The Women in the Castle

by Jessica Shattuck

  The home was not all bad, though. It was a cozy stucco house outside a village in the foothills of the mountains. It had a pleasant garden full of fruit trees and flowers, a broken fountain, and a high brick wall. The children were not allowed to leave.

  Frau Vortmuller, the potato-faced grandmother in charge of the place, was not unkind. She was firm and orderly and saw to it that her charges were bathed and clothed and fed. Every night, she played the recorder for them: sorrowful folk ballads about poor millers’ daughters and princes, witches and resourceful, neglected youngest sons. These were sweeter, softer melodies than the Nazi-endorsed songs the children learned from Herr Stulper, who supervised their reeducation. He taught them “The Rotten Bones Are Trembling,” “The Horst Wessel Song,” and “Germany Awake,” all full of verses about blood, slavery, and revenge; politics and war.

  Every day, Frau Vortmuller wore the same tweed skirt and green jacket with a Nazi Mutterkreuz, which she had been awarded for bearing eight children, on the lapel. Four of these were dead: two killed in the war, one dead at birth, and another who had “succumbed” in an institution for the “feeble-minded.” Frau Vortmuller hung this one’s picture in the pantry, where she could see his face every time she pulled out the ingredients for supper. Of those living, her sons had not yet returned from wherever they’d been fighting, and her daughters were married mothers themselves. Martin found the Mutterkreuz pin beautiful—with its gold points and shiny blue inset—and the pride with which she rubbed it clean and wrapped it in a handkerchief every evening lent it an almost holy significance.

  In the weeks after the war ended, Frau Vortmuller, a religious woman, began to speak to the children about God. Once she was the only supervisor left at the Children’s Home—Herr Stulper had taken off at the first sign of the Americans—who was there to reprimand her? The Americans, who held church every Sunday in their barracks and wore crosses underneath their uniforms? She included Bible readings and nightly prayers in the children’s bedtime routine. Herr Stulper would have reported her. He had taught them about racial purity and German Heimat and the divine wisdom of their Führer and had no patience for what he called “Christian superstitions.” Mostly the children hated him. Although he had led them on a few wonderful hikes in the mountains and let them listen to Nazi-endorsed radio programs. Martin grew to love one song that was played often: “Erika,” which he understood to be a folksy ballad about a flower and a pair of childhood sweethearts. Until Liesel “Falkman” whispered to him that singing along to it was as bad as spitting on his father’s grave. Martin did not understand this. How could it be like spitting on his father’s grave? The fathers and mothers of the children in the home had made “mistakes,” he understood. Now they were dead. And it was Frau Vortmuller and Herr Stulper’s job to ready them for new families—rich, powerful Nazi families who would teach them to be good Germans.

  Bullshit, Liesel said. Our mothers aren’t dead—they’re in prisons or concentration camps.

  For what? Martin asked.

  For plotting to kill Hitler, Dummkopf.

  Martin was filled with shame. For plotting to kill the Führer, who Frau Vortmuller assured them in many ways was all-knowing, kind, and good? His own mother and father had done this?

  At eleven, Liesel had a wider, darker sense of the world than Martin. When Frau Vortmuller extinguished the candles at night, Liesel would climb into Martin’s bed and whisper secrets. She was not supposed to be in the home with the others. Her parents were Communists, not aristocrats. Her bloodlines did not date back to Frederick the Great or Bismarck or anyone else of national significance. But somehow, when her parents were taken by the Gestapo, Liesel had been brought here. Maybe because she was pretty and blond and blue eyed. This Martin understood. Liesel was the prettiest girl he knew. She would make a good child for an important Nazi family. Wasn’t she happy then, that they had made this mistake? No, Liesel would scowl at him when he asked such questions. She didn’t want to live with Nazi pigs.

