The Ragged Edge of Night

by Olivia Hawker

  To the boys, he says, “You don’t need a rifle to hunt. What do you suppose people did in the days before guns were invented? You can make slings easily; I’ve a book somewhere that shows how to do it. We’ll need to find some leather soft enough to work with, but Möbelbauer might have a few scraps he’s willing to part with, left over from covering chairs.”

  “We can’t kill a deer with a sling,” Paul says. “And even if we could, a deer is too heavy for us to move.”

  “Deer! Who likes deer meat, anyway? No, boys—I’m talking about rabbit.”

  They glance at one another, considering.

  “It might be fun to hunt,” Al admits. “But it’s far more manly to be a soldier.”

  Anton covers his mouth with his hand, trying to hide his frown. How to tell them—how to make them see, in a world that praises the unfeeling killer as the height of masculinity? We celebrate the man who bristles with arms, who paves for himself a path of violence. But there are other men, other lives, other ways for a man to be. What of the teachers and the priests? What of doctors and artists, who heal and create where other men destroy? What of our fathers? And how do I tell them, he wonders, that the soldiers they revere sweat beneath their helmets and wake screaming in the night? How do I tell them that the Party leaves their soldiers little choice, or none at all? By force, the Wehrmacht commit such acts that destroy their souls, as surely as a bullet destroys flesh. By force, the Führer manufactures ghosts that will haunt forever those who serve him.

  He cannot say these things, not to boys so young and innocent. Let them stay this way for as long as fate permits, gamboling and unconcerned, with their heads full of dreams, not nightmares. He says, “It’s most manly of all to do kindness to one another. You remember, Al—you don’t want to hurt anyone, or see harm done to your fellow men. You told me so on the first day we met.”

  Al nods. He remembers.

  “I must take you both hunting,” he says with finality, though he has seldom hunted in his life, and not since he was a boy himself. When can he do it, busy as he is with the Widerstand network? He must simply find the time—find it, or make it. He must show these boys, entrusted to his care, that there are more rewards to be found in mercy and love than in mindless fighting and killing. We gain more by emulating Christ than his persecutors.

  “I would like to go hunting,” Al says.

  Paul jumps to his feet. “So would I! Let’s do it tonight.”

  “Not tonight.” Anton climbs to his feet, stifling a groan. His legs and hips ache from the run, and there is still a rough, burning sensation deep in his lungs. “We must make our slings first. You boys must promise me with all sincerity that you will never play with any sort of weapon again. And if you see anything of the sort, you are never to touch it, but tell me at once.”

  “All right,” Al says, still a little sulky. “We promise.” A darker thought occurs to him, and he grabs Anton’s sleeve in alarm. “You won’t tell Mother, will you?”

  “Seeing as how you’ve given me your solemn vow never to do it again, I think this time we can leave her in blessed ignorance.” It’s a mercy to poor Elisabeth; she would take sick with fright at the mere thought of her boys meddling with a grenade. “But if it happens again, you won’t be so lucky.”

  As he turns to go, he says, “I like your fortress. You’ve done well with it. Don’t stay out too long; it will be cold this evening, and your mother will be worried.”

  The sun has nearly set by the time he finds his way out of the woods. He eases through the gap in the hedge, and there is the grenade, lying mute and small in its furrow. He stands frozen, half crouched, his blood humming with a tight, uncomfortable energy, half expecting the damnable thing to explode unprovoked, like a curse. When he can relax by inches, he steps around it, cautiously, slowly, circling and staring like a skittish dog. He can see now that the boys were right: it’s only an empty shell. Someone has disarmed it; the steel plug is gone from one end, the pin from the other. There is nothing inside but a void.

  He lets his breath out slowly. He picks it up, feeling the cold of its metal skin in his colder hand. This grenade will harm no one, but it’s still a hateful thing, a tool of destruction. He turns it over in his hands, rolls it between his palms. Its size baffles him. How can something so small contain such deadly force? How can so simple an object unmake a body, a life, the world? He looks down the hole in the grenade’s tapered end into its hollow heart. Light shines through the other side. Then he whips back his arm and throws the thing hard, as hard and far as he can. It lands with a small, insignificant splash in the irrigation canal that runs along the edge of the Kopp field. The water, flowing high and fast with spring’s thaw, takes the grenade and pulls it under. In moments it is buried, vanished into soft and fertile silt.

