Motherland

by Maria Hummel

  The man shrugged. Had she tried the registration office in the Reichsbüro?

  “He’s not listed,” Liesl said. Jürgen began to cry and she picked him up, patting his back.

  “I don’t have time for this,” the man snapped. He glanced side to side, as if he suspected someone else was hiding in the room with them.

  Jürgen moaned. Liesl set him clumsily back down in the pram. She pulled his blanket over him, then pulled it off again. The baby twisted. Suddenly he no longer resembled a miniature human, but some other life-form, something trapped.

  “I really can’t help you,” the man added, yet at the same time he slid across the desk a directory. It was a big book, with tiny handwritten corrections. Liesl swayed there a moment, hovering over Jürgen. The baby grabbed for a ribbon she’d tied to the pram handle. She gave it to him and he began to suck on the satin.

  The man cleared his throat.

  Liesl grabbed the heavy book and sat down. It was organized by type of practice, and then by city or town. She didn’t find Schein among gynecologists, so she began looking in every category, scanning for his name, secretly hoping not to find it. The man at the desk looked at her from time to time, and then back to his stacks.

  She had been in the room with Uta that day. Uta had insisted on her presence, groping for Liesl’s hand but clamping her wrist instead. I won’t do it without her.

  Liesl had watched Uta, gassed and half asleep, while the doctor did his work. She had kept her eyes on her friend’s slack, quiet face, but she had heard the clatter of instruments, the slurry noise of flesh coming out of Uta’s body, then slapping the basin. Uta had been spared that. Uta had woken up in pain, but freed. She hadn’t witnessed a murder. Liesl had.

  Jürgen began to kick his feet against the side of the pram. She towed it back and forth with her free hand. The baby spat out the ribbon. Soon he would wail. She was only halfway through the listings. The old man glared at her and clacked his dentures. His skin was the same color as the walls. But she didn’t have time to return his scorn—a cry erupted from Jürgen’s mouth, a full-fledged scream, as if someone had just stuck him with a knife. She leaned over him and the book slid from her lap and crashed to the floor. The man at the desk glared. She leapt up and shoved the pram out, bashing the threshold.

  Outside, she pressed Jürgen to her chest. She carried him all the way home, the boy sobbing, then lying hot and quiet in one aching arm. Her other hand pushed the empty pram, its pale insides shaking over the cobblestone.

  Uta was sitting with her feet dunked in steaming water when Liesl burst in and set Jürgen down on the table, stripping him.

  “Where are the boys?” Liesl said.

  “They’ve been playing in the cellar,” Uta said. “I can’t stand it down there but I’ve been listening.”

  Jürgen began to cry again as she exhumed him from his clothes, but even beneath the noise, she thought the cellar was too quiet. She wedged the half-naked baby against her shoulder and walked to the head of the stairs, calling the boys’ names.

  “That child’s going to catch a cold,” Uta observed.

  “He has a fever,” Liesl snapped. “And I didn’t get the address.”

  Uta was silent. Her bare feet stirred in the water.

  “The boys might have liked a hot bath, you know,” Liesl said. “Did you ask?”

  “I should have gone,” said Uta. “Was it a man in charge? I’ll go tomorrow.” She pulled her feet out of the tub and wrapped them in a towel.

  Liesl took the naked child in one arm and filled a bottle of cool water with the other. She pressed the nipple to his lips.

  “Hans, Ani!” Liesl called, and tickled the baby under the chin. His mouth remained closed. “I left you in charge of them. It’s cold down there,” she said.

  “They won’t have anything to do with me,” said Uta. “They know you don’t want me here.”

  Finally Jürgen’s lips opened and the water went in, just a few drops. He squirmed and made a tiny sad sound.

  “Of course I want you here.” Liesl tried the nipple again.

  Uta tilted her head. “You aren’t pregnant, are you?” she asked softly.

  “No.” Her monthly bleeding had come, regular as clockwork, two days after Frank had gone.

  “Maybe I should go today,” Uta said, reaching for Liesl’s boots. “Is it far?”

  Before Liesl could answer, shoes pounded up the steps from the cellar. Ani fell into the kitchen. Hans stumbled and toppled over him.

