A View Across the Rooftops: An epic, heart-wrenching and gripping World War Two historical novel

by Suzanne Kelman

  Josef suddenly found the strength he needed to move. Mrs. Epstein’s terrified face swam into his thoughts and he decided this time he would fight. They would not take Michael unless it was over his own dead body. Forcing himself past the soldiers on the landing and up the stairs, he pushed his way into the attic, ready for a battle. But never would he have been prepared for what greeted him in there.

  As he stood staring, his mouth agape, Heinrich arrived behind him in the attic.

  “What is this person doing here?” Heinrich commanded.

  Josef was struck dumb. He scanned the attic, trying to understand what was going on. But he was at a total loss.

  “I asked you what this person is doing here!” Heinrich spat out at him.

  But it was Hannah who answered. “I am cleaning. I thought that would be obvious.”

  Josef again tried to make sense of it. Michael was gone, the attic was without any trace of him, and Hannah stood in the middle of the room with a duster in her hand. Thirty minutes before, when Josef had left the house, Michael had been here. Michael’s whole life had been here. Now the attic was empty, and it was if he had never been.

  “Is this true?” snapped Heinrich.

  “Of course it’s true,” responded Josef, without wavering for even a second despite his whole body trembling with shock and relief.

  Heinrich commanded them to keep looking as he made his way down the stairs.

  Josef fixed his eyes on Hannah as she nodded ever so slightly to signify all was well. He fought to hide the waves of relief washing through his body.

  When their raid turned up nothing significant, the soldiers headed back downstairs. Heinrich commanded his troops to leave, and then turned to face Josef. “Your niece has shown her true colors, and it is only a matter of time before I find out anything you might be hiding. So be aware, this is just the beginning of your trouble.”

  “No,” Josef coldly said, stepping forward and standing up once and for all to this bully. “I’m afraid, Herr von Strauss, that this just might be the end.”

  The Major looked taken aback but, instead of retaliating, turned on his heels and marched out of the house, slamming the door behind him.

  When he’d left, Josef locked the door and raced to the attic. Hannah was standing at the window looking across the rooftops toward the road watching them leave. She smiled at him, just a hint of mischief at the corners of her mouth, and then turned to continue cleaning the dirty, broken window pane.

  “Where is he?” Josef spluttered out.

  She turned. “He got out just in time. I got word from the Resistance that your house was to be raided and I managed to get here before the soldiers. Fortunately, I still had your spare key.”

  “The Resistance? How do they know you know me?”

  “They followed me here once while you were sick. Checking to make sure I wasn’t a double agent. They found out all about you but weren’t sure about my connection, until today. I’m afraid Ingrid may be in some trouble, which is what triggered your raid.”

  Josef sat down on the tea chest to take it all in. “Where did Michael go?”

  “I’m not sure. There wasn’t any time to arrange a safe house for him. And it would be too dangerous for him to come back here. You are sure to be on their watch list now.” She put her hand into her pocket. “He left you this.” She handed him a piece of paper and, appearing to sense his need to be alone, excused herself, saying she would make some tea.

  Josef opened the hastily written note: Find the man who used to play the piano.

  He stared at the words and knew precisely what Michael meant, but he wasn’t even sure that person existed anymore. And with this current blow, he wasn’t sure he would ever find him again.

  Chapter 52

  Ingrid was taken from the cell and brought to an interrogation room. The room was small and dark, with just a single bulb hanging in the center of the ceiling. She was placed on a metal chair in front of a metal table. A low-level official entered the room and started to interrogate her, asking her over and over again why she had misled the Gestapo. Ingrid told him everything she knew. But still he continued to ask the same questions over and over again, until she was exhausted. After a couple of hours, without even giving her anything to eat or drink, they dragged her back to her cell and threw her inside.

  Hours later, Ingrid sat quietly fuming on the very edge of the wooden bed, all her pleas to speak to Heinrich unheeded, when the heavy metal door swung open. An officer stood in the shadows. Finally, she thought, Heinrich had cleared up the mistake and they had come to release her. But then the officer stepped from the shadows into the light, and she froze as she heard a familiar voice she’d hoped she would never hear again.

