by Dean Hughes
He saw her blush, her face suddenly more red than the sunset could account for. She had taken a different meaning than he had intended. He felt sorry for her, that she would think such a thing, but she said, with touching earnestness, “I won’t let them hurt you, either, Peter.”
“Oh, is that right? And what are you going to do to save my skin?”
“I don’t mean that. I won’t let them hurt you in the past.”
The breath left Peter’s body in a steady stream. He felt the weakness in his joints. But he couldn’t let her love him. He laughed. “Now that’s a good trick, if you can manage that one,” he said.
“I know,” she said, not smiling, her narrow little face so full of adoration that Peter could only pity her. She seemed to see that. She suddenly left without a word, swiveling toward her shadow, walking straight into it, her long steps making undulations in the stretching line.
Peter wanted to tell her he was sorry, but that seemed condescending, and so he simply let her go. He finished one more furrow after that, and then he followed her inside, and he ate. Until the garden began to produce, the Schallers didn’t have a lot of food, mostly just bread, but Peter could live on bread—especially freshly baked, not the muscle-hard stuff he had known in the military.
After dinner Peter finally asked something he had been wondering about. “Do you ever go to church, Frau Schaller?” Sometimes she told him to call her Theresa, but he could never bring himself to do that.
“Not for a long time, we haven’t,” she said.
“Why not? Is it too far to go into town?”
“Well, yes. That’s part of it. We don’t have bicycles for everyone to go at the same time. But I could go by myself if I wanted. I simply feel no desire.”
“I don’t want to go,” Rolf said. He was eleven years old, and in some ways like his sister. He was huskier, and darker, like the father that Peter had seen in pictures, and he was more animated. But, like Katrina, he loved to laugh, and he had his own way of seeing things. “The men at the church dress like birds—parrots or something—and they talk funny. Everyone gets up and down like jack-in-the-boxes, singing and saying things. If you ever go, you’ll know what I’m telling you. It’s all a lot of nonsense.”
All this time Frau Schaller was shaking her head. “Now you know the truth. We’re heathens around here. Rolf hasn’t been to church since he was seven or eight. That’s what he remembers of it.” She looked at Rolf. “Certainly, Peter has been to church much more than you have. He knows all about it, and he probably speaks more respectfully, too.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Peter said. “It always struck me the same way.”
“What religion are you, Peter?” Katrina asked. “Catholic or Protestant?”
Peter let some seconds pass, and he considered. He didn’t want to lie, not about that. “Neither one,” he said, hoping that would be the end of it.
“That’s what I am, too,” Thomas said. “I’m nothing.” He was thirteen, and he obviously took pride in his unorthodoxy. On almost any subject he would announce that he believed the opposite of his mother, or Katrina, and yet he hardly seemed to keep track of his claims. He was actually just as playful as Rolf, but he liked to take on a serious demeanor, probably to make himself seem older than he was. But he was a fragile boy, thin like his mother and sister, with eyes full of need. Peter had a notion that the loss of his father had hurt him more than the others.
“That’s not what Peter said,” Frau Schaller told him. “Some people believe in their own way. There are other things to believe.” She looked at Peter. “You’ve said enough to me that I know you do believe in God.”
Peter couldn’t think of anything he had ever said on the subject, and so he was taken by surprise. He looked back at Thomas. “I do believe in God,” he said.
Thomas glanced at his brother, and they both laughed. “So do you go to church and bounce up and down and babble prayers?” Rolf asked.
Katrina smiled, but she was clearly embarrassed. “Peter,” she said, “don’t listen to these two. They aren’t used to being around decent people. They’ve grown up like rabbits, running where they want.”
Peter knew that was more or less true. The boys did go to school, but the schedule had been unpredictable during the past year. Lately there had been a power failure, after a station in the area had been knocked out, and always there were difficulties keeping enough teachers. Men were pulled away, time and again, to the war, and women were often pressed into service at a local factory that produced synthetic rubber tires. But the greatest problem was that there was no bus service, with the shortage of gasoline. The boys had to walk a long way, and in the winter, Frau Schaller often let them stay home. When they did, they went outside anyway, roamed the farm, played all day, and in truth, hardly noticed that a war was going on.
Katrina, on the other hand, was now out of school. She had finished the eighth form, and now she worked in an office in the nearby town of Premnitz. She was an assistant to a bureaucrat who monitored the flow of local farm products to the military. The truth was, he wasn’t that busy, especially in the winter, and he didn’t spend all that many hours in his office—or expect Katrina there that often. But he also paid her accordingly, and her meager income provided little help for the family.
“My church wasn’t like that,” Peter found himself saying. He didn’t mind them laughing at him, but he was a little defensive about their making fun of religion. He knew that these boys, sooner or later, might want to understand their world. They weren’t going to have an easy time getting by, not for years to come, whether the war ended soon or not.
“What church is that?” Frau Schaller asked.
Peter was about to give a vague answer when he decided he wanted them at least to know that much about him. “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
“He thinks he’s a saint,” Rolf said. “But I don’t see a halo around his head.”
Peter smiled. “I keep my halo in my pocket—and only get it out for special occasions.”
