by Bodie Thoene
“Mother. ” She nudged Anna awake. “Wake up, please. We need to talk.”
“Where were you?” Anna asked in a sleepy voice.
“Shhhh.” Elisa put a finger to her lips. “I’ve been in the cow barn. With Franz.”
Anna sat up and fumbled to light the lamp beside the bed. As the flame sputtered, she turned to Elisa in alarm. “What time is it?”
“Nearly one.”
“What have you been—”
Elisa was amused by her mother’s concern. After all, she had been on her own for several years. “Talking.”
“Talking? All this time?” Anna brushed straw from Elisa’s sweater.
Elisa smiled and nodded at her mother.
“Hmmm.” Anna pulled her robe around her shoulders.
“But listen, Mama, you were right. Right about Otto. Franz says we must be careful. Very careful around Otto.”
Now Anna looked terribly concerned. Elisa knew she would rather worry about a few kisses than the politics of their hosts. “Only him?”
Elisa nodded, then continued with a rush, “Yes. Everyone else is very . . . Austrian. Not even Frau Marta or Herr Karl suspect that Otto is pro—”
“Why did Franz tell you all this? If it is such a secret. ”
“Oh, Mama, he is so wonderful. So . . . kind.”
“But, Elisa, you have only just met him!”
“We talked a long time. I told him about Thomas, and he told me about . . . someone.” She waved her hand in front of her face as though turning the page of a book. “But mostly he told me that there are lots of ways that people from Germany can get an extension of their travel papers. Maybe you and the boys won’t have to go back if Papa doesn’t come.”
Anna seemed almost indignant. “He is coming! I know he will come. They can’t keep him.”
“But it may take longer than the two weeks allowed on your permit. Franz told me about a family from Munich who—”
“Elisa, if your father does not come soon I must go back. The boys can stay here—stay with you. But, Elisa, I must . . . ”
For the first time Elisa saw tears welling up in her mother’s eyes. She reached out and embraced her, then took her by the shoulders and looked her square in the eye. “You must not rush into anything, Mother! Don’t you see that’s what the Nazis are after? More hostages. More Jews for ransom.”
Anna drew her breath in sharply. “You didn’t tell Franz that your father is Jewish? That in the eyes of Germany we are all Jews?” She was shocked and fearful.
“No. It wouldn’t matter to him, I’m sure; but listen, he has a plan! If Papa doesn’t come in a few days, there are ways for us to stay without arousing the suspicion of the German authorities.”
Anna cleared her throat and tossed her head as if to indicate that she was entirely awake and ready to consider anything that might forestall their forced return to Germany. “Franz is . . . impertinent,” she said almost haughtily. “But trustworthy, I think. We have nowhere else to turn. Today I almost went to the village priest, but—”
“There are better ways. More organized.” Eagerly Elisa pulled a carefully penned list from her pocket and laid it on the quilt in front of her mother. “We’ll have to go to Innsbruck—”
“Innsbruck? An hour and a half by train.”
“Mama, that’s the point. Our German papers are made out to Lindheim. We cannot hope to have them changed here where we are known as Linder.”
“You told Franz our identity?”
“No. And he didn’t ask. He doesn’t want to know. But he knows enough to figure out that our real name cannot be Linder. The point is, Kitzbühel is a small place. People talk and ask questions, and they want to know everything about everyone nowadays.”
The memory of the telegraph operator flashed through Anna’s eyes. “Yes. Your father will not write to us here. You are right. If we go to Innsbruck . . . yes. It is a big city. Strangers pass through all the time. For one day we can be Lindheim. Fix our passes, mail a letter to Theo—” The last thought caused her to cloud up with emotion.
“Right. Anything that comes into Germany—a wire or a letter—will be read by the Gestapo. We must give them information, stories of our family’s vacation. Tell how we miss Papa and hope he comes soon. You see?”
“Will it do any good at all, Elisa?” Anna was close to despair. She seemed almost afraid to hope.
“Mother”—Elisa put her hand on Anna’s arm—“Letters to Papa from Innsbruck will be read by the men who keep him. Innsbruck is only across the pass from Germany.” She frowned. “If Papa should get away somehow, by some miracle, the Gestapo will not look for him to come to Kitzbühel, but to Innsbruck, you see?”