  Then, suddenly, it seemed Liesel was right. Their mothers were alive. The first to arrive was Adalbert “Schmedding’s”—a gaunt, hollow-cheeked woman with a dark-haired baby in her arms. She had cried and cried as she held her son, stuffing his face against her belly as if, rather than reuniting, they were saying good-bye. And then others came in batches: Claus and Gretel’s glamorous aunt from England, who was taking them to their mother in Switzerland; the “Beckers’” sweet, tired mother straight out of solitary confinement in Ravensbrück; the “Hansers’” mother by way of a fancy American armed forces escort car. At first Martin’s heart had leapt every time the gate bell chimed. His mother! He thought of her blond head bent over the game of marbles they would play, her fine strands of hair catching the sun—and the tight grip of her hand as she walked beside him past the bombed fountain to the Apotheke or the market. He recalled how it felt to press his face against the stiffly washed fabric of her dress and, underneath it, the softness of her breast.

  But Martin’s mother did not come and neither did Liesel’s.

  My little sparrows, Frau Vortmuller called them, looking increasingly worried. It was the beginning of June. Her youngest daughter, Magda, had come to stay with them, along with her two mean little boys, who called them “traitors’ spawn.”

  “Why don’t you throw them out?” Martin overheard Magda ask her mother one night. “The war is over! Your responsibility here is finished!”

  From then on, Martin was extra careful. He did not want to be thrown out. And he knew it was true: Frau Vortmuller did not have to stay with them anymore. There was no one commanding—or paying—her to do so. She just wants the extra rations, Liesel said. But he did not believe this. In her way, he thought, Frau Vortmuller loved them.

  And then one day, a tall, stern-faced lady named Marianne von Lingenfels arrived. With her cape and high boots she reminded Martin of a toy soldier. Is that your mother? Liesel whispered, watching through the window with him as the woman strode up the path.

  Then they heard her in the foyer. She had a loud, clear voice that carried up the tile stairway. She had come to claim Martin Fledermann (the sound of his name crackled inside like a spark along dormant wires: Martin Fledermann, of course that was his name). She was a friend of the family. She would take him to find his mother in Berlin.

  Beside Martin, Liesel grew still. She would be alone if he left. Martin could see her thinking this, too.

  The woman strode into the room, Frau Vortmuller scrambling behind her, wheezing up the stairs and looking alarmed.

  “Martin Fledermann,” the woman announced, clapping her hands together. She had a long, intelligent face and startlingly bright brown eyes. Her hair was pulled back severely.

  “Marianne von Lingenfels,” she said, bending to his level and extending her hand. “You don’t remember me. Your father was my dear friend.”

  Martin stared back at her.

  “And who is this?” The woman straightened, and her eyes moved to take in Liesel, whose pretty face grew petulant.

  “Liesel . . .” Frau Vortmuller said, pausing, “Stravitsky.” She cast a nervous look in the girl’s direction. It was not a name Martin had heard before.

  “Ah.” Frau von Lingenfels frowned. “What was your father’s name, child?”

  “Bartosz,” Liesel mumbled, and then, seeming to consider something, she looked up. “Do you know my mother? Johanna? Is she alive?”

  Frau von Lingenfels looked uncertain. “I don’t know,” she said, finally. “I didn’t know her.” Martin had never heard these names. But he understood something he could not put into words and reached over to take hold of Liesel’s hand.

  “Ach mein liebes Gott,” Frau Vortmuller said, and crossed herself.

  Liesel snatched her hand away.

  “Why don’t you come with us?” the woman said. “I will try to help you find your family.”

  Liesel shook her head.

  “Nha! Liesel!” Frau Vortmuller gasped at t
he rudeness, but the woman gestured away her protests.

  “You can stay here with Frau Vortmuller, who obviously cannot do anything to help you find your mother, or come with me and I can promise nothing, but at least I will try.”

  Liesel scowled, and then finally she nodded.

  “It is settled then,” the woman said, clapping her hands to her sides. “And”—she turned to Frau Vortmuller—“you can do your explaining to the Americans.”

  The journey from the Children’s Home to Berlin was, for Martin, like a voyage to a foreign land. He had been nowhere and seen nothing in the year that he’d lived in the home. Herr Stulper’s Sunday wanders were infrequent at best and always led the children away from civilization, up into the hills. And like most of the children, Martin had arrived at night by car and never even seen the village.

