The Gathering Storm

by Bodie Thoene

  For his part, Varrick made no sound. The assailants grunted and panted with the effort of the beating, but the only noise that came from Varrick was his hair brushing the dirt and gravel beneath him as he turned his head from side to side in a futile effort to avoid their blows.

  A small pebble bounced toward me from the scuffle, and I suddenly knew how I could help. I looked quickly around for a rock big enough to wield as a weapon. At the base of the wall of the dilapidated dairy building a chunk of masonry with jagged edges on one side seemed to glow bone-white atop the brown dirt of the road.

  Rushing to retrieve the rock, I began swinging wildly. The first of my flailing efforts missed completely but rustled Webber’s hair. The next blow connected with his skull, and he crumpled at my feet.

  I repeated the strike at the boy sitting on Varrick’s chest, and he yelped like a wounded dog and jumped away, wincing and rubbing his ear. That movement freed Varrick’s arms, and he snagged Wilmar’s boot in his hands and twisted it violently. Wilmar had to roll away from Varrick and to his knees to avoid having his ankle snapped.

  I hit Wilmar next, and he collapsed next to his brother.

  Varrick, sitting up now, delivered a single square blow to the boy still atop his legs. With a distinct crack, the adversary’s nose disappeared in a torrent of blood, and he screamed and fell backward.

  The second boy I’d hit was considering re-entering the fray, but I bared my teeth, growled, and menaced him with the bloody rock. He and his friend ran then, leaving the unconscious Funk twins at our mercy.

  Varrick slumped to his elbows, and I ran to him. His face was a mess—lips swollen and cut, eyes puffing shut. A horizontal gash extended from the outside edge of his left eyebrow to the center of his forehead, painting the whole side of his face with a thick sheet of blood. His cheek was swirled brown where it had mixed with the dust and debris from the road.

  His starched white shirt had pulled from his waist during the fight, baring his stomach and ribs. His body already showed the first signs of bruising from the punches landed there.

  As I helped him to his feet, he still made no noise, no tears, nor any complaints of pain. That was the moment I realized what an incredible man he was. He had no fear of physical pain, though I knew his must be unbearable. Yet he had cried real tears for being unable to make a better defense of what was right.

  He leaned against my shoulder, and I helped him walk to my home for my mama, who was a nurse, to tend. Varrick Kepler was a young man I admired immensely.

  It was in the weeks following Varrick’s afterschool encounter with the bullies that I began to understand how dangerous life in Germany had become for adults as well.

  It was a blustery night in Berlin, about a week before Christmas. A howling wind gleefully flung handfuls of sleet against the upperstory windows of our home. No doubt the furnace in our basement was doing its best, but it could not keep chilling drafts from exploring every hallway and rushing down the back of my neck when I shifted position. I was unconsciously holding my breath, but when I finally gasped for air, what I inhaled was a combination of the crisp scent of pine boughs, the reek of coal smoke, the familiar mustiness of the old parsonage…and danger.

  I was not supposed to be listening to the conversation taking place in our parlor. I lay out of sight, on a stair landing one floor above. The hour was late, and the gathering supposedly secret to all but my father and mother.

  No such secret could ever be kept around our house for long. From early that morning my father and mother had engaged in whispered conferences. There had been hasty knocks on our front door. My father had accepted cryptic notes passed by messengers with pulled-down hat brims and turned-up coat collars. These and other signals combined to involve me in the conspiracy, invited or not.

  Besides, I knew all of the participants by their voices. Along with my father’s resonant baritone, I recognized the deeper register of my uncle Theo—his sentences punctuated by dry, barking coughs from the cold he couldn’t shake, to which he habitually added, “Pardon me.”

  I also knew Pastor Bonhoeffer’s voice. If my father spoke as an ocean liner moves, forging ahead with deliberate, reasoned speed, Pastor Bonhoeffer’s inflection was a sailing ship, swooping in graceful lines before tacking abruptly to bring a whole new perspective into a discussion.

  “It is only a matter of time before my seminary is closed,” Bonhoeffer said. “The Reich will not tolerate our opposition much longer. Reichsbishop Mueller is on the offensive again.”

