The Good at Heart

by Ursula Werner

  “Oh, you know, I can’t help imagining,” she said quietly. “And I don’t know if it’s worse or better than the truth. And I feel sometimes that I could know so much more, that I should know so much more about what’s happening. That I should demand to know more from my father.” Marina’s voice began to rise a bit. “Because he must know more than he tells us, right? But he doesn’t tell us anything!” She wiped her eyes with a cloth napkin and took a deep, hiccup-laced breath. “But then I wonder, if he did tell us—if he knew what was happening to all the people disappearing from the cities and towns, if he knew anything about the train transports I’ve heard of—well, what would we do? I mean, what could we do?”

  Johann checked an impulse to reach across the table and touch Marina, to reassure her. Instead, he pressed his hands together and bowed his head. He too had doubts about her father. “We don’t know what Oskar knows,” he said finally. “You must remember that he’s in the Economics Ministry, not Defense. And from what my cousin tells me, there is practically no communication within the government. Each department is operating largely on its own, in an atmosphere of paranoia and mistrust.”

  “He’s right.” Marina straightened the napkin on her lap and refolded it. Another small hiccup escaped. “Oskar says that too.”

  Johann offered her his glass of water, though she had her own. She leaned forward and took a sip without taking the glass from him.

  “Even if Oskar knows something,” Johann continued, “whatever that something may be, it’s entirely possible he is trying to protect you from that information.” Johann held up his hand as Marina started to protest. “Perhaps it would be dangerous for you to have such knowledge. Dangerous for you and Edith. Dangerous for your daughters.” He paused to let Marina take this in. “Think of your daughters. Think how much you love them. You would do anything to protect them, wouldn’t you?” Marina nodded, tears again flowing. “Don’t you think Oskar feels that way about you?”

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “Yes, I know he does.”

  Johann was not a father, but someday he hoped to be. He longed for a son or daughter. Every once in a while, when he spoke with a young boy in Blumental, he had a moment, just a moment, in which he imagined the boy to be his own. Max Fuchs, for example: spirited but clever, harboring a good heart. “So, the refugees arrive late tomorrow morning,” Johann said. “And your home is out because of Oskar.”

  “Yes,” Marina said. “And he usually stays for two or three days, otherwise he wouldn’t bother making the trip. Also, we haven’t seen him in a while, so he might stay even longer.”

  “Right. Well, then, Ernst is probably our best option for short-term housing. He printed the travel documents and brought them to me this morning. According to him, there is no sign of Rodemann, which is excellent. This afternoon, I will go to Fritz Nagel’s farm to check on the truck.”

  “Has he finished it? Oh, wouldn’t that be wonderful!” Marina looked more hopeful than she had all morning.

  “I don’t know. Last time I went by, he was still working on the barrier between Pinocchio’s engine and the storage space.” When Johann first noticed Fritz driving the long-nosed Volvo into Blumental a month earlier, he immediately saw potential in the truck’s enormous front hood and in Fritz’s regular trips across the Swiss border to deliver crops to Kreuzlingen. With the appropriate financial incentive, Fritz promised to keep his mouth shut, and Johann asked him to modify the engine block to create enough extra space between the engine and the truck body to accommodate the human form. When the truck approached the border loaded with crates of fruits and vegetables, the driver might be stopped by guards searching for contraband goods or refugees. Those guards had been known to use their bayonets to pierce crates and sacks, a malicious test to discourage the smuggling of anything but produce. Whatever was stored in the engine block, however, could pass through unnoticed. Johann had visited Fritz last Friday to check on his progress and was quietly optimistic about the truck’s potential for successful deliveries.

  “I might even have time to test-drive it,” Johann added.

  Marina raised an eyebrow in skepticism. “You know how to drive a Volvo truck?”

  “God gave me many talents to do His work.” Johann smiled. “I will, with Fritz’s blessing and produce, drive the truck to Meerfeld, load the two passengers, and then, God willing, cross the border without incident and drop them off at the rendezvous point. But before that, I will need your help. I need someone to bring them to Meerfeld. Can you do that for me? Would you be able to get away unnoticed?”

