The Good at Heart

by Ursula Werner

  Three and a half years later, when Erich was approached by Gottfried Schrumm with a secret journal documenting German war crimes, his belief in Oskar’s ideal of unconditional fidelity to one’s military commander evaporated. By then, Erich had seen with his own eyes much of the inhumanity chronicled in those pages, and he had heard too many racist diatribes by the Führer to doubt that such actions were officially sanctioned, even ordered, at the highest level. According to Gottfried, the small resistance movement headquartered in the Defense Ministry was in search of a military man, preferably one with direct access to the Führer. The military disaster at Stalingrad had made it clearer than ever that something had to be done. The German push toward the Soviet city should never have been initiated late in the year, and certainly not by an army so woefully undersupplied and inadequately reinforced. In the eyes of Gottfried and the Resistance, the Führer’s single-minded pursuit of Stalingrad, a goal his advisors considered unattainable, was nothing less than megalomania, resulting in almost half a million unnecessary German deaths. After reciting this information, Gottfried had leaned over his desk in Berlin. “Originally, our goal was to divest him of authority, to make him step down. We have people inside and outside the administration who are poised to step into the power vacuum that would be left in his wake. Good people, people who know how to govern. Of course, he would never step down willingly. Removing him requires more than unseating him.”

  Erich sat upright. He was fairly sure he already knew the answer to his next question. “And what, precisely, does it require?”

  “Killing him.” Erich did not flinch. “We have already had a few attempts,” Gottfried said, leaning back again in his chair. “Obviously unsuccessful. The man has an uncanny sixth sense for danger or he is remarkably lucky. Or both. In any case, we’ve come to the conclusion that our principal stumbling block has been inadequate access. We have in place various men who can deliver the means to kill him. The instrument, so to speak. They are located around the country.”

  “But how do you know the Führer will go to these locations?” Erich asked.

  “We don’t,” Gottfried admitted. “We have pinpointed several venues, some highly likely, some less so, in which to place our weapons. What we lack now is the ability to bring the instrument right up to the Führer’s person. If he should come near one of these venues, we need a man on the inside, ideally someone on the General Staff, who could have direct contact with the Führer without being questioned.”

  “Someone like me,” Erich said.

  “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” At the time, Gottfried Schrumm’s proposal seemed to Erich the logical culmination of three years of self-examination, three years of struggle with the boundaries of honor and loyalty. Erich was troubled more by the idea of betraying his father and Oskar than by breaking his oath to the Führer. Just as the golden eagles on his father’s beloved Blue Max shimmered brightly in the sun, their claws clinging tenaciously to the sides of the Maltese cross, so did his father’s ideals of military discipline and allegiance grip Erich’s psyche.

  And Oskar. Oskar had essentially shaped Erich into the man he was. Every strategy Erich mapped out, every decision on the battlefield, every order to his troops was informed by the years that Erich had served under his first real commander, listening to and executing his directions with growing respect. Then too, after his parents’ death, the twelve years that Erich spent at Oskar’s home, living in that strange capacity—part son, part compatriot, part friend—had transformed his feelings of gratitude, need, and reverence into something approaching awe. Erich knew Oskar was indelibly Prussian in his understanding of authority. The law was the law, orders were orders, and both were to be followed without hesitation or second-guessing. Oskar believed this essential to civilized society. In Berlin, Oskar had introduced Erich to the writings of Thomas Aquinas and the cardinal virtues of prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude, by which Oskar measured his own actions.

  Ironically, it was Aquinas’s insistence on man being true to virtue that offered Erich the answer to his dilemma. What would the saint make of the Führer’s orders? Weren’t they merely exhortations to commit actions that were contrary to the virtue of the German people and the German culture? Some of the acts the Führer initiated were so heinous, so egregiously sinful, that Erich could imagine Aquinas stepping forward to assassinate the Führer himself. Would Oskar agree? Erich didn’t know.

