by Sarah McCoy
The day after Christmas, the Gestapo had returned. With Tobias still missing, the units were ordered to do a final community search in daylight. Their boots woke Elsie from her delirium.
“She’s ill!” Papa had yelled.
They entered her bedroom with guns slung round their chests. The room seemed too bright to Elsie’s burning eyes, every corner and secret exposed. She’d pulled the covers over her thin nightgown and whimpered with fear and delirium.
A soldier stomped the corner boards and knocked the wall with the butt of his gun. Another looked under her bed and then through her cedar wardrobe, pulling dirndls and sweaters to the floor.
“Please, stop,” Mutti had begged.
“We must check everywhere,” replied the trooper. He went to the back wall.
“No!” Elsie’s chest had tightened to cough, but she pushed out the words. “I am the fiancée of Lieutenant Colonel Josef Hub. If you don’t leave this minute, he will make sure you are adequately disciplined for disrespecting our family.” Her breath wheezed and sputtered into a hacking fit.
The men looked to their standartenführer leader, who gave the signal and they filed out. Mutti and Papa stared speechless. Papa said, “Fiancée?” And thus, a decision was made.
The gems glittering round the gold impressed her parents. They owned nothing that could compare. Mutti guessed Josef bought it from a Parisian jeweler, but Elsie knew better.
Now, she knelt by the wall. “Tobias?”
The board opened a crack.
“Can you read Hebrew?” She pulled the ring from her finger. “What does this say?”
A hand came through. He took the gold band and held it so the dusty light shone on the inner etching, then he gave it back.
“Well?” she asked.
Silence.
“Is it too worn?”
“I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.” His voice was clear and songlike. “It is from the Torah.”
GARMISCH BAHNHOF,
GERMANY
JANUARY 6, 1940
Captain Josef Hub obtained a Saturday pass and took the early train to Garmisch Bahnhof. He’d befriended a chatty secretary at the Nazi archive with a terrible sweet tooth and rosacea to show for it. After months of flirtation over sugar-dusted kreppels and carefully chosen innuendos, he convinced her to pull Peter’s file from the Hitler Youth archive. In it was the Abends’ street number.
The city map stretched across the train platform wall, and he searched the colored lines. He’d stood in the exact spot four years earlier at the 1936 Winter Olympic games. Then, the station had been filled with people waving vibrant country flags, extolling the virtues of Hitler’s new stadium and rushing to catch glimpses of their favorite athletes. Now, except for a handful of passengers, it was empty.
The train gears moaned and popped like arthritic joints. He was glad to be off and fingered the paper address: Herr and Frau Abend. They rented a handful of rooms above their home to visiting skiers and couples on holiday. Small-scale innkeepers, Peter’s file stated. Simple, hardworking countrymen. They had two children, Peter and Trudi. Peter was the elder.
“Any bags, Officer?” asked the porter.
“Nein.” Josef slipped the address into his pocket. “What time does the last train return to Munich?”
“Nine o’clock.”
That gave him nearly twelve hours, though he didn’t plan to stay as long. “Which way to Schnitzschulstrasse?”
“Down the road.” The man pointed. “Do you need me to call a ride?”
Josef adjusted his cap. “A walk will do me good.”
The porter shrugged and gave directions.
What Josef truly wanted was a little more time. Preparation. He’d longed and feared this day for over a year; but now that it was here, it didn’t have the proportion he’d imagined. The morning was too tepid and sunny for January. He’d expected bitter cold and lonesome streets to match his mood. Instead, the town bustled with Saturday commerce, smells of baked bread and stoked fires. Children chased each other across the cobblestones; shop bells chimed as lady patrons in heels and feather-trimmed hats exited and entered. Two young women smiled at him and giggled as they passed. A butcher dumped a bucket of pink water into the gutter. “Guten morgen, Hauptsturmführer.”
“Guten morgen.” Josef paused and checked the street signs.
“Can I be of service?” asked the butcher.
“I’m looking for Schnitzschulstrasse—the Abend innkeeper.”
