by Maria Hummel
She had a thousand household chores to do but she couldn’t tear her eyes from the window. The existence of Frank—across the yard, the dinner table, in her bed—still astonished her. Her insides swirled with so many new or bygone emotions that she didn’t think she would be able to eat for days. She would simply feast on relief (he was home), shame (he still blamed her for Ani’s illness), lust (she wanted him), fear (he would let himself be arrested), and hope (he would hide).
Stay with us, she’d whispered when they’d first woken up that morning. Frank had put his finger to her lips, then kissed her hard.
She heard footsteps behind her and saw Ani balancing a handful of brown speckled eggs against his chest, advancing to the counter beside her. “Be careful!” she sang out, rushing forward.
“I can do it,” he insisted, twisting away. “Let me do it.”
To Liesl’s surprise, he tiptoed all the way to the counter and set the first egg down.
“One,” he said proudly. “Two. Three. Four.” The fourth egg rolled, but he stopped it ably with the heel of his palm. The brown orbs balanced, fragile and unbroken, on the hard surface. Ani’s recovered dexterity thrilled her, and how long had it been since they’d tasted fresh eggs? Here they were, smallish but miraculous, Frank’s gift to the house. She glanced gratefully, fearfully across the yard, up to the window where her husband still paced. She wished he would come back to her. She was envious of any happy moment he spent with someone else.
“One from each hen,” Ani said. “Can I go see if the Americans are coming?”
His nonchalance shocked her—as if he were watching a game of marbles! “No one is leaving this house,” Liesl said.
“Upstairs,” Ani said impatiently. “They can see the western road from upstairs.”
“Did the Dillmans invite you?” They hadn’t reconciled with the Dillmans. They hadn’t said anything to the Dillmans or the Winters about Frank’s arrival. Both would have to be done, but she didn’t know how.
“Grete did. She said I could come. Just me.”
Liesl wondered if the Dillman girls were up to some sort of trick. She still hadn’t forgiven them for the loony business, and she didn’t understand how Ani could, either. She was about to refuse Ani’s request when footsteps thundered down the stairs. She followed the boy to the threshold to see Frau Dillman descending rapidly, wearing her house robe and slippers.
“He needs to hide,” she said, nodding, when she saw them. “They’re here. I saw the tanks with my own eyes. They’re at the city border now.”
Without waiting for an answer, Frau Dillman flung open the door and ran down the walk, her slippers floundering in the spring mud.
It took Liesl a moment to realize that Frau Dillman was talking about Herr Geiss and not Frank.
They all need to hide, said Uta’s voice. But you can’t ask a man to do that. Ask him to fight, to die—anything but hide.
Exhaustion spread through Liesl’s limbs, sore from a night with Frank and from hefting a shovel yesterday. She had the sudden urge to run upstairs and crawl under the eiderdown and pull it tight over her head. Instead she watched the woman’s progress, and the men at the window above, noting Frau Dillman’s advance.
Frau Dillman stopped and waved at them, a taut, anxious gesture, like someone trying to hail a departing ship.
Herr Geiss did not return the wave. Instead he scowled and bolted from his chair, pulling Frank away from the window. Frau Dillman paused, gave a cloudy huff of breath, and kept walking straight up to the front door. Her robe flapped, revealing her bare ankles. The cold spring wind didn’t make her wince at all. She appeared to have entirely forgotten herself.
“Mutti, can I go see? Please?” Ani asked.
Liesl watched, spellbound.
“Pleeaaase?” Ani shouted.
“All right!” she said, exasperated. “But you are to stay inside this house, do you hear me?”
She held her own elbows as Frau Dillman pounded on Herr Geiss’s door, as the voices of the men echoed up from the cellar, Frank pointing out his hens, the rabbits. They sounded as if they were two vacationers touring a farm, not an army doctor and a Party man on the day their city was surrendering to the Americans. Liesl marveled at their arrogance, their bravado, as her upstairs neighbor kept up her knocking.
