by Sarah McCoy
The Gestapo who’d ransacked her room came down to report: “Nothing, sir.”
Elsie looked up. Tobias was safe? Lowering her gaze, her eyes locked tight with Kremer.
He looked to the ceiling and clucked his tongue. “I do believe there is something.” He smiled at Elsie. “A mouse in the attic?”
Elsie’s heart stammered, stopped, and started again. She shook her head.
The two soldiers turned to go back upstairs, but Kremer halted them. “Stop!” He pointed to Elsie. “You will bring the Jew to us.”
Elsie swallowed hard. “There’s no one here except my nephew and me. My parents are at the church.”
“A traitor and a liar, indeed,” said Kremer. He pushed her to the floor and clapped Julius about the face, his hand over the boy’s mouth and the barrel of the pistol pressed hard at his temple.
“He’s German!” Elsie cried.
The Gestapo in the kitchen shifted uneasily.
“Come, come, come,” he baited. “This is the bastard son of a whore. A good whore albeit. I rather liked her myself, but truly our race has no use for such depravity. It may be more humane to put this child out of his misery rather than allow him to grow up in a family of deviants like this—traitors and harlots.” He shrugged.
Julius’s eyes, ringed red from crying, bulged under the pressure and panic; his arms went stiff by his side; the suede front of his pants grew dark and wet.
Kremer scoffed at him. “No son of the Fatherland. He’s not even toilet trained.” He leaned in to Julius’s ear. “Retarded, perhaps. You know what the Program does with the retarded—cyanide in the breakfast milk or”—he pressed the gun—“a quick bullet to the brain. This was the case for your brother.”
Julius’s tears spilled down.
Elsie gripped the cold ground, steadying herself. Her vision tunneled as if the universe were imploding.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do.” Kremer released Julius and thrust him down beside Elsie. “You bring me the Jew, and I’ll let the whoreson live. Of course, I can’t offer the same to you, fräulein, but I will promise to make your sentence quick.”
Julius lay heavy against Elsie’s side, a soggy, catatonic rag doll. Was his life worth Tobias’s? Was hers? Tobias had done nothing but trust and love her. He didn’t deserve to be handed over like currency in some immoral purchase. But surrendering her family? She couldn’t live or die with that kind of guilt. She believed in the afterlife and had no wish to meet God with either burden.
Elsie closed her eyes; starbursts flamed behind her lids. The nightmare was so close to ending. The Americans and Russians were said to be camped in the pastureland outside town. Better to die by their hands than to make this choice.
“What’s it to be?” asked Kremer.
Thoughts seesawed, cutting her mind in two. She couldn’t think her way to a solution. Logic had no power here. She could only hope for divine guidance and pray it was enough to absolve her. Slowly, she stood.
“I’ll bring him to you.” Her voice warbled like a sickly finch. “But you must let me go alone. He won’t come out if I’m not alone.”
The guards looked to Kremer.
He sucked his teeth. “You have five minutes, and then I’ll shoot your nephew, find the Jew myself, and shoot him, too. I’ll shoot you last, so you can watch the rest bleed.”
THE ROAD BETWEEN
TEGERNSEE AND GARMISCH, GERMANY
APRIL 29, 1945
Josef Hub was a shadow of the officer he’d been. The march from Dachau to Tegernsee had not gone well for the prisoners or the SS. He saw things in the daylight that shook his soul, and his migraines worsened. Sometime during the three—day journey, he’d stopped sleeping and eating; instead, he injected himself with methamphetamines as often as possible. Near Percha, he took a wool coat off the back of an elderly German sheepherder. It hung over his bones like a great bearskin, and he felt as beastly as he looked. He hadn’t shaved or bathed in weeks. His reddish-blond beard concealed his features. Swollen eyes and tremors made most turn away, and he found an anonymous freedom in his degradation.
The handful of travelers he encountered moved to the opposite side of the road on his approach. As well they should, he thought to himself, if they knew what I’ve done. Most of the pilgrims were Aryan families, women carrying babies, children in wool socks with cheesecloth sacks on the end of sticks, fathers armed with rakes and scythes for protection. Was this what Germany had come to: a land of wanderers?
