White Rose Black Forest

by Dempsey, Eoin

  He was going to need bed rest. The sled, even though it had left a trail of dirt when she pushed him into the house earlier, was still the best way of moving him around. She got down on her knees and turned the sled around, angling it toward the spare room where she and Fredi had slept on summer nights as children. It had been empty for years. The man lay immobile as she pushed the sled into the bedroom. The door was already open, the bed made, and the room immaculately clean. She tried to remember who had slept there last. It must have been her, or maybe even Fredi. She could recall her father taking Fredi up here, but that was years before the war—before Fredi had become too much for their father to take care of alone. Before she’d deserted them. She wiped the memories away like grime off a windshield and endeavored to focus on the problems at hand. She went back into the living room for his backpack. Clean civilian clothes lay folded at the bottom, but there was nothing he could sleep in, and she certainly wasn’t going to have him lying around the house in his underwear. Some of her father’s old clothes would fit him. Within a few minutes she’d found a pair of his old pajamas and a wine-colored bathrobe. She went back in and threw the pajamas on the bed but held on to the bathrobe for a few seconds, feeling the smoothness of the material between her fingers. The past was everywhere here. There was no escaping it.

  The man was soiled and grimy. The first thing he’d need was a bath, and that would be easier while he was still unconscious. She reached down and ran her fingers along the rough splints she’d made to keep his bones in place. They would need to be replaced. Getting him to a hospital, or even a doctor, didn’t seem worth the risk. She couldn’t trust anyone.

  Could he be trusted? She had heard the radio reports about the Allies, and knew better than to trust the Nazis’ view of the Americans as uneducated mongrels, and the British as treacherous wretches. Still, she had never met an Allied soldier before. The countless newsreels and stories over the years had reinforced in her mind the Nazis’ view of the Allies. It was impossible to dismiss all she’d seen and heard, even with her mistrust of the government and the media it controlled. She had seen what the Allies had done to Germany. They’d bombed cities full of citizens without mercy. It was difficult to see them as saviors, no matter how much she wanted to.

  His lips twitched, his eyes rolling like slugs under his closed eyelids. She stood back in fright, expecting them to open. She hadn’t even considered what she was going to say or do when he awoke. Fortunately, his face settled back into its previous catatonic state, and the dilemma was postponed.

  Franka walked into the kitchen. The house was frigid. Herr Graf, or whoever he was, could wait until she set a fire. She cleared out some of the ashes from the burner, pushing charred logs out of the way with a poker that had been in this house longer than she’d been alive. She struck a match, and the light from the fire enveloped the kitchen. She always took so much pleasure in setting a fire and stood back, watching the logs take to the kindling she’d placed underneath them. Satisfied, she went to the cupboard. There wasn’t much food, just some old cans of soup. The provisions she’d brought were almost gone. The roads to town would be cut off for days—her car would be useless. She went to the medicine cabinet and found an old bottle of aspirin with nine pills left—enough to last him about twelve hours. He was going to need more, and stronger medicine than that, especially if she had to set the bones in his legs again. The bottle rattled like a baby’s toy as she put it in her pocket.

  She took one of the wooden chairs from the old table in the middle of the room. It would do. She raised the chair above her head and brought it crashing down to the floor below. Nothing happened—the chair remained intact. She shook her head, laughing to herself. She went to the sink and got a hammer and several screwdrivers of various sizes. A few minutes later she had the sturdy wood she would need to set his legs until she could do a more permanent job of it.

  She went to the bedroom. The man hadn’t moved. She had dealt with worse breaks before, but that had been in a hospital. How would his bones heal without casts? The question of getting the plaster and setting it herself didn’t worry her so much as the suspicion that purchasing it might bring. If she was careful, she might just be able to get away with buying it, and the food, and the morphine she was going to need. The question of how she was going to get into town remained, but she pushed it away for now.