Finally the Geiss door opened, and Berte peeked out, blinking. She said something to Frau Dillman, and the other woman pushed her aside and went in.
Liesl heard Herr Geiss down below, urging Frank to take something he’d offered.
“No,” said Frank. “No. I’m staying.”
The words chilled Liesl. The men wouldn’t let the war go. Her hands balled to fists. What about us? she wanted to scream.
Frau Dillman’s voice broke shrilly through the men’s conversation. “You need to hide!” she shouted. “You told me you were leaving.”
Herr Geiss spoke in a voice too low for Liesl to hear. Liesl stared into the white, blossoming branches of the cherry tree, hardening her resolve. She wasn’t going to let him get arrested for the sake of honor or duty. Frau Dillman might be helpless, but Liesl had a claim. She was Frank’s wife.
In all his life, Hans had never heard a silence like this. It reminded him of a candle just after it has blown out and the darkness closes in.
Yet the silence was on only one side, the German side, on the side of his brothers and stepmother, and the neighbors’ wives and the neighbors’ children, the ones who just four weeks ago had been playing the game of Kidnap. He still couldn’t look at Frieda Dillman, though she always seemed to be crowding the edge of his vision with her tightly clothed body and sad eyes.
From the Americans emerged three distinct noises: the gravelly grind of the tank wheels pressing the road, the slippery whisper of a soldier reaching into a bag and tossing, and the flap-flap of sticks of gum hitting the pavement in front of the children. Occasionally the Amis would talk to each other from the sides of their mouths, and their voices sounded like radio voices, tinny and distant.
The column was long and slow; it seemed to stretch through Hannesburg all the way to some other city, maybe across the ocean, maybe even to some other century. The Americans rode in armored trucks. Some men stared out; others looked down at the guns on their laps. Helmets crushed their hair onto their foreheads. A lot of them were moving their mouths, though they didn’t seem to have any food, and Hans realized they must have been chewing the same candy they’d thrown.
He stepped away from his brothers and stepmother so he wasn’t touching anything at all, and slowly slid his shoe over two foil-wrapped pieces of gum. He stood on top of the gums, crushing them, until the whole column passed and the people started turning away. The whole time he thought about the gums, sweet and thin, waiting for him and Ani.
It was midafternoon when he bent and pretended to tie his shoe and slid the silver sticks in, feeling a stab of betrayal as he did so. He saw other mothers kicking the gum away from their children.
“Poison,” he heard one mother say. He also noticed that many of the pieces had mysteriously vanished, though no one was chewing.
“Hurry, Hans,” his stepmother said. She looked different this morning, as if she’d finally stepped in out of a storm, and he realized with a start that she was happy that his father was home, that she was in love with his father. It had never occurred to him before. His country had lost. The air raids were over. His town was full of Americans now. His father had filled the cellar with little bags of seeds. Things would start growing soon. She was in love with Vati. Hans followed her, trying to float on the slim pieces of gum instead of step on them. His mouth watered. He couldn’t wait to get home.
“The rabbits need more greens,” Ani announced, tugging at their stepmother’s hand when they reached the corner to their street. “I told Vati—”
“Shh,” she said.
“I told him I would stop and get them,” he whispered. “At the Kurpark.”
“Absolutely not!” Sh
e grabbed Ani by the wrist.
“Just to the park? Vati said I could go,” said Ani, pulling loose. “The Amis are gonna stay forever anyway.”
Their stepmother seemed startled by this comment and took a long time to respond. Jürgen yawned and fell against her neck. She ran her hands over her front, ribs to waist, a gesture Hans remembered his own mother doing before she entered a crowded room.
“Not forever,” she said, but her voice lacked conviction. “Come on. Everyone home.”