Anna nodded, certain that she would not sleep again all night. “We should make some tea,” she said absently as she studied the list.
“We can leave for Innsbruck tomorrow, if you like. If we tell Frau Marta that we want to go Christmas shopping. I am certain the boys can stay here without us.” For a moment Elisa felt excitement, hope. Then she shuddered at the thought of all that was against them.
“I am afraid, Elisa. Afraid that there are no miracles left for anyone in Germany anymore.” There was sadness in her eyes as she looked at the volume of Faust lying on the bedside table. “What miracles can there be when Germany has sold her soul?”
For the first time in all the days of worry, Anna cried. She buried her face in her hands and let small sobs shake her shoulders.
Elisa patted her helplessly on the back.
“Where is all the world that this can happen and everyone looks the other way?” Anna sobbed. “Where is England? Where was France when Hitler took the Rhineland and broke the Treaty of Versailles? They could have stopped him then, Elisa. He has shown himself to be some sort of demonic genius to the German people. He takes what he wants and claims it is for the good of the people. He has taken everything your father worked for. A lifetime of work. And now he would take Theo’s life as well. How can this happen? How?”
Elisa did not answer. She could not. Often she had heard men speak of Adolf Hitler as the bully on the block. Day after day he proved just how much power a bully could obtain if others simply stepped back and allowed it. First he had proved the power of intimidation in Germany. The laws of humanity and the Weimar Republic had been twisted for his own use. Now he was conducting international policy in the same way. The fate of Theo Lindheim would not stir more than a passing comment in some London club. And yet Elisa could not help feeling that the terrible things happening to her father and thousands of other innocent people in Germany were somehow setting the stage for the future. Perhaps her mother was right. Maybe in all the world there were no miracles left.
“They say that England is too far away to help,” Elisa whispered, “and God is too high up to hear—”
“God is not too high, Elisa.” Anna drew herself up and wiped her eyes. “He is where He has always been. Either in the heart of a man or not. We have watched the laws die, your father and I, and it is like Pastor Jacobi said: ‘They crucify the Messiah again when they crucify true justice.’”
Elisa blanched at the strength of such words and the certain fate of such a statement against the new laws of the Reich. “He said that?”
“Yes. And they arrested him, warned him to excommunicate all Jewish believers in his congregation or he would be arrested again. They released him, and he warned your father. We knew we had to get out then.”
“They will kill Pastor Jacobi for that.”
“Yes.” Anna sighed. “He told your father he was content with his fate—that men had also killed Jesus for speaking the truth.” She took Elisa’s hand. “There are no miracles, Elisa, but it is not because God is too high up. No, He is still being crucified with men like Jacobi and ten thousand others in those terrible camps. Maybe even your father. We have to admit that possibility, I suppose. The Nazis and their torchlight marches, the flag, the pagan symbols. They will crucify men to satisfy their need for a sacrific
e to this god of theirs.” Anna leaned her head back wearily on the pillows. “It has gone too far. People let it go too far. And now it has taken over because no one spoke loud enough against it. The few who have are already dead or rotting in some prison. Your father has been lucky up until now. The people admired him. Now I suppose Hitler will find some way to make him an enemy of Germany; he has done it with so many others. Everything that is good—” She shook her head as she stared at Theo’s skis propped in the corner.
The two women sat silently for a long time. Downstairs they could hear the call of the cuckoo clock hanging in the Stube.
“It is two in the morning, Mother,” Elisa said gently. “Do you still want a cup of tea?”
“No.” Anna raised her eyebrows slightly in resignation. “No. It is too late. We should sleep, and perhaps there will be one more miracle when we wake up.”
***
Drawing on some hidden reserve of strength, Anna Lindheim descended the steps into the low-ceilinged Stube with a smile on her lips. Frau Marta greeted her like an old friend and bustled about preparing a hearty breakfast of sausage and eggs as Anna explained their plans for the trip to Innsbruck.
