Danzig Passage

by Bodie Thoene

  Tonight there were no shouts, no alarms, no running footsteps or fluttering torches—only deathly silence. Leaves crunched beneath their feet; hands in the darkness reached out to make certain there were five in the line. Five together. Five slipping through the secret break one at a time.

  It was easy, as easy as Jacob had envisioned it should be when they first thought of the plan. Still, their hearts beat the uneven rhythm of fear. Their breath came shallow, rising up in little locomotive puffs of steam in the cold night.

  One, two, three, four, five through the churchyard fence!

  And Werner the kitten in Alfie’s pocket.

  ***

  Peter could not watch as his mother held the baby in a last embrace. He focused his gaze on bolts of cloth and the glowing gas heater, and finally, on Marlene’s brown hat. It was her best hat; it matched her coat and her eyes and hair. She was proud of it. Peter had teased her, telling her it looked like an upside-down soup bowl. Now he regretted saying so many mean things to her.

  She was quiet and sad, not the usual primping, fussing little Marlene. Peter saw regret and sorrow on her face, and suddenly he wanted to tell her things he had not known he felt until this moment of parting.

  Mama stood framed in the doorway of the bedroom, her arms full of Baby Willie. She rocked him and whispered quietly against his cheek, telling him things she might not ever have a chance to say to him again.

  Peter knew there were things he must say to his sister, in spite of the fact she had been the bane of his existence. He took a step toward her. He towered over Marlene. She looked up at him with those chocolate brown eyes, a single tear poised in each eye, as if stuck there. Words were stuck also.

  He straightened her hat. A shudder coursed through him. He wished she did not look so Jewish. He hoped that Lucy Strasburg was right. He prayed that when the Gestapo at the border checks examined Karin and Marlene that they would see only mother and daughter, not two Jewesses.

  “Do I look all right?” she ventured. “In my soup bowl?”

  “Very nice . . . in your . . . ” Peter swallowed hard. How he hated this emotion, this longing to hold on! It was so much easier to want to punch her! So much easier to cringe at every word. But now that good-bye might mean forever, nothing could shield him from loving her. Even her. Sister. Marlene. He could not say more. He reached out and pulled her close in a hug—awkward at first, then a warm merging of emotion they both felt.

  “You know, Peter,” she whispered, “maybe someday I will grow up . . . and be like Mama. And you will like me.” Such hope filled her voice!

  “Until then,” he whispered, “you keep me on my toes, ja?”

  She laughed and sniffed. Tears of relief came. “You and Willie will be careful? I’m not worried about me. I would rather something happen to me than you and Willie, see?”

  “Nothing will happen to any of us, Marlene.” He tried to sound reassuringly gruff. He patted her back. “Just believe that. We will meet at the Danziger Hotel day after tomorrow. Like we planned.” He lifted her chin and kissed her lightly on the furrowed brow. “Don’t worry. Just take care of Mama.”

  His words trailed away. He felt his head grow light. Mama stood at his elbow, pulling a string from his jacket, straightening his hair, stroking his cheek. He was almost grown now, and Mama was trying very hard to say good-bye to him as if he were a man. But the expression in her eyes when she looked at his face was the same as it had been when she looked at Willie. How he wished she could rock him, too, and whisper against his cheek! He wanted to lay his head on her shoulder and hear her say that everything really would be all right.

  But now it was his turn to embrace her, to comfort her, to say all the things a man of courage must say. Papa would expect it of him! So why was he crying?

  “There, there, son,” she said quietly, smoothing his hair and letting him rest his face against her shoulder. “You must not worry. We have not come this far to fail now. We will believe!” A mother was expected to kiss away her child’s hurt. Even for a child as tall as Peter.

  He straightened and wiped his wet cheeks on his sleeve. “Yes, Mama.” He cleared his throat. “We will meet at the Danziger Hotel. And don’t worry about Willie. I will take good care of him. You know he is as happy with me as anyone. You and Marlene . . . have a safe trip, then.”