  “Well, if it isn’t Heinrich’s whore.”

  Terrified, she jumped to her feet, attempting to run past him out of the cell, but he caught hold of her with ease.

  “Not so fast,” he taunted her. “I believe you and I have some unfinished business. I think I may have to see to that tomorrow.” He then shoved her back into the cell and slammed the door shut.

  The next day, with the crunch of metal upon metal, the door to Ingrid’s dark, cramped cell swung open again. Light from the hallway streamed in, blinding her. She cowered against the slimy brick wall as heavy footfalls echoed into the room. Had the monster returned for her?

  But instead of her torturer, an angular-looking soldier marched into the room. His sharp-edged frame filled the doorway, snuffing out all but a halo of light around him. From the intimidating silhouette came a gruff order, “You will come with me, Fräulein.”

  Reluctantly, Ingrid gathered herself up from her bed and slowly shuffled toward him. Everything in her body hurt from a rough night’s sleep and inside her spirit felt crushed. She urgently needed to find Heinrich; why had he not come for her? He couldn’t know she had been arrested and was probably sick with worry. She wanted his comfort; she needed desperately to feel his arms around her.

  She attempted to straighten out her soiled, creased clothes. The soldier lost his patience, grabbing her roughly by the arm and yanking her out into the dreary corridor, the same one she had been dragged down the night before.

  “My fiancé, Heinrich von Strauss, will be very angry with you when he hears what you have all done to me,” she rasped, her lips and throat cracked from a night without water.

  The guard sneered. “Major von Strauss is the person who instructed me to get you. He knows all about what you have done.”

  “Heinrich is here?” Ingrid cried out with relief. “Oh thank God.”

  The guard continued to drag her at a clip and seemed to relish his next biting revelation. “He has been here for hours. He only just got around to dealing with you.”

  Ingrid was confused. Hours? If he was here, why had he not come himself to get her?

  They continued down the dismal corridor toward a different room than the one she had been interrogated in the night before. A nagging concern gnawed her insides. Something was wrong.

  The guard opened a door and roughly pushed her into another gloomy room that smelt of sweat and mildew. Once again, a single light bulb dangled on a chain from the ceiling, where a wayward moth tapped an ominous rhythm; its fluttering wings thrumming like fingertips on a window pane. As her eyes acclimatized to the darkness, she noticed this room was bigger than the first, but held a similar metal chair in the center of the room.

  At the far end, three officers were seated behind a long, sterile desk. Her heart leaped. Heinrich was one of them.

  “Heinrich!” she cried out hysterically.

  But he didn’t look up or acknowledge her. He was engrossed in writing notes.

  “Ah, Miss Held,” stated one of the other SS officers dryly, peering up at her.

  Ingrid moved toward the table imploringly. “Heinrich, it’s me, Ingrid!”

  But Heinrich didn’t waver from his task.

  “You will only speak when you’re spoken to,” the thi
rd officer yelled sharply. “You’ll sit down and listen to what we have to say.”

  She was rooted to the spot, paralyzed by a new kind of fear, a fear that was much more acute—the fear of rejection. Responding to his superior’s request, the guard forced Ingrid down into the chair.

  A silent desperation weighed on her, like a heavy, damp fog that chilled her to the bone, along with the feeling of utter bewilderment. Why was Heinrich ignoring her? What had she done that was so bad they were treating her like a criminal?

  The first officer spoke again, his eyes fixed on her with disdain. “I believe you were interrogated last night by the Gestapo?”

  Ingrid shuddered with the memory.

  “Yes,” she responded meekly. Maybe if she got this over with quickly, Heinrich would take her home. She reasoned that he obviously had to keep up this charade of indifference toward her in front of the other officers.

  “You were accused of working with the Resistance to cause a diversionary tactic that resulted in one of our trains being destroyed,” he stated coldly, reading from a document.

