The Curator's Daughter

by Melanie Dobson

  Her new father was gone most of the time. He polished the buttons on his uniform as well, but he never said goodbye, never kissed her head before he left.

  And this mama never seemed happy to see him when he came home. They would go away together, letting Lilly play with the dollhouses on her own. Sometimes, after he left, she could hear Mami crying, but she never cried when Lilly was around.

  The windows began to glow, and Mami looked at her watch. “It’s time for our walk.”

  Later today Lilly would go to Frau Weber’s apartment to help bake Apfelkuchen and play with her cat. Or she’d help Mami at the museum, putting things into boxes and covering them with scratchy sheets.

  But each morning, before they rode into town, they walked up the hill to a broken church so Mami could pray while Lilly played with a collection of sticks and leaves.

  Her old mama used to pray as well, except she knelt by her bed.

  Was that mama still praying? Perhaps she had adopted another daughter. Perhaps, one day, another woman would adopt Lilly, but she liked it here for now with Mami and Frau Weber. It was much better than the sunny home.

  A stuffed elephant under her arm, Lilly followed Mami down the front steps, out into the meadow and the trees. Something stirred the branches, and she reached for Mami’s hand, hidden under a messenger bag.

  They didn’t have wolves here—that’s what Mami had said—only in Poland. But that’s not what the matron told her, and the matron was always right.

  A German wolf would eat her for breakfast.

  “Stay close.” Mami wasn’t worried about wolves, but the cliffs, she’d said, were dangerous. And there were holes in this forest that could swallow up a girl.

  She clung to Mami so she wouldn’t get swallowed.

  “Will you tell me a story?” Lilly asked. Mami told the most wonderful stories about nuns who’d helped people during something called a plague. About artists and inventors and a woman named Katharine who died because she believed in Jesus.

  “Of course,” Mami said as they hiked around mossy stones and fallen branches. “Have I told you about the celestial war?”

  Lilly shook her head.

  “Four hundred years ago, the strangest thing happened right here above the trees.”

  “To the nuns?”

  “No, the nuns were gone by then, but all the people in Nuremberg woke to a sky full of color.”

  Like the sun, Lilly imagined, when it didn’t want to go to bed, spilling its paint across the blue.

  “Different colors and all sorts of shapes,” Mami continued. “There were spheres and wheels and smoke rolling in the air. And a giant black sword as if the heavenly beings were warring over Nuremberg.”

  Lilly didn’t understand all the words, but she knew sword.

  “Then the shapes disappeared,” Mami said. “And all we have left to remember that battle is an engraving and the description of an artist who saw it. He believed that a merciful God was sending a warning to Nuremberg. That God would punish this town if they didn’t repent and return to living as His children.”

  Lilly looked up at the sky, searching for a sword in the clouds.

  Was God going to whip her for losing her parents?

  “Wait inside for me,” Mami said, pointing at the abbey walls.

  Instead of building a house with branches, Lilly sat on a large rock, swinging her legs over the edge. She didn’t like being by herself while Mami was praying. More than anything, she hated being alone.

  A noise in the trees, a shuffle of leaves, and she jumped off the rock. Tiptoeing to the edge of the wall, she hid behind a tree so Mami could hear her if she screamed.

  Her new mama moved in a circle as if she were playing a game. Then she knelt in the grass and opened her bag. Inside was a Löffel, much bigger than the one from the dollhouse. And she began to dig.

  Why was Mami making another hole when there were already so many in this forest? Intrigued, Lilly began to step forward, but Mami had said she wasn’t allowed to walk in these woods alone. So she waited behind the tree trunk with her elephant, peeking out as Mami placed a cookie tin in the soil.

  When Mami finished, she put her spoon back into her bag and moved something over the hole. Then she began to circle through the grass again.

  Lilly rushed back to the church.

  Clouds as thick as pudding poured over the blue sky, the forest growing dark. Perhaps, if it rained hard enough, they could play with the dollhouses all day instead of going into town.

