Lost Kin

by Anderson, Steve

  “Hello. We go west?” Harry shouted at a young boy, keeping his German wooden and true to character.

  “Not exactly,” a mother shouted for the boy.

  “We were in Austria, north part,” Max hollered, in character, an Ami deserter with bad German.

  “You’re well north of there now,” barked a man.

  “Bohemia,” yelled another. Czechoslovakia.

  “Probably passing right by the Šumava,” Max shouted into Harry’s ear. “Wonder if my scouts could hear this train.”

  Another stop, more people. Someone reported that the train had gained six more cars from its original ten, some of them open cars and the people in those had it much worse. The children finally came over to stare at Harry and Max’s wounds. Harry and Max offered their bread, and everyone’s food was shared all around. Harry and Max got used to the urinating and defecating in the bucket and even joined in. People emptied the bucket by dumping it out the narrow windows up high—a complicated, circus-like maneuver that required a pyramid of helpers with a child at the top, best done at those times when the train was almost at a halt.

  Another stop. A few more refugees came in, these ones speaking what sounded like Russian with some quaint old German words thrown in.

  “It’s Polish,” Max said, losing any spirit left in his voice.

  More jolts, starts, and stops. The light was dimming outside. By the time they got rolling again, it was near dark. The train barreled on into the darkness, yet at half the pace as before.

  “Why so damn slow now?” someone shouted.

  “Different locomotive,” shouted back one of the Poles. “Red bastards keep the ones from the West and send back the rickety old ones from the East. Like this one we got.”

  More food was shared, rationed out by bites. Harry and Max joined the crowd, and the women tended to their wounds. The refugees on this train, they learned, were ethnic Germans the Soviets were expelling from the East—forced to vacate countries, cities, villages, homes they had lived in for hundreds of years, some of them. Thus the strange German, if they had any left at all. Many only had their German names left, but even that was too much for Joseph Stalin.

  Harry and Max slept, their heads on the soft wide laps of women they didn’t know. They did not stop for hours, the tracks clicking and clacking and thumping. An icy wind whipped at the car and forced its way in between the slats. They woke to a dim light and then sat up. All paced the car. Friday morning. Organized looks out the high windows revealed countryside much like that of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland. “A sign!” someone shouted. “I can’t read it.”

  The old locomotive raced on as if barreling downhill. Harry hoped it had the steam to stop itself. He and Max retreated back to their corner, alone again, hanging on to each other’s sleeves, anchoring their feet to the walls. If this thing wrecked, at least they wouldn’t be killed by the bodies of other people. He hoped.

  “Hold on, Max, hold on!” Harry shrieked, and then muttered it to himself.

  The train slowed. Brakes squealed and the car wobbled as it switched tracks, once, and then twice. Another look out the window was attempted, this time by a young man who climbed back down with a stern look stretched across his face.

  “It’s all destroyed! All of it, for so many kilometers. Even the horizon. Where are we supposed to go? Who would take us here?”

  Full stop. The refugees cleared the doorway, and the woman shielded their children. The doors rolled open, bringing blinding sunlight and a gritty dust that swirled in the car and bit at their noses. It meant rubble. A city in ruins.

  Max and Harry helped each other up, leaning against one another. A few men approached the door. They stared out a moment, into the light, and then, with a shrug, waved the rest on out. Harry and Max waited until the last were outside. They hobbled to the doorway of the car and peered out.

  “I’ve been here … before,” Max said.

  Their car, attached to the middle of the train, stood half inside the great rail station and half out. Yet that hadn’t stopped the sun from streaming in, because the station’s great hall was a creaking, gnarled skeleton of iron beams, pocked and charred stonework and iron frames that had long ago lost all of its glass. The refugees moved along the platform, their heads craning at the great hall, clutching each other. The platform sign read:

  NÜRNBERG HBF

  Twenty-Three

  “THE TRAIN ENDED AT NUREMBERG,” Harry told Sabine. They were back at Harry’s mansion. It was that evening—Friday, November 2. Harry had asked Gerlinde to call Sabine, and Gerlinde and Sabine had cut a deal over the phone. Gerlinde would clean and dress Harry’s head, then Sabine would arrive and make Harry stay in bed. Gerlinde, still showing Harry disapproving looks, propped him up with pillows against the headboard so that Sabine could get a good look at him thusly repaired. When Sabine arrived less than a half hour later, she sat in a chair next to the bed, her fingers feeling at Harry’s duvet as he told her about Max and him on the packed train of ethnic Germans, just one of so many human trainloads that Joe Stalin had expelled from Eastern Europe—“Uncle Joe” had his own brand of Europe in mind, and it was already sure to look and behave like no other. To counteract the sick foreboding this gave Harry, like a bag of sand in his chest, he gazed at Sabine as he talked. She wore no makeup and as far as he was concerned didn’t need it. The low, soft light in the room, from candles Gerlinde lit because of outages, made Sabine’s skin glow. Her concern showed in her hard-set cheeks and full eyes. Her lips were a little chapped, with a darker spot on her lower lip where she must have been biting it. Was she worrying about him? Harry hoped so.

  “What about security?” Sabine said.

  “Wasn’t hard to avoid the controls with all the people. We got outside the station, onto the street … grabbed the first MP I saw, told him I was regional MG and I’d been roughed up by some deserter gang, took the clothes right off my back. Didn’t mention the train or the Soviet zone.”

  “And Max?”

  “I told them he’s my brother. They didn’t ask questions. From there, all it took was one call from Nuremberg MG to Munich. Munich regional verified me. Nuremberg even drove us back in an army ambulance.” Harry tried a laugh. “Max, he wanted us to rush us straight back over the border.”

  “To the Šumava? To be with the Cossacks.”

  Harry nodded. “I feel for him, after what we saw, but he’s too banged up to go just yet. He’s got the bedroom down the hall—Irina’s with him.”

  Sabine laid a hand over Harry’s and held it there. Harry told Sabine the rough part about their venture. The Cossacks’ families were trucked off, the men shot down like rabid pigs. Yet Harry and Max got it on film.

  “Now we have the proof,” Sabine told him. “And you used a top-notch Riga Minox? Such boldness.”

  The story of Max’s magic trick to hide the film made her clap. And Harry had another revelation for her: He had figured out that she and Max knew each other from the beginning, from before Harry found Max, and not only that: “You’ve been working with him all along.”

  It made Sabine blush, which Harry was sure to point out.

  “One thing not even you knew though,” he continued. “Max himself sent me straight to you at the Standkaserne, can you believe that? Used a disguise to hit me up on the sidewalk at night, of all the things.”

  Sabine shook her head in wonder.

  “Bet you didn’t know actors had so much moxie?” Harry said, adding a smile, but it pulsed hot in the back of his head like that Chinese mustard and suddenly he wasn’t smiling anymore. He said, haltingly, “What we saw, it was like something the Germans did—the Nazis did.”

  Sabine squeezed Harry’s hand. “You can include me in that. The Germans did it, and I’m a German. Now the game changes fast, does it not? A year ago? Right after the war ended? This was happening every other day, what you saw—to normal citizens. Anyone Russian or Soviet who had the misfortune to be caught in the West. POWs. Forced
laborers. Even their own spies and underground fighters. You sent back over two million—you Americans, the British, the French. All for policy.”

  “Hell, let’s not coat it with sugar,” Harry said.

  Sabine checked Harry’s wound, re-dressed the bandage, and stroked his hair. She undressed, tugging her blouse off her shoulders, and she wriggled her skirt off her hips. She unclasped her white corset lingerie that shined in the candlelight. He wondered, watching it billow to the floor in one last shimmer, if she had worn this just for him. She slid into bed with him. She was so warm, and he told her so, and they promised each other, fighting chuckles, that they would behave themselves and only sleep. Sabine, feigning anger, told Harry he was too banged up to even think about making it with her. Harry had been hard far too long yet managed to keep his pajamas on. She kissed him on the forehead and on each cheek. She blew out the last candle. They fell into sleep.

