Motherland

by Maria Hummel

  I just want to find one quiet piece of the world, and stay there and live a humble life, Liesl wrote back. Uta would laugh. She wanted to be a daisy of the fields again. Uta had not written. Uta was probably living underground. Berlin was under daily assault now.

  Several days after Palm Sunday, Liesl buried jars holding the records of Frank’s army draft and their years of working at the spa alongside a parcel with the house’s best silver. She did it in the dark, after Jürgen was sleeping, sinking a spade in the cold wet earth of the garden. She made sure no one was watching, ran upstairs, and brought down Uta’s bracelet, shoving it deep in the ground under the jars, and piling the dirt over them all. The fragrance of the thaw made her knees weak. It reminded her of planting time in the fields of her early childhood, holding her mother’s hand, jumping in the rows left by her uncle’s plow. She cried herself to sleep that night.

  The next day, Frau Hefter came to the door to enlist Liesl in a cleanup crew for the rubble in the city center.

  “My daughters can watch your little one,” she said. “We need strong arms and backs.” She recounted all the women who had joined the effort, this widow and that widow and that orphaned girl. She asked how Hans and Ani were faring in the country, and then without really listening to Liesl’s answer, she announced that her husband was missing.

  “Still doing his duty, no doubt,” said Frau Hefter. The last she’d heard from him, the Red Army was marching on the POW camp where he was based. “They were breaking down the camp and moving the prisoners west.”

  “I’m sorry,” Liesl said. “It’s hard . . . waiting for news.”

  Frau Hefter didn’t even blink. Her blue eyes shone. “And my Georg has joined the Volkssturm.”

  Georg Hefter was just a few years older than Hans, a skinny teenager who rode his bike too fast around town.

  “Oh,” was all Liesl could say. She reached out and squeezed Frau Hefter’s arm.

  Frau Hefter clicked her tongue against her teeth. Then she thrust her chart at Liesl, showing her what time slots were open. “We won’t win the war by giving up now!” she shouted as she departed.

  The next morning Liesl left Jürgen with the Hefter brood and their nanny and headed to the town center to join a small horde of women who were clearing it with wheelbarrows. A dense cluster of buildings there had been burned to walls and empty arches. Taken together they appeared not to rise from the earth, but hung from the sky like cages. A single wall jutted, holding nothing at all. Its innards puffed out: yellowed mortar, mold, ancient newspaper. Drifts of rubble rose around it, clogging thoroughfares with broken concrete, brick, roof tile, cinders, and worst, fragments of cloth and black spots that could have been spilled oil or blood. People had started to pack down trails over and through the drifts, but their web of paths made the landscape look permanently altered, as if it might never be level again.

  Now that it was daylight, Liesl saw that such ruins scattered like oases throughout the town, near strategic targets. The Americans had not destroyed Hannesburg, merely jabbed wounds in it everywhere. This wound was the biggest. Three lines of women worked the rubble. One searched for whole bricks; one stacked the bricks neatly in piles; one shoveled useless debris into carts. Scarves shrouded their hair and faces. They wore heavy aprons and housedresses, and dust streaked their stockings and skirts. They had the preoccupied air of ants after their mound has been disturbed. Liesl searched for Frau Hefter, for any familiar face, but if any of these women had been at the Frauenschaft meeting, she didn’t recognize them now. She had the desolate sense that all those hopeful, panicked wives were gone now, vanished, burned up in the night of the raid. These women knew the war was over. The Americans were coming. There were no men left to fight, no weapons left to aim but pride. They were cleaning up.

  The closer Liesl got, the more the air stank of rotting flesh, and she paused to knot her handkerchief around her mouth like the others. It was hard to breathe through the cloth, but the fabric dulled the sharpness of the scent. Bend, lift, straighten—her back remembered the old aches of the harvest. Her hands remembered the scratches and scrapes of plucking and digging. When she finally found a perfect brick she carried it down to the women making stacks.

  It was then that she spotted Frau Hefter. Her back was to Liesl, her blond hair bound up in two thick braids and pinned behind her head. Frau Hefter was muttering to herself as she stacked the bricks, her hands deft, the picture of effort.