  “I don’t understand,” she said in confusion. When she’d been arrested, she had heard the explosion but wasn’t sure that the Resistance mission had succeeded. “As I told the officer last night, I obtained information that the Resistance would be there, but they weren’t. How could I have known why the train blew up where it did?”

  The third officer got to his feet and marched toward her, towering over her in such a menacing way that she flinched in her chair.

  “We ask the questions. You were present during a deception which cost us lives and a significant advancement against our enemies. How do we know you were not behind this? You say you had obtained information about the Resistance. But why did you not come straight to your commanding officer with this information?”

  She looked across at Heinrich as his eyes flicked up briefly to meet hers. The chill she felt from his gaze shook her to the core. They conveyed so much hatred for her. She still couldn’t understand what they thought she had done.

  “I wasn’t, I swear. I thought I would be helping. I was going to try and find them myself then call you to arrest them. I wanted that train to make it to the depot.” She swallowed hard, looking past the officer to Heinrich again. “I know how important the V2 missiles are to the war effort. I wouldn’t have jeopardized that for anything.”

  “We would like to believe you, Fräulein,” the officer said, “but there are a few things we don’t understand. How did you know when the train would be arriving at the depot? That information is top secret.”

  Ingrid swallowed hard again, distracted by the moth. She watched as it beat against the light bulb, the very thing it desired over and over again, only to get burned for its trouble. She knew that in telling the truth, she could also get Heinrich into trouble. But if she didn’t tell the truth, they could think she was Resistance.

  She looked down at her hands and whispered, “I got it from a book in the safe, in Heinrich’s… I mean, Major von Strauss’s office.”

  Heinrich jumped to his feet and marched toward her. She looked up at him, desperate for any kind of reassurance that he still loved her. But he glared at her with nothing but contempt burning in his eyes.

  “What were you doing in my safe?” he demanded. “How dare you go in there without permission?”

  “I was trying to help, Heinrich. We had this idea of finding the Resistance for you. We had a lead that they would be at the place alongside the railway to blow it up. I wanted to stop them. You have to believe me.”

  Heinrich raised his hand as if he was going to strike her, and she recoiled like a fearful animal. But he stopped and spat at her, “You disgust me.”

  She looked up at him, trying desperately to see anything of the man she had fallen in love with, but all she saw was a beast. A monster created by the desperate and deplorable acts that he had become accustomed to inflicting on others on a daily basis. That’s when it struck her. The ideals that they had all felt so pompous about, so self-righteous indulging in, the superior world they were creating for the fatherland, was nothing more than a tragic illusion. An illusion that shattered in front of her as she looked up into his terrifying eyes. She realized in that instant what they had all become. This war had done this to all of them, and she despised it. She despised herself.

  Heinrich turned and strode back to the desk and sat back down. The third officer stepped forward. His tone cold and cutting. He picked up from his last question as if the exchange between her and Heinrich hadn’t taken place.

  “You said we, Fräulein. Who is we?”

  “My friend Vi and I,” she stated solemnly. “Did you have to interrogate her too?”

  The officer quirked an eyebrow. “Vi? Who is this Vi?”

  “She works with me, with us, at the office. Violette. She was helping me.”

  “Helping you?” he scoffed. “It appears that you were misinformed about her being your friend. Violette Schmit, who was in your office, is a member of the Resistance. She disappeared yesterday, and the place she lived in was empty. When you were picked up, all of the working staff in Major von Strauss’s office were checked, and she, Fräulein, has gone.”

  Ingrid felt distraught. Vi was gone and also working for the Resistance? Her world had gone mad. This new revelation multiplied her anguish and pain. Did no one in the world care about her? She just couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  The officer continued matter-of-factly. “Through our intensive investigations, we have now established this Violette as the renegade known as the Cuckoo. She had left Rotterdam months ago, where she had created much chaos for us. She was smuggled into Amsterdam and placed right under our noses. Very plucky, but also very foolish, as now we know exactly who she is. We will find her, don’t you worry. She will pay for her crimes. Then she apparently tricked you into finding out the delivery day and time of the train for her. This resulted in our fuel for our V2 missiles being destroyed by your foolishness.”