“Certainly!” Frau Marta exclaimed. “Go and have a good time! Your fellows will be fine here with Friedrich and Helmut. No doubt we will see them only at mealtime.” She babbled on happily as her seventeen-year-old daughter Gretchen served them fresh bread and butter churned just that morning in the predawn hours.
Gretchen was as silent as her mother was verbose. Her thick red hair was braided and carefully pinned up. She smiled shyly as she poured tall glasses of frothy milk and blushed when Wilhelm openly stared into her gentle brown eyes. Elisa suspected that Wilhelm’s obvious interest in the girl was one reason he did not want to ask the Wattenbarger’s opinion about Jews.
“You will stay out of trouble, boys?” Anna asked her sons.
They both nodded in unison, their faces reflecting the innocence of angels. “Of course, Mother.”
Frau Marta ladled eggs onto their already heaping plates. “And if they do not behave”—she waved the spoon threateningly in the air—“I have four sons of my own, don’t forget.”
Dieter laughed nervously, and Wilhelm continued to gaze at Gretchen with undisguised interest. At seventeen, Wilhelm was already nearly six feet tall and had the same ruggedly handsome features of his father. Elisa was convinced that shy Gretchen was as interested in Wilhelm as he was in her. “You may need something a little stouter than a spoon to beat my brothers with, Frau Marta,” she said.
Wilhelm shot her a sullen look, then returned his gaze to Gretchen. “Because she is twenty-three she knows everything,” he grumbled, and Gretchen giggled approval of his remark.
Their looks were not lost on the sturdy farmwife. “They’ll be out in the snow today,” she murmured. “That will cool them a bit, I think.”
“Can Franz take us to the station?” Anna asked.
“No. Otto and Franz are helping their father at the barn this morning. We have a mare in foal. Franz has been sleeping in the barn. A fine little mare, and this is her first. Friedrich will take you.” She disappeared into the kitchen, and the matter was settled.
***
Three hours later Anna and Elisa stepped off the train in Innsbruck. The sky, a clear blue, seemed suspended on the jagged white peaks of the mountains that reared up from the valley slopes in every direction.
There was a telegraph office in the Bahnhof, but Anna walked past it and out of the station onto Rudolfstrasse. “The place is thick with German tourists,” she whispered to Elisa.
It was easy to distinguish the Germans from the native Austrians. Tourists from Berlin and Munich often sported the comical little mustache inspired by Hitler, while the Tyroleans had long, drooping mustaches and wore the red-and-white colors of Austria on their armbands. The Chancellor of Austria was from the Tyrol, and in this part of the country the people made their politics quite clear to visitors from across the border. They made their statements without uttering a word to the German tourists.
Porters, guides, and carriage drivers accepted German marks, but they did not accept the strange notions of their guests. Coffeehouses frequented by native Tyroleans were often rocked with laughter about the flatlanders and their curious ways. Publicly, however, the Austrians were polite and correct in their relations with the Germans, ready to remind them that the Tyrol had been part of Austria for five hundred years, but only briefly was it linked to Prussia. Hitler’s claims that Austria should be unified with Germany were scoffed at in the face of history.
Nearly all of these pleasant Tyroleans could name ancestors who had lost their lives in a battle against Germans in 1866. Most of them believed that their independence from the grasping tentacles of the Nazi Reich would be safeguarded by the League of Nations and an alliance with Rome and Hungary. It was certain that Italy did not want the Germans at their back door, and only Austria stood between the nations of Germany and Italy. Innsbruck itself was the crossroad, the buffer that separated the two giants. If Hitler moved against Austria, the government of Vienna had the promise of Rome that Italian forces would come to the aid of little Austria.
The street was lined with horse-drawn carriages. Anna called up to a driver. “We are in need of a good hotel. Tyroler Haus we hear is close to the Bahnhof, bitte.” Her accent betrayed her Viennese upbringing. He smiled and tipped his cap. The smile was genuine. She was obviously an Austrian.
“The Tyroler Haus is just there. On Bahnstrasse. Have you any luggage?” he asked, climbing down from the carriage.