  Now he opened the door to the post office and was relieved to see no one inside other than Ludmilla Schenk, the postmistress. “Good afternoon, ma’am,” Erich said. “I need to send a telegram to Berlin. It’s urgent.”

  “Of course.” Ludmilla reached under the counter and pulled out a slip of paper. “If you fill this out, I will transmit it immediately.”

  Erich took the pencil she offered and filled in all the requisite formalities—Gottfried’s name, title, office, and room number, then the message that he had worked out in his head: Send info re instrument pickup. Will deliver tomorrow 18:00–20:00 at Weber’s. Wolf

  Erich pushed the paper across the counter. “Thank you for expediting this.”

  Ludmilla Schenk smiled politely. “It is no problem, General. As you can see, I am somewhat at leisure. But I imagine things will get a bit more hectic in the next twenty-four hours.” She turned and disappeared into a small room adjoining the main office.

  Erich was surprised that the postmistress seemed already to know of the Führer’s visit. But she had likely received a few early telegrams from Berlin and drawn the obvious conclusion. The point of his own telegram was not to tell Gottfried that the Führer would be in Blumental, a fact Gottfried most likely knew already. What Gottfried did not know was that Erich was in Blumental too, and, more important, that he saw an opportunity. Erich heard the light tapping of telegraph keys as he departed the post office. Now he had to wait.

  Too restless to return to his inn, he headed toward the town center. He was not certain when, or even if, he would receive an answer from Berlin. The plan that Gottfried had outlined involved explosives entrusted to an unidentified carrier. For safety reasons, Gottfried explained, everyone participating must remain unknown to the others; all Erich knew of the plan was his own role. How the carrier would transport the explosives to a rendezvous location hadn’t been specified. Presumably Gottfried counted on a window of opportunity for attack that would last a few days at least. But the opportunity here in Blumental would be available no more than twenty-four hours. It was a very narrow window, a veritable balistraria. The arrow Erich was about to let loose might not reach its target in time.

  – Eighteen –

  The bowl of shelled walnuts in front of Edith was almost halfway full. One or two more batches of nuts and she could begin grinding. She adjusted the pillow behind her back and sat up straighter in the kitchen chair. It was a tedious job, shelling nuts, but she had never minded it, even as a child. It took practice to cradle the hard outer shell of a walnut in the palm of one hand and apply just enough pressure with the nutcracker so that you did not break the treasure inside. Of course, with a Linzer torte, where the walnuts were ground before they went into the dough, it did not matter if the nut was whole. But it was still worth cracking the hull with care, to avoid crushing the membrane that surrounded and separated the two halves of the kernel inside. She took another walnut from the canvas bag lying on the table, cradled it in her left palm, and positioned the nutcracker over its central seam. She had just emptied its perfect golden kernel into her bowl when Marina walked into the kitchen.

  “Have you seen Oskar?”

  “Ah, the question of the hour—where has Oskar gone?” Edith tried not to sound annoyed. “No, my dear, your father was in his study after lunch, sending telegrams to who knows where, but when I went up to talk to him, he’d disappeared. He may have gone on a walk with Sofia. I think she wanted to show him the kitten she chose.” She cracked the walnut she had been holding with a bit too much violence
and placed it to one side. “Do you want to talk to him about what happened at lunch? Because I think he’s quite forgotten the incident. It might be best to let it go.”

  “No, that comment about morals just slipped out,” Marina said. “Too many things on my mind, I suppose. I’m glad he’s not dwelling on it.” She sat down in front of the grinder that Edith had attached to the edge of the table and began absent-mindedly turning the handle. “I was hoping to ask him about tomorrow.”

  “What about tomorrow?” Another broken nut. Edith pushed it aside.

  “I wanted to find out when the Führer is expected for tea. I have some errands to do in the morning, but I want to help you prepare. And then too”—Marina inhaled deeply—“there is the matter of mental preparation.”

