidence compiled by a fledgling resistance organization, of which Gottfried was a member. With Gottfried watching silently, Johann reviewed the pages of the journal. He read slowly and with growing horror its confirmation of rumors heard and fears harbored. Accounts narrated by army soldiers who watched as storm troopers forced hundreds of Polish Jews to dig mass graves, then shot them down with machine guns, covering bodies both dead and halfway alive with mounds of dirt that continued to pulse in the landscape long after the troopers had abandoned their shovels. His face blanched at the strange catalogue: the number of murders, according to psychiatrists, that a soldier could be expected to commit before he was in danger of mental and emotional breakdown; the number of cattle cars required to transport the population of Siedlce to Treblinka; the number of meters in length, width, and depth, required for a pit to accommodate the bodies of all the Jews of Vinnytsya. Johann had not shared any of this information with Marina, as Gottfried had sworn him to secrecy, but he knew she had her own suspicions. “Marina, what is it?” he asked, seeing her wet cheeks. He moved his chair closer to hers.