by Cathy Gohlke
Curate Bauer moaned again. He loved the true Passion of Christ and supported the town’s mission to present the play every ten years, but he hated the anti-Semitic slant the script conveyed, the way it demonized Jews—the very thing that had, for centuries, roused Christians to perpetrate pogroms, intent on killing off the “Christ killers.” The very apple of God’s eye, brothers and sisters Jesus had died for.
Frau Fenstermacher shoved the music folders into the bookcase opposite the door and hefted her shopping bag. “Well, you know a thing or two about the miracle business, Curate. I’d say you’d best get to it.”
“You border on sacrilege, Frau Fenstermacher,” he chided, but without heart.
“Not at all, Father.” Though she crossed herself. “You yourself said that the Lord turned water into wine.”
“Wine I can get; a children’s choir director I cannot.” He sighed. “Please, Frau Fenstermacher, just until I can find a replace—”
“All I’m saying is that under the present circumstances you might not be able to find a good Catholic choir director to get these refugee children ready for Advent. What you need is a Gestapo agent! In lieu of that, you might try the evangelicals. Wouldn’t they just love to slip in the back door and insinuate themselves into our play! Maybe it’s time we trained them.”
A yowl shot up from the courtyard. Curate Bauer knew he should investigate, but it would have to wait. “See here—”
She cut him off with a wave of her hand. “All you need at this late date is someone who can read music and keep them in line—that’s all you can expect with everything gone helter-skelter, thanks to—oh, never mind. The scallywags born and bred here know their parts, if they’d just settle down. But those refugee children won’t settle for me, and my old heart won’t take another rehearsal.”
“But—” He could barely hear himself for the howling in the corridor beyond the door.
“My best advice, Curate, and I thank you for asking, is to take the first person through that door who knows anything about drilling children. Give them the job before they can say no. Don’t even ask if they can sing.”
The distinct knock at the door and the sobbing beyond cut the wind from Curate Bauer’s sails. “What is it?” he shouted, defeated.
The door flew open and a furious Lea Hartman stood with six-year-old Heinrich Helphman’s ear in a death grip. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Curate Bauer, but Heinrich has been snitching the baby Jesus from Friederich’s Nativity scenes again. I really must ask you to do something about . . .”
Curate Bauer did not hear the rest of Frau Hartman’s tirade. He was too impressed with Frau Fenstermacher’s raised eyebrows and the significance of miracles.
9
A SINGULARLY UNCOMFORTABLE AFFAIR, Rachel decided of their meal with Gerhardt and Kristine. Gerhardt, the picture of Germanic efficiency gilded in arrogance; and Kristine, the intimidated and nervous mat on which he wiped his boots. His affected chivalry in holding chairs for the ladies and in ordering for his wife served more to underline his control over her than his gentlemanly attention.
Each time Rachel tried to draw Kristine into the conversation Gerhardt answered for her or swiftly corrected and ridiculed her responses. She’s absolutely cowed, just as she was at the gala.
“Tell me about your daughter,” Rachel pushed. Gerhardt’s smile remained, though his eyes turned cold. Kristine looked suddenly paralyzed. “She must be four by now.”
“Amelie is something of a throwback.” Gerhardt glanced at his wife, accusingly. “How do you say in English—feebleminded, slow?”
Kristine leaned forward, a lioness shielding her cub. “Amelie has a hearing difficulty; that’s all. She’s bright—truly bright—and says the funniest things.” Her eyes begged for Rachel’s understanding, her belief.
“She speaks?” Dr. Kramer questioned.
“She signs—quite well for a small child,” Kristine enthused.
“She grunts like an ape.” Gerhardt shuddered. “Kristine has convinced herself that the child is nearly human.”
“She is hum—”
“Enough!” Gerhardt stopped Kristine cold. “She will be sent for treatment.” He spoke as though the matter had long been settled. “As you know, Dr. Kramer, there has been much research done of late on such cases. She will be well cared for in ways that will no longer drain Kristine’s energies.”