  “I have always found him offensive,” Papa growled.

  Pastor Bonhoeffer spoke as a founding member of the Confessing Church—the organization of Protestant pastors who denounced the official German evangelical church for becoming one more arm of the Nazi party.

  “How long do you think you have?” I heard Papa murmur.

  “Months rather than years. They will shut our doors next summer if not before; Finkenwalde and elsewhere; me and others. Barth has already left Germany for Switzerland.”

  “And what will you do then?” my uncle queried, pausing between each scrap of words for a sound like the rasp of coarse sandpaper on rough wood. “Excuse me. Will you leave for America, Dietrich?”

  “I have in mind to keep doing what I’m doing,” Bonhoeffer returned, “but in a much less sedentary way. A ‘seminary on the run,’ as it were. If the students cannot come to the instructor, then I’ll go to them…one village at a time.”

  Even though the remaining member of the meeting had not spoken before, I knew him instantly as well: Richard Kepler, Varrick’s father. “Perhaps when the Nazis are chasing you, they’ll leave off chasing Jews for a time?” This was a grim jest, and no one laughed. All present knew the story of Varrick’s beating. Like the Keplers, my uncle Theo was ethnically Jewish, even though Christian. As such they were untermenschen according to the Nuremburg laws—subhuman in the eyes of the Reich.

  “It’s you, Richard, and your family, who should leave for America or England,” uncle Theo advised somberly. “The same choice I face myself.”

  Papa said, “Surely we can protect the members of our congregations, Aryan or Jewish.”

  I shivered at Pastor Bonhoeffer’s next words: “You will not even be able to protect yourself, Robert. If they close the Confessing seminaries, they will also suppress resisting churches. They will replace each true Christian shepherd with one more properly wolfish…I mean, patriotic.” Almost as an afterthought he added, “…and the synagogues they will burn.”

  5

  That Christmas everything I had believed about life changed forever.

  My cousin, Elisa Lindheim, returned home to Berlin from Vienna, where she played violin in a prominent orchestra. Elisa’s mother, Anna, was my father’s half-sister.

  Though Elisa was older than me by several years, we were closer than just cousins. There was nothing I could not reveal to her. No secret was too sacred that I feared to share it.

  Even so, a wide gulf seemed to separate us that holiday.

  Elisa had returned to a Germany almost unrecognizable from that of her childhood. The strain was palpable on their family.

  Elisa’s father, Theo Lindheim, was a decorated war hero who had flown aeroplanes in the Great War. He was also the owner of a much-admired Berlin department store.

  But my uncle Theo was also a Jew, and Elisa was half-Jewish. By reason of the Aryan laws about racial purity, my dear cousin was among the second tier of those most hated by the Nazis. Her father, being both wealthy and a Jew, was in the highest category of those slated for arrest. The Lindheim family was watched by the Gestapo. Without changing one bit, without committing any crime, they had become enemies of Hitler’s Third Reich.

  I had not suspected that uncle Theo and Aunt Anna had been preparing for the worst for some time. Elisa’s passport was Czech, not German. She performed in Vienna under the Aryan stage-name of Elisa Linder.

  I never imagined that the worst could actually come to pass
in my own family as madness gripped Germany by the throat.

  Elisa was distant and very quiet at our family gathering. She played her violin for us as we opened gifts several days early before the Christmas tree, but I noticed the light of joy was gone from her beautiful face. Blue eyes, so much like those of my aunt Anna, were downcast.

  That Christmas Lindheim’s Department Store was bursting with holiday cheer. The birch-paneled walls and the mirrored columns of the hall dedicated to scarves and shawls were festooned with greenery. Bright red holly berries and sprays of mistletoe defined the archways.

  Only the red-and-black banners of Nazi supremacy, which state ordinance decreed must drape the outside facade of the building, spoke of how things had changed. The shining electric lights of the Christmas star on Lindheim’s roof seemed in danger of being swallowed up in a swarm of creeping spiders.

  The day she and I went Christmas shopping in her father’s store, she was constantly glancing from side to side. I must admit, I was startled when I followed her gaze and spotted a Gestapo agent trailing behind us. He smiled in a tight-lipped, arrogant way when she noticed him.

