Motherland

by Maria Hummel

  “You’re a natural,” he told Hans, and saw his face burn with pride.

  By the time the first candle burned low, they had finished the walls and floor. It was time to fit the door. Frank had thought of the smaller nails he would need to hold the wire to the door, and the tiny taps it would take to send them into the wood. He had saved those blows for Ani. He sent Hans to get another candle and beckoned to his middle son. “Here,” he said, taking a nail from his mouth and holding it against the wood. With his other hand, he gave Ani the hammer. “Just the slightest tap now.”

  He waited, ready for the hard smack that would inevitably come, bruising his thumb. He felt Ani’s eyes on him.

  “Why is Mutti hiding?” the boy said.

  “She’s not hiding. She’s changing the baby.”

  “She’s taking a long time.”

  Frank flushed. “She’ll come out when she’s ready.”

  The boy continued to regard him. He set the hammer on the floor.

  “Go on,” Frank said.

  Ani rose and ran toward the study. He threw back the blanket and disappeared behind it, then shut the door.

  On his long journey home, Frank had not thought about Liesl, or rather he had thought about Liesl often, but as an agent in his plans. He’d thought she would understand him, as she’d always understood him before. In her quiet way, she would be grateful for the animals, the hutch, the seeds he’d brought for a garden. She would see these gifts as he saw them: promises of survival.

  He would tell her about his desertion after the boys had gone to bed, starting with his escape from the cistern and his hungry, exhausted days in the forest. He would describe his relief at finding a gamekeeper’s cabin, at resting there and eating someone’s old dusty provisions until his frostbite healed. He would skip the long days walking, getting lost, retracing his steps, and turn to getting arrested, rotting anonymously in a cellar converted to a jail cell while a local official asked around for the reward he would get for handing the deserter over. The man’s greed saved me, he would say. He thought I might be worth something. One night, the man’s daughter inexplicably let him free. After that, it was surprisingly easy getting to the farm, easy to find Bernd and ask him to get a message to his wife. He would not be ashamed of the desertion. After all, he’d done it in the name of his family. And he’d worked hard, mucking stalls and butchering hogs for the sake of a few chickens and rabbits, the supplies for a hutch, also in the name of his family. And risked his life to get those things here, all in the name of his family.

  But what he hadn’t expected was that his family would change. That Hans would act gruff as a little man, that Ani would be . . . whatever he had become. Frank had a hard time finding a word for it. As a doctor, he might spin a diagnosis around the symptoms of lead poisoning: impaired cognition and motor control, confusion, fatigue. Yet as a father, the best term he could come up with was “maimed.” Ani had been maimed. In mind as well as body.

  He would never forget Ani stumbling toward him with his burned arm and hissing with pain as he’d wrapped both tight around his father. Or watching Ani struggle to tie his shoelaces. Or waking to see Ani stumbling after a cat around the dark farmhouse, whispering to himself, If we don’t cry out, they’ll think we’re dead. They won’t hurt us if they think we’re dead. For two weeks, Frank couldn’t hold more than a two-sentence conversation with his second son, because Ani’s mind wandered so easily and because he mixed up words—“farm” for “barn” and “shell” for “coat.”

  All Ani wanted to do was see the animals in the barn, but his desire had a compulsion to it, as if he couldn’t stop being with them. He’d come back from his endless grooming sessions, eat with a silent, distracted air, go obediently to sleep, and wake screaming from terrible nightmares. Day after day, night after night.

  And then one night, Ani had slept the whole way through. And then two, then three nights in a row. He ran without tripping over his feet, and the clouds in his eyes began to clear. When a new pony was born, he’d begged to name it White Wing, and ran around all day grinning when Bernd said yes. Whole paragraphs erupted from his lips when he described the splendors of the horse. He’d stopped twitching and flicking his head.

