“What?”
She looked up at him, repeated softly, “And I need you. I specifically asked for you.”
He stood up and paced the room. He stopped at the lace curtain hanging on the wall and ran his fingers along it. It was long and wide and intricately made with a fine pattern of flowers and leaves running the length of it. Zosia’s grandmother had hung it on a balcony window of her town house, which overlooked the market square. Zosia had worn it at her wedding. Now it hung, a forlorn reminder of better days, against a damp, underground, concrete wall.
He spoke so quietly she had trouble hearing him. “All right, I’ll do it. We’ll need to change my numbers—they’ll be checked when we travel. And we should change my nationality. Polish is good, I know enough words now, and besides, I shouldn’t have to speak it.”
She nodded even though he couldn’t see her; he was still staring at the lace, his back to her.
“When do we leave?” he asked, his fingers still tracing along the leaves of lace.
“We take the overnight train tomorrow from Neu Sandez to Berlin. We’ll leave Berlin on Thursday morning.”
“So we’ll be staying a day there?”
“We have a safe place,” she assured him.
“That doesn’t give us much time.”
“I know.”
“What about Schindler? You said he heads up this laboratory. He’ll recognize me, if he sees me.”
“Don’t worry, he’s in London now. There is no reason to believe he’ll make a surprise inspection tour. And if he does,” she added before Peter could debate that point, “we’ll keep you out of sight. It’ll be easy—he’ll have no interest in meeting my servant.”
“No, I don’t imagine he would,” Peter agreed. He suddenly laughed.
“What?”
“Oh, I just realized, I was being an idiot! Schindler’s such a racist, I’m surethe only thing that he ever saw was what was on my shoulder. If we change that, he won’t have a clue who I am. I could spit in his face and he wouldn’t recognize me!”
“The son might be there—do you think he’ll recognize you?”
Peter really didn’t know the answer to that question. If he told Zosia that Schindler’s son would recognize him, then he would have an excellent excuse for not taking part in the mission. And he would disappoint her as well. With a conviction he did not feel, he answered, “No, I probably saw him once, years ago. I can’t remember what he looks like, I see no reason why he’d remember me. Still, it might be safer, if he’s around, to keep me in the room, or whatever.”
“We’ll do that,” Zosia assured him. “Any other concerns?”
“I’ll need to practice an appropriate accent—I’ll need your help with that.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll prepare everything.”
Peter turned and gave her a look that conveyed his doubts. “And will you prepare Tadek enough that I could turn my back on him?”
“You shouldn’t be so hard on Tadek.”
“Hard? The man wanted to kill me!”
“He didn’t know you—he is trustworthy. Believe me.”
“Of course.” Not for the first time, the question of Tadek’s place in Zosia’s heart worried him.
Zosia’s eyes were drawn from Peter’s strained face to the lace curtain he had been fingering. Unlike it, she had never known another home other than the heavy, damp concrete walls around her. What would her grandmother have thought? What would it be like to live unafraid in a town, windows open to the daily passage of life? “I wonder what the world would have been like if we had won. Or if the war had never happened,” she said dreamily.
“I can’t imagine. It’s funny, isn’t it? Whatever the reality is—it seems so set in stone, as if all of history led to this point. Yet, there must have been a point, in the thirties or forties maybe, when a few different decisions could have changed everything.”
“Do you think so?”
“Logically, yes. What if Hitler had never been born? Were the forces at work in Germany at the time strong enough to have produced another leader just like him? Or what if Hitler had attacked the Soviet Union? They say he really wanted to—only his astrologer stopped him. Or what if the German nuclear program had been less successful? What if the Nazis hadn’t believed in it wholeheartedly? Maybe . . . But you know, in my heart, it’s hard to believe things could have happened differently. The world is what it is.”
“So you believe in fate?”
“No.” He paused, shook his head for emphasis. “No. I think the future holds any number of possibilities. And I really do think history could have been different—it’s just hard for me to truly believe it here,” he finished, tapping his chest. “What do you think?”
“I think believing in other possible pasts opens up a terrifying door for most humans—for if all of history wasn’t working to this point, this particular present, then who can guarantee that they would themselves have existed? It’s scarier than death, because with death you can believe in immortality, but how do you counter the possibility of nonexistence? Better to believe things had to be the way they are—then you know, deep down, that you had to exist and you had to be the person you are. It still leaves room for any possible future—until, of course, the future becomes the past.”
Peter nodded. When he was younger, he could never have imagined his current situation and all the experiences he had had in between, but now, he felt that this point in his life had been inevitable. As the infinite possibilities of his future had been narrowed to one past, he had set it in stone. He wondered how Zosia’s belief in God tied in with her perception of the past and future. Did having an immortal spirit mean that you were sure to have the same personality no matter what circumstances you were born into?
Before he could phrase the question, Joanna interrupted them by running into the room. She had been playing in the woods with some of the other children, and she came in flushed and excited. Peter smiled at her and took Zosia in with the same glance. How could he believe that he might never have met them? It seemed impossible to imagine life without them now.
Joanna tugged at his sleeve. “You’re home!” she exclaimed in Polish. “Are you staying?”