“She doesn’t drain my energies.” Kristine rose to the occasion, though the dark circles under her eyes belied her statement. “I love our daughter. She wants only to be loved by us.” She seemed to gain courage from Rachel’s presence. “I can’t imagine life without her. I don’t want her sent away.”
But Gerhardt silenced his wife by placing a firm hand on hers. “You are so exhausted you don’t know what is necessary. You will see; it is all for the best.” He smiled, but Rachel saw his grip tighten on Kristine’s fingers until the tears glistened in her eyes.
Dr. Kramer offered little throughout the meal, Rachel thought, as though the entire affair were a script in which he had no part. So why are we meeting?
“I would be delighted to show you the improvements our Führer has brought to our fair city, Fräulein Kramer. Perhaps we could begin with a stroll through the Tiergarten tomorrow afternoon, when the day has cooled.”
“I’d be afraid of being caught in the blackout,” Rachel quipped. “I’m surprised you’re not in Poland, Sturmbannführer Schlick. It seems most of Berlin has been deployed.”
“Our Führer requires various means of support, and as you may have heard, we are doing quite well in Poland. We’ll take Kraków soon, and should be in Warsaw before the week is out. My role is here, for the time being.” He raised his glass to her.
By the time coffee came, Rachel had grown weary of Gerhardt’s repeated attempts to draw her into his company.
“It would do you good to get out, Rachel,” her father encouraged.
At last Rachel could take no more. “Father, you must realize that it is highly inappropriate for me to accompany Sturmbannführer Schlick without his wife.” She reached across the table to Kristine. “I will only go if you and Amelie join us, Kristine. It’s been so long since we’ve seen each other. I want to catch up on all your news, and I want to meet Amelie. She sounds delightful.”
Gerhardt laughed. “You Americans surprise me with your conventions.” But he acquiesced. “Certainly Kristine and Amelie must come, if it makes you more comfortable. I tend to forget the two of you were children together.” He eyed Rachel appreciatively. “You are so very different from one another.”
Rachel smiled politely but couldn’t miss the pain, the fear in Kristine’s eyes. She had no doubt that Kristine and Amelie would not make that date in the park, that she would have no further opportunity to speak with her friend—alone or in company. And so she knocked her glass of red wine from the table, targeting her own skirt.
“Rachel!” Her father groped for the glass as the dark wine spread across the pristine tablecloth, and Gerhardt called for a white-coated waiter.
“My best poplin!” Rachel gasped, standing in horror, knocking her table setting to the floor.
“Rachel, calm yourself!” her father ordered to no avail.
Kristine pressed her linen napkin to Rachel’s skirt while Dr. Kramer, never good with messes, pushed back from the table.
Gerhardt shouted, ordering the waitstaff as if they’d been the culprits.
“Kristine, come—help me rinse the stain from my skirt.” Rachel pulled her friend toward the stairs leading to the lobby.
“I’ll send a waitress,” Gerhardt intervened.
“I don’t want some stranger seeing me undress, Gerhardt! Kristine can help me.” Rachel’s indignation silenced him, and she pulled Kristine behind her.
Once in the powder room Kristine headed for the washstand, but Rachel drew her to the sofa. “We don’t have much time and will probably not have another opportunity to talk alone. I’m sorry I didn’t
believe you, Kristine. I’m so sorry—I didn’t know about the order or the children being—” Rachel couldn’t say the words. “I want to help you, to help Amelie, but I don’t see how I can—how I can get her out of the country.”
Kristine shook her head. “Gerhardt has given me an ultimatum. I must take Amelie to the center in Bradensburg before Saturday, before he returns from another trip to Frankfurt, or he will do it. I don’t know what to do, how to stop him.” Her eyes filled. “He’d never let her go to another family—never let her leave the country. He says Amelie must be sent away—no ‘loose ends’ that might call his bloodline into question.”
“Isn’t there someone you know who would take her? Hide her?”
