Springtime of the Spirit

by Maureen Lang

  But she did follow; he heard the patter of her footsteps. When she caught up to him, she grabbed his arm as if she were itching for the fight he was only too eager to give. “Didn’t you wonder what became of her? And yet it took you weeks to return after the last bullet at the front was finally shot.”

  He grabbed her arms then, not caring that she winced from the grip or that she leaned away when he pressed his face close or that for the barest moment she was afraid of him. “I had nothing to do with her death! Not hers.”

  And then, because she still looked afraid, Christophe was as disgusted with himself as he was with her unfounded accusation. He thrust her away and she stumbled back but did not fall. He wondered if he would even have helped her if she had. He didn’t stop long enough to contemplate it; he walked away.

  “Tell me the truth, then,” she called after him. “Prove it to me.”

  That made him stop. He faced her, seeing her shiver. Whether it was from the cold or leftover fear of him, he didn’t know.

  “Come with me.”

  He led her down the final two blocks he’d meant to take her all the time, to a quiet café where he could eat as he looked at the faces of others who understood. He’d come here during the middle of more than one sleepless night, because the door was never closed to soldiers. Even those like him, no longer wearing a uniform. A man didn’t have to wear a uniform to be recognized as a soldier these days; almost everyone his age had served one way or another.

  The dining room was three stairs down from the street, rarely busy because so few people had money to spend on café fare, and their menu was limited anyway because of the shortages. Though it was late, the café was well lit and a few people sat in various spots around the room.

  “Ach! Christophe! Merry Christmas!”

  Hearing the familiar voice was the balm he needed just then, this woman who’d lost her only son in the war and was now “Mama” to all the soldiers who came through her restaurant door. She was small, softly rounded, with graying hair and a smile that never stopped at her lips but always reached her eyes, too.

  Christophe let Mama hug him the way she always did. With his arm still around her, hoping the tension between him and Annaliese didn’t show, he introduced her.

  “Come in, both of you; come away from the doorway,” Mama said. “I’m glad you’re here, Christophe!” She pulled something from her pocket—something that looked like a picture, but he saw that it was a postcard. “You speak English; can you help me to know what this says?”

  He took the card from her, welcoming the diversion from the tension he’d carried in with Annaliese. It was a picture of a ship in a harbor—a passenger liner, not the sort of ship the German fleet had produced lately. Christophe flipped it over to look at the writing. “This is in German—”

  “Just the name of the ship, please. On the front.”

  “Great Northern Pacific Steamship Company, Great Northern, between San Francisco and Portland, Oregon . . .” He had no idea if his pronunciation was accurate, but the words were clear enough. “It says it’s entering a bridge—the Golden Gate Bridge at San Francisco.”

  She accepted it back, laying it to her heart. “Ach, thank you, Christophe! From my nephew. He says he may join the Americans. Who knows! He may be with them now that they’re here, over along the river.” Then she tried pronouncing San Francisco, but Christophe didn’t know if her version was any closer to correct than his. She leaned toward Annaliese and winked. “It’s late to be out even on a holiday, but if Christophe is your friend, you’ve nothing to worry about, Fräulein. He’s the kind of friend we all need, ja? Did you know he speaks English so well?”

  Annaliese had the decency to shake her head but stay quiet, for which Christophe was grateful.

  He took Annaliese to his favorite table, in a darkened corner where he could see the door but could not easily be seen by anyone else. Then he ordered coffee for both of them.

  The forced intermission to their argument had lent them both a renewed calm.

  “Now tell me, Annaliese. How could I have had anything to do with Giselle’s death when I haven’t seen her for years?”

  Instead of mirroring his confusion, her face went hard. “I saw the letters, Christophe. From you, telling her how you hated the war, hated that the soldiers were being pushed to fight even when they had nothing left in them. That you would do anything to stop it, and the Russians had a sound idea in shooting every last officer and simply going home.” Her eyes narrowed. “That if she had half the courage she possessed in her letters, she would sabotage every munitions plant in Germany to help end the war. Starting with our father’s.”

  “I never wrote such things! Ask someone to destroy a munitions factory? How would that have made a difference, except to hurt the men I fought with?”

  For a moment one of her brows dipped, but then she shook her head. “No. I saw the letters. They weren’t signed, but they were in an envelope with your name on it. I knew you loved her—you started loving her when we were all still children. I remember—”

  “Why would I want men to shoot officers? I was a Major; they would have started with me.”

  Her brows lifted in surprise, but before she could speak, Mama brought their coffee. Two steaming cups, delivered with a smile that might have erased the tension between them if either he or Annaliese had let it. But he didn’t, and he could tell she didn’t either.

  When Mama left their table, Christophe leaned closer and kept his voice low. “I was interested in your sister for a time, years ago. Right up until a month before I left for training in the army, I held a special place for her. Until she told me she loved me only as a friend and didn’t want me to go away thinking the wrong way about her.”

