The Rift

by H Schmidt

  There was still an hour of light when he moved from hen to hen, checking for eggs. As they often did when he took their eggs, they began squawking in unison. Satisfied there would be enough for breakfast, he was walking outside when he saw the army truck in the distance. He could see the men in the back. Tomas knew the stories of the other families whose estates had been taken from them. There had been meetings, but the old men and the women and children knew they were helpless to stop the men. Four kilometers away, the soldiers had killed a young boy who had fired on them. He had promised his mother he would not fight back. Now, he had to get to the castle before the men.

  ---

  When Friederich climbed down from the train, he saw two of the officers he knew standing on the platform. They waved at him, and walked his way. Neither was smiling. He could tell they were there on business.

  “The Soviets have taken Marburg.” Wilhelm Kunstler spoke first. “My family?” Friederich willed his voice to appear calm.

  “They are fine. Tomas spotted them coming and got everyone out.” “Have you notified the army, Captain?”

  “They say their hands are tied until they receive word from Berlin.”

  Friederich knew there had been trouble with the troops in Konigsberg. It was likely, he decided, that the commander was afraid his troops would not follow orders.

  The second officer was Gerhardt Kreiss, who had served as a company commander for Friederich with the Blitz Battalion. In the last days of the war, he had received his commission. Friederich turned to the lieutenant.

  “Can we find a company of loyal men, Lieutenant?” “Yes, sir, more if you need.”

  Friederich knew that Kreiss and the men he could count on were from the villages. They were farmers, those who made their living around the farms. The army had once been made up of such men, until the casualties became so high that men were conscripted from the cities. He, and his fellow officers, preferred the peasants because of their toughness and loyalty.

  “When did this happen?” “Yesterday afternoon, sir.”

  “Lieutenant, we will need fifty men, weapons and transportation. I want you to come with us to select the men we need.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Captain, do you have a staff car available?”

  It was two o’clock in the afternoon. He wanted to reach the castle before dark. He knew that the Blitz Battalion was occupying barracks just outside Konigsberg. They should be ready by 1700 hours. Soldiers loitering on street corners jeered as the three officers drove through the city. Friederich was shaken by what he had seen the last two weeks. He had remembered the stories of the Russian officers shot in the back by their own soldiers. He had always told himself that it could never happen in Germany. As he looked into those faces, he knew he had been wrong.

  By 1700, three lorries led by a staff car were on the road to Marburg. Leading the column, Friederich saw it first. The glow in the distance that seemed to bounce off the low-lying clouds. As they drove on, the light became brighter. Now, they could see the castle in flames.

  “Oh my God,” Friederich whispered silently.

  The driver glanced at the colonel, then turned his eyes back to the road. Within two hundred meters of the burning castle, Friederich stopped the car. He got out and started to walk toward the castle. Kunstler and Kreiss caught up with him, and fell in step.

  Friederich stopped. “Captain, take your men and check the stables. Lieutenant, take your men around the other side of the castle. There are woods behind Marburg. Be careful.”

  It was the lieutenant who hesitated. He handed Friederich the flask. “It is a cold night, sir.”

  Friederich watched Kreiss run toward his men, who were waiting. When he assembled the battalion, he had selected Kreiss because he had proven his worth as a soldier, joining as a private, receiving one field promotion after another, until he stood in front of his own company. But the quality that won him his place was the notation by one of his officers. “He takes care of his men.”

  Friederich smiled. “And his commanding officer.”

  He took a deep drink, felt the burning in his stomach, and felt better. He stepped back from the heat, watching the tongues of flame pour out of all the castle openings. In the shadows cast by the fire, he could see the soldiers moving about. Marburg was their home. Now it was gone. They could build another one. At that moment, he thought only of holding Erika and the children in his arms. He hadn’t felt this good in months. Since...he smiled. He wondered where Billy was, what he had gotten himself into.

  ---

  “It happens every hundred years. I should be used to it by now. Still, I feel sorry to the von Mecklenburgs when it happens. How long did the last one take to rebuild? Three years? Five years? It is hard to remember, sometimes.”

  “It is different now, Sir Rupert. All the peasants who could be drafted to help build, the carpenters, the artisans, could be taken from their estate or loaned by another nobleman. Look at what has happened. Who can they call upon? Now it is gold and that paper currency that decides what will be done. I think the family has very little of that.”

  “How do you know such things?”

  “While you are busy reading those radical papers, Sir Rupert, I have watched what is going on under our noses.”

  ---

  The family had worked together to make the stables livable. They were able to find some furniture stored in the cellars of the castle. Any rugs, blankets, sheets, fabric of any kind, were used to cover the walls and openings, to keep the winds and cold out. Neighbors helped as much as they could with clothing, shoes, essentials such as a sewing machine, knives, scissors, needles, thread. The von Papens had offered to let them share their home, but Friederich had refused. He would not move from the land. He had resigned his commission. He would stay with his family. Commander of the local militia, he had organized patrols to cover the district, alert for any roving bands of soldiers. Three days after Marburg had burned, Lieutenant Kreiss had cornered the band that was responsible. Word had spread quickly through the district that the men who surrendered had been granted a court-martial, then shot.