  “I’m not sure there’s enough time in the world to mentally prepare,” Edith said. “But Oskar told me that the scheduled tea hour is four o’clock. So you do whatever you need to do in the morning. I might need some help as we get closer to the tea.” She looked up at Marina. Her daughter’s eyes were dark, and there was a familiar pain behind them. Edith pushed the bowl of shelled walnuts across the table. “Here. If you’re going to turn that handle, you might as well make it worthwhile.”

  The two women were silent, taking comfort in the mesmerizing and calming predictability of their tasks. After a while, Edith dared to broach the subject that had been on her mind for two days. “The things you need to do tomorrow, Marina. Do they involve Erich?”

  Marina tightened her grip on the grinder, keeping her gaze on the slow, steady gyration of its handle. “I don’t want to talk about him, Mutti. I don’t want to argue.”

  “Talking about him doesn’t mean we have to argue.”

  “It always has in the past,” Marina said.

  “But I’ve forgiven him now,” Edith offered.

  “Forgiven him?” Marina bristled. She could not keep the disdain out of her voice. “Because he committed such a sin?”

  Edith laid the nutcracker down on the table and tried to choose her words carefully. “Look, I know that in the past I have been unsympathetic to your relationship with him. But I want to speak with you now about the future. I know his presence here affects you, makes you restless.” Marina opened her mouth for another retort, but Edith held up her hand. “Please, just hear me out before you say anything.” Reluctantly, Marina closed her lips, folding her hands onto her lap with measured patience. “When I first confronted you with my suspicions about you and Erich,” Edith continued, “and you told me you were in love with him, I’m afraid I didn’t react well.” Marina raised her eyebrows—a mocking gesture, Edith knew. “I was shocked, of course. Because you were my daughter, and he was practically my son, or at least it felt like that to me, and that made it feel, well, wrong.”

  “But he’s not your son,” Marina interjected. “Just because he feels like your son to you doesn’t mean he felt like a brother to me.”

  “I know, dear, I know. And I was able to get past that with time. The bigger problem for me, though, was fear of what your love would do to our household, fear of the threat it posed to our family. I put that fear ahead of trying to understand your needs and your feelings, and I want you to know that I’m sorry about that.” She paused to let Marina speak, but her daughter was too surprised by this unexpected apology to respond. Sighing, Edith continued. “I don’t know what you and Erich spoke about in Berlin before the war. I don’t know if the two of you contemplated leaving together. Back then I tried, for my own reasons, to convince you of the importance of maintaining an intact family, of staying for the girls, for Franz, even for your father. And then the war came, and the possibility of running away was taken from you.” A tear escaped Marina’s left eye and slowly slid down her cheek. Edith reached over and wrapped her fingers around her daughter’s hands. “Now he’s here, and I imagine that the past has been hurtling back at you, with all its emotions and passions. And you may be facing the same situation and questions you were confronting back then, yes?” Although Marina remained silent, her tears answered for her. Edith squeezed her hands tightly. “Erich is a good man, but so is Franz.”

  “I know! I know Franz is good.” Marina’s wail was filled with anguish, guilt, shame, love, and a touch of anger. “And I do love him. I’ve never stopped loving him. But my love for Franz isn’t like my love for Erich. The way Erich makes me feel . . .” Marina looked out the window, caught by the memory. “Alive, yes, but also truly cherished for who I am. And safe, protected, always.” She turned back to Edith. “Oh, it would be so much easier if Franz were awful. If he beat me, if he were a drunk or had other women. But he’s good.” Marina’s voice became quiet. “Or at least he was.”