  Peter watched them from the dark window until they boarded the trolley, paid their fare, and sat perfectly framed in the lighted car. Marlene smiled, excited about making such a long trip. Then those brown eyes began desperately searching the facades of the buildings, finally fixing on the window where Peter stood in the blackness. The small gloved hand rose up; fingers curled slightly down in farewell, and Peter saw her lips move: I love you, Peter. . . .

  ***

  They had planned even this. Lori walked alongside Jacob. She held his hand and talked to him about last Christmas as they strolled along the sidewalk.

  Jamie and Mark flanked Alfie, who looked out of place between them. He towered over them both. The sore thumb, Jacob thought, praying that they would not meet any old acquaintances on the streets of downtown Berlin tonight.

  The neon lights and blaring traffic assaulted their senses after weeks of enforced silence and nights without light. Lori tried not to look spellbound; she kept her eyes on Jacob’s face, pulling at his sleeve when he, too, gawked at the marquee of a cabaret that blinked on and off in red and yellow lights.

  “Where was the car?” he called to Jamie when they were out of earshot of three drunken middle-aged couples.

  “I think . . . just up there—” Jamie jerked his thumb. “But maybe not anymore. Who knows?”

  Alfie knew. “Pastor’s car?” he asked with a broad, childlike smile. “I saw it. It needs a wash.” He raised his nose in the air as if to take his bearings in the cacophony of the city streets; then he pointed. “It is still there.”

  Lori squeezed Jacob’s hand to slow him down. Let the trio cross the street first. They must not walk too closely together. There was a policeman on one corner. And there was another.

  The five had to walk separately; if policemen were looking for Jamie and Lori as Alfie said, then they must not present their faces like photographs off a wanted poster.

  A uniformed officer walked toward them. He looked at Lori’s face, letting his gaze slide down her once and then up again. He looked away, frowned, and then looked back.

  “Laugh,” Jacob said softly; then he looked at her and guffawed loudly. She mimicked him, her laughter bordering on the hysteria of terror.

  Two young people out for a walk, having fun. The officer did not recognize her after all. He brushed past them and they hurried, still laughing, to cross the street.

  There stood the car, caked in dust, its windscreen dull gray. The tires looked low. Jacob casually unlocked the door, opening it for Lori. He was keenly aware that it was at this point the trap might be sprung. Had Pastor Ibsen’s car been identified? Had it been left here just for such a moment as this?

  Lori slid into the passenger side. Her father’s glasses lay on the dashboard, his gloves still on the seat. She could not suppress a groan as she reached over and unlocked Jacob’s door. He jumped behind the wheel, and the three others crammed into the backseat.

  Key! Clutch in! Gearshift in neutral! Turn the starter, and—

  “What is wrong with it?” Lori gasped.

  The engine groaned and moaned, trying to turn over. Then it died.

  Jacob pounded a fist on the steering wheel. This far, and now the battery was dead! Could it be?

  He prayed and tried again. Key. Clutch. Gear. Starter.

  The moan sounded more pitiful than before. Jacob sat staring through the filth of the window. Lights from the neon signs blinked in weird patterns on his ashen face.

  “Dead,” he said dully. “Dead battery.” He bit his lip and then instructed. “Stay here!”

  They could see him as he struggled to open the awkward latch and lift the hood. It
creaked open like a gaping mouth. Jacob pounded on the terminals of the battery in hopes . . . Maybe just corroded?

  Cars whizzed by him. He left the hood open and then climbed back behind the wheel. Key! Clutch! Gear! Oh, God! Starter!

  This time there was a slight groan and a click. Jacob’s frightened breathing fogged the window. He was breathing like someone very frightened.

  “Hey, Max!” Mark asked, calling Jacob by the old nickname, “what do we do now?”

  Then the unthinkable happened. A green police car slipped in along the curb in front of them. Nose to nose, the vehicle hemmed them in.