Tears of frustration spilled from Kristine’s eyes. “No one. And I know he does not mean to let her live. I couldn’t hide her long. Everyone is afraid. Neighbors report neighbors. Children in the Hitler Youth report their siblings, their parents, their teachers.” She covered her face. “My poor Amelie!”
Germans can’t be so heartless—they can’t possibly know and allow this! But they weren’t the only ones to turn blind eyes, and Rachel knew it. Never had Rachel felt so helpless, so tied and without options. She raked her fingers through her hair in desperation.
What was it Jason Young had said? “There’s nothing I can do to help you if you won’t open your eyes. . . .”
Well, my eyes are open now, Mr. Young. Show me what you can do to help—I’m ready to listen.
“You mustn’t give up, Kristine. Tell Gerhardt not to worry, that you’ll take Amelie to the center before the end of the week—that you just want these last days with her.” “Are you crazy? I can’t do that!”
“No, but I know someone who might be—maybe—just crazy enough to help us. Give me the address of the center.”
Her father was in no mood to talk when they returned to the hotel. “You embarrassed us both. I’ve never known you to be so clumsy. It’s as though you tried to humiliate me.”
“Because I dropped a glass? Father, it’s my dress that’s ruined, not your reputation. It was only Gerhardt and Kristine. What does it matter?”
“It matters,” he snapped, pounding a cigarette onto its silver case, tamping the tobacco hard enough to smash its end.
In that moment Rachel pitied him, but she couldn’t hold back. Amelie’s life depended on it. “Father, I’d like to take Amelie home with us.”
“What?”
“Amelie,” she insisted softly. “You heard the way Gerhardt talked. Germany is no place for a deaf child now. We can make sure she receives the help she needs in New York. There are schools for the deaf.”
“Stay out of it, Rachel. It’s not our affair.”
“I’m not asking you to do anything, except perhaps to help persuade Gerhardt. He respects you, and—”
“Leave it!” He’d hardly ever raised his voice to her, and the novelty took her aback. “I don’t wish to argue with you. I’ve argued with half of Germany’s eugenicists to no avail.” The lines in his haggard face underlined his words.
“Then you know what they’re doing—and you know we must save Amelie. Father, she’s Kristine’s daughter!”
“Before we came you wanted nothing more to do with her.”
“I was hurt that she ran off with Gerhardt, that she never even wrote. That doesn’t mean I want to see her child murdered!”
He collapsed to the sofa, pushing his head into his hands, leaning forward over his knees. “There’s nothing we can do. You don’t know what is at stake. Gerhardt said she is going for treatment—”
“We can take her home! Kristine is like a sister to me!”
“She is not your sister! She is not your equal!” he exploded.
Rachel knelt before him. “I didn’t say she is. Father, I don’t know what to think about all this; I don’t know what to believe. I only know that killing children is wrong.”
He paled. “Great causes call for extraordinary sacrifices.”
“You can’t believe that means killing children!”
He slumped against the sofa back, closing his eyes. “It’s a fine line. The work I’ve done my entire life—it was to eradicate tuberculosis, to strengthen the human race. It was for good. I meant it for good, and the sacrifice—the sterilization—was only for those who carried disease, so they wouldn’t pass it on again and again.” His voice quavered.
“Then—”
But he cut her off. “No more. Say no more.” He opened his eyes and gripped her fingers. “What they do here is beyond my control. There are other things we must think about, talk about.”
“What could be more important than—?”
“You must intimate—no, you must make it clear when in the presence of my colleagues that you are interested in marriage, that you intend to marry soon.”
“What?”
“Lest they think . . . lest they think you are not normal. It is most important to be—and to seem to be—healthy, robust, and normal in Germany today.”
“Father, this is not about me!”
He leaned forward, weary but urgent. “You are wrong. You are so wrong, Rachel. It is about you—it is all about and has always been about you. Never forget that!”