He felt slightly guilty at his abandonment of her over the past week. “I’ve been here, little one,” he said in careful Polish, “you’ve just been asleep!”
She made a face, then asked, “What are you making for dinner?”
“Perhaps your mother is cooking tonight,” he teased.
“Yech! You cook better! It’s been awful without you!”
Zosia laughed. “Well, I guess that’s decided! Anyway, I’ve got work I have to do.”
“All right,” he conceded; the rest of the files would wait until his return—if he returned. He stood and grasped Joanna’s outstretched hand. “Let’s go see what we’ve got.”
24
THEIR TRAIN APPROACHED the outskirts of Berlin at dawn. Peter had been unable to sleep for the last several hours of their journey, and he had finally abandoned the couchette compartment he shared with Tadek and Zosia and gone to stand in the aisle. The conductor spoke to him deferentially, the occasional Zwangsarbeiter skirted nervously around him. Funny what the color of auniform can do, he thought, looking down at the ridiculous insignia and medals on the neat black cloth. The clothes he would wear tomorrow, that other uniform, waited safely tucked away in the safe house along with the papers and wristband and other paraphernalia they would need for the job ahead. He pushed his hair back and leaned against the cold glass of the window. The train slowed as it approached the city, and he watched with a fascinated dread as suburb after suburb passed by. He had checked the railway maps and ascertained that they would pass nowhere near where the Vogels had lived, but still the tidy houses and trim lawns of the infrequent well-to-do suburbs evoked a visceral reaction in him.
Zosia stepped out of the compartment, yawning sleepily. Her dress was rumpled and she had not even straightened her hair.
“Are we almost there?” she asked between yawns.
He nodded.
She came up to him, put her arm around his waist.“Don’t worry. It’ll be okay. We won’t be here long.”
They arrived at the pension without difficulty, having changed taxis several times en route to make sure they were not followed. After they registered and had their papers stamped, the elderly gentleman led them into a back room. There they were joined by an old woman, and Zosia greeted her warmly and asked them if they had swept recently. When they assured her everything was secure, she hugged and kissed them both. They greeted Tadek by name—they clearly knew him, albeit less intimately than Zosia—then they turned to Peter and greeted him without saying a word.
The three of them were led into a private dining room, and there they settled down to a hearty breakfast and exchanged news and gossip in whispered Polish. Peter studied the old couple who ran the pension—they looked thoroughly exhausted and they confirmed this with their own words.
“Oh, it is so difficult, Zosia—we don’t know how much longer we can put up with it,” the woman whispered in a singsong accent as she poured another cup of tea for Peter.
The old man nodded his agreement. “We are so lonely. It is so hard to live like this. We’ve got to go back.”
Zosia consoled them, assured them that they were essential, needed, appreciated. She begged them to be patient, to wait until there was an adequate replacement. They sighed and looked at each other wearily.“Ah, but what are we doing, complaining like this to you?” the woman sang.“We should be welcoming you. And you have suffered so much—we have heard about Adam! We are so terribly, terribly sorry.”
Zosia bit her lip and nodded mutely.
Then the woman turned toward Peter and asked the question that had clearly been bothering her since she first set eyes on him. “But who is this? And why are you so silent?”
Peter had been able to follow almost all the conversation, but had not feltcomfortable interjecting any comments. He noticed Tadek had been silent as well and was surprised by the woman’s almost accusatory question.
Zosia, however, understood. “He’s not a ghost, Auntie. Your memory of Adam is flawed; he does not look that much like him. Say something, Peter—that will dispel her doubts.”
“Say something” was exactly the sort of command that guaranteed an almost moronic inability to say anything in a foreign tongue, and Peter found himself momentarily stymied.
“He’s not Adam,” Tadek filled the silence, “he’s just a cheap, imported replacement model.” The joke carried a note of bitterness that even the old couple could not fail to notice. They looked at Peter all the more curiously.
Compelled to say something, he finally managed to say, “This is a very fine breakfast.”
Noting his accent, the old man turned to Zosia and asked, “He is German?”
“No. I’m English.” Peter could think of nothing else to say, so he turned his attention back to his plate and continued eating.
The old couple looked at Zosia and she replied to their unspoken question by saying, “We’ve vetted him completely—he’s quite safe.”
“Yes,” Tadek added, “we all agreed, didn’t we?”
Zosia shut him up with a look.
Peter chewed his food, thinking, And tomorrow I’ll be in a position where he can easily get me killed. Oh, God, what have I let myself into?
25
IN THE EARLY AFTERNOON, once they had all settled into their rooms and relaxed a bit, Peter ventured out to find Zosia. She was not in her room, but he quickly located her with the elderly couple in the little sitting room they kept at the back of the pension for their private use. Peter interrupted apologetically, then called Zosia aside to ask her if the car was already arranged.
“Yes. It’s on the street.”
“Give me the keys. I want to check it out.”
“Check it out?”
“Yes, it’s a long trip—we should make sure everything is running smoothly.”