  “I finally found one that wasn’t broken,” Liesl said, holding out her brick.

  Frau Hefter made a startled noise and turned. As soon as Liesl saw her face, she realized her mistake. It wasn’t Frau Hefter; but another woman with similar coloring but with uglier, fleshier features, masked by a scarf. Her eyes were red, as if she’d been crying. They settled on Liesl without recognition.

  “Just set it on down, with the others,” the woman said. She had a coarse accent. “Right there.” She pointed at a pile.

  Liesl didn’t move, still confused by her error.

  With a grunt of impatience, the woman grabbed the brick and set it on her stack.

  “Liesl, over here.”

  Liesl saw someone waving from half a block away. It took her a few moments to identify the slender figure, the doll-like face. Berte Geiss. Thank heavens there was someone she recognized. Liesl walked over the loose rubble with her hands held out, to stop herself if she fell.

  “It’s better here,” said Berte. “The RLB already cleared the worst of it.”

  Liesl sucked lightly through the scarf. She could still taste the rotten gases and she shook her head. “I’m not much help,” she said.

  “Chin up,” said Berte, and handed her a shovel. “Help me fill this cart. It’s just dust left here now.”

  They worked together in silence, falling into an alternating rhythm.

  “You seem so much older than when I first met you,” said Liesl.

  “Do I?” Berte shrugged. Her eyebrows rose behind her scarf, as if she were smiling. “Have I gotten all wrinkled already?”

  “No, I didn’t mean that,” Liesl said seriously. “I mean that you seem so capable.”

  “I thrive in a crisis,” Berte said. “I’ve been through this total war before, remember? It’s old hat. Besides, I gotta get out of the house. The lovebirds are driving me batty.”

  Liesl breathed again. The handkerchief tasted of her own sour spit. “Is it that bad?”

  “She even makes eyes at him when she dusts,” Berte said, and imitated Frau Dillman’s jiggling chest.

  Liesl laughed aloud at the imitation, but then was struck by a sudden sadness. She had never reconciled with Frau Dillman. She threw herself into shoveling. You can marry that old man, she thought, spiking her spade into the ground. But you’ll always be his Putzfrau.

  They filled five wheelbarrows and dumped them, then moved on to a new location, on the rim of the Rathaus, and began shoveling ash. The cinders made a higher, softer sound against the shovels, almost a music.

  “How are the boys?” Berte asked.

  “They like the farm life,” Liesl said truthfully. “I knew they would.” After a moment’s hesitation, she queried Berte about the crates that her father-in-law had moved into the house.

  “Oh, those,” Berte said. “He’s been storing some of my mother-in-law’s paintings somewhere and he thought he better bring them home.”

  Frau Geiss must have done a lot of paintings, Liesl thought. “Did you know her?” she asked. She had been curious about the elder Frau Geiss since she’d cleaned her house. She remembered the artist’s tenderness in her portrait of Ani and Susi.

  “Uli’s mother? Met her twice before she died,” said Berte. “She didn’t approve of our marriage. Said I shouldn’t get married so young.” She thunked a heavy shovelful of earth into the wheelbarrow. “I guess she did, and she regretted it.”

  Liesl and Berte were washing their faces and hands at the city pump when they heard the shelling begin. It had co
me, distant as thunder, several times in the past week, but this shelling was loud and near. Full of whistles and shrieks. A boy climbed up on a roof and looked east. He shouted that he could see a dark line moving on the roads. His mother begged him to come down.

  By the time the boy scrambled to the ground, the women had emptied their last loads and were piling the shovels. They spoke in whispers, as if the approaching Americans could already hear them. The metal dropped with loud clatters. The wooden handles clanked together, a drumbeat of common purpose. Get home. Get home now. Liesl felt the displaced sensation again, as if she were some other mother hearing the news. She glanced up at the pale dome above. What if more planes came tonight? What if the American soldiers took their revenge on women and children?

  Beside her Berte looked strangely serene.

  “You seem happy,” Liesl said, an edge in her voice.

  “It’s almost over.”