  An officer got out of his vehicle and walked slowly up to Jacob’s window. His finger twirled, indicating that the window should be lowered.

  Lori prayed, certain that the car had indeed been left here to trap them. Now there was nothing more they could do. No more running. No place left to hide.

  Jacob did not look at the police officer as he rolled his window down.

  The officer peered in, and a puzzled look crossed his face. He glanced at them, then looked hard at the raised hood.

  Alfie blurted out, “Hey, I know you! You are the . . . the policeman who . . . at the corner when I was lost.”

  Doubt crossed the face of the officer. He squinted into the backseat at Alfie. Same cap. Same coat. Same face. Were there any left in Berlin like this one?

  “Yes, I remember you. Ah! Yes. I see you have gotten use from your clothes, ja!” He tipped his hat at Jacob. “Your brother?”

  Jacob managed an astonished nod. “Yes . . . my . . . my brother.”

  “We are old friends.” The officer opened Jacob’s door. “He is the last honest fellow in Berlin, I think. I have thought of him often. So—” he thumped the car—“what is the problem? Aside from a layer of dirt?”

  “Battery.” Jacob managed to stutter the word twice.

  “I can give you a jump-start,” said the officer with a wave of his hand. “But you will have to keep the engine running until you get where you are going.”

  The beads of perspiration on Jacob’s forehead reflected the colors of the neon lights. In the backseat, Mark and Jamie sat frozen and silent, not believing that a German policeman was hooking cables to the battery of their stalled automobile and advising them to keep going and not turn off the engine.

  Jacob cranked the starter one more time. The engine coughed and rumbled and vibrated to a thundering start.

  “Let her run a few minutes,” advised the officer. “She has been sitting quite a while.”

  Was that a smile on his lips?

  “Yes.”

  “I checked the license and registration, since it is on my beat. I was hoping someone might pick her up.” He looked past Jacob, directly at Lori. “You are leaving Berlin?”

  She nodded. Should she tell him anything? Anything? Should he know they were leaving?

  He rubbed his hand across his jaw and peered up the street and then down again. “Listen to me.” He lowered his voice. “There are roadblocks across the bridges, and on the main Autobahns from Berlin in every direction. They are looking for lots of criminals; among them a brother and sister . . . ja?”

  Lori’s mouth went dry as cotton. “Ja,” she managed. “Bitte?” What were they to do?

  “Gut. You understand me.” The officer looked hard at Jacob. “I do not know who you are, but if you do not want to end up in prison, you must take the side streets out of the city.”

  Jacob could hardly make his mouth work. “Which . . . ?”

  “Do you know Landsbergerstrasse?”

  “Yes.”

  “It runs past Friedrichshain. The park.”

  Jacob knew the place well—a wooded area, filled with streams and small lakes. He had gone swimming there with friends. “Yes. I know it.”

  “Leave the city by that direction. If you are followed, drive into the park. Abandon your car and run into the woods. They will not catch all of you that way at least.” He looked at Alfie’s innocent face with concern.

  Alfie held up his kitten. “You see what I have?”

  A moment of pain and pity flashed across the man’s broad peasant face. “Yes, boy. And it is a nice kitten. Did you find it in the street also, like your clothes?”

  “No. He is Werner. His mama and brothers are back in the Halder grave at New Church with my mama. Please . . . will you take care of them?”

  The officer exhaled loudly. This appeal was more than he had bargained for. Danger at every turn, and this poor boy was thinking about his kittens, at home with Mama. The purest heart in Berlin. Maybe the last pure heart? “Yes, boy. I will see to them.”

  With a curt nod, he backed up a step and turned from them. Unclamping the cables, he slammed down the hood.

  “Now get going before someone arrests you for illegal parking.”

  ***

  “We are certain that they were hiding out in New Church like little mice,” Officer Hess explained with a shrug. “Gone now, of course. But they left us an itinerary.”

  “And this is what you have found of the Ibsen children in all this time?” Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels slapped his hand down hard on the road map that had been found beneath the window at New Church. “A road map! My own press prints these. What is that supposed to mean?”