No matter where these people ventured, they would always be German. He would always be German. So where did you go when your home was no longer safe—when the world stopped making sense? At what point was the decision made to go or to stay?
For Josef, it came when he watched a young Jewish prisoner drag her dead mother for over a mile. The old woman’s legs, blue and frozen stiff, left a trail like ski tracks in the mud. When a guard commanded the daughter to drop the body, she refused, and he shot her where she stood; her blood splattered thick against her mother’s rimy cheeks.
Then, Josef had turned his horse around, abandoning the Jews and his post, and dared anyone to shoot him in the back as he went. Galloping away, he prayed someone actually would. His horse succumbed to exhaustion halfway to Garmisch. He left it spent and dying on the side of the road and began to walk, still hearing the trailing footsteps of Jewish prisoners behind him. When he walked faster, the cadence increased. He broke into a run but they caught up. “Murderer, traitor!” They beat against his back. He fell then, tripping over the picked carcass of a vulture; its skinny head screwed sideways in the mud. Pulling his gun from beneath the bearskin, he fired a shot straight up.
“Go away!” he shouted.
But when he looked, there was no one. The long road stretched empty to the horizon. The only sound was the bitter wind whistling past his ears. A finch flittered against it, then caught the current up into the brindled sky. The pain of his head anchored him to the ground. He lay beside the dead animal, watching the maggots gorge themselves on its innards, smelling the rot of flesh, and seeing again the mass graves at KZ Dachau.
In all his years as an SS officer, he’d never personally taken the life of anyone after Peter Abend, but he’d been there. He’d seen death all around and ordered it into action under the guise of duty. He was steeped in their blood, more guilty than the simple soldier with a bullet. He closed his eyes, but the assembly of corpses only sharpened in his mind.
He was convinced the vengeful ghosts would stay on German ground. If only he could leave, he could be free of them and all the horrors of this war. Günther Kremer and his Garmisch comrades had an escape route. A ship bound for Venezuela awaited them in Brunsbüttel. He had to get there. But he needed payment—gold and jewels stockpiled and hidden in his Garmisch apartment. He’d collect those and Elsie. They could start anew in South America. She would help him find happiness. Faithful and true, she would help absolve him.
With that in mind, he gritted his teeth and peeled himself up from the dirt. In the distance, the chimney stacks of Garmisch plumed gray ash. He knew one of them was the Schmidt Bäckerei.
SCHMIDT BÄCKEREI
56 LUDWIGSTRASSE
GARMISCH, GERMANY
APRIL 29, 1945
Elsie took the stairs one at the time, each step an insurmountable climb. She imagined this was how the road to Calvary felt. She prayed for some kind of salvation, but unlike Christ, she wasn’t endowed with supernatural powers over hell. Three days dead, and she’d smell like worm rot.
She didn’t need to turn around; Kremer’s stare burned into her back.
The bedroom door was ajar, something rammed behind it. Her overturned nightstand barred the way. She pushed through and went to the wall, smoothing her palm along the long plank.
“Tobias,” she called.
Though there was not the slightest flutter, she could sense the warmth of his breath like a single flame in a church cloister.
She leaned her
cheek to the coarse wood. “You must come out.” She knew he was leaning back against her—a finger width between them.
The plank scraped open half an inch. “Are they gone?”
The warmth evaporated into the upturned room, and a chill settled in Elsie. Her bones seemed to rattle against it, and she wrapped her arms about herself.
Tobias crawled from his refuge. “What did they want?”
Elsie pulled him to her breast. “Hear me, Tobias,” she whispered. “There are men waiting to take you.” He flinched. “I’m sorry.” Her knees shook, and she swayed unsteadily.
Tobias tightened his grip, holding her back. “Don’t be sad,” he comforted. “I’ll get to see my family.”
“Forgive me,” begged Elsie. “Please, forgive me.”
She pulled his stocking cap off and kissed the top of his head. Before she could place it back, the door slammed open; the nightstand splintered; boots pounded into the room. She closed her eyes and didn’t open them as Tobias was silently yanked from her arms.