  18

  Spring slips rapidly away into summer. Anton would be glad of the change of seasons, the lengthening light and the growing warmth, if not for this persistent feeling—a kind of whispering dread, always murmuring behind his thoughts—that he has accomplished nothing since taking up with the resistance. Father Emil has told him, “Be patient. We can’t change the world overnight.” But still, he expected by now to hear some news from Berlin or from the Prussian outpost where the Führer often goes to ground. Our cities, our citizens, face bombardment nearly every day. But when the assaults prove too much for our great leader to bear, he tucks himself away in his Wolf’s Lair and shelters from the storm.

  On a blue day in May, when the air is sweet with the perfume of flowers, he meets his contact in Wernau. Anton sees the man reading an NSDAP paper on a bench near the bus stop—gray suit, blue tie, spats covering his shoes. This is the very man he was told to find.

  He passes the bench, muttering the key phrase as he goes. “Do you smell rain coming?” Without looking up from his paper, the man in the gray suit gives the expected response. “No one can keep the rain away forever.” Anton circles the block, taking his time, lingering at shop windows and lifting his hat to the women he meets. He flashes his charming grin. He makes as if he has nothing but time, as if his only concern is whether the sun will pink the tops of his ears.

  When he returns to the bus stop bench, the man in the gray suit is still there. He has finished his paper—it’s only one long sheet, printed front and back, as are all papers now—and he sits gazing down the street, as if searching for his bus. He has folded the paper into a perfect square. It lies on the bench, forgotten.

  Anton looks the contact over more carefully. Of course, the man declines to meet Anton’s eye; that much he expects. But the fellow waits patiently, allowing Anton to study his face while he scans the long street. Anton has seen him before. This is not the first time he has exchanged messages with this man. He is, in fact, the first man Anton ever met in the secret work, the one who told him the story of Rudolf von Gersdorff frantically defusing his bomb in the museum bathroom. He is glad to see Herr Pohl again. It’s always a pleasure, to know someone you admire has survived.

  As he sits, Anton lets the folded message drop from his hand onto the bench. A moment later, Pohl uncrosses his legs, recrosses them. He shifts, he sighs; distracted, he picks up his folded newspaper and the message with it. Anton’s note tucks into the paper square and slides between its overlapping leaves. The message has vanished.

  “A beautiful day,” Anton says. “Any news from Berlin?”

  Pohl gives the briefest of smiles. “Not the kind of news you and I are looking for.”

  “Soon, though. I can feel it in my bones.”

  “You are a tireless one. And optimistic.”

  “My faith in God compels me. I believe in the work God has given me, and I believe in His power to right all wrongs.”

  “A Christian,” says Herr Pohl. He sounds amused.

  “You’re not?”

  “If I say I’m not, will you stop coming to speak with me?”

  Anton searches the street, too, gazing in the opposite direction, never m
eeting Herr Pohl’s eye. “Not in a thousand years. I believe too strongly in my mission.”

  “More strongly than you believe in God?” There is no sting in the man’s voice. In fact, there is something of a chuckle. It’s a boyish game, this teasing, but Anton feels compelled to answer forthrightly.

  “I will admit, there are times when I have my doubts about the Lord.”

  “How not, with so much evil in the world?”

  “Once, on a train, I heard a man say he didn’t believe in God because he had never seen Him.”

  Herr Pohl laughs, dry and quiet. “A clever man, that.”

  “But just because we can’t see the Lord—that doesn’t mean He isn’t there.”

  “Can’t see Him, can’t feel His touch. He has no influence in this world, or you and I wouldn’t be here, now, doing what we do. If God ever existed, He is dead, my friend. Hitler himself killed Him.”