  So the morning they left with Marianne von Lingenfels, Martin and Liesel followed her with wide eyes. Bedraggled white sheets and handkerchiefs hung from windows of homes—left over from the capitulation, Marianne explained. Have you not been to town since the Americans arrived? Martin was suddenly embarrassed. How had they allowed themselves to be so thoroughly locked up?

  Other than the sheets on the windows, the village seemed untouched by war. The half-timbered houses stood intact, geraniums growing from their window boxes. An old stone church stood in the small square and beside this a water pump fed into a stone trough. Two American soldiers sat in a jeep, handing out chewing gum. “Would you like to ask for some?” Frau von Lingenfels asked. The idea of asking the soldiers for candy struck Martin as preposterous. The dangers of America had been a great theme for Frau Vortmuller. In America, she warned the children, Germans had to wear swastikas on their lapels. Just like the Jews had to wear stars here. She did not have to elaborate. Obviously this was not a good thing.

  The day was warm, and the satchel that held Martin’s belongings (three shirts, an extra pair of trousers, a well-worn Loden jacket Frau Vortmuller had dug up from God knows where) bumped hotly against his back. It was beautiful out, though. Dandelions and morning glories blossomed along the roadside, and the flowering rapeseed fields were a sea of yellow. Frau von Lingenfels, or “Tante Marianne,” as she wished to be called, led the children in silence. Martin listened to the wind whistle in his ears and through the stands of trees between fields.

  The next town over, which was bigger, had been bombed, and a church steeple jutted from a massive pile of rubble like a decapitated head. American soldiers and German women worked together scraping up the remains, pushing wheelbarrows, shoveling rocks onto an army transport truck.

  When night fell, the moon was huge. Tante Marianne hired a farmer with an empty hay wagon to drive them to a town where she had heard there might still somehow be train service. And on the back of this bumping, clattering vehicle, Martin allowed himself, for the first time, to close his eyes and fall asleep.

  When he opened them again, it was dark. People were everywhere, young and old, women and children, soldiers still in their Wehrmacht uniforms . . . all sitting on piles of belongings: suitcases and boxes and dirty sacks. He climbed off the wagon after Tante Marianne and Liesel, stepping around an old woman on a stool, cradling an intricately carved wooden clock.

  But he and Tante Marianne and Liesel were not joining the masses on this side of the tracks. They crossed to the other side, in hopes of catching a train going east. The wrong way. Martin thought of Frau Vortmuller’s warnings that the Russians were fierce, animal-like brutes who stuck German soldiers on bayonets and did unspeakable things to women (What? the children always asked, at which she would look aghast). They were going to find his mother. They were going to Berlin.

  If his mother was alive, though, Martin wondered why she had not come for him. But he didn’t ask.

  “How were they killed?” Liesel asked Tante Marianne when they were seated on the platform, leaning against their bags. He knew who she meant: their fathers.

  “That is no question for a child,” Tante Marianne said, her tone sharp.

  “But I want to know,” Liesel insisted.

  “Know that your father was a brave man. And that he did what he thought was right for his country.”

  “Was he shot or hanged?” Liesel persisted in a hard and unfamiliar tone.

  Tante Marianne sighed, a long, deep breath, almost worse than any answer. “Hanged,” she said. “They were almost all hanged.”

  It was the first time Martin had heard it. He squeezed his eyes shut and pretended to have fallen back to sleep. His neck began to hurt, but he did not stir. It was essential to pretend.

  When the train finally arrived, it was huge and violently loud, a freight train. Almost before its wheels ground to a halt, people hurled themselves at it, climbing hand over fist up the spindly ladders, scrabbling to the top of the open coal cars. There were only a few guards, all Americans, and they were busy unhooking the last car. One of them fired a few shots that whistled overhead: It was forbidden to climb aboard the freight trains, especially those hauling coal—it wasn’t yet winter but the predictions were already dire. Coal would soon be as precious as gold.

  “It’s only the Americans,” Tante Marianne said. “They don’t mean to shoot anyone—if it were the British, we would have to watch our backs.”