“ ‘And so the choice must be again, but the last choice is still the same,’ ” she recited. Her palms remained warm from him. She clasped them together tight and hugged them to her chest. “ ‘And God has taken a flower of gold and broken it.’ ” She leaned her forehead to the wall, moored to Tobias’s hiding place.
The stomps retreated down the steps and out.
“We’ll deal with the Jew,” said Kremer behind her. “You and your family are under house arrest.”
She turned then, “But you said.”
Julius stood under Kremer’s grip, his cherub face bloated red.
“There’s never one rat in a nest.” Kremer came close and pushed a disheveled lock back into her braid. “Besides, I’m not sure I’m ready to kill you. Your sister was more beautiful and quite skillful in her trade, but you—you’ve got a healthy German spirit. We were interrupted on Christmas Eve.” He grabbed the back of her neck and jerked her onto the bed. “And I always finish what I start.”
Julius bleated softly and shrunk down in the corner.
Kremer’s hand was thick and hot around Elsie’s throat. She stared at the cotton sheets, each thread distinctly linked to the next. Her body was as numb as the stiff pines against the windowpanes. The hem of her dress fluttered over her ears, Mutti’s stitching so neat and even. Kremer’s skin pressed coarse against her thighs. What came next was separate from her. Her spirit hovered at the threshold. No tears. Those were too much of the living. Only darkness.
Then, a shot rang out. Two more followed by the rat-tat-tat of machine guns.
“Major!” A soldier burst into the room. “He got away!”
Kremer’s nostrils flared. “What?!” he seethed, and in one fluid motion, he slapped the soldier and did up his trousers. “How could a child get away from four SiPo?”
The guard tucked his chin, his jaw rosy. He flushed at the sight of Elsie prostrate on the bed. “He bit Lieutenant Loringhoven and ran.” He kept his eyes to the floor as he spoke. “We went after, but then I thought I saw—I couldn’t say for certain, but it looked as though—he vanished, sir.”
“Vanished?”
“Ja.” The young guard was visibly shaken both by the slap and all he’d witnessed. “A sudden fog came, a storm, and then there was a sound unlike any I’ve heard in my life and … he vanished.” His breath caught. “A poltergeist,” he whispered.
“I heard nothing. Which way did he go?” Kremer cocked his pistol.
“East. Toward the forest of Kramer Mountain.”
“Fools! Done in by the Brothers Grimm!” He raced down the stairs with the guard at his heels.
Minutes passed; street shouting trickled in through the windowpanes; Julius sniffled in the corner; a train whistle blew somewhere far; rain started to fall then stopped; the world outside pressed on.
There was a sharp pain in Elsie’s legs, and she realized the metal edging of her bed had grated both her knees. Her sheets were stained with smears of blood.
“Elsie! Julius!” called Papa and Mutti from below.
Julius stood and ran to them.
Papa and Mutti gasped when they entered.
“Oh, Elsie … Elsie!” Mutti sobbed. “What have they done to you, child?” She held her palms above the bloody sheets like a priest above the sacrament. “Not my daughter.”
Papa turned away with Julius. Mutti swaddled Elsie in her arms and rocked her.
“It’s my fault. I betrayed us all,” said Elsie. She remained in Mutti’s steadfast clutch and felt like a child again, safe and protected.
“Shh—I’m here.” She rocked and smoothed the sweat from Elsie’s forehead. “We came home as soon as we heard the news,” explained Mutti. “Everyone is leaving the city.”
Papa picked up the broken ledge of the nightstand, turned the splintered wood over, then set it down again. Julius hid in the hemline of his coat, covering his face and moaning.
“It’s the end of the world,” said Mutti. “The Americans have taken Dachau. They could be here any hour.”
Josef, Elsie thought, then curled herself into the buttery smell of her mother’s embrace.
“Every SS soldier has been ordered to evacuate and meet the enemy en route,” Papa continued.
“They’re abandoning us,” said Mutti.
Only then did Elsie’s eyes sting hot.
“Don’t cry, dear,” Mutti soothed.