  She untied each of the ropes holding the twig splints in place and set the splints aside as firewood. The next part was going to be difficult for the man, unconscious or not. Those filthy pants and boots had to come off. She began working on the laces, intermittently glancing up at his face, aware of every grimace she was causing him. She opened the laces and applied gentle pressure to the boot as she tried to pull it off. The bone in his leg moved, and he cried out. It was bizarre to see him react. It was like a marionette wailing after being dropped on the floor. She stopped, expecting him to waken, but he didn’t. The boot came off, and she moved her hands back up to feel the bone. It had moved, but not much, and she set it back in place, lining it up. The man’s right boot dropped onto the thinly carpeted floor with a thud. She took a deep breath and steeled herself for the next leg. She didn’t want to cut the laces. Boots were a valuable asset these days. It took another five minutes to get it off. The experience she’d garnered on his other leg lent to a smoother process this time. The socks came off one inch at a time, revealing bruised and swollen feet. Scissors from the living room made short work of the man’s pants, and soon he was lying in his underwear, still on the sled.

  The pieces of the chair made for adequate splints, and his legs held taut. The Luftwaffe blazer came off next, and she tossed it into the corner of the room. The shirt came off with similar ease, and he was ready to be put on the bed. She made her way around behind him and eased him off the sled. The bed was mercifully low, and she leaned his torso against it. She dragged him up onto the clean covers, aware that he was still covered in dirt. But he was on the bed. She stood back in momentary triumph, marveling at the sight of this unknown man lying on her old bed in her father’s summer cabin in the mountains.

  It was good that he was going to be unconscious for his bath. It would not be the first one she’d given, but it would be the first she’d given to a sleeping stranger, and not in a hospital. Time was of the essence. The last thing she wanted was for him to wake up while she was rubbing him down. Nothing could have been more improper.

  “Bath time, darling,” she smiled. “How was your day? You won’t believe what happened to me on the way home from the hospital.” She made sure not to speak loudly enough that he might wake. No joke would have been worth that. She put a tub of water she’d warmed down beside the bed and took the washcloth in her hand. Dried dirt turned to mud as she sprinkled water from the cloth on his face. She wiped him off with strong hands. “I found a man—yes, a man—lying in the snow. In a Luftwaffe uniform, no less.” She hadn’t talked to another soul in days. It felt good to be speaking out loud, even if it was to an unconscious stranger. “No, darling, I’m being quite serious. You know it’s not the place of a good German wife to make fun of her husband, not with our brave soldiers risking their lives for the future of the glorious Reich on the Russian front as we speak.” She placed her hand on his now-clean face. “What’s that? You want to hear the radio? Well, it’s my duty as a good wife to obey your every whim.” She went to the living room and flicked on the battery-powered radio. The usual mess of news and propaganda was soiling the airwaves of the German stations. Radios were issued by the government and were only capable of picking up the government-sanctioned stations. Most people knew how to doctor them to get the foreign channels, however, and she was able to tune in to a Swiss broadcast of a new hit from Tommy Dorsey and his band. The big-band swing drifted through the cabin. The music gave her pause, washcloth still in hand. Somewhere people were still creating music like this, still listening and dancing and living. Suddenly she felt connected once more with a world she’d gi
ven up on.

  In silence she finished washing down the man and let the music flow through her.

  “All clean,” she said. She placed the aspirin on the bedside table along with a glass of water. She tucked him under the sheets and stowed hot-water bottles by his feet. Who was he? Why was he here? How on earth was she going to keep his presence here a secret over the six weeks or so it would take those bones to heal? How would he react to her once he woke up?

  She stood in the doorway, staring at him for several minutes, the music still floating through the air, before giving into the hunger pangs stabbing at her stomach. “Tomorrow will be the day,” she said out loud. “Tomorrow I find out who you are.” She took the key from the door and locked it behind her.