  They hurried back down the hill. The car would come soon, and Mami wouldn’t want to be in the forest when it arrived. She liked to wait inside the house, sometimes right beside the front window, watching the driver for ten or fifteen minutes before they opened the door. It was good for him to wait, she told Lilly.

  But Lilly didn’t like to wait. She was afraid that her potty would come in the front room or the car. She was afraid she wouldn’t be able to stop it.

  Something streaked across the meadow below, and Lilly’s hand trembled as she clung to Mami’s hand. If it was a wolf, could Mami scare it away?

  Then she saw a yellow tail, a fuzzy head that popped up from the grass.

  “Schatzi!” she shouted, letting go of Mami’s hand, racing toward the cat.

  Treasure. That’s what the name meant. A word she’d never forget.

  Lilly lifted the cat and cuddled it to her chest with her elephant. Schatzi must have been missing her.

  Did Frau Weber know the cat had left the apartment? She must be worried.

  Mami always held Schatzi when they visited Frau Weber, but this time she didn’t even stop to pet her. Instead she raced toward the house, and Lilly followed, carrying the cat in her arms.

  Lilly thought Mami would take off her coat, pour a glass of milk and cup of coffee like she always did after their walks, but she lifted the phone receiver instead.

  “I need to speak with Frau Weber, on Weissgerbergasse.”

  Lilly opened the refrigerator and poured her own milk as Mami paced beside the pantry door. Then she put some milk in a bowl for the cat to lap up.

  The line rang and rang until Lilly heard a woman’s voice. “She doesn’t seem to be home.”

  “Please try again.”

  Three times, Mami asked the woman to ring the same number.

  Where had Frau Weber gone?

  Lilly snuck upstairs with her elephant and Schatzi to show off her dolls. The attic was her special place, like the stones for Mami in the woods. Neither matrons nor wolves were welcome here, and she could pretend to play with her brothers on the bicycles.

  The door to the attic was open, and she thought this odd. Mami always closed it when they left for their walk. Had she forgotten this morning?

  She climbed the steps and her heart broke at the sight. Her beautiful houses, the shiny furniture and spoons, the dolls that played alongside her. Someone had taken der Schläger to all of it, as if it were a game.

  Now the pieces were scattered across the ground. Like the church on the hill.

  She fell on the floor, buried her head in her lap. Schatzi cuddled in beside her, and she held the cat close.

  Minutes passed before she heard footsteps shuffling up the stairs, the gasp on Mami’s lips.

  “The Gestapo was here,” Mami said, and in that moment, she sounded just like the matron.

  Lilly didn’t know this person—Gestapo. Why would he want to break her beautiful houses? She’d never broken anyone else’s things.

  Mami swept her and her elephant off the ground, leaving Schatzi behind to guard the attic. The black car was waiting outside, and this time Mami didn’t hesitate. They climbed inside, and the driver took them straight to Frau Weber’s home.

  32

  EMBER

  The flight was boarding when Ember and Dakota arrived at the gate. They stood together by the window, waiting for the agent to call her zone, and it felt as if everyone was staring, wondering if this classy uniformed man was goi
ng to fly their 767 to Frankfurt.

  “You still have about ten minutes,” Dakota said, glancing at his watch. “You want to be the last to board anyway, unless your backpack’s going in the overhead.”

  “I’ll keep it by my feet.” Her larger suitcase, she’d already checked at the ticket counter. “Thank you for arranging this.”

  Kindness warmed his eyes when he spoke again. “I want you to be safe.”

  “No one except my brother knows where I’ll be staying.”

  “Ember . . .” He took his cap off, brushed back his curly hair. “When exactly were you planning to tell me about Noah?”

  She looked back out at the plane. “Never.”

  Two baggage handlers tossed the last pieces of luggage onto the conveyor belt. Soon they’d be shutting the door to the jet bridge.

  “He seems like a great kid,” Dakota said.