“Thank you, God,” whispered Elsie.
Mutti stopped rocking.
“We’re saved!” said Elsie, unable to contain her tears any longer. “All of us! It’s over.”
Papa studied her sternly. “God is not responsible for the end of the Fatherland. That is man’s doing.” His eyes were sorrowful dark.
“ ‘Whatsoever man soweth, that shall he reap,’ ” quoted Elsie.
Papa lifted his chin to her.
“She’s in shock, Max,” Mutti reminded.
“Who did this to you?” demanded Papa.
Nazi countrymen; an officer friend of Josef; men capable of atrocities she could not say in front of her papa—because she concealed a Jewish child, because she didn’t believe in the man Papa quoted, because she didn’t agree with this land anymore. Elsie wasn’t sure how to begin or if it was wise to at all. She tucked her knees to her chest and turned away from him.
“Are we to leave, too?” Mutti asked.
Papa gave a heavy exhale. “This is our bakery, our home. I won’t leave it to be looted and destroyed. We’ll lock the doors and pray for God’s mercy.”
Mutti squeezed Elsie’s hand in short, nervous bursts. “I best bring in a bucket of water. We need to tend to your wounds as soon as possible.” She turned to Papa. “The stove is cold. Light a fire, Max.”
“Come, Julius,” said Papa.
Julius looked up then, tracing over Elsie and Mutti to the bloody bedsheets. His pants were still damp with urine, his eyes shot red as cordial cherries. His shoulders bowed inward with shame. Papa put his arm around him and ushered him out quietly.
Perhaps he would tell her secret, but not today. Today, he finally saw that the world was not contained in the delusion of his perfect reflection. Today, he bore witness to the end of his childhood.
A hard rain fell through the night and next day, washing the cobblestone streets as clean as the stream floors. By the first of May, the whole town smelled of thawed dirt and wet pine needles swept down the valley from the melting mountain peaks.
Though Elsie had searched the alleyways and roads around the bakery there was no sign of Tobias. It was as the soldier had claimed: he’d simply vanished. In the haze of morning when mist rose from the streets like awakening ghosts, she almost convinced herself he had done exactly that—been spirited to heaven on horses of fire like the biblical Elijah.
From the bakery storefront, she watched the American tanks roll into the city. Brandishing flags of colorful stars and candy cane stripes, it looked almost like a holiday parade if not for th
e gigantic chain-link wheels that grumbled and screeched over rubble and cars and anything else that got in the way. Helpless to stop them or find Tobias, she could do no more than pray—not for peace and understanding, though. Such things she knew would only be found in the afterlife. She prayed simply for a reprieve.
Hitler was dead. It took less than a day for word to spread from one corner of the German Empire to the other. Shot through the head with a Walther pistol. With defeat undeniable and Nazi authority extinguished, public reaction was divided. Half the town cried for him and thought his end noble. The other half called him a coward and deserter. After all, they’d stayed to face his adversaries; and though the Americans entered with pointed guns and grim expressions, Elsie quickly discovered they were far less terrifying than Nazi propaganda portrayed, far less terrifying than her own Gestapo.
The day before, a handful of American soldiers stormed the bäckerei and cleared the shelves. Mutti locked herself in the bedroom with Julius, but it took more than a gun or a foreign accent to scare Elsie anymore. She insisted on facing the enemy. Indeed, the men were not as Nazi propaganda had described. Their banter had the happy, songlike quality she remembered from the movies she’d idolized as a child.
One young soldier let a smile slip over his lips when he discovered Papa’s Black Forest cake, stale and sagging in the display case. Despite its age and crumbling sides, his face lit up, exposing hidden dimples on either cheek. She couldn’t help smiling back. And that’s when it happened: his comrades saw them smiling and smiled too; then they said something to another soldier who laughed, and the cheer seemed to spread like butter on a hot bun. Soon, all the men in the unit were carrying on like Christmas morning, cutting and wrapping dense cake wedges in paper. Elsie liked it. It’d been too long since she felt that kind of contagious satisfaction, even for the briefest moment, and part of her was pleased to see the cake go in such a manner.