  Ani’s turn toward wellness in a few short weeks astonished Frank. He’d never anticipated his own son would be living proof of his thoughts on dystrophy, how the constant pressures on Germany’s soldiers had made it impossible for them to heal. But Ani hadn’t been a soldier sleeping out in snowy, lice-ridden trenches, waiting for a Russian attack. Ani had been a six-year-old in a sturdy house, with a mother and brothers, and food on the table. Ani had fallen ill after Frank had gone, but long before the terrors of the air raid. He had succumbed under Liesl’s care.

  Frank had read and reread Liesl’s letter, but her order of events confused him. He asked Hans to tell him the story of Ani’s illness from the beginning. He could tell that the older boy hadn’t paid much attention. Or hadn’t been privy to much. There had been doctor visits, yes—not with the doctor Frank recommended, but someone else, Dr. Becker, who had found a high concentration of lead in Ani’s blood. And then things got murky. Though no one seemed to know what caused the lead poisoning, the doctor had wanted to send Ani away to an asylum.

  Why?

  I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t trust Mutti.

  And then?

  Hans shrugged. Then another doctor changed the first doctor’s mind.

  It sounded contrived. Why had Liesl sent the telegram?

  Because she was afraid Ani would be taken away. Before the second doctor came.

  So if she knew the second doctor was coming, why did she summon me?

  She didn’t know the second doctor was coming.

  She didn’t summon him?

  No. The first doctor sent him. The second doctor was going to take Ani to the asylum, but he changed his mind.

  Why? Why did the doctor leave without Ani?

  He thought Ani was well, I guess.

  But Ani isn’t well.

  He belongs with us, Vati.

  Yes, he does . . . Hans, did your stepmother ever hurt Ani?

  No. No. She saved him during the air raid. Me, too.

  Then the boy had told him the story of Ani catching fire, himself getting stuck at the brewery, and Liesl’s rescue of them both.

  Frank had ridden the whole way to Hannesburg curled in a ball under the soiled crates, and deliberating about how to greet Liesl. How could he be anything but grateful for what she’d done? And yet she had let his sweet, trusting son grow frail and twisted inside—so how could he not feel anger, too?

  Yet the moment he’d lit the lamp in his besieged house and seen his wife and son standing there, holding each other, neither anger nor gratitude filled him. I am a failure, he’d thought, looking at Liesl’s wide, trusting eyes. He’d wanted to fall down in front of Liesl. To bury his head in her apron and cling until her hand gently raised him. But she seemed so afraid of him, so afraid of letting him touch her. Did that mean she was hiding something about Ani? They needed to talk, but every moment was speeding toward the next, today crashing into tomorrow like a ship into another ship. He didn’t have enough time.

  Hans came back with the new candle and sat down, watching. Frank nailed the wire into the door with tiny precise knocks. His hands still worked. The frostbite hadn’t ruined them.

  He heard a noise and looked up to see Ani leading Liesl into the room. Her face was puffy from crying.

  “Look, Mutti,” Ani said in his old, clear voice. “This will be the rabbits’ house. We’re making it together.”

  He pulled her by the hand and smoothly sat her down beside Frank. Liesl swept her legs beneath her, folded them up, swan-like. Frank pressed the wire down and pinched another nail, motioning to Hans. “Give your mother the hammer,” he said.

  He waited, hardly breathing, as she hefted the handle, staring at its round metal tip. She didn’t seem to know how to hit with it. He wrapped his
arm around her, holding her wrist. She flinched but did not pull away. They raised the hammer together and brought it down lightly.

  “Where’s the baby’s cradle?” Frank asked her later, looking around the lamp-lit study. Jürgen was drinking his nightly bottle, watching his father with huge eyes.

  “It’s too small,” Liesl said. He’s been waiting for you to build him a crib, she added silently.

  “So where does he sleep?”

  She pointed to a little carpet she rolled out every night for herself and the baby.

  “On the floor?”

  “I sleep with him. It’s not so bad,” she said defensively. “I was afraid he’d fall off the couch.”

  Frank shook his shaggy head. He pulled one of his father’s books out, then shoved it back. He seemed to be formulating some response, but it did not come.