“Around that corner. Frau Abend makes a wonderful lamb soup for her guests. The meat comes from my shop. It is always the best. I promise you will not be dissatisfied.”
Josef nodded, knowing full well he wouldn’t be dining.
It had been an act of impulsive rage that November night. He was embarrassed at his lack of forethought and restraint. Peter was correct. They were just Jews. But despite all he read and heard and preached, despite the party’s belief that they were an execrated race, the Hochschilds had been his friends and his teachers and gracious beyond measure. He couldn’t deny that experience any more than he could deny the murder of Peter Abend. They were equally true, but he’d never profess as much. He was now a captain in the army of the Third Reich and up for early promotion. Peter had disobeyed authority. Discipline and faith, those were the central tenets by which they stood.
But no matter how he rationalized his actions, his mind was not at ease. He’d developed migraines over the last year. Searing pain made his vision shake and shrink to cylindrical tunnels of darkness. He’d lay for hours, catatonic and breathless, wondering if that was how Peter felt in his grip and Frau Hochschild in her grave. He prayed for God to take him in the night, but then he would rise at dawn, put on his uniform, and report for duty. His superior noticed his gaunt figure and sickly complexion and ordered him to the Waffen-SS physician who prescribed methamphetamine injections and told him to come in whenever he felt tired, anxious, or worried. The migraines stopped, but the drug did nothing for his insomnia. He stayed awake pacing the floor and reading Mein Kampf over and over until the doctor gave him sleeping pills as well. The injection-pill combination seemed to do the trick and he was back to good—no, he felt better than ever. Except for the nightmares. In them, he heard Herr Hochschild’s son’s whispers and felt again the slowing pulse of Peter’s heart in his hand. He’d awake wet with sweat, shaken by the knowledge that the dream was reality.
He hoped to hush the specter’s murmurs and lift the weight of Peter’s death by going to the Abends’. His guilt drew him, moth to the flame.
He knocked on the door.
“Ja,” answered a teenage girl. Trudi, Josef reckoned.
“I’m looking for Herr Abend?”
“Are you here to ski?” She put a hand on her waist and cocked her bony hip in a manner of maturity beyond her years.
“Nein.”
She looked over his uniform. “My father is not at home, but my mother can rent you a room.”
“May I speak to her?”
Trudi swung the door wide. “Come.”
Josef followed. In the narrow hallway, one photograph hung from a fat nail: a girl with pigtail bows and Peter in uniform posed by their parents’ side.
“Mamma, we have a guest.” Trudi led Josef to the parlor room where a gray-haired Frau Abend sat darning.
Seeing him, she slid the basket of threads under the couch. “A guest? Sit.” She beckoned. “We charge per night and include dinner and breakfast. I’ll give you a discount since you’re an officer. My son was an officer.”
Josef sat. “Nein—I’m not here for a room. I came to speak with you and your husband.”
Trudi turned. “But you said—”
“Hush,” Frau Abend commanded. Trudi quieted and picked at her fingernails. “Herr Abend will not be home for some time. What do you wish to speak to us about, Captain …”
“Hub,” said Josef. “Josef Hub—Josef.” He swallowed hard. “I knew your son.”
“Peter?” said Trudi.
Frau Abend gave her a look, and she went back to her nails.
“Ja, what about my son?”
“I was his command.” Josef’s eye flickered with an initial throb. “The night he died. I was there.” He paused. He’d come for exculpation, but he was unsure of how much to disclose. “I knew him. He was a dedicated soldier.” The heat of the Abend parlor made him sweat. His uniform collar constricted. “I was by his side when he was killed. So I came to tell you—that is, I came to say …”
Frau Abend’s chin dropped to her chest. On the table sat an empty teacup, a warped orange peel limp at the bottom. “My Peter,” she whispered. Her lips trembled. “My only son.”
Though Josef made sure to receive an injection before leaving Munich, the room began to quake, the corners shadowed. He took a deep breath. If a migraine began, he’d have no retreat.
“He was an excellent soldier.” Josef cleared his throat. “His death was a great loss. A tragedy.”