  “But—but I saw all those letters!”

  “I wrote three letters, telling her how I was doing. She’d written to me first, and I was obligated to return the favor.”

  “No, no, no! I saw dozens of them. Dozens!”

  “Not from me.”

  Now she slumped in her chair, rubbing away tears that spilled over her lids but thankfully were not replaced by more. She was shaking her head, mumbling something about the letters and envelopes clearly marked with his name. Then she stopped and looked squarely at him. “Did you really not have a romance with Giselle?”

  He shook his head. “Why would I lie? She wasn’t interested in me. She said I was too much like a brother to her.”

  Annaliese charged from her chair. Christophe started after her, but she was at the pay counter, then turning back before he was much more than a step away from their table. She had a pencil in her hand and a blank receipt paper.

  “Write something here. Write anything.”

  “Annaliese—”

  “Just do it.”

  And so he did. He wrote, For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

  She snatched it from him before he’d dotted the last i.

  * * *

  Annaliese stared at the handwriting, at the tallness of the capital letters, the lack of flourish in the curve on each g. This writing was sizable and bold, letters slightly too close but legible all the same.

  And entirely unlike the smaller, somewhat smoother and more pleasing script she remembered all too well from the letters she’d secretly snatched from her sister’s room.

  The words couldn’t have been written by the same hand, unless he was practiced in disguising such details and had reason to suspect what she was trying to find out.

  Yet the envelopes had said his name so clearly: Christophe Brecht. Of course, those had been neatly printed rather than written in script, and smudged, stamped, even a bit tattered. She’d assumed what handwriting she’d been able to see had been different only because he’d wanted to have the address written larger for ease of the delivery system.

  Was it possible the envelopes had been written by Christophe . . .
but the letters written by someone else? “I don’t understand. She received dozens of letters, and I thought they were all from you.”

  “I wrote her about my training and about approval of my commission to Hauptmann and then one last time when I was reassigned from behind the front to the battle lines. She wrote to me, too, and told me how things were at home, how everyone was making do. Three times.”

  Annaliese put her face in her hands, if only to hold back a scream of purest frustration. All this time, she’d been jealous of her sister over nothing. Over a romance that had never been.

  She pulled her hands away from her eyes and stared at Christophe. She’d also hated him for something he’d never done.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize,” he said. “Just tell me what this is all about.”

  How could she tell him what little she knew without revealing her own silly infatuation with him? It was all too embarrassing. And tragic. Giselle was still dead, and there was no way to find out the truth now.

  “My sister was corresponding with someone—another soldier I thought was you. I don’t know how or why it happened. I saw the letters myself, and the few with envelopes were addressed to her from you.”

  “Not more than three, then—envelopes, I mean. But the letters you saw weren’t the friendly sort I wrote? More . . . romantic?”

  Annaliese nodded. “The envelopes had Brecht on the return—and your regiment.”

  He leaned closer. “I didn’t write them, Annaliese.”

  She tilted her head, studying him and for the first time in a very long time feeling happy. She wanted to trust him about this. “I believe you.”

  “I know one way we might clear this up,” he said. “We could go home. Ask your parents if they know anything about it.”

  “They don’t; I’m sure of that. My sister never showed a single letter to my parents and never spoke of you—or this other man, I mean. I always assumed it was because of what he said in his letters: that you—or he—hated those who kept the supply of guns going. That’s why I thought you wanted to join the party, because of what those letters said about my father’s business. That if my father and those like him hadn’t thought money more important than stopping the war, we might have been done with it a long time ago. But you seemed so different from what was in those letters; I wondered what changed you.”

  “I joined the party to talk to you about coming home.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all.”

  “Then you don’t believe any of it? any of what the party stands for?”

  He sipped his coffee. “Some. There is a verse in the Bible that tells us to walk in justice, mercy, and humility. Fairness sounds like justice to me, but it’s fairness and equality in practice that baffle me. I believe we’re all equal in value. I understand that much. But we aren’t born equal in a lot of ways: in talent or looks or strength or energy or even in less obvious ways, things I can’t put to words.”

  “Yes, that’s exactly why we need to be more noble-minded. If we’re all treated equally, it’ll be easier to think of each other as equal in value, too.”

  He nodded. “Yes, that’s where mercy and humility make up the difference. Mercy to take care of those who can’t take care of themselves, humility to carry through with what mercy calls us to do: giving our time and fruit of our work to others who can’t take care of themselves.”

  “That’s right; so you do believe . . .”

  Now he shook his head. “I’ve worked with too many men to believe any of that could work. Even if we have equal opportunities, there won’t be equal results because none of us has an equal amount of the other things I talked about—energy, talent, effort. It’s like other things in the Bible: it shows the way we’re supposed to be, but it records a lot of evidence that we can’t do it, at least not without God helping us do it. And if the party won’t let God help, I don’t see how the ideals will ever be put into practice. If the army taught me anything, it was how men behave.”