  “The best.”

  “And he texts you every day?”

  “He comes over every day after school. If I’m not home right at 3:40, he checks in.”

  “That’s nice of you to hang out with him.”

  “I’m the lucky one,” she said. “He’s different from most kids his age, but I get him, and in some way, he gets me. I was different from the other kids too.” Different and desperate.

  “I think we’re all created to embrace the world in a unique way.”

  Noah would grow into the kind of man who stood for what was right, no matter what people cared to think about him.

  The agent called for final boarding.

  “How about a rain check on coffee?” Dakota asked as he escorted her toward the door.

  “I’d like that.”

  “I bet they have decent coffee in Nuremberg.”

  Her breath caught at the thought of spending time with him in Europe. “Seriously?”

  Brooke’s heart might fail when she found out. And the way her own heart was pounding, it might not make it either.

  “My last flight arrives in Paris on Thursday, and then I’m off for a week. I thought it would be fun . . .” His voice faded out and not even a buttoned-up uniform could mask the insecurity.

  As if what she thought actually mattered to him.

  “I could help you search for Gram’s labyrinth,” he continued. “I won’t get in the way of your work.”

  “I’d be grateful for your help.”

  The gate agent called her name over the intercom.

  “Will you text me when you land?” Dakota asked.

  She nodded as the agent scanned her phone.

  An awkward moment passed between them, as if Dakota might embrace her with his gold-trimmed arms, but he just brushed his hand over her shoulder. “Have a good trip, Ember.”

  She wanted to look back before the Jetway curved, to see him one last time. She didn’t turn, but her heart seemed to stretch as she crossed the Atlantic, all the way to Germany.

  Maybe together they could find out what happened to Hanna Strauss.

  PART THREE

  The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility.

  The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated.

  ROBERT JACKSON

  UNITED STATES CHIEF OF COUNSEL

  INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL IN NUREMBERG NOVEMBER 21, 1945

  33

  HANNA

  WINTER 1944

  Hanna peeled back the blackout curtains beside her bed and watched their meadow being transformed into a wonderland. The first snow used to mean that Advent would be soon upon them to celebrate the birth of the Christ child, but this winter held no hope of an Advent promise. She couldn’t even take Lilly to the Christkindlesmarkt with its gingerbread stalls, spiced wine, and merry-go-round that circled on these cold winter evenings.

  Light had been extinguished across their country, the Christmas markets and so many other things canceled. Even the light inside her, the hope for their future, had darkened in the past four years. The Germans continued to wait, but for what?

  The Americans had entered the war three years ago, but Vőlkischer Beobachter, the Nazi newspaper, said Germany was continuing to win the war against the Allies and the Russians, their men fighting on both fronts. As if Hitler planned to extinguish the light in their entire world.

  A picture of Charlie Ward swept into her mind, the memories of his short stay here. He’d been a light in her world, making her smile with the stack of books that he always carried around the university grounds, strapped together with a leather band. Fiercely handsome eyes that seemed to remember everything they saw. The long talks they’d had about religion and politics and the future of their world after the Treaty of Versailles.

  Charlie had been a scholar though, not a warrior. Was he fighting with Allied soldiers now? Or had a German soldier, a fellow student from the university even, taken his life?

  Lilly cried out, and Hanna rushed down the hallway to find blankets lumped on the floor again. Lilly’s eyes were wide when Hanna turned on the bedside lamp, hands clenched around her pillowcase, muttering about her brothers and wolves hidden in the trees and the beautiful dollhouses the Gestapo had crushed three years ago as if they wanted to steal everything from this girl.

  The terror had lessened over time, but with the change of seasons, the planes that sometimes rattled their ceiling, the nightmares returned with a startling strength as Lilly grew.

  The end of this narrow bed was the best place for Hanna to avoid bruises from the thrashing as Lilly hit and kicked someone trying to hurt her, still speaking words that Hanna didn’t understand. Words that Lilly didn’t understand either when Hanna repeated them back the next morning.

