“I don’t know.” Truthfully, he wasn’t sure he could engrave these well. But he hadn’t thought that far ahead. He’d worried only about the sketches. About Herr Bergmann coming back and liking them enough to think Kristoff was valuable to the Germans, that Kristoff deserved to be keeper of this house, the engraving workshop and tools, his station as a stamp engraver in Austria. Kristoff had promised Frederick he’d keep this place safe, and it seemed working with the Germans was the only real way to do this. “I will have to,” he finally said.
“Hmmm,” she murmured, and she closed the sketchbook. “I talked to Josef last night about getting my father out of the country.” Her voice turned brusque, as if she were conducting business. Any emotion she’d felt in the darkness in his room in the middle of the night had seemingly disappeared without a trace.
Kristoff nodded, wondering how Josef had felt about seeing Elena, back here. And Frederick, too. He dreaded the conversation he’d have with either one of them himself later. Josef, certainly, would blame him.
“I want to get him to America to go stay with his friend.”
“America? Not England, to be with Miri?”
“He’d have nowhere to go in England. They’re only taking children. He has a friend in America, and Miri can join him there, once he’s settled. And Mother, too, eventually.” She paused, and Kristoff understood that this was the real reason why she’d come back. She got Miri to safety and she wanted to do the same for both her parents. “I want to make him some papers, a visa with a different name, make him a non-Jew.”
“Forgery,” Kristoff said. Elena and Josef’s plan for the engraving tools all along. The last time Elena brought it up, it had seemed like something vague, distant. Now it felt so close, dangerous, and Kristoff felt sick to his stomach. But he couldn’t think of another way to help Frederick. The Germans thought Frederick was dead, and even if they didn’t, Jews were no longer allowed to leave the country without paying the high German tax, which Frederick wouldn’t have the money for, especially since he’d need to pay his passageway to America. “We’ll be killed if we get caught,” he said.
“And my father will die if he stays in that cabin for much longer.” Elena spoke without hesitation. “He needs a doctor, for his hand. And he needs real food. And fresh air.”
Elena was right. He didn’t know how much longer Frederick truly could survive hiding out in the tiny cabin. And Elena had left Miri on a train to come back here, to fight; Kristoff couldn’t be a coward. “If you or Josef can get a copy of actual exit papers, a visa, I’ll help. I can draw out replicas for Frederick with a new name,” he said.
Elena smiled at him, and jutted her chin out a little. “And I can engrave the plates.” He remembered how Frederick had criticized her engraving plates once, believing them to be Kristoff’s. Not precise enough. Too fast, too sloppy. But to the untrained eye, Kristoff thought they would look better, in fact, than his.
“How will we print them?” he asked.
Frederick had always taken his stamp engraving plates to Vienna to be printed by Herr Schweitzer, but that wouldn’t do for this, and besides, who knew if Herr Schweitzer’s place had been burned to the ground? Even if it was still there, Herr Schweitzer was certainly no longer running it. “Josef has a friend who’s willing to do it,” she said.
Of course. Josef always had an answer for everything, and Kristoff tried not to feel annoyed. He looked at Elena, and her face seemed softer, the way it had felt against his chest in his bed last night. “We’re going to make papers for you, too,” he said. “You want to stay and fight, but you also need a way out. I’m not going to let you fight to your death.” She just stared at him, her expression unwavering. “I’m not,” he repeated.
Wales, 1989
I ALMOST WALK RIGHT BY Benjamin sitting in the lounge bar when I get back to the hotel. But he notices me and calls out: “Kate, over here.” It’s strange that he’s suddenly calling me Kate, which hardly anyone ever does, except my father. But he waves me over, and I drag my blistered feet in his direction.
He’s drinking a mug of dark ale, probably not his first, because his cheeks are ruddier than usual, and that might explain the newly familiar way he called for me, too. “Have a drink with me,” he says, motioning for me to sit down. I do, and I order a glass of white wine.
“Wine? In Wales?” Benjamin laughs when the waitress brings over my glass.