  Officer Alexander Hess was a patient man. Because of his patience he had earned the reputation of achieving his goals. He traced his finger along the blue ink that followed the line of the new Autobahn from Berlin to the train crossing at the Polish border.

  “You will notice two things, Reichminister Goebbels,” he said. “They intend to cross here, where the express train to Danzig passes the border.”

  “Maybe this is nothing! Mein Gott! Such a line could have been drawn by Pastor Ibsen years ago and the map discarded by the children.”

  Hess smiled. Patient and clerk-like, he had reasoned it all out. “If one is going to cross into Poland at the train crossing, it would be customary to board the train in Berlin, you see.” He waited for that ordinary fact to penetrate the irritation of Goebbels. “However, the children have marked the Autobahn. They intend to drive from Berlin to the border and cross into Poland just there. They will abandon their car, no doubt.”

  “What car? What? They have a car? Why haven’t we heard about an automobile before?”

  “After I saw the map, I checked vehicle registrations in Berlin. There have been no thefts; however, there is an automobile registered to Pastor Ibsen. It is missing.” He slid his finger along the marked route to indicate that the vehicle should now be heading north and east toward the Polish border. “I have sent out a description of the Ibsen children to all the towns along that route—and a description of the vehicle, of course. Nothing could be simpler. A reward is offered. They will be picked up within hours, and we will transport them to their father’s prison, a mile from the border crossing. You will have your statement from Pastor Ibsen. The world will have it.” His matter-of-fact attitude reassured Goebbels.

  “I will give the Führer your word on that.” A thinly veiled threat lay behind the comment. If Hess failed to find the children, he would also fail to break Ibsen. And the Führer wanted badly to add the Ibsen name to his roster of faithful churchmen.

  ***

  Lucy lay staring up at the dark ceiling. Wolf’s heavy arm stretched across her as if to hold her there beside him even as he slept. When she tried to turn, the arm tightened, a prison of flesh and desire that kept her chained to him like a slave.

  Hours ticked past slowly. When the clock tolled nine-thirty, she imagined Karin Wallich and Marlene on board the train leaving Vienna at that moment. She wanted to pray for them; to remind the Lord of His mother’s eyes. She wanted to ask that everything go well. There was no question about the authenticity of the passports. She only hoped the mother and daughter had not been pulled aside for questioning.

  The night slipped by and Lucy found herself thinking that at this hour, the train would
pass through one city or the other. Perhaps tomorrow she would also be passing those checkpoints. But it was a long way from Wolf’s bed to tomorrow.

  Lucy was afraid. Alone with him like this, she knew what he would do to her if he suspected. She had told Frau Singer that he would not beat her, would not kill her. In reality, she knew better than that. And if, by some miracle he only had her locked up in the Lebensborn, he would have her eliminated after the baby was born.

  The baby!

  A gentle butterfly fluttered briefly in her womb. She felt it every day now. It filled her with the purest love she had ever known, and the deepest grief as well. Mothers like her who had lain in bed and wondered about the mystery of life within them now said good-bye to the children they had borne. Everywhere in the Reich, women like Karin Wallich sent their babies away on trains and hoped that one day they might be together again.

  Lucy did not want to send her baby away to be raised by another woman. She wanted to hold him, to feel him turn his face to be nourished by her. She longed to hold his little hands and praise him when he took a step. She wanted his smiles and kisses to belong to her heart, his tears to fall against her shoulder.

  She had witnessed the sorrowing eyes of the mother of Christ in the face of Karin Wallich. And in that moment her own fears and sorrows had somehow bonded inextricably with the grief of every woman in the Reich who was forced to say good-bye . . . forever.

  Jewish women had their children torn physically from their arms. Christian mothers who had remained steadfast watched as their children were spiritually poisoned, growing finally as dark as the masters of Germany. This sort of separation was just as real; the grief, though different, just as profound. The end was just as final. Eternal.