  ---

  But the enemy that was most terrifying was hunger.

  While the war had ended, the British blockade had continued. No food was allowed into Germany while the final peace terms were being decided by the Allies. President Wilson had proposed a new world founded upon self-determination of subject peoples, and policies which would insure peace in the future. The British, French, and Italians were intent on punishing Germany for the millions of men it had killed and dividing the spoils of war. Germany would pay for what it did. The terms they would demand could only be extracted from a starving enemy.

  The three men met on Wilhelm Kunstler’s estate. Most of the people who lived in the district were short of food. While peasants often fared better than most, they, too, were running short. Supplies of coal had dried up, and wood remained the only fuel available to most. While people had cash, each day it became worth less and less as prices doubled and doubled again. Friederich suddenly found that he was as poor as the lowliest peasant. Kunstler found himself in the same fix. All the thousands of arrangements which allowed people to earn their livelihoods were gone. That was why the three men met. They had to build new arrangements.

  The train schedule that Gerhardt Kreiss had obtained that day was on the table beside the map that Kunstler produced.

  “This is the smallest village where the train stops.” It was Kreiss who spoke.

  “Do you think there will be soldiers on board?” Friederich asked. “Yes. Trains have been carrying soldiers as a precaution.”

  Friederich knew it would come to this. Germans fighting Germans for food. He had hoped it would not happen, but word had gotten to him that speculators were bribing railroad employees and removing shipments that would normally go to warehouses for distribution. If the government could not control this pilferage, they would.

  “How many lorries do
we have, Wilhelm?” “Five, Friederich.”

  “Which car contains the soldiers?” “The last one.”

  “Good.”

  ---

  The young lieutenant was bored. He had been on many trips from Berlin to Konigsberg, and nothing had happened. They had left the small village of Gneisenau. As they pulled out of the station, he could see the land around the rail lines was open. Riding in the caboose, he concentrated on the telegraph poles, counting the seconds between each. He had noticed the lurch, and the train beginning to slow. At first, he ignored it. Then he noticed his counts begin to rise. They were slowing down. Why were they slowing down? He looked toward the front of the car, then leaped to his feet. Something was wrong. Walking to the front, he looked out. There was no train.

  ---

  Blindfolding the train crew, the men worked through the night unloading food and medicines bound for Konigsberg. One of the cars was filled with portable generators. They took them along. A tanker car with fuel was left untouched. Friederich made a note to get hold of lorries which could carry such fuel. The lorries were unloaded at storage depots selected by Kunstler, then returned for more supplies. They were able to load fifteen lorries before they released the crew, allowing them to continue on.

  Friederich and Kreiss watched the train disappear.

  “So, we are now common criminals, Gerhardt. When we did that in Russia, we were heroes. How long ago was that? Less than a year. All of us would rather be heroes, I suppose. If we have that choice.”

  A young man came from the west riding an emaciated horse.

  “There are soldiers marching down the track. They are about a kilometer behind me.” The two men saluted the young man and rode off in the stolen staff car.

  ---

  The Old Man liked the way the young man thought. Somehow, the young lieutenant had gotten hold of a startling piece of information. There was five tons of gold being held in a secret vault in a German bank. The gold had been hijacked from a train heading for Archangel in 1916 by the Bolsheviks. The gold was on route to the United States as payment for munitions sent to the Imperial Army. It had been sent through the port of Danzig to Berlin, where it now was stored. The young lieutenant offered to enter Germany as part of the American forces there and to retrieve the gold for America in return for certain favors.

  What the lieutenant wanted seemed modest enough. Properly routed back to the United States, the Old Man would see the gold got into the proper hands. Preposterous as the story seemed, what had he to lose? What had the young American to gain if the story were not true? The deal seemed clean and uncomplicated. With all the squabbling over Middle East oil, reparation payments, German colonies, the Ottoman Empire, something straightforward like this was a relief.

  ---

  He had gotten off the train before Petrograd. Although he had new papers, he could not risk going through Petrograd. He crossed into Finland, and from Helsinki, traveled by ship to Kiel. He boarded a train and headed for Berlin. In Berlin, he found despite his work with the German language, he was still marked as an American. He still was confronted by angry stares, and shouts of ‘go home’. But Billy found that everyone was not unfriendly. Many had relatives in America and wanted to tell him about them, or ask if he knew them. He avoided those who wanted to harangue him about the peace treaty.

