The Gathering Storm

by Bodie Thoene

With a smile she inspected our work and said to me, “Soon it will be the rose hour.” She held up an instructive finger. “But where are the roses, my dear?”

  I blinked at her. Three vases positioned as centerpieces were empty. “I’ll gather them.”

  She placed a basket and shears in my arms. “Three dozen precisely. Thirty-six white roses. Mind the thorns.”

  I examined the flowers, choosing only the most beautiful blossoms on the rose tree. Perhaps I took too much time at my task. A string quartet was already setting up their music stands when I arrived back at the tables. Frau Helga wore a beautiful sky blue frock, while I was still in my work clothes. Other guests, elegantly dressed in party clothes, began to emerge from the cottages.

  Frau Helga seemed pleased with my selection of blooms. “Well done, Lora. I’ll set them out. You’ll want to wear your prettiest dress tonight, I think.”

  Eben drew my attention. He was wearing white linen trousers and a blue pinstriped jacket with a red tie. I was certain his clothing was chosen as a salute to the American and British athletes in the Olympic games. He leaned against the railing of his porch, gazed off at the still water of the lake, and inhaled deeply.

  I had never seen any man so handsome.

  Frau Helga noticed my wistful look toward Eben. “He will sing for our company tonight.”

  “Eben sings?”

  “Eben is a nightingale, my dear. He sings like an angel. You’ll see.”

  I grinned stupidly. My schoolgirl adoration must have shown like a spotlight. “He does everything well.”

  “And you are his white rose, it seems.”

  I did not understand what she meant. “Eben calls me his White Rose.”

  “You know the legend, the one of the white rose and the nightingale, surely?” she asked, arranging the flowers. “My favorite story. I named the inn White Rose, because I love the tale so much.”

  I shook my head, wishing I knew more. “I’m sorry. No.”

  “An ancient legend. Would you like to hear it?”

  I nodded eagerly and trailed after her, passing her roses one at a time.

  “From a high mountaintop in Eden, a Nightingale fell in love with a beautiful White Rose. White Rose called to him each day as the sun set, and he sang to her through every night. Then one day, the serpent came into the garden and decided that he wanted White Rose all to himself. He wound himself around her trellis, threatening to choke her into submission. She called out in terror. Nightingale flew to save her. He battled the serpent, flying at him again and again. At last the serpent struck him, sinking poisonous fangs into his brave heart. Nightingale fell, singing his last song, as his blood dripped onto the White Rose. With every drop of Nightingale’s blood, a thorn suddenly grew up to surround and protect the White Rose. When the serpent tried to claim her as his own, he could not penetrate the hedge of thorns. Nightingale fell dead at the foot of the White Rose. And where he lay, next spring, a red rose tree grew up. The white and the red roses grew side by side; two became intertwined.”

  “A lovely story,” I said, gazing at the vases as the quartet warmed up with Mozart. “But sad.”

  “Sad? No. A happy ending, yes? So the two bloom together for eternity in Eden.”

  “But what about the nightingale?”

  “He sacrificed himself to save the white rose. He gave his life for hers. By the shedding of his blood, the white rose was given life. A picture of Christ, some say.”

  I was both fascinated and terrified by the thought that Eben might be my nightingale. How would I go on living if anything ever happened to him? I was also mildly disturbed that he might believe I needed saving from something sinister.

  As I skipped off to wash and change into my party frock, I watched him out of the corner of my eye. His gaze followed me as I ran to our cottage.

  I was the last person to be seated beneath the stars. Candles were lit, and we welcomed the Shabbat.

  Eben sang a Jewish blessing over our meal in a clear baritone that I thought must surely call angels from heaven to listen. It was strange, ancient music I had never heard before. It stirred my heart, which for a little time took my mind off myself, and made me turn my eyes toward the stars. Just for a few moments Eben was my Nightingale, and I was his White Rose.

