The Apple Orchard

by Susan Wiggs

  “She grew to be a lovely young lady, and she married a prince, and they moved to a far-off land where it was safe for them to live,” said Farfar.

  Eva twirled around the room, the angel cradled in her hand. “Does that mean she’s a real actual princess now?”

  “I suppose it does, at that,” said Farfar. “Although she lives in exile.”

  “Where is exile?”

  “It’s not a place. Exile is when you don’t get to live in your homeland anymore, because it’s too dangerous.”

  “Like Daddy and me,” said Eva, thus proving she probably understood more about the situation than they realized.

  “Magnus, can you mind the fire?” his mother asked. “It’s gotten cold in here.”

  He turned back the carpet runner by the Christmas tree to reveal the coal bin built into the floor. It was a clever innovation by him and his father. The coal was loaded into a drawer from the outside, and could be accessed from within, thus saving a trip out into the weather. Taking care with the scuttle, he added coal to the fire.

  Just then a pounding rattled the door. “Gestapo,” came a harsh voice. “Open up.”

  Magnus’s father jumped up and hurried to the door. At the same time, his mother took Eva by the hand and headed upstairs, motioning for Magnus to follow. He didn’t. Some impulse made him lower the jeweled egg into the coal bin before shutting the trapdoor and flipping the carpet back in place.

  His heart hammered like a bird beating its wings against the bars of the cage, and he could scarcely catch his breath. He felt ill with fear, yet at the same time, the heated rush of blood through his veins made him feel exhilarated, every cell in his body pulsing with life. He composed himself as he went to stand beside his father and grandfather.

  “Good evening,” said Father. His face was as still and expressionless as a funeral mask. The German soldier stepped forward, filled with self-importance. He was shadowed from behind by two others. Something Magnus had noticed about the Germans was that they never went about on their own. They always traveled in groups. These three wore the winter uniforms of brown and buff-colored wool, hats flecked with snowflakes and tall boots polished so brightly that they reflected the candlelight from the Christmas tree. The leader of the three wore a long belted overcoat and black gloves. They all had holstered weapons, wearing them as casually as a watch on a fob.

  “Which one of you is Dr. Johansen?” asked the leader.

  “That would be me,” Farfar said. “What do you want?”

  “You will come with us,” the soldier ordered.

  “Not without an explanation.” Farfar spoke mildly, yet there was a thread of defiance in his voice.

  The German’s clean-shaven jaw tightened visibly. “It is not a request, but an order. Your medical services are required.”

  “In what capacity?”

  “Major Fuchs, the Hauptsturmführer, has taken ill. I will not waste precious time negotiating with you, explaining the situation. Get your coat and come with me.”

  “I have other patients and other duties to attend to,” Farfar said. “If you would kindly give me the address, I will come around when—”

  “You will do as you are told,” the German insisted. “Now. Without delay. As a man of healing, you can do no less.”

  The other soldiers took a step closer. Magnus could see them scanning the room, their eyes lighting on the glasses of cordial on the desk, the dancing fire, the curio cabinet with its door left open. He couldn’t tell what they were looking for. He tried to view it from their perspective. It looked like the home of an ordinary Danish family. He’d heard rumors, though, of the invaders helping themselves to people’s artwork and jewelry, or taking it away to the local armory for safekeeping.

  The Germans pretended their invasion was meant to safeguard the Danes. However, everyone knew the people of Copenhagen had been perfectly safe before that April morning when they’d woken up to the news that their country had been occupied.

  Magnus studied the faces of the soldiers in their parlor. He wondered what was going on behind those darting, narrowed eyes. Did it feel awkward to them, coming into people’s private homes, checking out their things?

  “Pardon me,” said Magnus’s father, “but if the officer is so gravely ill, shouldn’t he be taken to the hospital?”

  “Dr. Johansen, you will come with us,” said the Gestapo officer.

  Farfar cleared his throat. “Let me get my kit and my coat,” he said. “I will see what I can do.”