  “What are you doing?” Hans shouted, rolling and scrambling to his feet, his eyes traveling to Uta holding his stepmother’s boot. Red spots bloomed on his cheeks. “Where is she going? I can stand in the ration lines. Herr Berger likes me. He gives me the best bones.”

  Liesl turned her back on them and curved herself around the baby, shushing him although he hadn’t made a sound. His eyeballs bulged in his hot head. She held the cold bottle to his cheek, then belly.

  “Why’s my baby brother naked?” she heard Hans say.

  “I don’t feel good, Mutti,” came Ani’s voice.

  She pivoted and touched his brow. Cool. His eyes were muddy, lost, but not burning. “You don’t have a fever,” she said. “Lift your shirt.”

  Ani’s ribcage showed as he flashed his abdomen. No spots.

  “Does your throat hurt?”

  Ani shook his head. Jürgen cried weakly, tears squeezing from his eyes.

  “Shh, shh,” Liesl whispered, wiping them with the corner of his blanket.

  “You’ll be all right, Ani,” Uta said. “Your brother needs her now.” She shooed them away, back to the cellar, telling them to play a little longer while their mother got Jürgen to sleep, to be big boys and she would give them each a special treat from Berlin. Liesl heard Ani protest and Hans tell him not to act like a baby, and she was relieved when the footsteps descended again. It was too damp and chilly downstairs for two growing boys, but they would be safe there, no matter what.

  For three days, Hubertstrasse 6 fell into an uneasy routine. Liesl nursed Jürgen around the clock, monitoring his fever as it spiked. Uta watched the boys in the morning and then went outside with Hans in the afternoon to get food. The man at the records office promised to write his contact in Franconia, but it could take weeks for a reply. Meanwhile Uta cooked, Uta washed dishes, Uta swept floors. Her blond hair fell everywhere, snagging on the sofa pillows and curling in the sink, clinging to the kitchen broom. Her humming filled the air. She was bossy and abrupt with the boys and they did not like her. Hans faded into the farthest parts of the house, and Ani stayed close by Liesl’s side. He slept and read beside his younger brother, acting like a second, bigger baby. When he woke, he always complained about his stomach. Liesl was sure it had something to do with Uta’s oddball cooking, but she told him they should be grateful. Without Uta, they wouldn’t be eating at all.

  “I don’t know what we’d do without her,” she said to Ani. “You’ll get used to her food.”

  “I don’t want to.” Ani frowned. Were his cheeks unusually pale? She stared at their curves and hollows. For a moment, he looked like an unearthly creature, and then he was Ani again, complaining. “She’s the worst cook in the whole world.”

  Jürgen’s eyes opened and he began to wail. He reached for her. She scooped him up and pulled him to her chest. The wails diminished to sobs.

  “The worst cook in the whole world,” she said over the mewling. “Are you sure?”

  Ani nodded.

  She checked the baby’s temperature with her palm. Cooler than yesterday, but still too warm. “Then you haven’t heard of the cook in Clever Lina’s house,” Liesl said, thinking of her fairy tale book. “Now, he was awful.”

  Ani’s eyes grew bigger.

  “I don’t suppose you know about Clever Lina,” Liesl said with mock disappointment. She set the baby down on a blanket. “She had a little brother that she found in the nest of a tree. She called him Birdie. She loved Birdie, bu
t her father’s cook hated him.” She paused, realizing how awful the next part would sound.

  “Why did he hate him?” asked Ani.

  “He was an extra mouth to feed. So Clever Lina took Birdie and ran away.”

  Jürgen’s bottom lurched up and he heaved himself forward on his arms. It was the first time he’d ever propelled himself anywhere.

  “Look at him,” Liesl crowed. He had to be feeling better. She cheered, and Ani clapped his hands. They watched Jürgen lurch again. He grinned and gurgled.

  “What was the story?” Ani said in a funny voice. “What was the story you were just saying?”

  She met his troubled eyes and frowned. He didn’t usually forget plots.

  “The one about Clever Lina?” she said.

  “Yeah, the bird. What were you saying?”

  “Does your stomach still hurt, Ani?” she said.