  It was to be our last journey as a family before we returned home. Papa and Eben and several others from the White Rose Inn had a meeting in Rome with Jewish Agency leaders. All had a passion to remove Jewish children from Hitler’s persecution.

  Papa and Mama had a private compartment on the train from Switzerland, but I preferred to ride in the observation car. I carried two volumes, which Frau Helga had loaned me. One was a thin volume of Keats poetry, and the other was the Jane Austen novel, Pride and Prejudice. I finished the romance novel early in the journey. Then, reading Keats’ verse, I imagined I was Elizabeth Bennet, and that Eben Golah, austere and remote and handsome, embodied the character of Darcy.

  We wound slowly southward through the great mountains.

  In the dining car, Eben stopped for brief conversation with Papa and Mama. He did not look at me at first, until he noticed my copy of the poems of John Keats.

  “Is this yours, Lora?” he asked with a sort of wonder in his voice.

  “Frau Helga loaned it to me.” I blushed at his attention. How I hated to blush. “I read the poem about the nightingale.”

  “Ah, did you? And do you enjoy the poetry of John Keats?” Eben thumbed through it. He found a verse he recognized and, to my astonishment, recited it rather than read from the page.

  “When I have fears that I may cease to be

  Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,

  Before high piled books, in charactery,

  Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;

  When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,

  Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

  And think that I may never live to trace

  Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;

  And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!

  That I shall never look upon thee more,

  Never have relish in the faery power

  Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore

  Of the wide world I stand alone, and think

  Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.”

  “Bravo,” Papa said.

  Eben’s perfect lips curved slightly upward as he wistfully scanned the page. “I got it right, I see. After all these years.” He closed the book.

  I said quietly, “I understand the meaning of the words, but not the nuance.”

  Eben reared back a bit. “Keats’ poetry is all nuance. John Keats’ grave is in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome. Perhaps you and your mother should visit. It’s in the guidebooks. A lonely place. He insisted there be no name carved upon his marker, just an epitaph: Here lies one whose name is written on water. He left his life in England and the girl he loved. Not yet thirty, he vanished from his world. Keats did not believe his poems would be ever be read and appreciated by a lovely young woman in a distant generation.”

  I answered, “I think his name should have been written in stone, not water.”

  “Perhaps in this generation his name is stone at last.” Eben replaced the book beside my water glass and, with his characteristic bow, moved on to his own table at the opposite end of the car.

  4

  1937

  While other Christian pastors ran from trouble, my father faced it head on. Papa accepted a temporary position as the pastor of a church in Berlin. Mama’s American citizenship offered us some protection, but all the same, it was a dangerous time to be an outspoken Christian.

  It was in the fall of 1937 when I first met Varrick Kepler. We both attended the recently and loftily renamed Reinhard Heydrich Unified Academy in Dahlen, formerly known as the Dahlen School. I’m quite sure Heydrich, a rising star of Hitler’s SS, had no knowledge our little school had been named after him,
nor would he care. But the new school administration agonized over the renaming for months. They held a formal ceremony at the beginning of the term.

  Because of my nationality, I was fortunate to attend this model university prep academy. Most of the nation’s schools segregated male from female students in the principal subjects, but ours did not. While young men were being taught their lessons, young women worked silently alone…but I was always listening to what the other sex was being taught. I knew the reverse was true for Varrick as well. I was the token American. Varrick was the token Jew.

  The papers’ insistence that indoctrination was not occurring was for the benefit of non-Germans. The state-controlled media was ordered to allay the fears of a war-weary world. The Germany that was rising again, less than twenty years after the end of the Great War, was an amiable neighbor and not quarrelsome.

  Of course, we also recognized the frightening implications of such reports. If newspapers were making claims on behalf of the government, claims we knew to be false from firsthand experience, then it stood to reason their other denials were actually a kind of “reverse inventory” of what the Nazis were, in fact, doing or planning.

  The papers proclaimed:

  Lebensraum, the supposed intention of Germany to expand beyond the borders established in the Treaty of Versailles, is not being taught in our schools. But an accurate history of geography will not be hidden from our youth. Should we lie to them? Should they be told that Germany was not once….