  Harry woke, in the dark, must have been the middle of the night. Sabine had clasped onto him in her sleep, one leg over his hip, her arm tight around him. Like a brave woman hanging on for dear life. Her cheek pressed against his shoulder. Then she was kissing him, her lips chapped no more. Harry was hard again. His pajama trousers came off and his shirt, so fast she’d done it like the veteran nurse she was stripping a bed. She cradled his head on a pillow. Re-lit the candle. She was all seriousness—not focused in a sterile way but rather bright-eyed, as if she were gazing out at a grand mountain view. His hands all over her now.

  He felt scars, on her back and on her shins, and dents there, and he knew where it came from. Few survived the Gestapo without something to show for it. Her fingers found the scar on his left thigh, from his death bout with Spanner.

  “Me, I walked into a door,” he whispered.

  “Is that so? I tripped on the sidewalk.”

  “A likely story.”

  “I’m not ashamed,” Sabine whispered.

  “Neither am I.”

  They stopped, to stare into each other’s eyes. Then they were kissing again, with tongues, her contours velvet in the light, and he was reaching for all of them, finding them. Finding her.

  The next morning, Harry reported to regional MG with the same story he’d told Nuremberg MP and MG. The gash on his head and one oversized bandage from Gerlinde didn’t hurt his tale, and he had little trouble getting sympathy. That was some tough luck for a Military Government Officer on his way out the door, they said, because the quadruplicates had reached Munich HQ spelling out that Captain Kaspar had no more than two weeks left. He could push the papers for redeployment if he wanted such a thing, but time was ticking. Harry still hadn’t told Max, and he should’ve told Sabine last night. He refused to think about it this morning. It was a Saturday, the sun made the November breeze tolerable, he felt lucky to have his skull in one round piece, and there was so much to get done and fast.

  The Minox cartridge needed developing. Using Harmut Dietz made sense, Harry reckoned. The detective had given him the camera, after all, and this way no one else would have to know. Dietz was a good egg. Sure, the detective knew about Max, but he hadn’t made an issue of it and hadn’t gone around prying as far as Harry knew. Sabine had demanded a shot at developing the film herself, but she didn’t know a photographer she could trust, she admitted, since so many good ones were dead or emigrated. Yet she vowed to find someone or would learn to develop it herself if need be. No, Harry had argued—this needed doing pronto and right. He said he knew a person and Sabine didn’t ask questions.

  Harry called Dietz at the Polizeipräsidium, saying only that he had hit a snag. Dietz said he’d meet him in one hour.

  To kill time Harry strolled through Old Town, lit up a Chesterfield and thought about Max back at the mansion, hopefully charming Gerlinde right about now into making her famous Kaiserschmarrn even if they didn’t have raisins. He passed St. Peter’s Church, thinking of Sabine again. She’d been up and working for hours, no doubt. The most surprising thing about Sabine in bed was that it had been fun, a hoot. They had laughed. Maddy had always made it so formal, like taking some ancient rite. One would think the German girl would be the ceremonial one, Harry thought, wearing a smile as he turned corners.

  He stopped. Maddy Barton herself was coming up the street. She wore a buff fur coat with matching bonnet. A squared-jawed hunk of a GI in crisp new US Army green followed eyeing pedestrians who got too close. Harry had no choice. He gritted his teeth and continued on, locating the gears inside his head that would somehow put a pleasantly innocent morning smile on his face.

  Seeing Harry, Maddy stopped a moment and then made straight for him. “Well! Captain Kaspar,” she said. Then stopped again, waiting for him to come to her. Always the formality.

  Harry took a puff and kept coming, not faster or slower, just on his merry old way. Square-jawed GI stood in front of her. Harry gave him a once-over. “Madd, I think there’s a tree trunk got between us. And he doesn’t salute much either.” Only then did Harry realize he had his civvies on.

  The GI broke a smile. Teeth wider than Harry’s fingers.

  “Oh, let me at him,” Maddy said and the GI stepped back. “Go on, take a breather and ogle some dames or something,” she told him.

  She rolled her eyes at Harry as the GI found the closest wall to lean against. Two Gretchens passed, already eyeing him. Maddy’s face looked a little paler but in a nice way, like an Asian woman with powder on her face.

  “What’s with the goon?” Harry said.

  Maddy shrugged, the fine fur billowing. “They made me take him. I don’t care for it either if you must know.”

  “Made you? Ah, right, your new general did.”