“I’m not much of a beer drinker.” I take a slow sip.
“Me neither.” He raises his mug of ale. “But when in Wales.” He laughs again.
“How many of those have you had?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer, and anyway it’s not my business. “I came up to your room to look for you,” he says instead. “But you weren’t there.”
“I decided to walk around, explore the city a little.” I tell him about the beautiful castle, the hundreds of steps and the ancient stone walls.
“You know what you should do?” He’s slurring his words the tiniest bit. “You should write travel guides.”
“What?” I laugh a little and take another sip of my wine.
“You’re a writer, right? Instead of those movie reviews you should write travel books.”
I’m not sure how Benjamin knows what I write (has he looked up my reviews?) or how desperately I need to find a new job. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he’s just had too much to drink. “Anyway,” I say. “You said you came up to my room. You were looking for me?”
“I was thinking . . . Faber’s apprentice, Kristoff. I’ve never heard of him before.”
“So?”
“So let’s say he did make this stamp. Maybe he made others for the Third Reich, too.”
I shrug; I still don’t understand what he’s getting at.
“Miriam said she thought he wrote this letter, maybe made this stamp, that her sister went back to Austria for him. He wasn’t Jewish. Maybe he made a lot of stamps. Maybe he survived the war?” He pauses and finishes off his ale. “Maybe we’ve been looking for the wrong person. Maybe we don’t want to find Elena, Fräulein Faber. Maybe we should be trying to find Kristoff?”
“So you didn’t waste your miles, then, did you?” I’m not sure Benjamin and I ever would’ve known about Kristoff if it hadn’t been for Miriam sharing her story with us earlier.
Benjamin sips his ale and then keeps talking. “I know this professor at Oxford who specializes in World War Two–era history.”
“Oxford? How far is that from here?”
“Not far. A train ride.”
“Can we go there, ask him about Kristoff and our letter?” I hear my voice rising with excitement, though I’ve misspoken: the letter is not ours. It’s mine, or my father’s or Elena’s or even Kristoff’s. But it is certainly not ours, Benjamin’s and mine.
But Benjamin doesn’t seem to notice. “Yes,” he says. “I gave him a call before I came down here. We can go tomorrow, if you want.” I nod, I do. Benjamin motions for the waitress, and when she walks over, he asks for another Double Dragon. I’m starving from all the walking around, and I ask if she can bring me a rarebit sandwich.
We don’t say much while we wait, but as the waitress brings everything over to our table, I ask him if he’s ever been to Oxford before.
Benjamin doesn’t answer me at first, and I take a huge bite of my sandwich—I’m so hungry I want to inhale the greasy cheese and bread. So there’s no turkey or pumpkin pie, but my sandwich is delicious, and Thanksgiving—and my regular life—seems so far away. As I sit here in the dingy hotel pub in Cardiff, this is all that feels real.
“Yes,” Benjamin finally answers me. “I’ve been to Oxford before.”
“With your wife?” I venture cautiously, when he doesn’t explain more.
“You ever been married?” he asks.
I hesitate before I answer him truthfully. “I’m in the midst
of a divorce,” I say, and it’s the first time I’ve ever said that particular phrase out loud. I flinch a little.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” He sounds genuinely sorry. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. I wish I could just pick this one specific day or a fight and say, okay, this was the end of my marriage. But we hardly ever fought. My father’s memory got worse and worse, and I was spending a lot of time at his house, helping him out. I guess Daniel and I, we just grew apart. And then he left me. I honestly can’t really explain it.”
“And that’s just life, isn’t it? All the small stupid things we can’t explain.” He drinks his new ale down. “It’s been two years this week . . . since Sara and Davis were killed.” His face contorts on the two names.
I want to know more, to understand this man sitting across from me, who has shown me nothing but kindness the past few weeks. But I also don’t want to pry for details he’s unwilling to share, so I just settle for saying that I’m sorry. I reach my hand across the table and put it on his arm. “That’s why you hate Thanksgiving?” I wish he’d gone exploring the city with me, climbed up the stone steps in the fortress of the castle, the dampness of a thousand years invading his senses the way it had mine.
