White Rose Black Forest

by Dempsey, Eoin

  “Yes, near Inzlingen, but let’s worry about staying alive long enough to get there.”

  “No, John,” she said, reaching to him. “This would be so much easier for you if we left separately. You could make your way down to the border on the train. With your papers—”

  He flicked her hand away. “All right, then. Gather as much food as we can carry. Start with the light stuff—bread and cheese. Pack as much of that as you can. After that, we’ll take some cans. Bring water, and the can opener too. I have matches, flints, and I’ll take a couple of those kitchen knives. I have a sleeping bag, but I want you to bring at least two blankets also. Wear your warmest coat and hat. Bring any spare ammunition you have for the pistol, and as much money as you can lay your hands on. We just might be able to bribe a guard to let us over the border if we get lucky. How much petrol do we have in the car?”

  “Half a tank, perhaps?”

  “That should do. We need to get as close to the border as we can without using any main roads. The regular routes will be thick with guards, even at night. We have to avoid being stopped at all costs, particularly once they realize that Berkel is missing. Don’t bring toiletries or more than one change of clothes. They’ll only weigh us down. Take only what you can carry, starting with food and water.” John folded the map and stood. “We can do this.” He held a hand out, and she took it. “We’ve no time to waste. Can we get out of here in fifteen minutes?”

  “Yes.”

  John felt the weakness in his legs. It was something he’d never known before. He wondered if he would be able to run if he needed to, let alone trek through snow-laden forests. He had always been able to rely on his body, whether it was to shoot a basket to win a game or to scale a wall in basic training. He hoped it wouldn’t let him down now, not when he needed it most. Not when someone else was relying on him and the mission itself depended on it. He made his way to the bedroom, reveling in the feeling of sitting on the bed, knowing it would be the last time he’d feel comfort like that for a while. He dropped the microfilm into the secret compartment in the backpack and zipped it closed again. His pistols were clean, and he shoved one into his coat pocket, the other down into his backpack. John stood up, ready. He looked around the room one last time, and then down at the floorboards, thinking about the decaying body of the Gestapo officer they’d stowed underneath. The room seemed clean—nothing to signify upon loose inspection what had happened here. He took the oil lamp with him, leaving only darkness behind.

  Franka had packed the lighter food into her own bag, leaving the cans and water bottles on the kitchen table. John packed them into his bag, feeling the weight double. It was still nothing like Guadalcanal, or even basic. He could take it.

  The sky was clear as he stepped outside. No clouds meant no snow, but also no insulation. He had been in Germany almost six weeks, had only spoken to one person, and had barely left the cabin. It was time for him to complete his mission.

  Franka folded her change of clothes and placed it into an old rucksack that had gone untouched for ten years or more. Her hands were still shaking, perhaps from what had happened, or perhaps at the thought of what was to happen. It was hard to tell where one feeling ended and the other began. She worked through the route again in her head. She had skied those back roads as a teenager during winters and hiked them on warm summer days. She had never driven them. They weren’t roads as much as mere suggestions of corridors through the forest. She had little idea how far they could get but knew they had no other option. The Gestapo would show no mercy for killing one of their own.

  The bag was ready, and she hefted it onto her shoulders. It was heavy, but she’d carried more. With a last look around the room, she realized that she’d likely never see it again. The mundane suddenly became precious. The faded wallpaper was now a wonderful tapestry, each piece of furniture now the keeper of the precious jewel of memory, her old hairbrush on the dresser a family heirloom to be cherished and passed on to the next generation. This was where they’d spent that last summer with her mother.

  The living room offered no escape from the feelings bombarding her. She saw her father there sitting in the chair by the fire, her mother laughing at one of his corny jokes. And Fredi. Fredi playing with his trains on the floor, his legs still sturdy enough to walk, and his heart strong, as it had remained until the end. Franka took a step toward the door, feeling the cold breeze on her face. John was standing by the car. She knew she had only seconds now. The dark patches on the wall lingered, and the cuckoo clock went off for the last time. It was eleven o’clock. She paced back to the bookcase. The pictures were in a box on the bottom shelf. She thought to take it but decided otherwise, reaching in to scoop out the dozen or so black-and-white photographs of her family she’d taken off the walls. Franka took one last look around and made for the door.