  Martin liked her optimism. When the train started, it blew her hair every which way. She looked younger and softer now. An old man passed her a flask, which she refused, but the generous spirit of his gesture was contagious. Another woman offered handfuls of raw oats. Marianne distributed a loaf of bread. The mood was jolly, even exuberant. Above them the stars were so bright and three-dimensional they seemed closer than the dark blots of towns and woods the train trundled past. Bombed church steeples, houses, and highways disappeared into an irrelevant jumble.

  “Your father would have loved this,” Marianne said, startling Martin. “He always was a troublemaker.”

  Martin was confused. The image of his father was becoming more opaque rather than less.

  “When he was a boy,” Marianne continued, “he took up boxing to rebel against his father, who was very stern and very proper. A Fledermann boxing! It was shocking—it would be like”—she groped for an analogy—“like you taking up tap dancing!”

  Martin had never heard of tap dancing. It sounded frivolous. Like something a boy should stay away from. Boxing, on the other hand, was manly. He gave up trying to make sense. He could barely hear her voice over the wind. Beside him, Liesel had fallen asleep. He let Marianne’s words wash over him. She had loved his father. This much he understood.

  The train stopped at some point in the night. The tracks went no farther. The Berlin station had been bombed by the Allies and then flooded by the SS, who feared the Russians would use its vast tunnels to stage their invasion. Drowned bodies were supposedly still washing up onto the streets. They learned this from a grizzled old man who was eager to warn Marianne off. Liesel and Martin listened, half-asleep. So we will walk, Marianne responded, unfazed. Both children did not protest. Martin’s wonder at being free had worn thin, though. His feet ached and the road was crammed with fellow refugees. In the gray light of dawn, the city’s suburbs looked mean and haggard. Somewhere within all this crumbling brick, his mother waited. Martin tried to fill his mind with her but found he could barely conjure her face.

  They walked all day through the suburbs and into the ruined city. They trudged down cavern-like streets piled high with debris. The fronts of buildings rose from the wreckage like jagged cutouts. Had the buildings always been so fragile? Like sand castles taken down by waves. At street level the remaining walls were covered with papers, scrawled names, and messages. Martin could see Liesel staring at them.

  “Missing people,” she said in her defiant way. “Probably dead.”

  Makeshift chimneys rose from the rubble like waving arms.

  For the final portion of the journey, Marianne flagged down a passing American army jeep. At first, the driver s
hook his head without even looking at them, but the soldier in the passenger seat jabbed him with his elbow. He slowed to a halt and extended his hand. Martin hesitated before accepting, but the sores on his feet and his general fatigue won over his doubts. Frau Vortmuller’s warnings about the Americans already seemed like something from another life. Marianne sat with the soldiers in front and spoke English, while Liesel and Martin huddled in the back. To their amazement, the soldier who had waved them in turned around and handed them a chocolate bar. And after that, for some time all else fell away. There was only the unaccustomed sweetness of the chocolate, the slippery melting on the tongue. When was the last time Martin had tasted something so delicious?

  When they arrived, Meerstein Strasse did not look like a street where anyone could live. No more tall, speckled plane trees lining the curbs, no more lively café on the corner, no more gurgling fountain. But still, pockets of memory opened in Martin. The smell of damp stone, rot, and chemicals; the sight of people emerging from cellars covered in dust . . . the empty brass birdcage that hung in their shelter, the pee bucket in the corner. The horrible, glass-eyed elephant trunk masks.

  Marianne climbed out of the jeep and thanked the Americans. Still sticky and slightly dazed from the chocolate, Martin and Liesel scrambled after her. She pulled a crumpled envelope from her jacket and regarded it for a moment before crossing the street to ask a group of women at a water pump for directions. The paper looked ancient and unpromising. But the script stirred something in Martin—it was familiar. His father’s handwriting.

  As Marianne spoke, one of the women tried to fill a woven basket. The water rushed out through its lattices, but she didn’t seem to notice. On her hip, a baby stared at Martin.

  “Over there,” another woman said, pointing to a building, if it could be called that.