  And,

  This government has no intention of wasting money imprisoning individuals who’ve committed no crime. Lawabiding Jews are free to live their lives and conduct their business in peace, so long as that business does not conflict with..

  And,

  Chancellor Hitler was very congratulatory of the Negro American Athlete Jesse Owens. Rumors that Hitler remarked on the Negroes’ supposed lack of intelligence and sub-human origins are false….

  It was after a “science” lecture related to this last event that my newfound admiration for Varrick occurred.

  “Without question,” Herr Schmidt remarked, “the Negro is an inferior species to the Caucasian. There is near-universal scientific consensus on the point, and those who disagree are considered lunatics by researchers of actual experience. It is their subhuman, animal-like nature that allows them to excel in purely physical endeavors, yes, even above the Aryan. But their brains are no bigger than a dog’s, and their incapacity for higher thought is scientifically verified. So, while the Negro may be able to run faster or jump higher, who here would ever trade your place as an Aryan for that of a Negro?”

  Herr Schmidt meant the question rhetorically and as a joke, but he paused and looked around the room as if someone might respond affirmatively.

  In that moment, Varrick pounced. Slowly raising his hand from his place in the back row, he cleared his throat so Herr Schmidt and the whole class would know.

  “A funny man,” Herr Schmidt replied, and a few students laughed nervously.

  But Varrick did not put his hand down.

  Herr Schmidt glared at him. “Do you mean to say, Varrick, that you would prefer to be a mindless, inferior Negro, so long as you could win foot-races?”

  Varrick inhaled deeply as he rose from his seat to respond. Before then I had not noticed how tall he was.

  “Do you mean to say, Herr Schmidt, that there has never been a Negro who contributed anything of intellectual value to the world?” Varrick’s eyes flashed defiantly.

  “I certainly can think of none, can you?” Herr Schmidt had not finished his question before Varrick began his response.

  “Benjamin Banneker, 1731 to 1806, accurately predicted solar and lunar eclipses based on his own calculations, and published them in almanacs. Lewis Latimer, 1848 to 1928, made significant improvements to electric lights. Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, 1856 to 1931, performed the world’s first open-heart surgery. Garrett Morgan, born 1877, invented the gas-mask. George Washington Carver….”

  The list had been uttered so quickly and so calmly, that at first Herr Schmidt was too stunned to respond. Finally, in sneering reference to Varrick’s heritage, he shouted, “And what has a single dirty Jew given us?”

  Varrick’s face drained of color. He stood, silent and staring, white knuckles on clenched fists. I knew he was fighting an intense battle within himself: whether or not to beat Herr Schmidt to a pulp in front of the class.

  Schmidt turned his back on Varrick, picked up a piece of chalk, and began writing on the blackboard. The rest of our classmates remained facing backward in their seats. All eyes were fixed on Varrick as he inhaled raggedly and sank to his seat. His hands, now unclenched, shook slightly as he busied himself tidying a small stack of paper and a pencil at his desk.

  As students turned their attention once again to the front, Herr Schmidt resumed his lecture. “Margaret Sanger,” he barked, underlining her name on the board, “is perhaps the most notable scientist in the field of Malthusian Eugenics. It is her contention that the suffering of the Negro through hunger and poverty could be much reduced by affording them access to birth control and sterilization…a position very much in concert with Chancellor Hitler’s own views. In fact, she has established, in a primarily Negro population center, an office of her American Birth Control League.”

  This reference to Margaret Sanger, an American who endorsed Hitler’s racial policies, was aimed at me.

  I suffered silently through the remainder of the class.

  Outside, I couldn’t wait to congratulate Varrick.

  “The look.” I laughed, giddy with the memory, as we passed the crumbling complex of an abandoned dairy farm. “Oh Varrick, did you see the look on his face?”

  “I lost” came the sullen reply.