Zosia furrowed her brow as though she thought she was being deceived. “Don’t you think it would be a little inappropriate for you—in that uniform—to go poking around a car?”
“No, not at all. Give me the keys and show me which one it is.”
She excused herself from her godparents—for that’s who they were—and walked to the front of the pension with Peter to show him the car. They pausedthere, on the stoop, and he looked into her eyes, willing her to trust him. He needed to go alone—unobserved—and he needed her to let him go.
“Wait here,” she said. “I’ll get the keys.” It took her some minutes to return. When she did, she handed him the keys and said, “Whatever you do, don’t take too long. Otherwise, we might worry.”
Peter kissed her on the cheek and said, “I’ve just got to check it out. I’m sure you understand.”
She nodded and left.
Normally, he would have confided in Zosia, but he knew that while they were on a mission, they were bound by their military procedures and ranks. Tadek outranked him, and Zosia outranked them both, and though it was not usually relevant, in this context, when he was going to do something that was so foolhardy, he could hardly ask her permission. She would have had to refuse him. Better Zosia could plead ignorance, even if, as she so clearly indicated, that was not the case.
As any high-level official would do, he quickly scanned the underside of the car. Satisfied that he was not a terrorist target, he then slid into the driver’s seat. Despite the cold it was a bright day, and he put on his sunglasses. He had memorized the map in his room, and without further hesitation he started the car and drove away confidently. Forty minutes later, he turned onto the familiar suburban street and parked the car two houses down from the Vogels’ house. Although he would raise suspicions by his presence, nobody would harass him. The uniform, the quality of the car, the military license plate—it would all keep him out of danger. The neighbors and the Vogels alike would assume that he was observing somebody on the street, but they would not dare to wonder more than that.
He lit a cigarette and began to smoke, but the reflection of the smoke off the windshield reminded him of all the times Karl had blown smoke in his face, and within a few seconds he extinguished the cigarette. He tapped his fingers on the edge of the ashtray pensively, wondering what it was he had come here for. What did he hope to achieve? What demons could he dispel just by looking at the house? As he watched, the front door opened and Frau Vogel and a woman emerged. The woman was obviously his replacement, and he felt a surge of pity and guilt. Doubtless her life would be a lot more miserable because of what he had done—they would feel that they had been too lenient with him and would take out their vengeance and frustrations on her. He almost felt like going over to her and apologizing, and perhaps if she had been alone, he might have done so—though, wearing the uniform that he was, he would probably have provoked only uncomprehending terror in her.
He shook his head to dispel the thought and imagined a different scenario: he could walk up to Frau Vogel and demand to see her papers and harass her mercilessly about their being out of order. Even if she thought she recognized him— and how could she not?—she would not dare to disobey him, not while he was wearing this uniform. He imagined her stunned face, imagined her thinking,How can this be? He smiled at the ludicrous image, suppressing a childish urge to actually do it, since it would be pointless and dangerous, but he allowed himself to enjoy the brief fantasy.
He sat for a bit longer, watching the house. Frau Vogel and her servant returned. The children came home from their various activities. It was a Wednesday, so that would mean that Rudi and Gisela were returning from school, Teresa would be returning from attending her Bund Deutsche Mädel meeting—or more likely, from not attending her BDM meeting—Ulrike would by now be enrolled in the N.S. Frauenschaften and would doubtless be busy with a training program and a schedule that he would be unfamiliar with. He wondered if she had passed her school ex
ams, wondered if her modern history results were as poor as his had always been. Probably not, she had apparently learned her lessons and would fit well into her place in society. And Horst would not come home until late—if at all. Perhaps he had moved out permanently. Uwe, Geerd, then Horst. They all seemed to run away, but there was nowhere for them to run—they were, in some ways, more trapped than he had ever been.
He realized that whatever he was looking for—the cure for his dreams, the peace of mind that still eluded him—it was not here. He could take no revenge, could not even gloat that he had managed to survive. He had to remain silently missing from their lives, and though Karl and Elspeth had scarred him terribly, probably permanently, he had to live with the fact that he would never influence them in the same way that they had warped his life. He had been a tangential concern of theirs, a thorn in their side occasionally, a commodity to be used; whereas they had been the very definition of his life for three long years. They had held life or death over him; pain, sustenance, even sleep, had been at their will. The balance was unfair and could never be redressed.
He started the car and drove back to the center of Berlin, deciding en route that there was one small thing he could do. He parked the car near the pension and walked about until he found a shop that sold note cards and stamps. He purchased the local postage and wrote a brief note to Teresa, making it so obscure that even she might not guess what it meant. He did not sign his name, and no one in the house had ever seen his handwriting, so he figured it was safe letting Teresa know he was alive and well in this manner. He wrote: Enjoying my new location, but miss seeing you at school. Hope all is well with you. All is well here. Change the world! F.
He chose to sign an initial on the assumption it would make the note look less suspicious, say from some rather shy boy, and he used the letter F for “Freedom.” The last line would probably cause Elspeth to interrogate Teresa, but he was sure she could handle it. He smiled as he dropped the card in the postbox and hoped that there was no unforeseen danger associated with such a whimsical gesture.
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