Rachel knew that was precisely what she’d thought too, what she’d always thought—been raised to think: Me first. But after seeing Kristine so distraught over the intended euthanization of her deaf daughter, she wondered.
“There were stipulations, you know. Things that involve you and your adoption.”
“What things? I’m an American citizen. What has—?”
“You are also a German citizen by birth—you know that. I will do my best for you. But you must be prepared . . .”
“Prepared for what?” Rachel felt her anxiety rising.
“I’m tired now, Rachel. I will know more after my meetings in Frankfurt.” He stood. “We’ll talk more when I return.”
“You just got back!”
He placed a hand on her shoulder, giving it an uncharacteristic, affectionate squeeze. “Our plans have changed. I leave early. I will not wake you. We’ll be back by the night train at the end of the week.”
“Is Gerhardt going with you?”
“Yes.” He sounded as though he carried the weight of the world, then closed his door.
She needed to know what he meant, what she had to do with his meetings—why he was returning to Frankfurt so soon, and what this growing link with Gerhardt Schlick meant. Why would an SS officer spend so much time with a eugenics scientist?
Her only connection to Frankfurt had been her many medical examinations at the hands of Dr. Verschuer. She’d always assumed that was simply because her father knew and trusted Dr. Verschuer, because he and her mother so highly prized their adopted daughter, and because they thought German doctors were better than American doctors. But that didn’t sound logical to her anymore. What was their real purpose? What is his purpose now?
Lea stepped from the curate’s office as dusk fell, determined to take the longest road home. She needed time to think.
He’d called her a miracle. Lea had never been called a miracle, she was quite sure.
That morning, Curate Bauer had questioned her carefully; she’d answered truthfully.
“Do you read music?” he’d asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you sing?”
“I love to sing.”
“You can control a classroom of unruly children?”
“Oh—possibly.” She could make time for the rehearsals each day—absolutely.
But he hadn’t asked the important questions—about the day she’d screamed in his sanctuary of the evil burned so deeply into her soul that she could not see it, name it. He’d just kept explaining her duties, as though he was offering her the job. She’d heard him, and yet she hadn’t absorbed it all, so loudly had hope beat in her chest.
Curate Bauer—good, kind Curate Bauer of the Roman Catholic Church of Saints Peter and Paul
—had offered the despised, barren Protestant Lea Hartman the opportunity to conduct his youngest after-school children’s choir—seventeen unruly, rambunctious, obstreperous hooligans below the age of eight, if Frau Fenstermacher was to be believed. It was not for Passion rehearsals, simply to keep them singing and out of trouble. There was nothing Lea wanted more. If only the Institute did not learn of it.
She’d accepted. But later, the fear grew inside her—a living, coiling, recoiling thing. Late that afternoon, she’d stopped at the curate’s office door. Knowing she could not endure another disappointment, could not help but believe this joy, too, would be ripped from her the moment she set her heart to it, she spoke again to the curate of the day he’d found her in the church.
She could barely believe that she’d dared such a thing in a practical, matter-of-fact voice. Curate Bauer wasn’t married, had no children of his own—by choice and vow. How could he understand the anguish of sterilization? The scorn of being barren and despised, demeaned by doctors who professed to know her heart and nature when she barely knew them herself? The terrible fear that her husband would stop loving her? And she’d told the curate all of this—twice.
Confessing again—reminding him of her sinfulness—might make him reconsider his offer. But it would be better never to meet with the children than to have them ripped away. She knew this. Still, the curate did not despise her. This time, Curate Bauer wept with her and prayed with her. He said something so strange—that he couldn’t pity her for the journey that was her own, for in it was her Father’s good pleasure to give her the Kingdom.
She wasn’t entirely sure what he’d meant. She could hardly believe that God would despise her and then bless her with the care of these precious children. Perhaps He would yet see He’d made a mistake and take them away. But until He did, Lea resolved to be the best choir director Oberammergau’s youngest after-school choir had ever known—not for the sake of the coming Advent celebration, but for the children.