  John took his place in the passenger seat as Franka sat behind the wheel. The car sputtered a couple of times before starting. Franka made her way down the hill, her foot on the brake as they went. The beams of light from the car jutted through the dark, illuminating the way for perhaps twenty yards in front. The tires clawed at the earth for traction, and the car rumbled down the hill.

  “Do you know what road to take?”

  “For the first few miles, yes, but you’re going to have to help me after that.”

  John took out the map and a tiny flashlight from his pocket. The paper lit up in circles of greenish white as he ran the light across it. Exhaustion was setting in, but Franka dismissed it as a triviality. Sleep was a luxury they couldn’t afford.

  They proceeded in silence for hours, the car trundling along at less than twenty miles an hour. John stared through the windows in every direction, his gun in hand. The tracks they took ran in general tendencies, sometimes meandering to a halt where the trees had grown back, and they would have to back up, unable to turn around on more than one occasion. The forest seemed determined to retake the roads encroaching into it. Ways that she remembered as a child were impassable now to all but the hardiest of trekkers. The human world seemed to ebb away as they delved farther into the forest. It was a welcome feeling—an escape.

  Franka broke the silence as they came to what seemed like another dead end. The blackness of the trees seemed to envelop them. It was almost five in the morning.

  “Can we go any farther?” Franka said.

  “Perhaps, if we go back. The map’s not clear.”

  “Where are we now?”

  “I think Bürchau is dead ahead, down the hill in front of us.”

  It had been several years since she’d visited her great-uncle here. In years past she would have shouted out greetings to the farmers who lived there as she passed by on her bike. But the National Socialists had eradicated any sense of trust among the people they claimed to be protecting. Trust bred free speech, and that was the thing the Nazis feared most.

  “It’s tiny,” John said. “Not more than a few houses thrown together. Do you think there are any guards there? Any military presence?”

  “Hard to say. We’re deep in the frontier zone. This whole area is crawling with soldiers.”

  John was just able to open the door. The trees were only inches away on either side. The track they were on had not likely seen a car in years, if ever. He bustled through the tree line until they were overlooking the houses below, pockmarked on the hills. The moon and stars lit the slanted roofs. Nothing was moving, and no lights from the houses pierced the perfect darkness. He turned and made his way back through the snow, six inches thick.

  Franka had turned off the car and was sitting in the passenger seat.

  John clambered back in. “Nothing’s moving down there. No lights, no guards. It seems safe.”

  The features of her face seemed to blend one into another in the darkness.

  “Can we trust your uncle?” he asked. “We can’t afford to be complacent.”

  “Hermann never leaves the house, and I know where he leaves his spare
key.”

  “When was the last time you checked for it?”

  “Nineteen thirty-eight, and I guarantee it’s still there. I’ll speak to him in the morning. You stay hidden. We don’t need anyone to know you’re with me, even Uncle Hermann.”

  They got out of the car. They spent a few minutes covering it over with branches and leaves, until it was difficult to make it out in the dark. They were under no illusions—if someone happened down the path, they’d see it. They slipped on their rucksacks and moved in silence past the tree line and into the snow.

  Franka led them through and stopped at the top of the hill overlooking the hamlet below. John crouched down beside her. The night was still thick around them, but nothing was moving in Bürchau. It was just as she remembered it, untouched by the National Socialists. It was heartening to see the lack of their flags and posters. It was as if they didn’t know about this place. Fifty people lived here back when she had last visited, and she doubted many had left. She motioned for John to follow her as she began to descend the hill. The snow came up to their knees. It took them several minutes to negotiate the two hundred yards or so down.