Liesl stared at the rabbit hutch on the balcony. Frank had finished it. The rabbits hid in the corner, out of sight, as if all along they’d been waiting to disappear. The living room was empty except for the coop, and it smelled like sawdust and fur. The walls of the coop were also done, but it still needed a roof and ledges for nests. Jürgen reached for an edge of the wall, gripping it with his fat fingers.
Frank appeared from the Icebox, drying his hands.
“Where are the boys?” he said.
“They’re picking grass in the yard,” said Liesl. “They’re in love with those rabbits.”
“So are those little Dillmans,” said Frank, and told her about introducing himself to both families upstairs and downstairs, giving them fresh eggs.
“You shouldn’t trust them,” Liesl said.
“We don’t have a choice. Besides, they seem relieved to have a man here.” Frank picked up his son and kissed him. Jürgen squirmed and cried. “What’s the matter?” he said.
“He’s just getting tired,” she said.
Frank continued to hold the baby, and the baby’s cries escalated.
“Ready for his nap,” Liesl said, holding out her arms. Yet as soon as Frank handed the baby over, Jürgen quieted and grabbed at her hair.
Frank began to pace.
“Susi never had your gift for infants,” he said. “She liked the boys better when they were walking and talking.” He looked at her, a searching gaze that made her uncomfortable. She walked to the couch and sat down.
“They’re all good boys,” she said to the top of Jürgen’s head.
“Sometimes I still don’t get it,” Frank said. “I didn’t have anything to offer you but three grief-stricken kids and my own absence, and you took it.” He cleared his throat. “You took it like it was a gift and you raised my sons when I couldn’t.” He walked back toward her and then crouched by her feet. “The whole time I was running home, I thought, why would she, except that she wanted a family, and this war took all the other men away.”
In his nearness, he looked younger, earnest, endearing. Liesl’s gaze fell to her wedding ring, the one that had been Susi’s before her. She wished the boys would come back, would light up the room with their bickering and laughter. She wished Frank would just accept the simple fact: We are together now. She didn’t want to think about the past or the future.
“And I thought, how can I be the man she deserves?” Frank’s voice cracked. He touched her knees. “I can get home. I can save my son. I can feed my family, and I can hide like the others, and when it’s safe—maybe months, maybe years—I can work again. It doesn’t have to be medicine. I’ll do anything.”
Liesl twisted the ring, feeling the gold pull away from her skin.
Frank kept holding her knees and talking, describing how everything changed the moment he stepped across his own threshold. He saw the walls that had protected his mother and father, his wives and children, and now new families. He saw the shelter his sons had fixed in case the rest of their home was destroyed, and the hole his neighbor had made to make it possible for one house to escape into another. Everything was porous now, nothing closed, nothing fixed. A man could create himself anew.
He sounded giddy as a boy.
“You should rest,” she said. “You haven’t rested since you’ve been home.”
Frank rose and towered over her. “I’m not leaving again,” he said. “I’m not hiding. When the Americans come to this house, I’m going to be with you.”
What was he saying? He touched her shoulder. His hand weighed like a sack of meat. She shook it off.
“Liesl,” he said.
She shook her head, her legs clenched, her neck stiff, while Frank waited, shifting from foot to foot. There was a noise on the balcony as a black rabbit crossed the hutch and sniffed the mesh. Its ears swiveled back and forth.
“You’ll break their hearts,” she whispered.
The rabbit hopped back to the shadows. Frank touched her shoulder again, and this time she let him. She let him draw her up from the couch and close his arms around her and Jürgen. She breathed into the linen of his shirt, her legs weak and shaky.
What will you do if Frank never comes home? she heard Uta’s voice again.
The door swung open. Hans stood there, frowning. “Ani’s gone,” he said.
Ani rounded the corner and then took off for the brewery pasture. He knew where the soft sprigs poked up through the soil. He knew because his mother had once showed him where to gather sorrel for Sauerbraten. He remembered walking beside her, tugging the tender shoots.
