The Way the Crow Flies

by Ann-Marie MacDonald

  “They hang at the entrance to the tunnel, perhaps a metre and a half—five feet?—from the ground, so we must pass among the legs—they have lost their trousers, you pass through like curtains, the SS enjoy to watch this.” He lifts the lid once more and steam escapes. “Will you join me?” he asks, ladle poised over a bowl.

  “No. Thanks, Henry, but I’m not hungry.”

  Froelich returns to the table with his bowl. “It was used to be a mine,” he says, and eats.

  “What?”

  “Dora. In the Harz Mountains.”

  “The rocket factory?”

  “In a mountain cave.”

  A secret, in a mountain cave, worked by slaves. It sounds like a fairy tale.

  “Near Buchenwald,” says Froelich. “Near to Goethe’s home. They bring the Häftlinge—the prisoners—to dig to make the cave larger. With bare hands they have digged and many die. These are no Jews at first, these are French and Russian, German, English, Poles and Czechs and many others. They wear the triangle, many different colours, but all wear the stripes. And on our feet, the wooden clogs, bare in winter also. In the beginning, the slaves must sleep in the earth with the rockets and many die.” Froelich raises another spoonful to his lips but pauses. “You see, the Nazis have two intentions and these did not go together, but they were efficient with each.” Jack sees the professor again as Froelich raises two fingers consecutively. “Erste: to produce the weapons. Zweite: to kill the workers, ja.”

  “Henry—”

  “When I arrive to Dora from the other place—”

  “What other place?”

  “From Auschwitz Drei—Auschwitz Three, ja? I am not so strong but I have learned to say ‘electrical mechanic’ and so I do not die with carrying the skin, the shell of the rocket, how you say?”

  “Casings.”

  He is speaking quickly now. “I am fortunate also because I have not terrible dysentery, only somewhat, but there are many children and they take them away and beat them to death. I am lucky because I have not marched all of the way from Auschwitz to Dora, I have been on a railway Wagen, it is open, no roof. This is good because it is winter and I drink the snow from my shoulders, you see? Also I can breathe. I do not freeze because many die around me so I crawl beneath their bodies. I am thin but when I arrive to Dora I am fortunate, I do not build my barracks, others must do this and many die.”

  The word “Auschwitz” sizzles like acid in the air around Jack. His home is across the street. His bed. His children in their beds. His wife. He feels heat on his face, but it is not comforting. He is too close to something. He should move back, but he cannot.

  “We sing for the guards.”

  “What?”

  “It is winter and I do not know the date, only that it snows and they make us to sing ‘Stille Nacht.’”

  “‘Silent Night.’”

  “So I know this is December 1944.”

  Froelich tears off a piece of bread and feeds it to the dog, whose black nose glistens just below table level. A new layer is unfolding in Jack’s mind. Fried worked in a criminal place, so it follows that Froelich would associate his face with brutality, but it does not necessarily follow that Fried personally committed crimes. Still, he must have known about the hangings. Does Simon know? I cleared him for security myself. “So he was a scientist.”

  “Who?”

  “This fella you saw, the man from Dora.”

  “A scientist? He was just an engineer. Es macht nichts. He is a criminal.”

  “Are you saying he was a—what? SS?”

  “I never saw a uniform at Dora,” says Froelich. “Only the guards wear uniforms. Von Braun does not wear his uniform.”

  “Von Braun?”

  “Ja, he visits his rocket.”

  “Von Braun was SS?”

  “Natürlich. But the other one, always brown wool.”

  “What?”

  “The engineer—he wears always a suit of brown wool. And small glasses, round like pebbles. No face—I mean to say, no expression. His eyes do not change, his voice does not change, always quiet. With him, alles ist normal. This is what I remember.” He pushes his bowl away and sits back. “An ordinary man.”

  Jack sips in order to wet his lips; they have gone dry.

  Froelich continues, “Except for his flower. It was rare. It grows in the tunnel.” He shakes his head. “People are not boring, Jack, do you agree?”

  “What did he do, Henry?”

  “He was an engineer in the tunnels.”

  “No, I mean, what did—?”