“What church is this?” Katrina asked. “I never heard of it.”
“Some people call it the Mormon Church.”
“Ach, die Mormonen,” Frau Schaller said. “I know of this.” But she looked shocked, and she asked, rather hesitantly, “Isn’t this the one that lets you marry as many wives as you like?”
This brought an enormous laugh from the boys. “Look out, Katrina,” Rolf said. “He may want you for one of them.”
“Hush, boys,” Frau Schaller said, but then she looked at Peter and waited.
He could feel the heat in his face. He didn’t really know what to say. “No. Of course not. We only marry once.”
“But why have I heard this?”
“A long time ago—in the last century—it was this way. Some of the leaders had more than one wife. I’m not sure of all the reasons.”
“When I was a girl, my father used to tell me stories,” Frau Schaller said. “He told me the missionaries from this church would snatch young girls and take them on a ship back to America. And they kept them in a big building, like a prison. The old men married them and kept them in a harem.”
“It wasn’t so. People spread these things. But nothing like that ever happened.”
Peter glanced at Katrina. She was trying to seem only casually interested, but he could see that she was alarmed. “What do the Mormons believe?” she asked. “It sounds like Mohammedans.”
“No, no. I told you, it’s the Church of Jesus Christ. It’s Christian.”
“But not like the Catholics or Protestants?”
“In many ways, yes.”
“Then what’s the difference?” Katrina asked, and her interest was clearly more than passing.
Peter tried to remember the things he had learned in church, back so long ago. “We believe that the other Christian churches started teaching things that weren’t true. But a man named Joseph Smith was called by God to restore things the way
they’re supposed to be—and teach the truth.” He hoped they wouldn’t ask him more than that.
But of course, the next question was the obvious one. “What is this truth?” Frau Schaller asked. She looked toward the boys, who were still smiling. She waved a finger at them to hush.
Peter remembered the first thing he had known for sure about the church. “The men who have the priesthood—the missionaries and the leaders—they can place their hands on someone’s head and heal them. My sister was dying, and they brought her back.” But somehow this seemed too exotic to Peter. Rolf began to grin, but Thomas shook his head at him, as if to tell him not to be disrespectful. Peter also saw the concern in Katrina and Frau Schaller’s eyes. “But it’s all very normal. The people meet and sing, and someone preaches. There’s just no bowing down and no fancy robes. It’s simple and good. The people like each other, and they’re all good friends.”
“I like that idea,” Frau Schaller said. “I think it’s better for the preachers not to have such fancy outfits. I never understood that. Some of the smaller sects in Germany are like this. But we have no Mormon churches in this country, do we?”
“Yes. There are congregations in most of the cities—at least the bigger ones. Now, with the war, I don’t know if they meet the way they did. But we had a group in Frankfurt, and I know there was one in Berlin.”
“But it’s Christian,” Katrina said. “About the same as the others?”
Peter hesitated. He couldn’t think what to say, but he knew the missionaries would never say it was the same. “We do have differences—important differences,” he said. “God is real, for one thing. He’s not just a power or a spirit. He hears you the way a father would. He’s not just a spirit in the universe. When I was in trouble in the war, and dying, I prayed to him, and he heard me. I don’t know many things, but I do know that.”
Frau Schaller nodded. “Peter, I go to church, and I feel those cold stones, and I hear all the talk of God’s mercy, and it doesn’t touch me, doesn’t convince me. I look around myself and ask where God is, and I don’t see any evidence that he cares about us. But your words, just then—those words did touch me.”
“How did you know that God heard you?” Thomas asked, and now, clearly, he was trying to be one of the adults.
“I was trying to help my friend, and I was almost dead myself. I didn’t want to ask for help for myself—because I didn’t deserve it—but I asked for power to pick him up. Strength came into me, and I carried him.”
“And your friend lived?”
“No.” The story seemed silly, and Peter could see the skepticism in Thomas’s face. “But on the ship, when I was being evacuated, I knew God had been with me, helping me. And then my whole body filled up with . . . something. I felt all warm and comfortable, and I knew I was going to live. I don’t know how to say it, other than that. I knew. It was more than hope or faith; it was something that came into all of me—not just my head—and filled me up.”
“I don’t doubt that at all,” Frau Schaller said. “I think God would do that. But I don’t know why so many die, and others receive this blessing.”
“I don’t know either,” Peter said. “I watched my friend die, and I couldn’t help him.”
“Where was this?”
“We were in Memel, in Lithuania. And then we were carried on a ship to Pillau, in East Prussia. Almost everyone in my company died there in Memel, or before. I might be the only one left. I’m not sure. My sergeant was alive on the ship, but if he stayed in the fight, he could be dead by now.”
“So you left the battle?” Thomas asked.
Peter understood the question. Every boy in Germany knew that this was the ultimate crime. This was an act of cowardice, and it was no wonder that so far, these two boys had never warmed to Peter. He knew they considered him a traitor. They didn’t attend Jungvolk regularly, and they were hardly aware of the realities of the war, but they surely knew this much, that a German boy didn’t run from the battle.