  A dog barked in the distance as they reached the bottom of the hill. John crouched as he moved forward. Mimicking his movements, Franka lead them down the hill to Uncle Hermann’s house. Aunt Lotte had died back in the 1920s. Franka’s father had said it was from a broken heart, from mourning the deaths of her sons lost in the Great War.

  Franka held a finger to her mouth and reached under a flowerpot to the right of the wooden front door. John nodded to her, and she slipped the key into the lock. The door opened with a gentle creak. Franka stopped for a few seconds to listen. The house was exactly as she remembered it, worn down and old. Franka led him up the stairs. A portrait of Aunt Lotte stared down at them. The carpet on the stairs was threadbare, graying in the middle from a thousand footsteps. They kept to the side, but still it creaked. The door to Hermann’s bedroom stood at the top of the stairs. They could hear the unmistakable sound of the old man snoring. She led John past the bedroom and down to a door at the end of the hallway. She placed her hand on the doorknob as if it might shatter under her touch and turned it with the same care. The room was dusty but otherwise clean, the bed still made.

  “This was my uncle Otto’s bedroom,” Franka whispered. “We can rest here a few hours.”

  “What about your great-uncle?”

  “I doubt he’s been in this room for fifteen years. I’ll deal with him. We’re safe here.”

  John took the bag off his back and placed it on a chair in the corner. The curtains were drawn, the light of the morning not yet drifting through. He pushed the curtains back a chink and surveyed the houses below. This wasn’t what he’d wanted, but they had to rest. Nowhere would be safer. The long hike to the border was just a few hours away. Weeks of lying in bed had rendered him weakened, and exhaustion was spreading through him. He motioned for Franka to take the bed and got down on the floor.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said.

  “It wouldn’t be proper. I’m fine on the floor.”

  “We need sleep. The bed is the best place to get it.”

  She took off her boots and lay on the bed.

  “Come on,” she said, turning away. She felt the weight of him shift the mattress, and lay with her eyes open for several seconds before the hushed sound of his breath soothed her to sleep.

  Berkel came in her dreams, his fingers coiling around her throat, the weight of him on her, the fury in his eyes as she forced herself awake. John was still sleeping beside her. The day had broken. The sky outside was concrete gray. Franka heard the sound of her great-uncle shuffling around the house downstairs. The clock on the wall told her it was just after noon. They had slept for seven hours—longer than they’d wanted. The light of day would fade in a few hours, and while traveling through the forest at night would be more discreet, it would also be more dangerous. First she needed to see Hermann—not only because it would have been disrespectful not to, but also because he no doubt still had that shotgun he brandished at the first sign of trouble. Intruders in his house would be prime targets.

  John was going to need all the sleep he could get. Sheer stubbornness was only going to get him so far. She left him sleeping as she made for the bedroom door. Hermann was at the kitchen table, eating a lunch of soup and bread as she came in. His face was wrinkled and worn like balled paper flattened out. His mustache was white, his full head of hair the same. He dropped his spoon as he saw her.

  “Franka? What are you doing here?”

  “I’m sorry, Uncle. I was hiking and got lost. I needed somewhere to rest for a few hours, and I knew you wouldn’t mind if I laid my head down.”

  “Of course not,” he said, struggling to get out of his seat.

  “Please, don’t get up for me.”

  Franka sat down beside him. He offered her food and ignored any attempt she made to refuse it. Two minutes later she was sitting at the table, eating the thin turnip soup that he told her he ate most days of the week.

  “I hope you don’t mind my resting here a few hours.”

  “Of course not. It’s been too long since I last saw you.”

  The old man shuffled over to the pot, drained out enough for a full bowl, and sat down at the table once more.

  “I was so sorry to hear about your father,” Hermann said. “This war gets more and more horrific every day. This Nazi madness has poisoned our nation and led to the deaths of countless innocents. It was said that the insanity thirty years ago was the war to end all wars, but it’s happening all over again, except even worse this time.”