  He wanted her to know she was being watched.

  Over lunch in the elegant Tea Room, with its pale blue and silver brocade carpet and its art deco brushed-chrome wall sconces, I confessed to Elisa that I was in love with Eben Golah. Her expression was one of pity for me.

  Elisa replied, simply, in a barely audible whisper, “Oh, Lora, but Eben is a Jew…as I am, as my father is. Eben must be leaving Germany forever.”

  I nodded in agreement that this was the plan, never thinking that perhaps Uncle Theo had also made plans for a desperate escape for his family. Elisa knew what was about to transpire, but she never spoke one word to me.

  Who among us would live and who would die was something I pondered when I climbed into my bed at night. The pink floral wallpaper and row of stuffed teddy bears on my shelf seemed suddenly too childish for the terror raging around us.

  Varrick was still recovering from the beating and did not come to church all through Advent. Many whom we had counted as faithful parishioners stayed away that year. I wrote Christmas cards to my Texas cousins and dreamed of holidays in America.

  Papa and Mama and I called on the Keplers at their beautiful three-story home on Christmas Eve. Swastikas and foul epithets were scrawled on the hewn stone exterior.

  Servants who had worked for many years in the Kepler home had quit at the “suggestion” of Nazi party members. Mrs. Kepler, a petite, elegant woman in her late thirties, peeked out from behind the lace curtains and then answered the door herself. Her doeeyes brimmed with tears when my mother stepped into the foyer and embraced her. The aroma of cinnamon and apples filled my senses.

  “Happy Christmas,” Mama greeted Mrs. Kepler, though we all knew it was not happy, nor could it be.

  “Oh, Janet!” Mrs. Kepler cried. “What a chance you take coming here.”

  Just then, Mr. Kepler, looking very gray and weary, stepped from his study. Papa extended his hand and greeted him with these words, “The Messiah of Israel is born in Bethlehem. We bring good tidings that our Redeemer is near.”

  Mr. Kepler could not speak for a moment; then what he said startled me. “Herod rules even now. He seeks the lives of the sons of Israel.”

  Papa replied, “But we who see through the eyes of faith know the end of Herod’s story.”

  I glanced past Mr. Kepler into the study. Handsome and muscular, Eben Golah looked back with brilliant green eyes from the burgundy leather chair opposite the mahogany desk. Dressed in a brown tweed hunting jacket and corduroy trousers, Eben offered a faint smile. His tan boots were scuffed as though he had hiked a long way through the mountains. I did not smile back, but rather stared at him with open curiosity as though I were studying a framed photograph. For the first time it struck me that he looked Jewish, with his strong jaw and curly hair—much like Varrick and Varrick’s father—only Eben’s hair was a dark red.

  Mrs. Kepler kissed my cheek. “And you, Lora, brave girl.”

  Papa replied, “Lora will not be returning to school after the holidays. I’ll instruct her at home.”

  Mrs. Kepler directed me to the parlor as the adults went into the study. I heard Mr. Kepler say, “…Eben is a very old friend.”

  Varrick was stretched out on the ornate Victorian sofa. Light filtered through leaded-glass windows and streamed over his shoulder. A red, leather-bound copy of Ivanhoe with gilt-edged pages was open on his lap. He looked up when we entered and smiled through swollen lips. I had been told some ribs were fractured. His beautiful Sephardic nose was broken. The break would forever be a reminder to me of that terrifying day. I went to him and sat in the highbacked chair near him as our parents and Eben spoke in quiet, urgent voices.

  Suddenly shy, I said, “Happy Christmas, Varrick Kepler.”

  “Happy Christmas, Lora Bittick.” He shrugged. “Because of you I’m alive, I think.”

  “Oh, Varrick.” I simply gazed in pity at his poor, wounded face.

  He held up the volume. “Ivanhoe. Have you read it?”

  “No.”

  “Eben brought it to me from England. A Hanukkah gift. Sir Walter Scott. So I can practice my English.”

  I admired the volume. “Ivanhoe.”

  “I must loan it to you when I’m finished. The heroine reminds me of you. Very courageous.”