Peter had tried since the beginning to say little about his flight from the army, but having said this much, he had to defend himself or always feel ashamed. “Thomas, I was fighting for the wrong side. Hitler is as evil as Satan himself. He’s led this country into destruction. He’s killing innocent people by the millions. I wasn’t wrong to stop fighting for him, but I was very wrong to start.”
These were stunning words, unspeakable in Germany. The room was silent, and Peter wondered whether he would be told to leave. But Frau Schaller spoke carefully and softly. “This is what I also believe, Peter. We don’t say it, and my opinion must never leave this house. But Hitler killed my husband, as far as I’m concerned. And I have seen the work of the Gestapo. If you stopped fighting for these swine, you are a hero. I’ve never said this to my boys for fear they would say the wrong thing sometime, but I’ll tell them now. They are not going to fight in this war. If it lasts much longer, Hitler will want them, but he’s not going to get them. I’ll see to that.”
“We have to go when we’re old enough. We have no choice,” Thomas said.
“Peter made a choice. We’ll make one too.”
“What if you’re caught, Peter?” Katrina asked.
“The war can’t last much longer,” Peter said. “My danger now is not that I’ll be caught by Germans. If the Russians come, my only papers are German military papers. And the Russians are butchers. They’ll shoot me, or they’ll carry me off. And you and your mother are . . . not safe with them.”
“What can we do?”
“We have to hope the Americans and British will occupy this area, not the Russians.”
The boys were no longer finding humor in any of this. The room was silent.
“How do you pray?” Frau Schaller finally asked. “Do you have a prayer that—”
“We don’t have written-out prayers. We speak to the Lord in our own words.”
“Would you be able to do that for us now?”
Peter was nervous about that. He hadn’t prayed aloud since he was very young. “I can try,” he said. “But I wish my father were here, or my mother. They knew much better how to do this.”
“Just use your own words. You’ll do fine.”
And so Peter prayed. He asked the Lord that he and the Schallers might find safety, that they might have strength to deal with the danger that lay ahead. When he was finished, Rolf and Thomas were staring at him, entirely serious, and Katrina was looking at him with awe in her eyes, as though she had felt something spiritual for the first time in her life.
***
Brother Stoltz was sitting in an underground bomb shelter just down the street from the boarding house where he lived. Up above, the whole city seemed to be blowing apart. Bombs had been falling for an hour, but now a grand crescendo, like the climax of a symphony, was being reached. Scores of airplanes had to be unleashing their chaos all at the same time. Inside the shelter, the sound reverberated and the dust flew, but the people who filled the place sat silent, numb.
An old man, sitting next to Heinrich on the floor, would grunt a little when a bomb seemed to hit close, hold his breath for a moment, and then let it blow out when the sounds diminished a little. “This is not all bad,” he mumbled. “This is probably the last.”
Brother Stoltz knew exactly what the man meant. The Allies had crossed the Rhine well north of Karlsruhe, in the Ruhr, but now Americans and French had made it across nearby, between Karlsruhe and Saarbrücken. It would be only a matter of days until ground troops would arrive. That might bring a last attack, with artillery fire, but the fact was, the end of resistance for this city was very close. What would come next, how the Amis, or worse, the French, would treat civilians, was the subject of constant speculation now, but no one doubted that the fall of the city was inevitable—and coming soon.
Brother Stoltz watched two little children across the room, a brother and sister. The girl, who was probably seven or eight, was holding her little brother, and he was sound asleep,
with all this noise thundering around him. The girl seemed only half awake herself. She was wearing a threadbare little dress and worn-out shoes, but the dress was clean, and her hair was nicely brushed. She wasn’t exactly pretty—too thin and hollow for that—but the picture was beautiful, here in this hole, and it touched Brother Stoltz.
And then the noise stopped, rather suddenly. Brother Stoltz watched as heads gradually came up, as people listened for the roar of airplanes, but those sounds were moving away, the buzz diminishing, second by second. “There could be another wave yet,” the old man said, and some of the people nodded.
And they waited. But nothing more came. Finally an all-clear horn began to wail outside.
“It’s been nice seeing you all,” the old man said in a loud voice. “It was a lovely night—only a little noisy.” He chuckled.
A woman smiled at him. “You always keep your spirits up,” she said. “I don’t know how you do it.”
“I have nothing to lose,” he said. “If I die, I die. That’s easier than worrying about everything, the way you younger people do.”
“I suppose,” she said. “I suppose.” And she followed the others, out the door and up the steps.
Brother Stoltz waited, took the man’s arm, and helped him up the stairs. At the top, they both stopped and looked around. The night was quite dark, and the air was full of smoke and dust, but a block or so away, a building was burning. The light from the fire sent a glow through the clouded air. Outlined in silhouette were the broken, burned buildings, most of them damaged in previous attacks. Little of the city was left.
“Can I help you to your home?” Brother Stoltz asked.
“Oh, no. It’s right here.” He pointed to a building across the street that looked like the ruin of some past civilization, only fractured walls standing, the insides gutted. “My apartment is on the first floor. It’s held together so far.”
“All right then,” Brother Stoltz said. “Sleep well—for the rest of the night.”