No one watched that field. No one would chase him away. He sprinted, and the women on their way to the ruined market stared, their hands tightening on their empty bags. He ran harder, even when one shouted at him, “Slow down! I thought there was a Yank behind you.”
Not a Yank, but surely Hans, once they figured out he was gone. Vati would send Hans right away, and Hans was fast. Faster. Ani could feel the old weakness in his bones and muscles, but he was getting strong again. His head was clearing, too. In the country, under the stars, he’d stopped having bad dreams and started to have good ones. He wanted to own his own yellow barn and fields one day. He’d announced it to his stepmother last night. She asked him why, and he said, because he liked growing things. Then she told him about sowing her own garden when she was a child—potatoes, peas, and cucumbers in a ring of daisies and asters. She told him about wandering barefoot in the rows of new barley with Fräulein Müller, and imagining they were queens of barley and all the green plants were their loyal subjects. Then she’d fallen silent.
Is that the end? he’d asked.
The end of what?
The story.
No. But I forget the rest. She’d sounded sad.
Can I see your farm sometime, Mutti?
She’d pinched the bridge of her nose and covered her eyes with her thumbs. Yes, yes, of course you can, she’d said and smiled.
He knew she was not lying and she was not leaving. She would never leave them. He knew because of the way she looked at his father, and his father looked at her. It was as if a thin gold chain attached them. He remembered the same gold unspooling between himself and his mother, and how her love for him tugged him back whenever he ventured too far from the house. His recognition of this new love filled him with purpose. He would be a good boy. He would not cry or fall down. He would take care of Jürgen and show him how, in turn, to care for the bunnies. He felt bad for sneaking away, but he didn’t want the animals to go hungry.
He reached the edge of the pasture. It was thick and brown, with a few patches of melted snow. But here and there he could see the green shooting up beneath, and he began to bend, to grab and tear. His nose filled with the sweet aroma of ripped grass. He stuffed his pockets. He saw the small flat leaves of clover and picked it, too. There would be more. It didn’t matter if he stripped these few tender things out from the roots. More would grow. More and more. This was just the beginning.
He was almost ready to head home when he saw it.
Under a big hummock of dead grass, it hid, about the length of a grown man’s shoe. A flash of bright green. Beneath it, red. The arch of a wing. A claw.
He paused, his heart beating in his throat. He sneaked closer. He was reaching when his foot bumped something hard.
White light.
Fly up.
While Liesl was putting Jürgen down to sleep, she heard a knock on the door. Not Hans and Ani. Hans and An
i wouldn’t knock. They would just pile in, full of noise and purpose, Hans collaring his brother to show him off, safely returned.
Instead, it was Frau Winter announcing that a few streets over, the American officers were moving three whole families out of their villas.
“Their new headquarters,” she said.
Liesl listened to Frank thank her for the information and deftly herd her out, far quicker than she ever managed to do. The door thudded shut. After a few moments, the baby’s eyelids fluttered, and Liesl tiptoed out of the room.
“What did she say about the Americans?” she asked Frank when she rejoined him in the main room. He was sanding a few patches of rough wood on the hutch.
“They’re moving people out,” he said, his hands moving up and down, fine dust falling to the floor.
Liesl watched it fall, resisting the impulse to fetch a pan and broom. Instead she swept up Hans’s small handful of grass and put it in a clean ashtray.
She wanted Frank to understand that she wasn’t changing her mind about his plans. A father should do whatever he needed to stay alive for his family. There wasn’t anything more honorable than that.
A squall rose from the other room.
“I’ll get him,” Frank said, throwing down the sandpaper.
“He might go back to sleep,” Liesl said, but Frank was already down the hall. She picked up his coat, noting the missing button, and went to her sewing box to search for a match. The baby cried louder and then miraculously fell silent as Frank began to sing.
She heard the creak of feet outside the door, a rustling. “Come in. Quietly,” she said, irritated at the boys. “Your brother is trying to sleep.”
There was another creak.
“Come in,” she said, rising. “Hurry it up now.”