  “But what is it . . . the story you were telling?” He sounded frustrated. “What’s the story you were telling?”

  “I’ll tell you at bedtime. Don’t worry. Clever Lina saves her brother. Does your stomach still hurt?”

  He moved his palm over his ribs. “A little.”

  “I’ll cook tonight,” she promised. “And I’ll tell you the whole story later.”

  “All right,” said Ani, and when their eyes met she saw his hopefulness.

  “Come here,” she said and hugged his thin shoulders. “We’re going to fatten you up,” she said into his hair. His head smelled sour and plastery, like the basement walls. This poor winter-war child. He was like the parsnips her aunt used to send her to dig from the root cellar in January, damp and pliant, all the sun gone from them.

  At bedtime, Ani asked to hear the cook story.

  “About Clever Lina?” Liesl said.

  Ani nodded. “You remember that one you told?” he said. “It’s really good, Hans.”

  “I probably already know it,” said Hans. But he was the one who listened to her while Ani dozed off.

  Clever Lina and her brother ran away together. Soon they heard the cook’s messengers coming after them.

  “Never forsake me, and I will never forsake you,” she said, and the boy promised. And she changed him into a rosebush, and herself, the rose, and the messengers went home, baffled.

  “You fools,” cried the cook. “Cut down the rosebush and fetch me the rose.”

  But the next time, Lina made the boy promise again. Again, she changed him, this time into a church, and herself, into a bell, and again the messengers went home.

  “The cook was so mad that he went himself the last time,” Liesl said. Ani’s breaths were deep and easy. She fell silent.

  “And that’s it?” said Hans from the depths of his blanket.

  “No,” said Liesl, and she described how Lina made Birdie promise a third time, and changed him into a pond and herself into a duck. She told how the cook tried to drink up the pond, and the duck drowned him, and Lina and Birdie went home safe. But she couldn’t help feeling the story was already over long before.

  The true end was the vow that brother and sister had made to each other.

  Never forsake me, and I will never forsake you.

  They could change into anything—they could survive it all—as long as they promised that.

  The next afternoon, Ani cuddled with his baby brother again and slept in the window. Liesl left them and went to Frank’s files and found the name of the doctors he’d recommended. She dialed one number and found it was disconnected. She dialed another and was told the doctor had been drafted. “Do you know anyone who makes house calls?” she asked the sharp female who answered, and got the number of a certain Dr. Becker. On the phone, Dr. Becker sounded brusque but he agreed to come the next day.

  Just after she hung up, there was a light rap on the door. Liesl peeked from the second-floor window: A uniformed teenager stood on the stoop, his black boots grinding into the snow. Clouds of breath gusted from his mouth. It was bad news. It had to be. But Frank was playing the model German now. No more packages, he’d instructed. No more fantasies of escape. It was Uta’s lover, then. He had tracked her down.

  “Heil Hitler.” Liesl clumsily bashed her hand on the knob when she raised it.

  Without a word, the boy saluted, held out a letter, and spun around, marching down the walk. Liesl ripped the envelope open with stinging fingertips.

  The notice was from the housing office. Two refugee families would be moving in next week. Their names were Dillman (five persons), and Winter (six persons), all women and children. Each family would require its own rooms, its own stove for cooking, and access to the bathrooms and the wash kitchen in the cellar. An official would come to start refitting the rooms tomorrow, so they needed to clear all their possessions out now.

  She clomped to the gate in her boots, hoping to catch the messenger. Surely he would know more—couldn’t he at least tell her where these Dillmans and Winters were from? What sort of occupations they had?

  But the messenger was gone, vanished around the corner. As Liesl folded the telegram, she felt someone’s eyes on her and looked up to see a movement in the window on the second floor of Herr Geiss’s house.

  What did we do to you? she wanted to ask. Her boot prints covered the walk to the front gate, making soft tracks in the fresh snow although she hadn’t been outside in days. But she had never walked with such a long free step. She never ground her footsoles as she took a corner, allowing her hips to swivel and sway. And what had Uta shouted yesterday, “I’m off to get some Goebbels meat—one pound of bones, and two pounds of snout!” She told Frau Hefter when she walked by with her dachshund, “Your dog is quite the bureaucrat. He wags his tail for you, but he gives everyone else his crap.”