“No,” Anna answered hurriedly. “We need a room for a friend. Danke!” She took Elisa’s arm and walked quickly toward the hotel, which was directly across from the Post and a branch of the telegraph office.
Elisa recognized the place from Franz’s description as they entered the lobby of the typically Tyrolean hotel. The building had probably been built two hundred years earlier. Heavy beams and low ceilings were dark with the patina of age. “A hotel room?” she asked as her mother stepped up to the desk.
Anna did not respond to her; instead she addressed the gray-haired old man in leather breeches who slipped mail into the slots of the boxes behind the counter. “Have you a room, mein Herr?”
He turned slowly, appraising her over the top of his spectacles. “It is high season, Fraülein,” he explained. “Nothing at all, I’m afraid. No. Nothing.” On his sleeve the colors of Austria were tied.
Anna looked disappointed. She frowned, then stared hard at his armband. He noticed her gaze and smiled slightly. “When will you have a room available?” she asked, lowering her voice.
“Perhaps a day or two. Is there some way I might help you?”
Anna looked into his face, then back at the armband as though she was making a decision. “Yes. I think you might.” She hesitated and looked at Elisa. “We need to rent a room.”
“I have no rooms today.”
“Then for tomorrow.”
He checked the registry. “Of course. Yes. Tomorrow. And for how long will you need the room?”
“Until Christmas Day. Perhaps longer, but at least until then.” She smiled her most charming smile, and he slid the registry across the counter to her.
“You have just come in on the train? You have luggage?”
“No luggage. The room is for a friend.” She signed her name.
“Also from Vienna?” He seemed pleased that he had recognized her accent.
“No. From Berlin.”
A veil of reserve immediately dropped over his face. “From Berlin.” There was a coolness in his voice.
Anna leaned closer. “We are hoping he will come.” There was an urgency in her tone that made the old clerk meet her gaze.
“Yes. I see.” He looked troubled as he studied the name written on the registry. “He is coming alone?”
“There may be others who ask about him. Or they may ask about me. How long I have registered, thin
gs like that. They may ask about my two sons.” Anna gestured toward Elisa. “And my daughter.”
“Yes.” He nodded. “And do your children like Innsbruck? They enjoy skiing?” He studied the name again, then added, “Frau Lindheim?”
“Very much.” She was certain that the old Austrian understood some of what was happening. “And they hope to see their father before Christmas.”
“Indeed. Innsbruck is such a fine place for the holidays. Much more pleasant than Berlin. Berlin is so gray and dreary nowadays I hear.” He winked knowingly. “The Tyroler Haus shall eagerly await the arrival of your husband, Frau Lindheim. He will not have far to go from the station.”
“There may be a message sent to me here.”
“It will be in your box when you return.”
“And now I am in need of a good physician.” She touched his red-and-white armband. “One who perceives distress as clearly as you do.”
“I hope you are not ill!” The old man seemed alarmed.
“My oldest son, Wilhelm, has injured himself on the slopes.”
“Wilhelm.” He repeated the name as though filing it away in his memory. “Ski injuries are quite common in Innsbruck.” He wrote down the name of a doctor and slid the paper to her. “Doctor Wertmann. A good fellow.” He lowered his voice. “Jewish. Also from Berlin recently. He is quite discreet, Frau Lindheim.”
“I recognize the name.” She folded the paper and put it in her coat pocket, then opened her purse to pay. “How much do I owe you for the room, Herr—”
“Schroder.” He held up a hand in protest. “You owe me nothing, Frau Lindheim, until the guest arrives, ja? And we will hope for your sake that he comes. At that time I will happily accept payment for lodging. You will need a room number and a key.” He turned to scan the boxes, then pulled a key out of number seven. “A French couple has the room until tomorrow. I will hold it open for Herr Lindheim after they check out.”
***
Elisa was astonished at the ease with which they had made a much-needed connection in Innsbruck. They had, in fact, told the old clerk nothing incriminating, and yet her mother had given him all the information needed in the likelihood that the Gestapo should check their lodgings in Austria. When asked, he could tell them that Frau Theo Lindheim was staying at the hotel with her three children, and that the oldest boy was injured in a skiing accident.