  “It doesn’t seem you’re too severely affected by the war here.”

  “Perhaps not.”

  “Do your neighbors feel the way you do? About the Nazis?”

  Hermann shrugged. “Who knows? We wouldn’t discuss it. I have nice neighbors, though. The woman next door, Karoline, calls in every day to check up on me. She lost both her sons on the front.” He shook his head. “There’s no real escape from the war. Not even here.” He took a mouthful of soup before speaking again. “What year were you born? Remind me.”

  “Nineteen seventeen.”

  “I remember holding you as a baby. You had those same beautiful blond curls back then.” He put his spoon down and stared into the space in front of him. “That was the year the great hunger took hold—the great hunger caused by the Allied blockade of Germany.”

  “I heard about it.”

  “The British blockaded the North Sea and attempted to starve us out. People wasted away. We had enough food to survive, but were all thin as greyhounds. Your great-grandfather died from dysentery, your great-aunt from tuberculosis, worn down by malnutrition. Every family was touched by the great hunger, by the madness of the kaiser, the French and the British, the ridiculous jingoism that destroyed a generation. And now they’re determined to do it all again.”

  They sat in silence for a few seconds.

  “I’ll be on my way after lunch, Uncle.”

  “You won’t stay longer? It’s been so long.”

  “I can’t. I would love to.”

  “It was wonderful to see you. I’m so glad you had the chance to visit.”

  “As am I.”

  The chair screeched on the stone floor as she got up. Franka knew there was little chance she’d ever see the old man again. She stood hugging him in the middle of the kitchen, letting go only when she recalled John in the room upstairs waiting for her.

  He was ready to go, standing by the door as she arrived back at the bedroom.

  Franka distracted her uncle by asking to see the view from the backyard as John snuck downstairs and out the front door. Hermann led her back into the house a few minutes later. She took him in her arms, knowing that she’d likely never hold a member of her family again. Cherished family memories would soon be hers alone. She would be the only person able to describe her mother’s sense of humor, her f
ather’s singing voice, or the love that Fredi shared with everyone he met. Those remnants of her past would fade into oblivion. Hermann bade her goodbye, holding a hand aloft as she shut the door behind her.

  She followed John and ducked behind a neighboring house. The tree line beckoned. No other way. They moved in silence up the hill and into the forest. The trees closed in around them. The dull winter sun faded out behind snow-covered branches, and they moved almost in darkness, even in the middle of the day. The cover on the ground was a foot deep. Franka wished she’d brought her snowshoes, as her thick walking boots lumbered through the clinging snow. John found branches to serve as hiking poles, and they trudged on, the cold gnashing at them, the sweat forming on their backs. John had insisted that they maintain absolute silence as they went, so they didn’t talk.

  John worked through every possible scenario he’d trained in, trying to remember every word his instructors had ever spoken. He searched for the answer to this situation—this problem of getting to Switzerland alive. It had to be there. He remembered the instructions on sneaking through the border. It was possible. There was no barbed wire, no wall—just a line of listening posts. The guards were human. They fell asleep. They read letters from home by candlelight when they were meant to be watching. They talked and joked and ate while they were on duty. There would be holes. The map would tell him where they were. Enough men had already stolen through, and with the strains on the German war machine, perhaps they had cut down on the border guards. They needed all the men they could get to fight the Soviets on the eastern front and to protect against the coming of the Allied forces to the west.

  Franka watched John’s back as he went. His movements were considered, deliberate. It was hard to say if his legs were affecting him or he was just pacing himself. He put his weight on the walking sticks he’d fashioned as he moved. She tried to picture what lay across the border—that was an irrelevance. The only thing that mattered was getting there. There was no room for hesitation now. Their only chance would be to make it across the border before the Gestapo found Daniel’s decaying corpse under the floorboards of her father’s cabin. Once they found him, the roadways would be flooded with every available man they could muster, and trying to cross into Switzerland would be almost impossible.