  What can Anton say to that? He has scarcely felt the Lord’s presence since this war began. He believes because he wants belief—because without it, he will crumble in despair. God is not dead, only absent. Whenever He deigns to return, Anton will be waiting to embrace Him. He will take God in his arms and say, Look what I have done while You were gone. Look how I have tried to uphold Your glory. I am only one man, but my God, I tried.

  After a pause, Pohl says, “My name is Detlef. My Christian name, I mean.”

  Anton turns to him, grinning. “Your Christian name—then are you a Christian, despite yourself?”

  Pohl only shrugs and refuses to look at him. Anton understands his uneasiness. They aren’t supposed to know one another’s names, the men and women who carry out this great and deadly work—except when two resisters work closely together, and on a regular basis, as in the case of Anton and Father Emil.

  “I know,” Pohl says, apologetic. He looks up and down the street, casually but with a keen eye. “We aren’t supposed to tell. It’s safer that way—of course it is. But sometimes I find my job rather lonely, don’t you? Sometimes I think, ‘If we don’t remember each other’s humanity, and recognize individual worth, then we aren’t much better than . . .’” He leaves the rest unspoken, but his meaning is clear.

  Anton has felt the same way, now and then. He has shared Detlef Pohl’s dark thoughts. He sees, too, that this is Pohl’s apology, an earnest attempt to mend what this talk of God has broken. “I’m Anton Starzmann. Pleased to meet you—properly, I mean, since we have crossed paths before.”

  “Don’t tell me if you have a family,” Pohl says quickly. He toys with the folded newspaper. He spreads it open again, glances over its lines. The scrap of paper with Anton’s message is gone. If Pohl concealed it in his hand or in his pocket, Anton never noticed the subtle motion. Pohl is a man of long experience. “If you have a family, I don’t want to know. In case they ever catch me, you see. I don’t want to tell them how they can get to you, if they force me to reveal whatever I know.”

  “I understand,” Anton says. “They can’t force you to say what you don’t know.” He leans back on the bench and turns away again, searching now in earnest for his own bus. Outwardly, he is unconcerned. Inside, his throat has gone tight with fear. Don’t ever tell how they can hurt me. How they can force me to their will.

  Pohl says, quite suddenly and with the hint of a laugh, “They call us the Red Orchestra, those of us they know about, those they keep their eyes on. Did you know?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “It’s their secret code. Or they think it a secret, but we know—we know nearly everything.” Pohl’s voice falls even lower than the cautious murmur he’d been using before. In that sinking pitch, Anton hears the unspoken words: Knowing as much as we do, one would think we could have acted by now. One would think we could have cinched this business up last spring. Von Gersdorff and his damnable bomb.

  Anton says, “Why an orchestra?”

  “They give us each a special name, those they know about. We are all musical instruments to them. Herr Violin, Herr Clarinet, Fräulein Oboe—that sort of thing. Do you know why? Because they think if they ever capture us, they can make us all sing.”

  “They don’t know us half as well as they fancy.” It’s a brave thing to say, but Anton has seen firsthand what the SS can do, how they can break a man and force him to their will. He says, “How will this all end, do you think?” He dares not ask when.

  “The kingdom can’t be overthrown until the king is dead. What he has built is too deeply rooted in Germany now.” The Party is too thoroughly entrenched, and the people are too cowed, too frightened to resist. They are all too willing to shut their eyes, to pretend nothing evil has happened. They are even willing to accept that these things Hitler does, these things he says, are normal—that the Party has the right of it, and has been right all along. They are ready to believe, now, that mankind was always meant to hate his neighbor, to kill the weak and the outcast, since God first dreamed us into being.