  Marina didn’t hesitate. “Count on it, Johann. My father usually retires in the afternoon to nap or read. They’ll be at the East Blumental station?”

  Johann thought for a moment. They had used the deserted station in the past as a resting place, with great success, but that was before Max Fuchs started watching it for spies. He would have to find a way to keep Max busy. “Yes,” he answered finally. “I’ll pick them up at the main station and bring them over to the East Blumental station. Then you just need to get them over to Ernst before the four p.m. mail train makes its daily stop there. I’ll aim to pick them up shortly after midnight.”

  Marina placed her napkin back on the table. She had folded it into the shape of a rose. “Fine,” she said. “I can do that. There will be so much chaos at our house, no one will notice my absence for an hour.” She pushed her chair back and stood up. “And now, I’m afraid I should go. There are potatoes to mash and berries to crush and egg whites to whip to stiff attention.”

  “Sounds violent.” Johann stood up with her.

  “It’s a good outlet.” Marina sighed. “Keeps me out of trouble.” She gave Johann a quick kiss on the cheek and headed down the promenade. Johann watched her go. He watched the eyes of everyone she passed follow her along the promenade. It was not Marina’s appearance that drew the gaze of other people, for although she was unquestionably attractive, even beautiful, there were other women in Blumental who were more physically stunning. Rather, it was the way she moved through her surroundings. She radiated unbridled strength and courage. Hope too, Johann thought, communicated through her straight posture and confident step, and in the animated swing of the thick light-brown braid across her back. People wanted to hold on to the sight of her calm conviction, her assurance. She was so certain in everything she did. It was intoxicating.

  Johann had worked hard to attain that kind of certainty for himself. The day he read through Gottfried’s secret journal, forcing himself through one page after another, his stomach had involuntarily heaved. The evidence he was confronting, actions inconceivable in a civilized society that was heir to Goethe and Bach, manifested a degree of malevolence and evil that had, until then, been unfathomable to him. Gottfried had watched his cousin’s face carefully that day. “Now,” Gottfried had said, “will you join us?”

  Thus the moral question took a new twist for Johann. It was one thing to affirm an obligation to help the victims of a treacherous regime; that was fairly easy to reconcile with God’s Word. Far more difficult was the question of whether, and to what extent, he should engage in the overthrow of such a government. Everyone in the Resistance agreed that the Führer had to be removed. It was clear that removal meant killing the man. Marina had once asked Johann if God could forgive his followers for remaining idle before the evil of the Führer. But the spiritual question that Johann wrestled with now was how to justify murder. Would a God who gave Moses the Ten Commandments condone assassination? Johann had spent countless hours in contemplation of this question. A brown leather briefcase sat in his coat closet awaiting his answer.

  – Fifteen –

  In the back corner of Edith’s garden stood a copper birdbath, part of Edith’s plan to make her home as welcoming as possible to all manner of creatures. She had planted blackberry bushes a few meters away, and over the years they began to circumnavigate their way around the bath, eventually growing tall enough that the entire basi
n was obscured from view. Edith was immensely pleased. Now the birds had their privacy, she said, and she told the girls not to disturb them. But it was too tempting a space to be limited by a grandmother’s prohibitions. The blackberry bushes, now at their peak, had entwined themselves completely around one another, and their leafy vines, seeking to annex more territory, had reached across the lawn to the birdbath itself. The resulting plot of grass, shaded and shielded by their canopy of leaves and berries, was the perfect hideout for a teenage girl.

  Lara could not believe it when the postmistress handed her the magazine that morning. She had been waiting for so long. Ever since Opa told her, back in April, that he had heard that Princess Elizabeth of England was on the cover of Life magazine, she had been desperate to have a copy. He’d promised to try to find one, and here it was. She laid the magazine carefully on the dish towel she had placed on the ground next to the birdbath, for she did not want any dirt on the princess’s beautiful face.