Frau Abend sniffed and steeled herself. “Thank you.” The starkness of her tone snapped the air. “None of his friends ever came. We got a telegram. There was no body. They said—” She stopped.
“Burned,” whispered Trudi.
Josef recalled the torches the Hitler Youth troopers haphazardly threw into the buildings and the subsequent blaze that swept through the street.
“We had a nice funeral to honor him. We buried a few of his things in our family plot at St. Sebastian’s.”
Josef nodded.
“Were you in the Reich Youth? You must know his fiancée, Hazel,” chimed Trudi.
Josef frowned. “Engaged?”
“He has a son, too,” she went on.
“Trudi, go do the breakfast dishes and give the bread crusts to the dog,” Frau Abend commanded. After the girl had gone, she continued, “Peter was engaged to Hazel Schmidt, daughter of Max Schmidt, the baker. A nice fräulein.” She sighed. “Since their child wasn’t legitimate by marriage but of good German descent, it went to the Reich program at Steinhöring. It’s the most proper place for him.”
“I had no idea,” said Josef.
A pine log crackled in the fireplace. The heat of the room seemed suddenly unbearable.
“Well.” He stood. “I must catch the train back to Munich.”
She nodded. “If you ever return, we have good rates. There was so much business during the Olympics, but not anymore.” She walked him to the door.
He winced at the daylight, but the cool mountain air calmed the mounting ache.
“I’ll pray for your safekeeping, Captain Hub,” said Frau Abend. She shut the door before he could thank her.
A man passed with a large, round loaf wrapped in paper. Josef’s stomach growled. He hadn’t eaten that day, and the smell gnawed at his gut as fiercely as the migraine to his head. He went in the direction the man had come, past an alleyway where two boys stick-fought amid pigeons picking crumbs. A fur-trimmed woman stepped out onto the street carrying a pastry box. Above her hung the sign: Schmidt Bäckerei.
There was a line. A man wearing thin, wire glasses waited behind a wizened frau leaning on her cane.
“I need a good, solid bread. Nothing full of sweet air. It rots the teeth,” said the frau.
The young woman behind the register pulled a studded, brown loaf from the shelf.
The frau looked it over, then nodded. “That’ll do well enough.” She took her bread bag, dropped her coins on the counter, and hobbled out quickly. A bell over the door clanged with her departure.
“You are welcome, Frau Rattelmüller,” called the girl behind the register. She huffed and itched her head, pushing askew the blue scarf she wore.
Was this the baker’s daughter, Josef wondered, Peter’s Hazel? She looked far too girlish: her skin flushed and glossy; her neck and arms twiggy like a fledgling. Could she really have borne Peter’s child? The older he got, the younger everyone else seemed. He’d pegged the Nazi archive secretary for a mature thirty and was shocked to discover she was a decade younger.
The man in glasses ordered neatly braided poppy seed rolls and paid with SS ration coupons. The young woman reached inside the bread bin and wisps of wheat blond hair fell over her eyes. She pushed the strands back into the messy braid beneath her scarf. Pretty.
“May I help you?” Wide, pine-colored eyes met him.
He had yet to look at the menu or the bread rack. “What’s fresh?”
“Everything,” she answered confidently.
“Everything?” He smiled. “Really?”
“Things don’t sit around long enough to get stale. People are hungry. We’re at war. Or hadn’t you noticed?” She rolled her eyes at his uniform.
He cleared his throat to keep from laughing. She was feisty in a way markedly different from the pubescent Trudi Abend. There was a fearless intelligence in this girl that he quite admired.
“Well then, I shall have brötchen and butter to eat here. If it is not too much trouble.”
She shrugged and turned to the bread bin. “You get fed. We get money. I don’t see how that could be trouble.” She spoke with her back to him.
Her waist was slim and bent easily without the bulge of full womanhood. He could have fit one hand around.
She returned with a roll and a pat of butter. “The butter costs extra. 30 Reichspfennig or the equivalent in ration coupons.”
Hub set coins on the counter, but he halted her hand before she took them. “Hazel?”