  Billy purchased a second ticket sending him back east. He was in Germany because he wanted to see his family. He had gotten to Germany because he made a deal with the Old Man. He had not deceived him; the source was an official in the Russian National Bank, still bitter at the Soviet destruction of the Constituent Assembly. He had no doubt the gold had been there. He hoped it still was. The stories about the clean towns and well-kept farms were true. He knew that the French used the fact that the war had occurred on German soil only in the east as the basis for their demands for territory and reparations. How could the French not be bitter? How could millions of families on both sides, who lost family, not be bitter? What both sides needed to do was to think about how they can assure it would not happen again. He thought about the families who had never forgiven the United States and Confederate governments for America’s own Civil War. He looked out the window, feeling melancholy when he saw the little face reflected in the window.

  Billy turned. He thought of the little American boy who talked to him on the train to Murmansk. “Hello, little boy.” Billy found the little boy’s steady stare amusing. He smiled and the little boy smiled.

  “Are you an American?” “Yes, I am.”

  “Why are you in Germany? We do not want you here.”

  Billy looked at the young boy. He looked into his eyes, wondering if the boy disliked him. He decided he did not. He was simply repeating something someone had said. Was there any reason not to tell the little boy? “Because I have a brother I want to see.”

  “Why does he live in Germany, then?”

  Like the American mother, the little boy’s mother started to retrieve him. He could see she was far more anxious, though. Billy eased quickly past the boy and stood before the mother.

  “Please, if you don’t mind, your little boy asked me a question and I would like to answer it for him.”

  For a moment, she seemed about to say no. She looked at Billy and saw something which changed her mind. She smiled.

  “Of course. Hans, you be a good boy.”

  “Yes, Mama.” The mother returned to her seat and Billy sat down beside Hans.

  “May I tell you a story, Hans, about my brother and me?”

  Billy saw the same thing in Konigsberg as he had seen in Kiel and Berlin. Crowds of former soldiers, many with their old uniforms, milling around the train station. He passed a soldier dressed in a neatly pressed uniform. He sat against a wall, a cup beside him. He had no legs. He passed others like that soldier, some disfigured, others missing limbs. By the time he had arranged for a cab which knew of Marburg, he was out of coins.

  “You know the colonel, mein herr?”

  “Yes.” Billy decided he wanted to say no more to the driver. He didn’t know why.

  “If the Soviets win, he will hang.” Billy wondered why the driver would tell a stranger this. He remained silent. The driver continued. “He had my brother shot.”

  The roads were filled with deep ruts from the spring thaw. The driver cursed as he spun the steering wheel to keep out of the deepest ones. “The administrator has reported him to Berlin for stealing from the trains to Konigsberg.”

  As the driver listened, Billy wondered what had happened here. He was silent until the driver stopped at the end of the long road. Billy looked at the burned castle. His heart sank. He leaned in to the driver.

  “What happened to the castle?” He looked at the heavy, surly looking driver. “They burned it, mein herr. They have sucked our blood enough.”

  “Where are the von Mecklenburgs?”

  “In the stable where they belong?” The man began to rock as he laughed, until he began to choke, then spit on the side of the road to clear his chest.

  Billy felt the Colt he had placed in its holster at the station. “Was your brother among the men who burned it?”

  “Yes, I am proud to say he was, mein herr.” The man stared defiantly at Billy. The American looked at him, his eyes hard and steady. He forced a smile. “Then, herr taxi driver, he should have shot him sooner.”

  The driver’s face turned red. He started to reach for something on the floor. Billy stepped back to give himself room. Whatever was there, the driver decided against it. He hit the accelerator pedal and the car sped off.

  Billy looked at the massive stone building, gutted now. He could see the blackened timbers through the windows and where the roof had been. Did he remember it? He had returned to the castle when he was three, Friederich had told him. It was familiar somehow, but he could not remember. A sadness came over him that he did not understand.

  Billy picked up his bag and started to walk toward the stable. It was almost dusk. T
he air was warm, at least, Billy thought, it is warm after Archangel. Beyond the stable, he could see two young girls. He could feel his heart pumping inside his chest as he saw his two nieces. Closer now, a young boy came around the corner of the stable carrying a shovel on his shoulder. He thought of the pictures Mother had kept of him when he was twelve. He was now no more than ten feet from the boy, who had put down the shovel and was staring at Billy.

  “Hello, Tomas.”

  “Uncle Willie?” the look of shock was replaced by a great smile. “Father, Mother, come quickly. It is Uncle Willie.”

  Friederich had been mending harness when he heard Tomas. Was he hearing things? It could not be. What is that rascal doing here? He dropped the harness and ran into the daylight, letting his eyes adjust for a moment.

  Erika heard Tomas. “How can it be?”

  She heard the shouting outside and looked quickly into the mirror they had found in the cellar. Brushing her hair, and then releasing a sigh of resignation, she hurried out. The two girls had heard the shouting, and left their baskets in the fields, hurrying to find out why all the excitement. Erika looked at the tall young man, so much like her Tomas. She put her hands together, trying to fight back the tears. Anna and Katryn now stood next to their big brother, looking at their handsome American uncle.