  But those of us who resist—we remember what the world was like. There were times before—all the long history of our nation, before Hitler’s rise—when we behaved less like wolves and more like men. We remember; we know. The purging of the press, the suspension of our constitution, the rallies and marches and the Reichstag fire—this is not who we are. Anton sits in silence, listening to the slow rustle of Herr Pohl’s paper. He stares down the road for the bus, but in his mind, he walks backward through time, searching as he did before for the place where Germany went wrong, where we turned aside from our humanity. It was when hunger came in 1918. It was when our jobs vanished, when a man could no longer expect to feed his family, when any crust of bread was a miracle. His efforts are misplaced, in searching for the origin of evil. He knows it’s so, yet he can’t stop asking: When? And why? But when and why don’t matter. If not now, then some other date. If not for Hitler’s reasons, then by the will of some other man. Satan is alive and well; he lives in the hearts of all people. He waits, his sharp ear cocked, for the whisper from a sly politician, or a general’s shouted order. He is always ready to reach out his sulfur-stinking hand and beckon us toward the unforgivable.

  Walking home from his bus stop outside Unterboihingen, Anton considers what Detlef Pohl said. The Red Orchestra, and all the secrets the Nazis think they can keep. Do they know about me yet, or am I still invisible? What name have they given me; what will my voice sound like when they take me, and make me sing?

  The bells of St. Kolumban ring out the hour, and the sound carries across the distance, familiar and soothing, a beacon to guide him home. Despite his worries, Anton smiles to hear it. For a moment, that gentle tolling overwhelms the dread that murmurs ceaselessly in his mind. The bells drown out the frantic chorus of his imagination, the blood-red orchestra playing.

  He reaches into the pocket of his unbuttoned jacket. The Easter chocolate went over well; he has found more candy to give the children—peppermints, this time—and he feels compelled to check on his small treasure, to be sure it’s still there. Tucked beside the peppermints, he finds the folded letter from his sister, Anita. He received the note two weeks ago, a welcome surprise, but he’d forgotten slipping it into his coat pocket. He pulls it out and unfolds it to reread Anita’s words as he walks.

  He’d written to her belatedly, months after the wedding. You will never believe it, he told her. I am a husband and father now. I am sorry it has taken me so long to tell you. I’m kept busier than I’d imagined I could be, caring for the little ones.

  Anita’s response is amusing—she was always a funny girl—but between her humorous lines, he can read the sobriety of her thoughts.

  My dear little brother,

  It is I who must apologize to you. You may have taken three months to tell me you ran off and got married (I would have expected something like this when you were a boy of seventeen, but now that you are practically old . . . !) but it has taken me three more months to write a reply. That’s six months of shame on us both. It’s a good thing n
either of us is in our orders any longer; otherwise, we would have to assign penance to one another, and I hear nuns are terribly cruel to their little brothers. I would be obliged to uphold that tradition.

  Since we saw each other last, I have found work as a secretary here in Stuttgart. Can you imagine, a nun taking dictation and typing off memos! It’s too ridiculous to think about. I can hardly believe it myself, and yet I get up every morning and put on my city-girl clothes and go off to do my work. But it’s work or starve, for me. I won’t take a husband (not that many men chase after me; I am forty-two now!) for I am still faithful to Christ.

  Yes, you read it correctly. We are still estranged, but I am willing to take Him back once He’s ready to reconcile. I am faithful to Him forever.

  You mustn’t think I judge you for your decision to marry, Anton. I am sure your wife and children are delightful. I trust your heart to lead you in the right direction. I hope you trust your own heart, too—and God. Someday, when this boring war is over and we can re-form the orders, you will not go back, now that you are a Vati. But I believe you have ended up exactly where the Lord means you to be.

  I wonder, is Christ truly divorced from me now, or has some worse fate befallen Him? Am I a woman cast off, or am I a widow, like your Elisabeth?

  Your loving sister,

  Anita

  Anton smiles down at the note, as he did the first time he read it, and a dozen times after. But Anita’s pain strikes him afresh, so evident in the letter’s final lines. Even the most devout have begun to believe that God is dead. He can hardly blame them. What kind of Lord allows this iniquity to taint what He has made? Only a weak God or a nonexistent one—perhaps Herr Pohl is right. Perhaps it’s Anton who is strange, he who is unusual, buoyed by his relentless, unforgiving optimism, pressed ever onward by his conviction that this regime can be overthrown. Even when logic and common sense tell him, Give up, Anton, it’s impossible. Shut your eyes and accept—still he presses on.