  Later, Magnus realized he should have recognized the signs that this was the last he would see of his grandfather. After he donned his good wool overcoat, Father helped him on with his muffler, slinging it around his neck and holding him close for a few seconds, whispering something and then kissing him. Farfar’s eyes were bright behind his spectacles as he bent down and kissed Magnus, whispering, “You be as good and brave as I know you can be.”

  Then Farfar put on his hat with the earflaps, and his gloves, picked up his bag and followed the soldiers out into the night.

  * * *

  Magnus never gave up hoping to see his grandfather again. He later heard that the Hauptsturmführer recovered, declaring that he owed his survival to the brilliant Danish physician. However, unlike other grateful patients, he had given Dr. Johansen no reward, but instead pressed him into service to the German elite officers.

  The Johansen family didn’t have to wonder how the Germans had located a skilled doctor to cater to their needs. The Nazis intruded into everyone’s lives, stripping away all their privacy, delving into their secrets. Magnus heard his parents speaking of it in low whispers, late into the night.

  Though they could not arouse suspicion by appearing to flee, it was decided that Sweet would take Eva up to the family orchards to the north of the city, near a village called Helsingør, on the island of Zealand in the Øresund Strait. There was a small country house that was used in the summer, and some very basic cottages where the pickers stayed during the harvest.

  After Farfar was taken and Uncle Sweet and Eva had fled, Christmas arrived, a subdued holiday with just Magnus and his parents. Friends came around in the afternoon and kind words were exchanged, but nothing was the same. Everyone in Copenhagen now understood that nothing would ever be the same.

  Typically, the Christmas tree was left up until Epiphany, just after the new year. But the tree started dropping its needles on Christmas Day, and turned as dry as tinder. Magnus’s mother announced that they would take it down before Epiphany this year. The end of Christmas was always a melancholy time, and far more so this year, without Farfar to remind everyone that the new year was here, bringing fresh opportunities each day.

  Boxing Day was a miserable affair. It never even got light enough to extinguish the lamps. An icy rain hissed over the city, battering at the snow until the streets and sidewalks were covered in dirty pockmarks. Magnus’s father went to the town council to file an objection that Farfar had been illegally pressed into service to the Nazis. Proper Danes did not take kindly to those they perceived as collaborators.

  A few days later, Father came home wearing a scowl of frustrated fury, declaring that he had accomplished nothing. Over dinner that night, he and Magnus’s mother barely spoke, though Mother said something Magnus would always remember—“It’s as if they have sucked every bit of happiness out of the city.”

  “If we allow them to do that,” said Magnus’s father, “then they have already won.”

  She pushed aside her plate of eggs and rye bread. “Perhaps it has already happened. I don’t even want to be here anymore. I wish we lived someplace else.”

  He patted her hand. “Where, then, my love? We’re born and raised here. I grew up in this very house. Where else would we go?”

  “America,” Magnus piped up. “It’s the place where everyone goes to make a new start.”

  “That’s what some folks say.” His father took a sip of mulled apple cider. “However, others say it’s
a haven for outlaws and criminals and misfits who can’t make a go of life in their own homeland.”

  “The Nazis make me wish I could be an outlaw,” Magnus declared. “In fact, maybe I’ll become one.” He thought about the fires he and his friends “accidentally” set around the German supply ships in port, when the soldiers weren’t looking.

  “You mustn’t talk like that. One day, this will all be over, and we’ll get our lives back.” His mother sighed, then got up to clear the table. “I miss chocolate.”

  Father stood and kissed her cheek. “We all miss chocolate, love.” He turned to Magnus. “Let’s have a proper wood fire in the fireplace tonight, shall we? Not just coal in the stove.”

  “Yes,” said Mother. “It’ll brighten up the house as we take down the Christmas tree.”

  Magnus jumped up. “I’ll bring in the wood.”

  “Bundle up, and don’t forget to cover your ears.”