“It’s a brutal holiday. Everyone has a family, everyone has something to be thankful for. And I have the anniversary of a fatal wreck on the 405.” He sighs and finishes off his ale, but now he seems oddly sober, weary. “Sara used to fucking love it, too. It was her favorite time of the year.” The harshness of the curse word sounds all wrong in Benjamin’s even tone. I try to imagine him with a wife, this vibrant woman who loved things deeply. Maybe Benjamin was a completely different person then, two years ago. Maybe he was vibrant and loved Thanksgiving, too.
“And Davis?” I ask, tentatively.
Benjamin doesn’t answer for a moment, like he might ignore my question. But then he says, “My son. They were hit by a drunk driver who was going the wrong way. Killed on impact. He would’ve turned three next month.” His words are so terrible that they cut me; I feel like I’m bleeding.
Two years ago Benjamin was someone’s husband, and someone’s father. He was so much more than just this quirky guy whose whole world is stamps, who has collected thousands of frequent-flier miles traveling around to philatelic conferences. He was part of a family, and then, suddenly, he wasn’t. “That’s really awful,” I finally say. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Me too.” He raises his hand; he wants to order another ale, but then seems to change his mind and pushes the empty mug across the table, away from him. “I don’t usually talk about it. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”
“Oxford,” I remind him gently. “You went with Sara once?” I wonder if he’s always been a stamp dealer, or if stamps became a hobby he indulged, turned into a business, in his grief.
He nods. “Sara did her master’s there, before I met her. We went back to visit once, before Davis was born, and I met Dr. Grimes then.”
Is that why Benjamin really wants to go to Oxford tomorrow? Is this entire trip not so much a fact-finding mission or Benjamin’s escape at all, as he’d claimed, or even about my stamp, but instead a connection to his past, the woman he once loved?
I finish off my wine, and push the glass toward the center of the table by Benjamin’s empty one. “I should probably go up to bed,” I say. “If we’re going to go to Oxford in the morning, we’ll want to get an early start.”
“Right,” Benjamin says. But neither one of us moves for a moment. He looks so sad sitting here. I want to say something more to comfort him, but I don’t know what that would be. Finally Benjamin stands, and so do I.
We walk together toward the elevator, and when it stops first on the third floor, my floor, Benjamin puts his hand on the door to stop it from closing behind me. “Can I come with you?” His words tumble out in a rush. “We could watch a movie or play cards or . . . something? I just don’t want to be alone right now.” He stares at his beat-up sneakers.
“Sure,” I hear myself saying before I can really think it through.
He lets go of the door and gets off the elevator, following me to my room.
He is not coming to my room to have sex with me, I think as we walk down the hallway. He’s lonely. He doesn’t want to be alone. The ghosts of his dead wife and son are hanging over him this week, all these miles from home. Benjamin’s kind of grief must be a never-ending pain.
I put my key in the door, and we go inside. The room is dark, and the maid has come in my absence, so when I turn the lamp on I see the bed is made, the clothes I’d strewn on the floor tidied and placed in a pile on top of my suitcase.
I look around and realize there’s nowhere to sit but the bed or the floor. Benjamin sits on the bed, but I walk over to the television to turn it on, avoiding any inevitable awkwardness for another moment. Benjamin picks up the clicker from the nightstand and begins switching channels before settling on the BBC. A reporter in West Berlin is talking about the Mauerspechte, wall woodpeckers, people who live in East Germany and who are finally allowed out from behind the iron curtain. They are literally pecking away at the wall, chiseling it, piece by piece. The reporter zeroes in on a woman in a khaki raincoat who is chipping at the wall with a pickax.
I sit down on the bed, because my feet are aching, and I want to take off my sneakers and put my feet up. I sit as far to the other side as I can, not wanting to get too close, not wanting to accidentally bump elbows or hands with Benjamin.