  “We can all stay in here. You can have the couch,” she offered. “It’s perfectly comfortable.”

  “What happened to our beds?”

  “There wasn’t room for them. I loaned them to the Winters.” She paused. “I could have moved all the books and the desk instead, but I thought they were more precious. To you.”

  Frank blew out through his lips. She wondered if he’d wanted to make love to her that night. She wished she knew how to ask about such things. You don’t have to ask, she heard Uta’s voice say.

  Frank turned away from Liesl and sat down lightly on the couch, as if testing it out for purchase.

  Jürgen tossed down his bottle. “Muh-muh,” he said, reaching for her.

  “He sleeps soundly,” she said. “Once I put him to sleep, we can . . . we can talk, if you like.”

  She wasn’t sure which one she dreaded most, the talking or the lovemaking—the complicated ways they could hurt each other. She just wanted time to stretch instead of collapse.

  This is your last night in a German house, she heard Uta’s voice again.

  As Liesl dressed the baby in his nightshirt, an awkward silence fell. She felt Frank watching her and it made her hurry too much. When she pulled off his sweater the baby squalled. She fumbled with the buttons, the diaper pin. Finally the baby was dressed, his thin hair erect with static. She smoothed it down. He shook her hand off and tried to pull up on the bookshelf.

  Liesl watched Jürgen balance, uncertain what to do next. “He’s a good walker,” she said.

  “He is,” Frank said.

  “I’ll take him to say good night to his brothers,” Liesl said.

  “Good,” said Frank.

  When she came back a few minutes later, Frank was examining his hands. “When I got frostbite out there, I was worried I’d lose sensation in my fingers,” he said. “That I would touch things, but I wouldn’t be able to feel them anymore.” He flexed his fingers.

  Liesl carried the baby over and squeezed Frank on the shoulder. “Once you start thinking like that, you can’t stop,” she said.

  He looked up at her. “I never would have told Susi that. She wouldn’t have understood,” he said. “But you do.”

  Liesl set Jürgen in Frank’s arms. “Hold him while I make our bed,” she said, and she felt them both watching her as she spread out the little carpet and then a folded blanket next to it, then dug into the couch beside him and found three pillows, one for each of their heads. The simple task calmed her. She was making a bed; that’s all she was doing. In her German house. On the last night and the first. With her husband, who was home.

  “Go out and say good night to the boys,” she told Frank. “When you come back, he’ll be asleep.”

  To her surprise, Frank looked grateful for the instruction, kissed his son, and rose.

  She set the baby down on the far side of the carpet and lowered her body next to him, already singing her nightly lullaby. The baby’s eyes followed his father out the door and he rolled to his feet and started to totter after him.

  “Stay here, now,” Liesl said, laughing.

  Frank scooped him up and carried him back, chuckling. It was the first time they’d laughed together in how long?

  Four months. And when will we laugh again? Liesl thought, and then saw Frank’s smile fading as he recognized it, too.

  When Frank came back, sinking down beside her, the baby was asleep, as promised. At least she could accomplish that. She curved her body to Frank, hoping that he would hold her, but he lay stiffly, staring up at the ceiling. She watched the outline of his nose and chin.

  “Did you have enough food for them?” he said after a moment.

  It took Liesl a moment to understand he was talking about Ani. “Of course.”

  “And did he eat it?”

  “I thought he did,” she said. “The boys always eat well.” Except when Uta cooked, she added mentally, but that was only a week or two.

  “Did you notice his loss of motor control or his cognitive impairment first?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.” The floor suddenly felt hard and uncomfortable.

  “Was he stumbling or was he acting bonkers first?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, trying to keep the edge from her voice. “He grew more . . . upset after you went missing. He started talking to himself.”

  “What about the twitching?”

  And on the questions went, Frank spitting the next one out before she had time to finish responding to the last—the queries similar but not exactly the same, probing to get at some truth she did not know how to reveal. How could Frank grasp it anyway? He hadn’t had to live through the nightmare of Jürgen’s first illness, the insanity of clearing out the house for the refugees, Hans’s constant disobedience. He’d never contacted her the whole time he was fleeing home. He’d never had to live with her fear of his death.