  “He’s only a colonel, Harry.” Maddy blushed, feet together, swinging her hips a little.

  “Yeah, but he’s staff caliber, right? So he’ll be a general. You deserve a general.” Keep this civil, Harry. He put on another smile. “I mean it, Madd. Good for you.”

  But Maddy’s mouth had scrunched up. “Hey, wait—turn around, you.” Fur hooked onto his arm and she spun him around, making a tsk-tsk sound.

  A small square of Pflaster had replaced Gerlinde’s big bandage on the back of his head, expertly applied by Sabine. “Oh, that? Heck of a thing. It’s not too bad,” he said, giving her no more than that. Maddy shouldn’t have been able to see the bandage from her angle, but then again she didn’t have to—she’d surely gotten word through the MG grapevine. She probably even knew his assaulted-by-deserters story. Come to think of it, why would she just happen to be waltzing up this very street? They had no dress boutiques, candy shops, or even a swanky bar within blocks. He wanted to point that out to her, but he was being a good boy today, and she a good girl. “Say, just where you heading anyway?” he added.

  “Never mind me.” She turned him back around to face her. She was pouting, her lips two cherries. They had always been sweet—he had to admit. And they were going to start asking questions and rapidly like a tommy gun. Too many Americans and Germans were like Maddy, all flash and gossip and snooping. The Maddys of this world had too many connections, which meant too many allegiances. What did they care about those Cossacks? Not unless the poor saps were privy to a truckload of gold bars, rare bibles, or a secret map to the Fountain of Youth.

  He had to curb her powers somehow. He blurted, “Hey, you know a man named Aubrey Slaipe?”

  The cherries parted, flattened. For the briefest moment, nothing escaped from between them. “That a doll or a guy name?” she sputtered.

  “Guy.”

  “Who’s asking?”

  “I’m asking. Just me. Calls himself a trade representative. Might be CIC or whatever the new flavor is.”

  “Well, I don’t, Harry …” Maddy looked around before she continued. The GI was talking to two other Gretchens. “What are you up to, huh?” she whispered. “Soon as I’m out of your life, you’re off getting in all sorts of trouble.”

  “You’re hearing it or you’re knowing it?” Harry s
aid.

  “A gash like that? Someone meant to do you some harm. I don’t want harm done to you, see, whether you believe that or not.”

  “I’m glad you’re not sore at me.”

  “Sore at you? Heck, best thing you could do was give me those walking papers. I was about ready to seize your whole billet. First your fancy bathtub, tomorrow the world …”

  “Thanks. I mean it.” What if he just out and told her now? He fought the urge. He couldn’t know what she’d do, what whistles she’d blow or bells she’d ring. She might just call him a sucker. “I’m doing all right, Madd.”

  “It is quite a serious to-do though, isn’t it?” she said.

  Harry took a long drag of his Chesterfield, wondering how to play it. She was obviously keeping tabs on him. She may or may not know Slaipe but had probably heard of him even though the man didn’t seem like one for castle parties. She might even have taken a little of what he preached to heart. Yet that fur was saying otherwise—that her priorities were always her own.

  Maddy hadn’t taken her eyes off him. The cherries were back.

  “Your brother,” she said. “Does this have something to do with it?”

  Harry yanked his cigarette. He hadn’t meant to and it gave him away. She planted her gloved hands on her hips, expecting him to fess up. The grapevine, that goddamn grapevine, it grew faster than any ivy, stronger than any iron.

  “Who told you about him?” he grunted. Not that he expected an answer.

  “Word gets around. They say he looks like you—only ritzy,” Maddy said but she added a sympathetic raise of eyebrows where he’d expected a devilish grin. “Look. Maybe I could help.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t.”

  “Nothing shocks me, Harry. You know that. And now? Let’s just say I’m wising up, see. You may not believe this, but I’ve given some thought to some of those things you laid on me that night. You mean well. I know that now.”

  “That’s good,” Harry muttered, still stunned by her knowing about Max. He should have seen it coming. Her pale and beautiful mask of a face was so impenetrable. What did she really want? Was this the look of contrition? It might as well be part of a complicated plan of deceit. She was only trying to peg something on him. Something she could do to make him pay for kicking her out. How could he know with a gal like this?