  The cover was a perfect photograph of Elizabeth. She looked absolutely radiant, Lara thought. Her hair was excellently coiffed, swept off her forehead to the left and pinned back, dark curls falling to her shoulder. Her eyes were sparkling, and she was gazing at something beyond the camera, her family perhaps, everyone making faces to get her to smile. She was smiling, but not too strongly, not too happily, because of course England was at war. Lara thought it was the best photo she had seen of Elizabeth so far, and she had seen many pictures of Elizabeth.

  She opened the magazine carefully, with the reverence befitting a publication featuring photographs of the most famous princess in the world. Turning to the table of contents, she saw a small photograph of the British royal family and examined it carefully for clues to Elizabeth’s life. The princess was looking over the king’s shoulder while he was reading some important state papers. Of course she had to be introduced to the business of government, as she would be eligible to be queen in three years.

  If she and Elizabeth lived near each other and were not on opposite sides of this stupid war, Lara imagined that they could be best friends. They could share stories about the difficulties of growing up in a household with an important official personage. How that personage, king or cabinet secretary, was not necessarily available when you wanted him to be. How he was often called away from family lunches by telegrams. Or if he stayed through lunch, he went upstairs afterward for a nap and was not to be disturbed. How you came to be an expert in reading military uniforms. Lara wondered whether the princess would trust her enough to share government information. Lara would assure her that she considered the bonds of friendship sacred and that she would never reveal anything the princess told her. Unfortunately, she would not be able to reciprocate with any information of her own, for her opa never told her anything about his work in Berlin. But she didn’t really want to know. She’d stifled any curiosity she felt about what her grandfather did for the Führer years ago, after her mother had that big fight with him.

  It started when Lara’s friends Adelaide and Berit had asked her to join them in the Führer Youth Corps program in Berlin. She had been only eight, and when she asked her mother if she could go to evening meetings at her school, Marina adamantly refused. There was no need for Lara to get involved in politics at such a young age, Marina insisted. She had far more important things to learn about in school. No amount of protest from Lara could change Marina’s mind, and her opa would not get involved. Oskar told Lara that if she wanted to join the group, she would have to convince her mother herself. That was, Lara knew, an impossible task.

  A year later, membership in the Sorority of Aryan Sisters and its sibling group, the Fraternity for the Führer, was made mandatory for all children between the ages of eight and eighteen. Rosalie Mohn, a girl from the seventh class, came into Lara’s classroom one spring morning, wearing the summer uniform of the Sorority and carrying a small pile of papers, which she gave to Lara’s teacher. Frau Finkel took a quick glance at them and stood before her desk.

  “Girls,” she said, tapping authoritatively on the desk with a ruler warped by frequent contact with students’ knuckles. Lara kept her hands in her lap whenever possible, for she never knew what might anger Frau Finkel. “Today I will be giving you a form that you must return to me tomorrow. It is an order form for a uniform like the one Fräulein Mohn is wearing.” Rosalie stepped forward and did a pirouette, trying to make the uniform swing around her but thwarted by the stiffness of its long navy skirt.

  Lara adored the uniform, especially the crisp, pristine white blouse with its short blue tie. It all looked very smart, very polished. She could hardly wait to wear one. Adelaide had cautiously raised her hand. “What if we already—”

  “If you already have a uniform,” Frau Finkel interrupted her, waving the ruler in the air menacingly and causing Adelaide to lower her hand quickly, “then you should check that it still fits you. Some of you have grown like fungi over the past year.” She glared with distaste and accusation at Sarah Schwartzmann, who was on the front end of the bell curve of puberty and now hung her head in shame. “So I want everyone to take a form and have her parents fill it out and sign it at the bottom.” Frau Finkel slammed the ruler on the desk for emphasis.

  Lara ran all the way home that day and burst through the front door yelling for Marina. “Mutti! Mutti!”

  “Hush!” Her mother came out of the kitchen, drying her hands on her apron skirt. “Opa is still resting before he has to go back to work.” But her opa was standing at the top of the staircase.

  “Too late,” he said. “The old geezer has awakened.” He descended slowly, groaning in exaggeration. “Come, dear child, share some of that youthful energy with an old man.” Lara ran over to kiss Oskar, then ran back to her schoolbag, pulled out the order form, and handed it to Marina.