  But Berte plodded on the walk home, and Liesl had to keep slowing her pace to let her catch up. “Please,” she said, breathless. “I need to get Jürgen.”

  “They won’t reach here until tomorrow,” Berte said. “I think we can make it home before tomorrow.”

  “I just want to get him,” said Liesl, her mind flashing with terrible images of Frank, Hans, and Ani hiding in a hayloft while tanks rolled through the fields below. What if Jürgen was the only one she had left?

  “And I just want to see these streets as German for one last time,” said Berte. “Don’t you? Tomorrow it’ll all belong to someone else.” She waved a hand at a house’s brown-painted shutters and the cracked glass window of the bakery, at the white tower that rose over the town. “And we’ll belong to someone else, too.”

  Liesl burst into the apartment with Jürgen, already mentally sorting and packing what else to bury in the yard. The china. Anything with a swastika on it. She wondered what could be burned.

  She heard something thump across the floor and stood still, heart pounding.

  She was reaching to turn on a lamp when a male voice said from across the room, “Don’t be angry about the rabbits. Hans and I will build them a hutch for the balcony tonight.”

  Liesl switched the lamp on, and Frank’s body sprang out of the darkness. He looked too thin and had grown a beard, and he was wearing a ridiculous hodgepodge of clothes—pants too short in the legs and a shirt too short in the sleeves and a giant, poorly knitted shawl thrown over it all. His eyes fastened on her, then Jürgen. She stared back, unable to believe it was him. She didn’t recognize the expression on his face. He looked so hungry, but his mouth curled as if he had tasted something bitter.

  The silence extended. And then she ran to him, baby and all, lurching into an embrace.

  “Careful, careful,” Frank murmured as he folded them both in his arms.

  “Where are the boys?” she said into his shirt, and at almost the same time, he said, “Where have you been?” then answered, “They’re down with the chickens. Is this my baby?” He smiled at Jürgen.

  “I was clearing rubble,” said Liesl, and then she burst into tears. “They were going to take Ani away—” she said, sobbing. “I wouldn’t have sent that telegram, but I was so afraid—”

  “He’s going to be all right.” Frank said, but he moved away from her. “Is this my boy?” he said to the child.

  Jürgen gurgled back and Frank gently shook the baby’s fist.

  “Ani’s getting better every day,” he said.

  She gulped and shook, her face wet. “He’s better?”

  “You should have seen him with the animals,” said Frank, and described Ani spending hours in the barn, currying anything with fur until the cows’ and ponies’ coats crackled. “They would have won all the prizes at the fair.” Ani ate well, too. Especially after he was allowed to sample from Bernd’s secret store of cheeses, Frank said, adding a chuckle that sounded forced. His stories sounded wrong, like the off-color jokes she used to overhear her uncle telling. She had never been able to fully comprehend their details, and their endings mystified her.

  “And he slept well?” she interrupted.

  Frank was across the room again. “Most nights,” he said.

  “Did he tell you anything?”

  “No.” Frank sighed. “Let’s not talk about this right now. I just want to see my son. And you.”

  But she couldn’t stop. Frank had to know how hard she’d tried. “I looked! I looked every day. I asked him every day,” Liesl said. She felt her lips drawing back, baring her teeth, and she covered them with her free hand and turned away.

  A silence fell between them. Frank walked back and took Jürgen from her. The baby squirmed and stretched his arms for Liesl. “Muh-muh,” he said.

  “That’s your father, now,” Liesl said softly.

  The baby whined. A rabbit whumped into view. It was small and black with one white spot on its back. Frank carried Jürgen to the window.

  The rabbit hopped to her shoe and sniffed. It sniffed the toe, then the side, the heel, one long ear flopping. Then it loped slowly away. Liesl wiped her eyes. “They’re lovely.”

  “I’m trying to keep Ani from naming them all,” Frank said. “He wants them all to be pets.”

  “It’s not safe for you here, Frank,” Liesl whispered.

  “Muh-muhhhh,” Jürgen wailed. Frank handed him back.

  “I had to be sure you were provided for,” said Frank. “Things are going to get worse after we surrender. There won’t be enough food. I want you and the children to have your own meat and eggs and the seeds for a garden. It won’t be an easy year.”