  Edith knew what her daughter meant. The last time Franz came home, after Stalingrad, he was unrecognizable: a skeletal, broken frame of a man, ghostly. Initially, Edith and Marina considered it lucky that he had survived the three-month siege by the Soviet army in the bitter cold of a Russian winter, when 95 percent of his comrades had perished. But the man who returned was not really alive, not as he had been. During the month Franz was home, the tension in the house was a living, wounded, snarling animal that curled up in a corner and attacked if you came too near. Franz spent most of his days napping, but it was nightmarish sleep, and he often awoke screaming. Once, when Edith had stayed with Franz so that Marina could take a short, much-needed nap, he had popped up in bed, eyes wide open but clearly not seeing. “Don’t pet the dogs!” Franz cried out. “They have bombs strapped to their bellies! No, don’t! Don’t!” The only thing that soothed him, Edith remembered, was Marina’s voice, reading aloud to him from his library of ornithological treatises, tales about the migration of the bar-tailed godwit and the nesting habits of the fan-tailed warbler.

  “I have been lucky in love,” Edith said at last. “Very, very lucky, to marry a man who makes my heart beat faster every time he comes near, to share my life with someone I fall for over and over again every time I see him.” She smiled at her own romantic confession. “Well, almost every time. The point is, I never felt that I had to settle in my marriage, to accept something that was less than what I wanted because it was all that was offered or available at the time, or because . . .” She gently patted Marina’s hands. “Because I had to. The truth is, Marina, if I had the opportunity to choose again, to pick a man to build a life with, I would make the same choice.” Edith paused for an instant, trying to assess the truth of this statement in light of all her current fears and doubts about her husband, and she imagined Oskar’s eyes, gray and green, with slivers of teal and ice blue near the pupils, radiating warmth and love and twinkling lightly with mischief. “Yes, I would choose Oskar.”

  “Despite everything?” Marina’s look was full of judgment.

  “I’m not certain there is an ‘everything,’ Marina.”

  “Oh, come now, Mutti. He must know something about what’s going on.”

  “But we don’t know what exactly is going on,” Edith reminded her daughter. “All we know is what we hear, and none of that is particularly reliable.”

  “Still, what we do know is already pretty horrible. Innocent people being thrown out of their homes, sent to work camps . . .”

  “Stop, Marina.” Edith hit the table with the palm of her hand to interrupt. “This is not about Oskar. What the Führer does, what he requires his subordinates to do for him, none of that will change how I feel about your father. Because I love him unconditionally.” Marina stared at her mother in silence, as if trying to understand such a love. “As for Franz,” Edith continued, “remember that the two of you have built a family together, a family that means more to you than I think you understand. And if you leave now, if you are thinking of leaving, you know you would be leaving alone. Without the girls. There is no way they could come with you during wartime, and you would not risk their safety.”

  Marina appeared shocked at this suggestion. “No, of course not! You know I wouldn’t do that. But . .
.” She picked an intact walnut out of the pile in front of Edith and rolled it between her palms. “They may not need me as much as you think they do. They could survive without me for a time, couldn’t they?” Now it was Edith’s turn to look shocked. Before her mother could object, Marina backtracked. “In any case, it won’t always be unsafe. The war has to end sometime.”

  “Yes, it does,” Edith said, feeling relief wash over her. “And that is my point, dear. Wait. Don’t make any decisions now. Wait until the war is over. And then . . .”

  “And then?” Marina asked.

  Unexpectedly, Edith felt her daughter’s hope. Marina did not need Edith’s approval or blessing for the things she did, as she’d made quite clear. But did she perhaps prefer having them to not having them? If so, Edith resolved to nurture that hope. “Marina, I don’t want to see you married all your life to someone who doesn’t make you happy. You wouldn’t want that for your own girls either, would you? And Franz,” Edith added, thinking of her son-in-law’s quiet sensitivity. “He too deserves to be married to someone who wants to be married to him, who truly loves him. You do Franz no favors by staying in this marriage if you don’t love him.”

  Marina stared at the wall behind the kitchen table where Edith had taped various artistic creations that Lara, Sofia, and Rosie had given her over the years: Lara’s lion, its mane made of pasted bits of ribbons; Sofia’s abstract study of shades of blue in various shapes; Rosie’s drawing of a girl in a sailboat feeding a cookie to a shark. Suddenly she pushed back her chair and stood up. “I’m going to check on Rosie and Sofia,” she said. “But I’ll be right back to help.”