  “He saw over production in his sector. He hated to see his rocket to be built by us. We were scarecrows. He looks for sabotage. He finds a great deal. He wishes to impress his superiors, verstehen?”

  Jack leans forward. “What was his crime?”

  Froelich likewise leans forward. “You know how many people are killed by the V-2?”

  “No, I don’t,” says Jack. Their faces are only a foot or so apart.

  “Five thousand.” Froelich drops his palm to the table with a smack. Jack doesn’t move. “Do you know how many die of building this rocket that is so fascinating you, Jack? Mehr als—more than twenty thousand.” The palm slams down again and the empty glasses jump.

  The dog barks, the back door opens and Madeleine’s little friend comes in.

  “Colleen, Schatzi, hier zu Papa, bitte komm.” The girl goes to him and he hugs her, stroking her rough hair. The narrow blue eyes stare at Jack over Froelich’s shoulder.

  “Hello, Colleen,” says Jack. The child doesn’t answer. Jack notices a faint scar at the corner of her mouth.

  Froelich fills a bowl for her and she takes it from the room. The dog follows. After a moment, music comes from the hi-fi—a woman singing “Mack the Knife” in German.

  “In the camps, I am not so young and strong but I know something. If you help another to survive, maybe you also survive. At Auschwitz, I take a boy’s glasses when we are pulled from the train. There are dogs and lights and music very loud, and screaming of guards, all to confuse, but underneath is very organized, you can see this if you are not so terrified, and I am lucky, I am not so afraid because I know my wife is safe. Also”—he looks at Jack as though imparting a secret—“I have a trick. I imagine that I have lived before these experiences.”

  Froelich looks expectant so Jack nods.

  “This boy,” continues Froelich. “A student, probably—I knock his glasses down and I tell him what to say, ‘electrical mechanic.’ They push him to the right. To right is work. To left is death. I have already been from Bühne so I know. Perhaps he has survived.” Froelich closes his eyes. “Also, I do not realize the bombing until after the war, so this also helps me.”

  “What bombing?”

  “Hamburg.”

  Jack remembers—that’s where Froelich is from. “Your wife?” he asks quietly.

  Henry breathes evenly, eyes still closed. Memory is lapping up. The whisper of shells, combings of silent seaweed and stray shoes, are they teeth or pearls that shine down there, pebbles or bones? The wash of lost objects, memories cut adrift from their owners, memories released by death. If he kept his eyes closed long enough, would all the lost memories find their way through Henry Froelich, as through a living portal?

  “My wife was safe from the camps. And so was I, for a time.”

  Jack has the curious feeling that, if he rose to leave now, his body would stay behind, seated at the table, a shell.

  “She was, according to Nazi classification, Aryan. Which is ironic because, when I brought her to meet my mother, my mother did not approve. My mother was sehr rafiniert.” He smiles. “Annie was a peasant.”

  “What was your father’s view?”

  “He was killed in the Great War.”

  “My father fought. My uncle was killed.”

  Froelich nods. Jack sighs. Something has been understood between them, so he feels he can ask, “Henry, why didn’t you leave Germany when Hitler ca
me in? Why did you stay?”

  “I am Deutsch. This does not change. You are right, Jack, it is a beautiful country, it is my country. We were Deutsch, you see. Then slowly we find that we are not. This does not happen over one night, there is not an invasion. Friends—those one has eaten with, at the table, as you and I here. One realizes, too late, this is the enemy.”

  Jack feels the headache coming on. Like muffled footfalls on a metal staircase. Froelich is saying, “And my mother refused to leave Germany. When she died we tried to come to Canada but we were not admitted.”

  “You couldn’t get into Canada?”

  “We were admitted nowhere, and my wife refused to leave without me.”

  “But you were a professor or something, you should’ve had your pick.”

  Froelich shrugs. “I was a Jew. Not a very good Jew, but from 1933 it did not matter. Good or bad, when the knock comes at the door in the middle of the night, you are a Jew.”

  “How did you wind up at Dora?”

  “We had a good apartment in Hamburg. The block warden did not have such a good apartment. He reported me for listening to the BBC. I was arrested and taken away in April 1942. In July 1943 came the bombs.”