  “You have to fill that out today and sign it,” she said with authority, “so I can get a new uniform. Every girl has to have one. They are so pretty, Mutti, like sailors’ suits but with skirts!”

  Marina looked at the paper and frowned. She shook her head. “No, Lara, we’ve been through this already. You are not joining the Sorority of Aryan Sisters. End of story.”

  “But I have to join!” Lara protested. “I have to! Frau Finkel says everyone has to. And I want to join, I’ve wanted to for so long. Why won’t you let me?” Lara tried not to cry. She had cried the last time she pleaded with her mother to let her join, and it had not worked at all. Marina had only become more resolute.

  “I don’t care if you want to join, Lara, it’s not something I want you to be a part of.” Marina folded up the paper into a small rectangle and held it out to Lara. “If I need to go talk to Frau Finkel about this, I will.”

  Oskar made a throat-clearing noise. Lara looked over to him, eager for an ally. He had pulled his handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and was cleaning his glasses with it. When he put them back on, he raised his eyebrows, as if trying to stretch his eyes wide open. She sidled over to stand closer to him.

  “Marina, my dear, you don’t have as much latitude on this question as you did earlier,” he said. Lara had no idea what the word latitude meant, but Opa was using his slow, serious voice, and that was promising.

  Marina bristled, her body stiffening, bracing for some sort of fight. “What do you mean, I don’t have ‘latitude’? Lara is still my daughter, isn’t she?” She grabbed Lara’s backpack from the floor as if arming herself with a weapon. “And my opinion of these youth organizations has not improved with time. On the contrary. Honestly, Vati, all this marching around and singing songs in praise of the Führer”—Marina stomped around the sofa in mock imitation, waving the backpack over her head—“what is that supposed to teach them? How is that useful”—she slammed the backpack on the floor—“except as a form of indoctrination?”

  When Opa spoke again, his voice was still calm and steady. Lara noticed that the angrier her mother got, the quieter he did, or maybe it was just that he seemed to be quieter
because her mother was so loud. “I have no doubt, Marina, that the children could be given more useful civic responsibilities. But the fact remains”—he walked over to the open window and pulled it down—“that you have no choice in the matter.”

  “No choice?!” Lara was impressed with how well her opa had anticipated her mother’s screaming. “This is my daughter! Since when does the Führer come into my house and tell me what I can and cannot do with my daughter?!” Marina reached forward and tried to grab Lara, but Lara slipped away and ran to the sofa, against which Oskar was leaning. She grabbed one of the pillows and hugged it for protection. “Am I required to submit my daughter to brainwashing about her duty as a German woman? I can only imagine how many little bastards have already been born to teenage girls who took their duty to procreate seriously!”

  Marina’s words were getting way beyond Lara’s comprehension now, but Opa’s face suggested that he was not enjoying this rant. “Marina, you are overreacting.”

  “Am I? Am I overreacting because I want Lara to come to her own beliefs? To have her own opinions? Why should I let someone else tell my daughter what to believe?”

  Oskar took a deep breath. “This is not about belief. It’s about the law.”

  “It is absolutely about belief! It’s about the government using law to compel belief! Can’t you see that? Don’t you want to protect your granddaughter from that? Unless . . .” In her tirade, Marina had been striding toward the sofa, toward Lara and Opa, then away again from both of them. But now she stopped. It was strange—it felt to Lara as if something new had entered the living room. Something heavy, and perhaps slightly dangerous, had blown into the air right in front of where she sat, right between her mother and her grandfather. Opa had been patting his pockets, looking, Lara knew, for his pipe and tobacco, but when Marina suddenly quieted, he looked up. “Unless you don’t want Lara to start questioning things.” The words came out slowly from her mouth, as if she were feeling them out with her tongue before she spoke. “Because then she might come to question you. Like her mother does.” This was no longer a conversation about the Führer Youth, but Lara did not know what it had become. Her mother’s eyes were brimming with tears. Her opa stared at her for a long time.