  She’d tried to waken Lilly once, but she had screamed and cried for the rest of the night, confused, it seemed, or overwhelmed. Hanna had never tried to waken her again.

  If only she could step into these nightmares with her, see what had happened long ago so she could help Lilly navigate her way to the other side. Or at least fight off the monsters in her mind.

  Lilly settled back on the mattress for a moment, and Hanna closed her eyes, knowing the respite might be brief.

  In those first months after Lilly arrived, Hanna had sent letters to friends and agencies across Berlin, inquiring about this girl who’d lost her parents. They could offer no help without a surname, of course, and she’d intended to go to Berlin to search herself one day.

  But the longer Lilly had stayed, the less Hanna wanted to search for her extended family.

  More than a year had passed since she’d sent a letter. The terror from the past still tormented Lilly, but in the daylight, she no longer seemed to be afraid.

  People across Nuremberg had continued to disappear until it seemed like anyone connected to the Jewish community had been sent away on trains. Rumors had drifted back from the east, scathing stories about people being killed in the Nazi camps. Her colleagues in the museum had whispered about extermination, fragments of information when the director wasn’t around. She prayed the rumors weren’t true, but on the nights like this, when she longed to hear news of friends like Frau Weber, she feared the worst.

  Four years had passed since Frau Weber left Nuremberg. After the Gestapo destroyed Opa’s dollhouses, the morning Schatzi arrived at the lodge, Hanna had visited her friend’s apartment. Another woman answered the door, a star stitched on her sweater to distinguish her from Aryan neighbors.

  Hanna had wanted to warn the lady back then. Tell her to leave this town before her family was swallowed up in the madness. Tell her to hide before the Nazis sent those she loved someplace else. But she suspected this woman might not really be one of the stars. The Gestapo, perhaps, was paying her to wear the emblem, to see who might show up at the door for refuge from the enemy.

  No one, not even Kolman, s
poke with Hanna about her last visit to Frau Weber’s house or the dollhouses that she and Lilly had tried to restore with nails and glue. The driver no longer took her to work, but the Gestapo agents circled around her drive several days a week, watching the house as if they might pay another visit if she stepped out of line.

  Lilly twitched several more times, calling out, and then her eyes began scanning the familiar leaves on her wallpaper, the vines twisted and stretched across a canvas of white.

  “Mami,” she gasped.

  The word, even in dismay, sounded sweet to Hanna’s ears. “I’ll stay with you.”

  Lilly’s voice trembled. “But I’ve wet the bed.”

  A deep breath, but Hanna didn’t sigh. Not when she saw the lingering fear in the girl’s eyes, the blue-striped pillow a shield against her chest. “It’s okay.”

  “I’m sorry.” Lilly’s body shook as if she were still asleep. “So sorry.”

  “We’ll clean it up.”

  Tears poured down her ruddy cheeks. Lilly was eight now but the pleading in her voice sounded like a toddler’s. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Hanna said. It was the fault of the demons who dared threaten her.

  She changed the bedcovering and poured the last of her verbena-scented bubble bath that she’d been saving into the tub, but the warm water didn’t stop Lilly’s trembling. Hanna helped her into dry pajamas, and Lilly sank into her chest as they watched the snow fall across the meadow together, the moonlight burnishing the layers of white.

  “Can the elephants see the snow?” Lilly asked, her stuffed animal tucked under an arm. Schatzi had curled up on the bed beside them.

  The zookeeper would have coaxed the animals into cages so they had shelter for the night, but it was possible they could still see outside. “Perhaps.”

  “They’ll be cold.”

  Hanna held her closer. “Not in their cages.”

  Lilly seemed satisfied with this knowledge as she nestled back into Hanna’s side. The two of them together, mother and daughter snuggled in the cool of this night with the toy elephant between them, snubbing the chaos outside that was tearing families apart.