  Jack recalls the name of the mission: Operation Gomorrah. British and Canadian bombers dropped nine thousand tons of explosives on Hamburg in three days. Forty-two thousand civilians died in the firestorm—incinerated, asphyxiated, crushed, swept away by thermal winds. Jack does not ask if Froelich had children.

  “I love Canada,” says Froelich.

  It seems Oskar Fried is the farthest thing from Froelich’s mind at this moment. Jack eases his chair away from the table, but Froelich is still talking. “So. I did not fight in the underground. But at Dora I do what I can.”

  At the mention of the factory, Jack sinks back onto the spent vinyl of the kitchen chair as quietly as possible.

  “Nobody sees the entire rocket, only the piece he works on, but I am in the Elektriker Kommando. My job is to spot-weld the skin—the casing, and also to fix the welding machines, therefore the rockets are near to me and I have … opportunities.”

  “Sabotage?”

  “You put a bad piece for a good, loosen a screw, perhaps you can urinate on some wires to make rust. Maybe you weld not always perfectly at the seam. This helps me to survive. I knew a Pole who was hanged for making a spoon. But I am more afraid of my Kapo.”

  “Is that who he was? A Kapo?”

  “What?” Froelich shakes his head, impatient. “A Kapo is … a Kapo. He is a prisoner also, in stripes, rags, ja? But with a green triangle, for criminal. He has power. This one tries to kill me. Every day with the Gummi—this is a hose—black, thick. He says, ‘No Jews on my Kommando,’ he wants his squad should be judenrein. Not only guards and Kapos, the engineers also enjoy to beat the prisoners. It is not necessary to hang a man, most starve and the sick are selected for extermination.”

  “Did this man you saw in the market, the engineer—did he beat prisoners? Did he personally order any hangings?”

  “I know this Kapo would have killed me if it had not been for him.”

  “He saved your life? How?”

  “The engineer points at the Kapo. The guards take him and hang him over his machine.” Jack waits.

  “You see, the engineer knew I am skilled. The Kapo was sabotaging a valuable worker, so the engineer points at him. Whenever the engineer points, the guard takes the prisoner away, and one morning soon you will meet that prisoner again, at the mouth of the tunnel, when you walk beneath his feet. I saw him point many times. Once when a prisoner offered him a cigarette. Once when one said, ‘Good morning.’ So when he hangs the Kapo, I do not say thank you.”

  “… Henry? Are the police still looking for this man?”

  “No. I told you, they don’t believe me.” Froelich’s eyelids are heavy, his mouth stained purple.

  Jack stands, reaches for his hat. “I believe you.”

  Froelich gets up and takes his hand. “Thank you, Jack. For everything. This is my country now. I will call up the newspaper, I will tell them what I have seen and who is living in this free country with us. I will tell how the police persecute my son, and I will have this man to prison.”

  “What does your lawyer say about all this?”

  “My lawyer?” Froelich rolls his eyes. “He says, ‘Keep quiet. You prejudice the case.’ I don’t think he believes me either.”

  Jack pauses halfway to the door, remembering the money, changed to large bills and weightless in his pocket. He puts his hand inside his jacket and removes a small brown pay envelope.

  “What is this?” asks Henry.

  “Please accept this—”

  “No, no I can’t.”

  “A lot of good men have contributed. I can’t go giving it back to them.” He places the envelope on the table, among the bills.

  Henry stares at it. “My lawyer says, even if it is true, my son appears more guilty with this alibi since I have claimed to see the same car.” He takes a big breath. “When I think through the eyes of strangers…. They do not know my son. They don’t know me. We are from … elsewhere. His alibi, I think … it sounds like a Märchen—a fairy tale.”

  Jack clicks his tongue. “You’re probably right, Henry.” He sticks his hands in his pockets and with a shock he feels the lone car key.

  “I think I take my lawyer’s advice,” says Henry.

  “He’s the expert.”

  “Then afterwards, I tell the newspapers what I have seen. And this air force man, whoever he is, I make him to feel it.”