  Her hunger took precedence over her need for a bath, so she went to the cupboard for a can of soup. Some bread would have been fantastic, but she’d finished the last of it along with the cheese she’d brought the night before. It was to have been her last meal. She sat back at the table, staring into space as the soup heated on the stove and making a mental list of what she was going to need to keep her and the man in the bedroom alive through the winter. Somehow she was going to have to make it to Freiburg to get food, gauze, plaster of paris, aspirin, and morphine—a journey of almost ten miles each way. In ordinary circumstances she would have driven in, but the weather had taken simplicity out of the equation. She got out of the seat and went to the closet near the back door. Her old cross-country skis lay untouched at the back, behind some old winter coats and other pieces of assorted junk that had built up over the years. It had been more than a decade since she’d used them, not since she was a teenager, back when her mother was still alive and they’d come up here every winter. She reached in and felt the weight of the skis in her hands. It seemed she had no other choice. She took the skis under her arm and brought them back to the kitchen. The soup was ready, and she poured it into a bowl, devouring it in seconds. It seemed only to awaken her hunger. She made herself another, promising that she would replace it when she went to Freiburg.

  The second can of soup did the job, but the sweat-stained filth clinging to her body remained. The thought of heating on the stove all the water she would need almost seemed too much, but the sheer smell she must have emanated was motivation enough. She put the kettle and two large saucepans of water on the stove and sat, watching as they came to boiling point. The awareness of a strange, albeit immobilized and unconscious, man in the house was with her as she closed the door to change. Emerging in her bathrobe, she paced to the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. The candlelight lent the room an air of relaxation, but the lack of water did not. The wonderful bath she’d been dreaming of ended up being a case of sitting in the tub and scrubbing herself down.

  The coldness of the cabin hit her as she emerged, dripping from the bath. She grabbed a towel and rubbed herself as hard as she could, using the friction to warm herself. Once she was dried and in her bathrobe, she went to the mirror. She hadn’t looked at herself in days. Her shoulder-length blond hair lay straggly, stuck to her neck. Her blue eyes were bloodshot, and large, darkened circles hung underneath them. She ran a comb through her hair, wincing in pain as the knots came out.

  She thought about Herr Berkel and remembered his son, the charming Hitler Youth she’d fallen for during her time in the League of German Girls, the female equivalent of the Hitler Youth. Everyone she knew joined. It became a rite of passage. To not join would have singled out a young boy or girl as a weakling, an upstart, or a malingerer. Perhaps even a pariah.

  A wave of paranoia hit her. How did she know Berkel hadn’t seen them? Maybe he had seen them and had already reported them to the Gestapo. It seemed unlikely, but there was no room for error when no one could be trusted.

  Night had settled, and she lit candles in the kitchen and the bedroom, as well as the oil lamp in the living room. The man was still asleep when she peeked in on him. She went to her bedroom again, and though her body yearned for sleep, she couldn’t let herself. Not yet. She got dressed once more. The Gestapo could come at any time. He was exposed. Hiding him in the closet would only prolong by seconds the amount of time it would take to find him, and he was too injured to hide outside in the cold of winter. Running through nightmarish scenarios in her mind—each of them realistic—she went back into the bedroom where he lay asleep. They weren’t safe, even up here, particularly if she had to go into town. The Luftwaffe uniform was still bundled up in the corner where she’d thrown it. If, on the off chance, he was Luftwaffe, she could give it back to him. In the much more likely scenario that he was British or American, it would only serve to have him shot as a spy. It had to be hidden, but where?

  She stomped her foot and heard the hollow wooden sound from the floorboards. She got the toolbox from the kitchen, went to the bedroom where he was sleeping, and pulled up a thin rug, exposing the wooden slats below. If she pried up the boards, she could create an effective hiding place. But first she would have to move the bed. She made her way over to the side of the bed and pushed it across the room, the man still asleep on it.

  She dug the claw of a hammer into the space at the end of the long floorboard, then angled it back, wrenching it upward. After a few minutes of wrestling with it, the stubborn board gave way. She finished the job with gloved hands and placed the board against the wall, revealing a two-foot space below. It was filthy, and freezing cold, but would do the job nicely with a bit of cleaning and a few blankets. She set to work on the adjoining floorboard, wondering how many she would have to pry up to fit him in the space. The fewer the better—everything had to look as natural as possible.