  Uta still had not found Dr. Schein, but she said she was getting close. The man at the records office had turned up information that Schein had applied for a visa, but found no paperwork about his departure. Uta was sure he was concealing himself somewhere.

  “How will that help you?” Liesl said. “If he’s not even practicing anymore?”

  But Uta stirred a stew of stringy rooster meat on the stove and didn’t answer. Twice Liesl thought she saw her friend’s hand steal over her flat belly. The gesture filled Liesl with sadness and hope.

  “He’s awake,” she heard a voice behind her say, and saw Ani in the doorway, holding Jürgen. Then the older boy’s bright face contracted suddenly and he staggered. Liesl scooped the baby from his arm.

  “Careful, Ani,” she scolded. “I’ll make you some nice tea and tomorrow the doctor will come, all right? We have a lot to do tonight,” she added. “We’re going to have people moving in. Refugees.”

  The boy gave her a puzzled frown.

  “Refugees are people running away from the Russians. From places where it’s not safe for Germans anymore.”

  When she read him the telegram, she watched Ani swallow and stand straighter.

  “Was somebody shooting at them?” he asked.

  “Probably,” she said.

  “And burning their houses?”

  She could see the fear in his face. “I don’t know, Ani. Is Hans filling your head with this stuff ?”

  “Will they be hungry?”

  “If they are, we’ll share what we have,” Liesl snapped, hitching Jürgen higher on her hip. “Now stop worrying. I’m sure they’ll have children, and you can play with them.”

  He gave a little nod. She put her free arm around his shoulders and squeezed. “Stop worrying,” she said again.

  “Can I go find Hans and tell him?” Ani asked.

  Liesl looked at the sky, empty of planes. It would be nice to have an hour home alone with Jürgen, to feed him and dress him without rushing with the buttons and bottles and pins. It would be good for Ani to get some fresh air.

  “No,” she said. “There could be a raid.”

  “There won’t be,” Ani pleaded. “I promise I’ll be careful. You never let me go out, just Hans.”
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  “No,” Liesl said again, locking the front door, locking out the chill and brightness and constant eyes of their street. Eleven people. It would never be quiet in the house again. It would never be hers again.

  “Why don’t you get out a Max und Moritz and I can read it to you,” she added a moment later, but heard Ani’s footsteps already thumping down the stairs to the cellar.

  Liesl was shocked by her instant dislike of Dr. Becker. She had dressed carefully for the visit, in one of Susi’s blue wool dresses, which was loose everywhere but had no fading or stains. She let Jürgen whine on the floor outside the Icebox while she raced to comb her hair and fix it back with pins. She had sent him downstairs with Uta and Hans so Dr. Becker could examine Ani in peace.

  Her own deliberations made her nervous and irritated. She didn’t know precisely what she wanted the doctor to confirm—that nothing was wrong with Ani? Something was wrong with Ani: his stumbling, his stomach pain, the absent way he talked.

  Her anxiety skyrocketed when the doorbell rang, and she had to ball her hands in Susi’s pockets to hide their shaking. Dr. Becker was right on time; he was professional and polite, with a clean soap smell. She could imagine Frank inviting a fellow like him over for dinner, and he would be a tidy eater, and, after the meal, sing folk songs with them in his clear tenor. She told herself there was nothing the matter with Dr. Becker, but she still found herself staring with disgust at the little curling hairs at the back of his head as he walked up the stairs before her.

  “His baby brother just got over a fever,” she said.

  “But Anselm’s temperature is normal?” He glanced back at her.

  She flushed at his scrutiny. “Mostly normal.”

  His eyelids dipped slightly.

  “I haven’t taken it today,” she said, and they proceeded in silence down the cluttered hall to Ani’s room.

  Dr. Becker had the same headlamp as Frank, and before he even sat down to examine Ani, he pulled it dramatically from his bag and let the boy switch it on and off. When Ani stuck it on his own head and peered up, Dr. Becker gave a tiny smile, though he must have seen hundreds of children do the same trick. Liesl smiled, too.