  She pressed her cheek into Jürgen’s head, trying not to cry again. She didn’t like the way he said “you and the children.” The baby frowned and grabbed her hair.

  “How did you manage to get into Hannesburg?” she asked.

  Frank picked up the bunny with one swift hand and petted its head. “We had quite a ride,” he murmured. “Four rabbits, three chickens, and two sons on top of the lorry, and a father riding under the crates.”

  The bunny twisted and he let it down. It bounded behind the couch.

  “I want Ani to be safe,” Liesl whispered. “All of us to be safe.”

  “Ani will improve,” said Frank, his eyebrows contracting. “He’s a strong fellow, and he’s pulling through. You’ll see when he comes upstairs.” He took a step nearer to her again, his beard still startling her every time she looked at him. “And I’m here now. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “Someone will denounce you,” said Liesl.

  “You have to understand something. This is my house,” Frank’s voice rose. “This is my father’s house. I’m not abandoning it.”

  She started to shake again. How could he be so loyal to this simple brick and plaster, that staircase and that balcony, when it all could be blown up tomorrow? Better to flee where bombs would not follow them. To keep flesh and bone whole. “We have to think about what’s best for—”

  He cut her off with a look, and a bitter salt filled her mouth. He wasn’t the same Frank. First that beard, and then the angles of his face and body, his scrawny hips—he wasn’t the same man anymore.

  “We should turn on the radio,” Liesl mumbled, fumbling with the knob. A march was playing. “We shouldn’t shout.”

  The door opened behind them and Hans and Ani stormed in. After three weeks they both looked ruddier and fatter, and Ani wore a pair of new baggy trousers cinched at the waist with twine. Liesl knelt down and opened the arm that wasn’t holding Jürgen and they jostled in to hug her with silly grins on their faces. She didn’t know what she’d expected of their reunion, but it felt just right and too brief at once. The boys extracted themselves and began patrolling the room. Jürgen demanded to get down, too, and pulled up on the legs of his brothers.

  “The chickens are thirsty,” Hans said loudly to his father. “We need a lot of water for them. And a water trough.”

  “Where are my bunnies?” Ani said.

&nbs
p; She studied him as he rooted among the furniture. He seemed older, his face ruddy, his movements smooth and confident. If he was getting better in the country, Frank ought to have stayed. They all ought to go back together.

  “We’ll have eggs for Easter,” said Frank. “And a beet for dye. Susi always liked that tradition. The boys, too.”

  Did he think she was Susi now? Would Susi let them talk about holiday decorating when the Americans were coming, and Ani needed quiet, and Frank could become a prisoner of war?

  The radio changed songs. A familiar stink rose from Jürgen’s vicinity—he’d soiled his diaper.

  “Their mother used to write their names in wax so when they dipped the eggs their names would show,” Frank said.

  “I can write my own name now,” said Ani.

  “I’m sorry,” Liesl said. She could feel herself starting to tear up again, and she turned so they would not see. “The baby needs to be changed.” She ran with Jürgen to the study and shut the door.

  God knows, he’d had time to think, to prepare. The whole endless march through the snow, the days in the basement in Bad Vilbel, he’d felt his own skin tighten around his ribs; he’d felt his head swim with daydreams of roasts and strudel, felt his teeth going loose in his mouth, and calculated what he would need to save his family from hunger. The animals. The seeds. The wood and nails and chicken wire. A saw and sandpaper. Two hammers, one for him and one for his eldest son. The latch and hook for the gate. He’d even thought about the noise it would take to build the hutch by dark, and he’d hung blankets over the living room door to muffle the sound.

  Frank didn’t care if the neighbors noticed his presence. Even if they could find some authority left in Hannesburg willing to arrest him that night, it would take hours and hours. He just wanted to finish the hutch. He’d showed Hans the plan, sketched out on a scrap of envelope, and they’d each built a side while Ani watched, stroking the rabbits and telling them not to be afraid. Ani was part of the blueprint, too. Frank wanted him to see them making a safe, secure home. Shaping something in the wreckage.