  A cough from the bed jarred her from her concentration, and the hammer fell out of her hand into the hole she’d created. She stood up as the man’s eyes flew open. He sat up in the bed, his face contorted into a horrible grimace. He clamped his eyes shut before opening them again and turned to where she, stunned silent, was standing. Pain and confusion clouded his eyes.

  “Who are you? Why are you keeping me here?” he said in perfect German.

  Chapter 4

  His accent was hard to place. She’d known Berliners before, had heard their slender, harsh accents. He had some of the hallmarks of that, but it seemed there was something missing. It was hard to explain, almost like trying to describe a dance to a blind person. He was sitting up on the bed, his eyes imploring. It had been several seconds since he’d asked her, and his words were still hanging like smoke in the air. A thousand thoughts flashed through her mind, but she wasn’t quite able to catch hold of any of them. She stepped forward, her arms outstretched, her hands turned upward as if in a gesture of defense.

  “I am a friend,” she said.

  He didn’t reply, seemingly wanting more.

  “I found you in the snow. You were unconscious. The pain you feel is the fractures you sustained in both of your legs.”

  The man ran his hands along the splints she’d fashioned from the kitchen chair, and the grimace came again.

  “My name is Franka Gerber. I brought you back here. It’s just the two of us. The nearest village is several miles away.”

  “Where are we?”

  “We’re about ten miles east of Freiburg, in the mountains of the Black Forest.”

  The man brought a hand to his forehead. He seemed to recover from his confused state and spoke with some clarity now.

  “You are with the police?” he asked.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Do you have any affiliation with the Gestapo, or the security forces?”

  “No, I don’t. I have no phone. I found you and brought you back here.” The words tumbled out of her mouth. Her hands were shaking by her side. She brought them behind her back.

  The man narrowed his eyes before speaking again. “My name is Hauptman Werner Graf of the Luftwaffe.”

  “I saw your uniform.”

  “Why did you take me back here?”

  “I found you last night
. We were too far from anywhere that could have offered us any medical help. I didn’t have any other choice.”

  “Thank you for saving my life, Fräulein Gerber. Are you associated with the armed forces?”

  “No, I’m a nurse. Well, I was a nurse.”

  The man tried to move his legs. His face twisted in agony, and she stepped forward again, right by his bedside now.

  “Lie back down, Herr Graf.” It felt ridiculous to be using a name she knew wasn’t real. “I know you’re in great discomfort.” She looked around for the aspirin pills. They weren’t going to do anything more than temper his pain, but any kind of relief would help him sleep again. They were on the bedside table, which she’d shoved out of the way to reveal the floorboards, and now his eyes went down to the gaping hole she’d created.

  “What is going on here? What are you planning on doing?”

  “Just some repairs,” Franka said. “Nothing to concern yourself with.” She took out three pills and offered them to him. He looked at them and then back into her eyes.

  “They’re just aspirin. They’re not much, but they’ll help until I can get something stronger.” She could see the pain in his eyes, and also the fear and confusion that he was working so hard to hide. He held out his hand, and she dropped the pills into his palm. She gave him water, and he swallowed the aspirin, gulping down the entire glass in seconds.

  “Do you want more water?”

  “Please.”

  She hurried into the kitchen, glancing over at his rucksack on the floor of the living room as she passed. The guns were still inside. Her father’s gun was in the drawer of the dresser table by the front door. When she returned, he was trying to get out of the bed, his face sweating and distorted in suffering.

  “No, please,” she said. “Lie back down. You have nothing to worry about. I am a friend.” She handed him the water. It was gone in seconds, as before. She took the glass back. He was still upright on the bed. He folded his arms across his chest as she began to speak. He looked as if he was concentrating on each individual word she was saying. “Lie down. We’ve no way of moving you. The roads are closed, and both your legs are broken. We’re stuck here together. We’re going to have to trust one another.”