  I stopped and grabbed his arm, turning him toward me. Only then did I see angry tears hanging beneath both of his eyes. “What do you mean, Varrick? That was wonderful! You gave him all those names, those facts, that prove how ridiculous—”

  “But I couldn’t give him one of my own!” He pulled his arm from my hand. “I could have known he would insult me when he had no answer, but I said nothing. Lora, I dreamed of saying those things when Herr Schmidt first described this lesson at the beginning of term. I knew that when he brought it up again, I would be ready for him. But I wasn’t. It was the way he attacked! In that moment I had not even one example in my mind of one of my own people who had contributed anything meaningful to civilized society. And the way he phrased the question, what could I say? Would the salvation of our Lord Jesus be a good example of something ‘a dirty Jew’ gave the world? But I couldn’t even think to say that! I lost.”

  As he turned from me and wiped his eyes with his forearm, I stepped around to keep in front of him. “Varrick.”

  He turned away again.

  “Varrick.”

  I stepped again; he turned again, I stepped again, and we shared a little laugh before resuming a slower pace. Varrick walked me home nearly every day, though he lived quite the opposite direction. We continued awhile in silence, but I knew I had to make him understand how brave he’d been, especially in my eyes. “You did not lose. Anyway, that was not a debate; it was a personal insult. The fact Herr Schmidt had to resort to such a childish response means you won!”

  “But knowing I’m right is not the same as showing I am, in front of people who might otherwise believe such stupidity,” he said sternly. He was very earnest then: “Lora, things will only get worse. If I…if we are not prepared for everything to come, this lunacy will continue until…I don’t know what will happen. I just know that they’re very bad people, the ones who make these claims based on science, and they will use gullible people to do unspeakable things if we don’t all know how to speak up.”

  It was as if the devil himself wanted to prove Varrick’s point to me. Just then four of the boys from our class stepped around a corner as we approached it. It was Webber and Wilmar, the tow-headed Funk twins, and two
new boys who’d only just come to Reinhard Heydrich the week before.

  “’Tag,” Wilmar said, nodding. Webber repeated the greeting, though quieter, with a nervous chuckle. The other two boys said nothing, but they fanned out to form a semi-circle around Varrick and me.

  At first I didn’t realize their intention, so I returned their salutation, “Good day.”

  Varrick stepped forward and guided me behind him with a sweep of his arm. “Come, Lora, your father will be looking for us. We should get back to school before he sets out this way to find us.”

  “My father?” I repeated dumbly. But as I looked around Varrick’s arm and saw the sneering faces of the other boys, I suddenly knew what he had already realized.

  “One more lie to tell?” Wilmar said, his voice eerily high and wavering with nervousness…or excitement. “Dirty, lying Jew. We know you walk this way every day. There is no one coming for you at school.”

  Webber mouthed quietly, “Dirty Jew.”

  “Just like the lies you told in class today,” one of the new boys shouted, circling farther to our left. “Trying to make Herr Schmidt look foolish.”

  “Trying to make Herr Hitler look foolish,” the other corrected, moving to our right.

  “Please,” I said, “we don’t want a fight.”

  Wilmar sneered. “Funny thing that those who cannot win a fight are always first to say they don’t want one.”

  Varrick and I had, to this moment, been stepping backward almost in unison, as the boys widened their circle around us. Now Varrick stopped, set his jaw, and squared his shoulders. “I will fight any one of you and win,” he said, “but that is not your plan, is it?”

  From three sides they rushed at him then, the impact knocking me to the ground as well. I scrambled upright, yelling at them to stop, as Varrick fought a losing battle to free himself from the heap of attackers piled on top of him. The twins got to their feet and kicked him as the other two threw punches from atop his chest and legs.

  It was as though I were seeing the whole event from another place. I could hear my own screams and the thuds of their fists and feet against his head and body. I saw the spurt of blood from the flesh of Varrick’s forehead as the heel of Wilmar’s boot opened a gash.