The girl frowned then and swept the coins into her palm.
“My name is Captain Hub. I was a soldier with Peter Abend,” he explained and waited for her reaction.
She gave none. Cool and steady, she deposited the coins in the till and closed it with a shove. “I am Elsie. Hazel’s sister.”
He nodded. Yes, of course. If Hazel shared this fair skin and light hair, it was no surprise they took her into the Lebensborn Program. Even the bones of Elsie’s cheeks and nose showed classic signs of Nordic descent. He’d spent hours researching the scientific legitimacy of Aryan supremacy, hoping to further validate his actions and the hooked cross he wore.
He took the plate. “I’ve come from the Abend home and paying my respects to his family. They said Peter was engaged to Hazel.”
Elsie moved sticky cinnamon-swirled buns from a metal tray to a glass cakestand. “Is that why you’ve come?” she challenged.
“Why I’ve come?” He looked down at the brötchen, the cracked top split into four quarters by a baker’s cross.
She finished arranging the cakes and wiped away a dribble of icing with her finger. “Ja, they were engaged. He died, and she went to Steinhöring with Julius, their son.” Elsie sucked her finger clean, pursed her lips, and ran her eyes from his collar insignias to his boots. “If you want to ask questions, you will have to speak to my father. It is not my place to discuss our family matters with a strange man. Nazi officer or Winston Churchill, I do not know you.” She flipped the fishtail of her braid over her shoulder and took the tray back to the kitchen.
She was bold, a trait both championed and admonished by the statutes of the Bund Deutscher Mädel. Right or wrong, Josef found it refreshing.
“Doch, I came for breakfast,” said Josef with a shrug. His headache was receding.
He sat at one of the two small café tables and tore the roll apart with his fingers, exposing tender, white flesh, slightly gummy in the center.
A woman and her son entered the shop arguing over a sugar roll versus a cheese pretzel. The woman told the boy he’d grow fat as a cow if he ate nothing but sweets, while she herself was round and soft as a baked apple. Exasperated by the cold walk and prolonged argument, she wheezed through her mouth and yanked the boy to the counter.
“Pick something healthy,” she instructed. “How about a bialy?”
The boy pressed his nose against the display case, leaving a greasy smudge.
His mother crooked her head toward the back kit
chen. “Elsie!” she called. “Max—Luana! Did you decide to take a holiday?”
The boy stuck out his tongue at her while her attention was deviated.
Josef crunched his crust, amused by the child’s disdain and eager to see Elsie again.
She returned clapping flour from her hands. “We are here, Frau Reimers.”
An older man with a ruddy complexion and hair the color of sea salt followed close behind. “Grüs Gott, Jana! And Herr Ahren. How are my best customers?”
“Gut,” said Frau Reimers curtly. “I need a loaf of bauernbrot and Ahren will have—” She looked down at the boy. “Well? Tell Herr Schmidt what you want?”
“A cinnamon roll,” he said flatly.
The woman sighed and adjusted her hat. “Of course you pick the most expensive thing. Fine, but remember, the Hitler Youth doesn’t take fat boys.”
“I don’t want to go to Hitler Youth,” he spat back.
The mother smacked his cheek. “Stupid. Look—” She turned to Josef and pointed. “All good Germans want to be officers. But you’ve got to fit the uniform.”
Josef continued to chew without acknowledgment. The boy was far too young to worry about joining the military ranks or the consequences of a sweet bun.
“Oh, Jana. Let the boy be. Look at me! I grew up on sugar bread and pastries and the doctor says I’m fit as a fiddle.”
“One cinnamon roll?” asked Elsie.
The woman shrugged her shoulders. “I suppose. But Max, at these prices …”
“Sugar is hard to find. Supplies aren’t what they used to be.”
“And wouldn’t it be God’s punishment to give me a child who eats nothing but sugar and butter!”
Elsie bagged the bread and boxed the pastry while her father changed the discussion to that of the cold weather’s effect on his dill plant by the windowsill.
“Here you go, Ahren,” Elsie whispered to the boy. “I like these, too.” She winked.