  “I’m not sure you should compare civilian life to army life, especially in the last few years.”

  “Men are men, civilian or soldier. For every talented man who doesn’t mind those with less talent, who is even willing to take care of them, there is another who either resents those with less talent or will take advantage of them. And what about those who’ll take advantage of things on the other end? those who can work but won’t, not if someone else who is stronger can do it more easily for them?” He shook his head. “Men just aren’t good at being perfect examples of fairness. Not without God, and even then, men get in the way. It’s the way we are. Even when we want to be good, we aren’t. Not always.”

  “But if everyone were part of the same system, even the reluctant ones, eventually we’d all see the wisdom that can only come with fairness. We could all be more consistent if everyone has the same thing in mind every day. No one would be allowed to take advantage of anyone else; every single person would be valued.”

  “You have more faith in man’s goodness than I do, then.”

  “How can that be, when you’re the one who’s always done the right thing? Even now, you want to take me home because you think it’s right.”

  “If you want everyone to be valued, then why won’t you see your parents? value them enough to see them before they leave?”

  She looked away. “That’s different.”

  He laughed. “So it’s all right to impose fairness on someone else, just not on yourself? My guess is your parents don’t think it’s fair that you won’t even talk to them.”

  She looked down at the table between them, eyes on her coffee cup instead of him. She would have liked to put her palms over her ears or just leave, but something made her stay. Made her listen.

  “I imagine they’re home tonight,” he went on. “Alone. Probably thinking of last year or other happier years, when you and Giselle were with them.”

  But that was enough. She would listen no more. She raised her gaze to meet his. “Stop, Christophe. You don’t even know how Giselle died.”

  “Then tell me. Did she . . . did she kill herself?”

  “She might as well have. She wanted to destroy my father’s factory but got caught in her own sabotage. The last letter that man sent to her said if she wanted to prove she loved him, she would do something to show she supported him—not only be waiting for him when he left his ranks, but do something to show people like our father how wrong they were to keep supplying the war, to keep it going. So she did. She started a fire in the factory, only it exploded before she had the chance to get out.”

  When he reached across the table to take her hand in his, she didn’t draw away. Instead, she stared at the difference in their hands, feeling his strength and the comfort he offered.

  Something stirred in her heart, something too willing to take up residence when it came to Christophe. An old, familiar infatuation, the same thing that made her want to be with him and run shyly away whenever he smiled at her.

  “Come with me, Annaliese.”

  She looked from their hands to his eyes. “Home? I don’t think I’m ready for that.”

  “Then come with me to church tonight. For old times’ sake. I know that’s how you used to spend every Christmas.”

  She looked at him, knowing she shouldn’t go—shouldn’t even want to. Tradition was one thing, but Leo had convinced her of the dangers of an organized church. She should let Christophe go on his way, and she would find her own way home.

  But she was caught by his hopeful smile and the eagerness in his eyes. If God struck her down for the hypocrisy of stepping inside a place of worship with a heart like hers, so be it.

  16

  Annaliese had been to St. Luke’s only once, on the twentieth anniversary of its completion. Her mother had asked her and Giselle to accompany her to services that day, just three years ago. So much had changed since then. Her father had stopped attending services first, just as
the food shortages worsened. Her mother had told them all that they needed to pray more, but he’d refused. And the prayers Annaliese prayed had gone unanswered.

  The tall dome, the brown brick, the colorful stained glass of St. Luke’s all remained the same. For a moment she stared at the ornate threshold and imagined her mother nearby, both their arms looped with Giselle’s. The three of them together, worshiping a God who loved them.

  So long ago.

  She followed Christophe inside, wishing he would take her arm. Funny how quickly she’d abandoned her distrust of him. She’d never been able to connect him to the hatred those letters had shown, not even when she’d read them. She thought the war might have changed him, but after seeing him here in Munich, she knew it hadn’t. Not really. He was the same Christophe he’d always been.

  She glanced at his profile once they took their seats, side by side at the back of the sanctuary, back where those dressed like they were dared to sit. She should have resented the class difference, seeing those more regally dressed taking up the pews in the front the way her family once had.

  But instead she thought about Christophe, wondering what he’d been thinking when she’d accused him of having something to do with Giselle’s death. Another death, he’d said. Accompanied by desperation, desperate unhappiness. It hadn’t been about Giselle at all, but about the idea of being responsible for her death.

  Annaliese would ask him about that . . . maybe.

  No sooner had the service begun than everything came back to her, the songs she knew so well, the tone of the sermon as it echoed from the dome. She nearly succumbed to the inevitable feeling that came with being part of the crowd instead of the one addressing it, that unity she should have felt by virtue of being here, listening to a man talking about the love of God, the gift of Christmas, the forgiveness one and all could receive.

  It was a tempting message, but her heart would soon cool once the memory of a few well-spoken words faded. She knew that.