  Ingrid started to weep as the weight of it all overwhelmed her. “I’m so sorry. I was just trying to help.”

  The second officer pierced her with his steely gaze. “We should shoot you for this terrible indiscretion, but knowing the Cuckoo’s skills and the work you have done for us over the years, plus taking into consideration other factors…” He glanced over at Heinrich, who was looking down at the desk, his face burning with fury. “We have decided in this instance to be lenient in your case. You will remain in custody until we decide what to do with you. Do you understand?”

  Ingrid nodded through her whimpers.

  The officers stood and exited the room. As Heinrich passed her, she grabbed at him, gripping hold of the fabric of his trouser leg. “Heinrich,” she wailed, “I love you.”

  He recoiled from her as if she were a serpent, slapping her hand away from him.

  She reached out to him again in desperation. “But I am your fiancée!”

  He stretched his hand toward her, and for a moment she thought he was going to take her hand. Instead, he roughly pulled the ring from her finger.

  “You are a traitor,” he spat back. “You are nothing to me.” And with that, he strode from the room.

  The guard pulled her up again by the arm and attempted to drag her back out the door. But her legs collapsed from under her and he had to carry her. From deep within her gut came a sound she could not control, not unlike a wounded animal snared in a painful trap. Her wail reverberated around the stark corridor as he dragged her back to her cell.

  “You will have to stay here until the right documentation is signed,” he spat at her as he pushed her roughly back into the cell.

  She collapsed on the floor, blubbering. Defensively she wrapped her hands around her stomach.

  The guard moved toward the door and hesitated for a moment to look back at her. His lips curled in a sneer. “You shouldn’t feel so bad about the major, Fräulein. He would have rejected you once this w
ar is over anyway. I’m pretty sure his wife and two children are waiting eagerly for his return to Germany.”

  Ingrid couldn’t stand it any longer. Unable to hear one more dreadful thing, she pressed her hands hard against her ears and howled as she was plunged back into the darkness with the clang of the heavy cell door.

  Chapter 53

  Elke stood in the kitchen and looked around her houseboat. It had been months since she’d been here. And the place felt sad and unloved. With her brother-in-law away fighting the war, her sister had been grateful for Elke’s help taking care of her children as they pooled their rations. It had been so hard without Michael. Even to this day Elke felt the loss of him. But she was grateful for her loving family, and with the joy and innocence of her sister’s young children to buoy her up, she had survived, somehow.

  However, whenever she came back to visit the houseboat, she always felt a little heartbroken. It was still alive with too many painful memories of Michael. His poems scattered about the room, a pile of his books he had managed to smuggle in, his clothes in her wardrobe, his socks in her drawer, his razor, dusty and discarded on her bathroom shelf.

  Leaning against the bedroom wall was her guitar, placed there the last time he’d played it. Sometimes she would run her fingers along the strings, hoping that a little of his presence still lingered there.

  Elke had, finally, changed the sheets on the bed, but the pillowcase he had last slept on went with her everywhere. Though it was probably just in her imagination, she believed she could still smell the fragrance of soap from the final time he’d laid down his head.

  Sighing again, Elke rolled up her sleeves, preparing to clear away the debris from the latest bombing campaign. As she did, she thought about the first time she’d visited the houseboat after Michael had disappeared.

  She’d kept away for an extended period of time to be safe and had finally made her way back nearly a month later. Opening the door after such a long absence, the first thing to greet her had been the smell of mildew and rotting food. The stack of dirty dishes they had left in the sink was covered in green, furry mold. It had been the perfect illustration of how she had felt. Time had stopped for her too, and nothing was left in her world but decay. She’d looked at her moldy dishes, and instead of washing them, she’d thrown them away. Elke knew this was extravagant in wartime but was unable to bear the sadness of the last time she and Michael had been together.