  I blushed at the intensity of his eyes on me. “I should like to be the heroine of a novel, but I’m not made of courage.”

  “You don’t look like her. She’s dark, and you’re fair. But inside, your heart is like her heart. I thought of you when I began to read. I remembered you wading in among them.”

  “I think of how you spoke the truth.”

  “Foolish, I suppose.”

  “We should all remain fools, or truth will perish. What did St. Paul say? The wisdom of the gospel is foolishness to those who perish? Something like that.”

  “I fear wise fools may perish and the truth with us unless we leave Germany.”

  I touched his arm and then drew back, startled at my boldness. “Varrick, there’s a place in the world where truth still survives. Must be.”

  “Maybe in America. Not in the Reich, Lora. Fear has made truth unpopular. The world’s upside down.”

  “Christ in us must turn it right again.”

  “One day, perhaps.”

  We looked into one another’s eyes for a long moment. In the study Mrs. Kepler cried quietly, and we heard Mr. Kepler say to my father and mother, “The leaders of the Youth Corps seek the hearts of the youth. They’ll have them, too, unless we can hold firm to the education of our children.”

  Papa replied, “Lora won’t return to state school at the beginning of the term. We must resist the anti-Semitic, anti-biblical teaching, or we’ll no longer find Christ in the hearts of our youth.”

  Eben chose his words carefully. “It is too late for those in the Reich who are Hebrews. They have no choice but to leave the Reich, or they will not survive. This is not a new evil, but it is perhaps the most violent assault against Jews since Jerusalem fell beneath the boots of Rome. I’m doing everything I can to find a way of escape to England for my Hebrew brothers and sisters.”

  Papa’s voice was deep and confident when he answered. “God declared to Israel, in Genesis chapter 12: ‘I will bless those who bless you. And those who curse you I will curse.’ Neither the church nor the nation will stand if we turn our back on such a promise…God’s Covenant may not be disregarded. This is how we know National Socialism is the darkest and most ancient evil.”

  Mr. Kepler answered, “If my son is beaten nearly to death, and my wife is refused service by the neighborhood baker, the Covenant won’t save me. Germany will eventually fall in disgrace for what it has done, but I must seek refuge for my family before we’re swept away as well.”

  Varrick nodded at his father’s words and said to me, “So, you see, Lora, we must go away. N
ot because we’re cowards, but because we must live to fight against this on another front. Germany is lost.”

  “I understand. I’ll miss you.” I felt very grown up in that moment. The friend I admired with all my heart would be leaving for some distant haven. I did not like growing up so suddenly. I asked God in my heart, Why must we know so much?

  God answered me with a thought. Just as a young David faced Goliath, the youth who follow Christ are compelled by the apathy of the world to carry heavy burdens and fight great battles.

  I said to Varrick, “Christ the Savior is born…. Greater is He who is in you, than he who is in the world.1 I’ll pray that the Lord will help you find a way of escape.”

  “And you? Back to Brussels? Or America?”

  “I’m not afraid for myself. But I don’t want to stay in a nation where children of Abraham are not welcome.”

  He took my hand in his and brushed my fingers with his lips. “Then it’s indeed a happy Christmas, Lora Bittick.”

  Eben was polite but cool to me when he met with Papa. His reserve broke my heart. “Why does Eben Golah come here so often?” I asked Papa after one such visit. I knew Papa heard the resentment in my voice. I do not doubt that he understood the true reason I was so angry when Eben came to talk all night: my adolescent infatuation with him, my childish resentment of his indifference.

  “History holds the truth. It must not be forgotten. He is a man who brings us gifts from a distant place.” Papa passed the bread and then the butter. He looked away from meeting my gaze in such a way that I recognized he knew a secret he would never share.

  I assumed Eben was a messenger who delivered some financial support for our family and the ministry.

  I said no more about it but ate my supper in sullen silence.

  The next morning my studies were laid out on the dining table like a banquet. The volume of John Keats’ poetry had been my favorite since our summer in Switzerland. Among all his poems, I most cherished “Ode to a Nightingale,” which was strangely linked in my heart to my love for Eben Golah.