  He dressed for the weather, which had turned bitterly cold after the rains at Christmas. Now everything was silvered with a coating of ice, making it appear otherworldly, like a painting in a museum.

  In the center of the garden was his mother’s favorite piece—a tiered birdbath, which in the springtime played host to blackcaps and warblers. Since the Germans had arrived unannounced before Christmas, the birdbath served another purpose. Mother had hidden her good jewelry in the hollow section under the top tier. People in the city were taking precautions. The German marshal claimed his men were models of integrity. The Danes knew such grand pronouncements didn’t stop the soldiers from having sticky fingers.

  Ice had transformed the humble stone birdbath into a precious vessel; it resembled a pair of silver bowls one might find in a church.

  The blackout curtain at the back door had been left up to give him some light for working. Through the glass he saw his mother crank up the Victrola; then he heard her favorite record start to play. Father swept her up into a dance hold, and they swayed together to the rhythm. In that moment they were a refuge for each other, holding the world at bay, if only for a short time. Magnus imagined they let themselves stop worrying about Farfar, and the shortages, and the soldiers who overran the city.

  He turned to the wood shed and took up the maul, finding a refuge of his own in the violent labor of splitting a dry log into kindling.

  Soon the cold gave way to the heat of exertion, and he welcomed the fire in his muscles. There was something immensely satisfying in breaking apart a thick log, wrenching it open to expose the clean-smelling heart of the wood.

  From the corner of his eye, something in the house caught his attention. He paused in his work and looked up to see a different kind of movement through the glass of the door.

  Soldiers.

  The sweat generated by Magnus’s labor suddenly turned as cold as the ice that coated the garden. His grip on the maul tightened convulsively as his stomach clenched in fear.

  He saw three uniformed men moving menacingly toward his parents while the music played on. His first instinct was to protect, to rush inside with the sharp maul and split the Germans’ heads open like fat blocks of wood.

  Despite his rage and fear, he held the impulse in check. He was no match for three burly soldiers with their sidearms and bayonets.

  It was terrible to watch. They were no better than thieves, rifling through drawers and cupboards while forcing Magnus’s parents to stand against the wall, helpless and white-faced with terror.

  He felt sick, his stomach churning, his heart pounding, his breath scraping in his chest. He shook like a palsied old man. He couldn’t think. He had to think. If he rushed inside to be with his parents, they would trap him, as well.

  If he went for help—there was no one to go to for help. The city police were powerless and under orders to obey the Germans. The thieves. Their harsh voices rumbled from the house. Magnus looked around wildly, wondering if he should sneak next door to the Hansens’.

  No. That could expose another family to danger. He would not be responsible for that.

  They were questioning his parents now, their voices sharp. Magnus was proud to hear his father’s even tone. He didn’t panic or plead. Magnus pressed himself into the shadows of the garden, hiding by the stacked wood. If the soldiers came outside, would they notice the tracks in the snow? Would they find the cache of valuables in the birdbath?

  As the terror swirled through his head, the back door opened. The blinding glare of a handheld electric torch swept across the area. And somewhere inside himself, Magnus found a core of steel. He simply stopped breathing, so his frozen breath wouldn’t give him away. He stopped trembling through sheer force of will and stayed as still as a statue.

  The beam from the torch intruded like a nosy neighbor, pausing on the snow-clad apple trees, the acacia bushes, his mother’s garden bench. Magnus continued to hold his breath, to hold himself motionless. The only sign that he was alive, and human, and just a scared kid was the one reaction he couldn’t control, something that would haunt him with humiliation until the end of time—he pissed himself. He couldn’t help it, didn’t even know it was happening until it was too late, and by then he was powerless to stop.

  A storm trooper came out to the edge of the back porch, his heavy boots thumping on the planks. The beam swung again, seeming to snag on the birdbath. Then it moved on, passing over Magnus’s hiding place. He wondered if the German would see that someone had been splitting wood for a fire.