  She shrank away from Frank, pressing back into the baby’s soft warmth. She just wanted to get to the part where they trusted each other again.

  “You’re not falling asleep on me, are you?” he said.

  “No,” Liesl whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m just tired.”

  Frank shifted. She felt his eyes searching for her across the dark air. “Liesl,” he said softly. “We have to know everything so we won’t let it happen again. We have to learn.”

  She lay there, silent, thinking, What if you can’t stop things from happening again?

  “My boys love you. As a mother,” Frank said. “I can see it in each of them.”

  She was all stillness now.

  She felt Frank reach for her, clumsily brushing her breast before he took her hand, stroking the palm, the fingers. “They talked about you all the time. Hans told me how you rescued him. Ani made me stay up one night and watch the stars because he said you asked him to.”

  “He’s doing better, isn’t he.” Liesl said, a catch in her voice. She didn’t want him to let go of her hand. “When he came to get me today, he seemed like the old Ani.” How tender the boy had been, asking her to join the family again, showing her where to sit.

  Frank squeezed her hand. The clock in the living room chimed ten times. In another twelve hours, the Americans would be in Hannesburg, and then what would happen to Frank—

  “I can’t wait any longer for this,” Frank muttered, and kissed her. His lips pushed against hers so hard, his tongue in her mouth, her tongue in his. In one motion, he slid his arm under her body and hauled her to the couch across the room. She bit off a moan as he set her beneath him, pressing his thighs into hers. He had always been so gentle and slow with her, but now his movements were quick and decisive, unbuttoning her, pulling her breast to his mouth with one hand, his other traveling up under the hem of her nightgown, touching between her thighs. She reached for his hips. He batted her hands away, kissing her breathless again before lowering his head down her body, tasting her.

  Afterward, they stayed on the couch, lying intertwined so they both could fit on its narrow shelf. She propped her head on Frank’s chest, and he told her about his journey home, getting lost in the woods, climbing a tree—it all
sounded like a boyhood adventure, until the night he was following a road through a darkened village and a dog began barking.

  “There wasn’t anywhere for me to run. The snow was too deep in the fields,” he said.

  Within moments, the barking dog became a woman screaming, then a man shouting, then a gunshot fired over his head.

  Frank had been caught. They threw him in a cellar. A girl brought him water and bread. “Her father tried to interrogate me. I didn’t tell him my name, but he found some poems on me that belonged to Hartmann, so that’s who I said I was. The fellow told me I was under arrest for desertion, but he didn’t seem to have any authority but his gun.” Frank lost track of time in the cellar because it was always dark, but he was sure he’d been there for several days. “Luckily for me there was a big snow during that time, and the roads were slow going.”

  “And then the daughter came down one night and let me go. I don’t know why. Maybe she read Hartmann’s poems. Maybe she thought I was a poet. Couldn’t make heads or tails of his stuff myself. But maybe it saved my life.”

  “What happened to Hartmann?”

  Frank didn’t answer for a long time. She heard him swallowing.

  “He didn’t make it.”

  She moved to her side and pulled him around her. The clock chimed again. It was two in the morning now.

  They didn’t have any more time to talk if they wanted to sleep before the Americans came, and Frank’s hand was gliding up her hip again, circling her waist, and she was turning to meet him.

  Liesl watched Frank and Herr Geiss from her kitchen window. The men were sitting on the second floor in the Geiss house, in the room with the long pane that overlooked the Kappus villa. They sat with their legs crossed, on either side of a green bottle of liquor, talking and sipping as if neither of them were in the slightest danger. Frank had dismissed her fears that Herr Geiss would betray him for desertion, and clearly he was right. The old man looked as delighted as a father welcoming home a prodigal son. He leaned toward Frank, and Frank was lapping up the attention, helping himself to pour after pour and roaring with laughter at Herr Geiss’s jokes.