  Henry walks Jack to the door. “I never forget a face, Jack. In April the Americans came. I remember a soldier who reached down his hand and I think every day, I hope this boy has a good life. I hope he has children.”

  “Henry, I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “Making you—stirring up all these memories.”

  “Ibergekumene tsores iz gut tsu dertseylin. Troubles overcome are good to tell.” Froelich smiles and the twinkle returns to his eye. “My grandmother used to say this. She was ‘typical’ Yiddish.”

  Jack steps out into the night, the key closed in his hand, digging into his palm. Across the street, he sees the light in his kitchen window. He feels suddenly sorry for his wife—pictures her at the table with a cup of tea, poised to turn the page of a magazine, waiting for him. As though he were away at war—although, if he were, the picture would not seem so sad. Add a child drinking cocoa at her side, and the caption, “What did you do in the war, Daddy?”

  The lights of a car catch his eye as it turns onto St. Lawrence. Karen Froelich is coming home, alone. He turns and heads back between the Froelich house and the one next door—he will take a shortcut through the park to the station. It would be quicker with his car, but he doesn’t want to alert Mimi, cloud the situation with explanations. She will assume he is still at the Froelichs’.

  He jogs past the swings and teeter-totters. Is it possible Simon knew all about Fried? Jack quickens his pace, running as much to dissipate the adrenalin spurting in his gut as to reach the phone booth in short order. Fried is a killer, a man who concealed his past and switched loyalties when it suited him—why would he not do so again? How likely is it that Simon would knowingly recruit such a man on behalf of the West? Jack is about to emerge from the park when he notices something hanging from a backyard tree—rope and pulley. What’s it for? He slows to a walk now that he is back under street lights.

  A man like Fried would besmirch the jewel of Western science: the space program. He’d put into disrepute our fight for missile supremacy, and play into the hands of Soviet propaganda. The Soviets are ahead because they coerce their people—their entire country is a concentration camp. Jack loosens his tie, cooling his neck, and crosses the county road, passing under the wing of the old Spitfire.

  Up Canada Avenue and past the hangars, he slows to a walk. The darkness thickens ahead of him, where the mown grass on the
far side of the runway turns to weeds obscuring the lip of a dry ditch. He would rather not be out of earshot of his family at night—although whoever did this thing is probably miles away. Like the McCarrolls themselves, in Virginia now. Loved ones filling a suburban living room. Framed photographs. Sandwiches and tears. So sorry. He crosses the runway and takes the key from his pocket. He raises his arm, poised to throw, and is shocked by his next thought, which arrives without remorse: better his child than mine—because in this instant Jack is certain that it would have been his child, had it not been for McCarroll. As though one child was demanded by something. A sacrifice. To what? He hurls the key into the darkness.

  The phone booth shines across the parade square. He runs, pushes through the glass door and dials zero. He hears the phone ring in the darkness at the other end of the line.

  “Operator.”

  Jack takes the scrap of paper from his wallet, reads out Simon’s night number and listens as the digits are dialled, clicking like the tumblers in a safe. He looks up at the frank sliver of moon through the glass of the booth and realizes something: Simon is still on active duty. He hasn’t lived in peacetime since 1939. He has gone from one war to the next. Jack is grateful not to have his job—even if Simon is still “flying ops.” And while this mission cannot now be called a success, it has not been entirely futile if Simon’s task included depriving the Soviet space program of Fried’s expertise. Even if Fried is shipped back when the truth is out, the Soviets are unlikely to return him to work. It’s more likely he’ll be executed. Jack feels no twinge of pity for the man, but his next thought chills him: perhaps Fried is actually a Soviet spy. He takes a deep breath—no point getting ahead of himself. He listens to the phone ring somewhere in Washington.

  Madeleine tried to stay awake but sleep overcame her, invisible magic wand—why is it we can never remember the moment of sleep? Now she has awakened with no sense of what time it is, merely the knowledge that it’s late. Her father must be home by now, and she needs to ask him the questions before school tomorrow.

  She creeps into the hall. A stealthy push at her parents’ door reveals the room. Bed made. Her heart leaps—her parents have gone away! Of course they haven’t. They are staying up late, they are grown-ups, they are allowed.