  The soldier coughed, hawked up phlegm and spat loudly, then went back inside. Magnus let out his breath and scooped in lungfuls of fresh, cold air. A sound he couldn’t identify came from inside, a clattering and scraping. He could no longer hear his parents’ voices. Then everything went quiet, but a smell of burning filled the air.

  He started to tremble again. He thought he might throw up but didn’t let himself. He counted to ten, then concluded that the soldiers had left. Moving stealthily, he went to the door and peered inside. He could see no one, but the downstairs was filled with smoke.

  Magnus broke out of his state of terror and burst inside, into the house, racing from room to room while calling for his parents. There was no answer, and they were nowhere to be found. They’d been wrenched away like Farfar.

  The Christmas tree lay on its side, turned into a torch by the fallen candles, its treasures and ornaments scattered everywhere. He ripped off his overcoat and beat out the flames, coughing from the pine-scented fumes. A large hole had been burned in the carpet, and the floor itself was charred. The walls and ceilings were streaked with black, the family pictures that hung there obscured by soot.

  Once assured that the fire was out, he made a more thorough search of the rooms, calling to his mother and father, all the while gulping with sobs of hopelessness. The house had been ransacked; he could see that the liquor cupboard and the pantry had been emptied by the greedy soldiers. Along with the reek of burning pitch, a feeling of violation hung in the air. This was no longer a home. It was not a safe haven. The German intruders had turned it into a place of peril.

  They had taken more than just liquor and valuables; they’d taken the things that made the house a home—the sense of family, of love, of security. What they probably did not realize was that they had left something behind—a very scared, very angry boy.

  Twelve

  Tess slept poorly, trying to ignore the soft and secretive sounds of nighttime in the countryside. In between bouts of wakefulness, she catnapped, her rest plagued by dreams of Magnus. She missed the city. The silence and fresh air of the deep countryside were overrated, in her estimation. She didn’t find the sounds of birds and crickets restful at all, but repetitive and distracting. The noise of the city, with its clanging and screeching trolleys, its sirens and ships’ horns, made a better soundtrack for her life.

  Magnus was no longer a stranger to her, no longer just a name on a piece of paper or an academic problem, like an object whose provenance she was charged with uncovering. He was a person
with a haunted history, someone whose childhood had been ripped apart in ways she could only imagine. He had clearly suffered great losses, yet then he’d survived and built a future for himself. He was a man whose life had mattered.

  She thought briefly of her own life and how it mattered—or not. Yes, she had a career she was passionate about. Yes, she was going to move to the next level in the firm once she concluded things here at Bella Vista. That had been her goal all along, hadn’t it?

  The idea caused a flurry of nerves in her stomach. Family and friends—not work—were the things that made a life matter. Being here, being pulled deeper and deeper into the heart of this place, she feared work had taken precedence over everything else, and now she felt...unbalanced. Her friends in the city were great, but were they the heart-mates of a lifetime? Just asking herself the question made her uncomfortable, so she pushed the troubling notion aside.

  It was still dark when she abandoned sleep altogether and went to her laptop. She’d taken a series of high resolution pictures of the old photo and document. Using her photo enhancement program, she went to work, her excitement building as she brought each detail into focus.

  All too soon, the sounds of night gave way to the sunny chirps and whistles of songbirds at daybreak. She abandoned any attempt at further sleep and got dressed for the day, pulling on a good pair of jeans and a striped top. That was another thing—she was running out of clothes to wear as her visit to Bella Vista lengthened.

  The smells of Isabel’s kitchen elevated her mood somewhat. There was something incredibly uplifting about getting up in the morning to a perfect cup of coffee and a freshly baked treat from the oven. The kitchen was the heart of the house at any time of day, but mornings in particular were grounded in the sunny space, open to the patio. The start of the day was a small celebration of sorts, with people coming through the kitchen for their coffee and to have a chat, lingering before heading out for the day. So far, none of the residents or workers knew about the financial state of Bella Vista. They gathered as usual while Morning Edition drifted from the radio and Charlie the dog trotted from person to person, looking for handouts.