“The wall came down,” he says. “But there it still is.”
The woman the BBC is focusing on is petite, blonde. Her raincoat is too big. She swings the pickax as hard as she can, and small pieces of the wall turn to dust all around her. The reporter asks her why she is hitting the wall so hard, and she replies in German, which they translate on the screen. Because it kept me from my family.
If any station in the United States is showing something similar, Gram would be taking such joy from watching a moment like this, the wall being slowly, slowly chipped away by this tiny little woman who was oppressed by it, isolated behind it, for so very long. Who now, it seems, can finally be with her family again.
“It’s beautiful to watch her, isn’t it?” I say. Benjamin doesn’t say anything. But his hand moves slowly across the bed, reaches for mine, and I take it. Our fingers interlace; his hand is twice the size of mine, but I fold my fingers into his, so we are linked, connected, fit together, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I turn a little and his eyes are closed. I close mine, too, and we both fall asleep like that, holding on to each other’s hands.
Austria, 1939
HERR BERGMANN RETURNED IN the first days of the new year, his arrival so sudden that Elena barely had time to hide in the floor space in the workshop before he walked in, without knocking. As if Frederick’s old workshop really belonged to the Deutsches Reich now. And maybe, Kristoff thought, it did.
Kristoff didn’t have time to hide the nearly finished plates Elena had been working on for her father’s exit papers. Or, rather, the exit papers for another man, a made-up Christian man, Herr Charles Darnay, which happened to also be the name of one of Elena’s favorite Dickens characters. It might as well mean something, she’d said to Kristoff, of the new chosen name for her father. Charles is the one who’s saved in A Tale of Two Cities, just as Father will be when we finish his papers. And Kristoff prayed Herr Bergmann wouldn’t notice the plates, question them, examine them.
“I trust you have had ample time to make sketches for the Führer?” Herr Bergmann’s tone was brusque, and Kristoff didn’t want to think what would happen if Herr Bergmann—or the Führer himself—should not be satisfied with his sketches. Or if they were to hear the gentle noises of Elena breathing as she hid beneath the floor below them. Or understand the evidence of their forgery in progress laid out right on the worktable.
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br /> “Jawohl, Herr Bergmann,” Kristoff said. He picked up his sketch pad, and tried not to look at the forgery plates. If I don’t look, he thought, Herr Bergmann will have no reason to notice. He couldn’t stop his hands from shaking as he handed over the sketches.
Herr Bergmann flipped through the way Elena had only a few weeks earlier. He made an approving clucking noise with his tongue, nodding his head briskly. “I think the Führer will be pleased,” he said at last. “You are quite skilled.”
Kristoff kept his head down, not sure whether to answer, but Herr Bergmann shoved the sketchbook back toward him, and Kristoff looked up, took it. The page was open to his drawing of Stephensdom, a variation on the drawing he’d shown to Frederick when Frederick had first decided to bring him on as an apprentice. “Begin with this one. It is a very nice picture of Österreich,” Herr Bergmann said. “You have all the tools you need here to make an engraving plate for this?”
“Jawohl,” Kristoff repeated. It was hard to breathe, and he felt certain Herr Bergmann could sense it, see it, the way Kristoff could sense Elena underneath the floor.
But Herr Bergmann didn’t notice. He had nothing to suspect, and he seemed to have taken Kristoff at his word that all the Fabers were long gone. He pulled an envelope from his coat pocket and handed it to Kristoff. “I trust you will find this acceptable payment.” Kristoff didn’t look inside the envelope but he nodded all the same. “Good. Then I should return in a few weeks to get your engraved plate.” He turned to leave but then stopped, turned back, and put his large imposing hand on Kristoff’s shoulder. “It is a great honor to make a stamp for the Deutsches Reich.”
He raised up his other hand to his forehead in salute, but he didn’t move his left hand from Kristoff’s shoulder until Kristoff stood up tall and saluted back. “Heil Hitler,” Kristoff finally said, with as much enthusiasm as he could muster.
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