Saving Amelie

by Cathy Gohlke

  She would pour every ounce of love she had into them.

  She’d squander her rations and buy or beg whatever was needed to bake strudel and kuchen and turnovers and bring fresh milk from her cow to each rehearsal, no matter if she had less to sell in the market. No, perhaps not milk before they sang; that tended to muddy the vocal cords. Water—that should do. But she would give them milk after they sang, so they would walk home on full bellies.

  She would sew new robes for the celebration—for each child. Friederich would never begrudge her the cost or trade of the fabric, she was certain. And if it was too dear or new could not be had, well, she had old fabric from curtains no longer needed. That might be even better—might fit the tenor of the celebration even better.

  Lea laughed—a soft and gentle laugh known only to her and God. She couldn’t wait to write Friederich. He would understand what this meant to her. But she would not tell him what she’d told Curate Bauer. She’d not told even Friederich so much about the Institute and the doctors’ branding of her. She pushed those memories away—at least for now.

  As she walked clear around the village, she began to sing, softly. Night fell. By the time she reached her gate the sky was inky black and the stars stood as white flames against it—burning brighter than they had perhaps ever. Lea felt cleaner, clearer inside, than she could remember. She wondered if this sensation would last or if it was only a momentary lifting of the cloud that was her life. She wouldn’t ask. For this moment, she would sing praise.

  She smiled and, laughing, crying, hugged herself. This night, though he’d not returned the baby Jesus and had stubbornly vowed to Curate Bauer that he never would, even Heinrich Helphman wore a halo.

  Jason Young yawned and stretched. He’d been on the trail of a story for seventeen hours—the last three of which he’d spent pounding the keyboard. He’d just phoned his story to New York and was about to call it a night—a very long night—when his desk phone rang. He checked his watch. One thirty. He’d be spending the night on a cot in the downstairs newsroom. The phone rang again. He wanted to ignore it, but that went against his newsman’s grain.

  “Can you talk?” The breathless female American voice at the other end of the line bore the trademark tensions of nearly every one of his sources in Germany.

  “To my femme fatale? Sure!” Jason smirked, suddenly wide awake.

  “You’re very funny, aren’t you?”

  “A regular riot—that’s me. What can I do you for?” He was careful not to use her name, certain as he was that every phone in the newsroom was tapped.

  “Coffee. Do you like coffee?”

  “Real coffee—by the boatload.”

  “So do I. Eleven o’clock tomorrow morning? Our corner?”

  “See you then.” Jason thumped the phone to its cradle. She’s scared. Something’s happened.

  He rolled down his sleeves, swung his jacket over his shoulder, and headed for the door, wondering what was up, more than glad she’d called, and dubious he’d get a wink of sleep.

  10

  JASON WAITED at the corner where he’d found Rachel after the murder of the innocents. He tipped his hat as she approached and fell into step beside him. The Tiergarten café wasn’t far, and it felt good to walk in her company.

  Half an hour later the waiter delivered their order and she’d finished her story.

  “Let me get this straight.” Jason leaned across the café table toward Rachel, distracted as much by the scent of her perfume as he was by the silver flecks in her blue eyes. “You want me to hide a deaf kid who can’t understand anything I say until Hitler and his cronies go belly-up and disappear, then restore her, unscathed and smiling, to her doting mother, the wife of an SS officer—which officer, by the way, wants to slit both their throats?”

  Rachel sat back, blinking in the morning sun as it streamed through the linden trees. She sipped her coffee slowly, then set it down. “I realize it sounds difficult—”

  “Difficult? It sounds impossible, dangerous . . . a suicide mission.”

  “I didn’t know where else to turn, whom to trust.” She looked desperate.

  “I’ll do it.”

  “If we don’t do something, her father will take her to the center at the end of this week—” Rachel stopped short. “You’ll do it?”

  “I’ll do it.” He sat back, concentrating. “I don’t know how—exactly. But I know some people who might have connections to others who will. I’ll need a little time. The first thing is to find someplace to hide her—somebody who’ll take her in. And then some way to make it seem like she’s gone for good.”

  “I want to take her to America with me, without Gerhardt knowing.”

  “You’ll never get a deaf kid out of Germany. In case you hadn’t noticed, you didn’t come in with one. They’re sure not gonna let you leave with a German kid on the lam, Miss Kramer.”

  “I wish you’d stop talking like a Chicago gangster, Mr. Young.” Rachel frowned.

  “You heard that the US declared neutrality today? I’m not sure we can count on them to help—not now, maybe not ever.”

  “Then what do you propose?”

  “Give me forty-eight hours. Let me see who can help, what I can arrange.”

  “You know people that influential?”

  He shrugged and looked away. He couldn’t share the little he knew. “We’ll see.”

  “Why? Why are you willing to help me?”

  Jason didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t sure he knew the answer. He only knew he couldn’t stop Hitler or the eugenicists or the crazy things he’d seen perpetrated in the name of building a strong Germany. He was sick of seeing the world go askew and doing nothing. Maybe if he saved this life . . . maybe that meant something.

  He looked at Rachel—beautiful and bewildered and vulnerable and proud at once. Her helplessness reminded him of the impotence he’d felt in Germany for months, and of a recent conversation.

  “I interviewed a Jewish professor last week—a guy who’d been at the top of his game at the University of Berlin for years. Over the last three years he’s been ousted from the faculty and stripped of his citizenship, his property has been confiscated—Aryanized—and he’s been reduced to half rations. He’s cleaning streets now—on good days. Those are the days he eats a little, as opposed to nothing. Even that he shares with his wife and their Jewish neighbor. After the interview, I gave him my lunch. You’d have thought I’d given him the world on a platter. He gave me a saying, a proverb, in return: ‘He who saves one life saves the world.’”

  Rachel blinked. He recognized the ungainly wheels spinning in her brain, the wrestling and slow dawning of an idea.

  “I don’t know how that rates with thousands of people being cut out of society, so many being imprisoned and some even worked to death. But I want to find out, and this is as good a time as any. Besides, maybe we can save more than one.”

  Jason stood, pocketing the address of the medical center. “Lunch at the Ummerplatz on Thursday—noon. No more telephone calls. The newsroom is tapped. Goebbels keeps an eye and ear on everything that comes in and goes out with the press. He doesn’t want Germany’s reputation ‘tarnished’ before his world audience, and killing kids might have a way of doing that, no matter the propaganda.”

  Rachel nodded, her eyes wide.

  Jason knew this was a new world to her. He was glad she was seeing it as it was. Somebody needed to. He wasn’t making much headway through the press.

  “You can’t print this in the newspaper,” she whispered. “Not here and not in America. It would be too dangerous for Amelie, for Kristine.”

  “Not to mention you.” Jason tossed coins to the table. “I won’t print it now, and not with those names. But there’ll be a story in it sometime, somehow—and it’s my scoop. Don’t forget that.”

  Two days later, Rachel received general instructions from Jason and passed them to Kristine, whom Jason promised to contact directly with details. The day aft
er that—the day before Gerhardt and her father were to return from Frankfurt—the rescue would be carried out. Rachel didn’t know what that meant, only that Jason’s broad plan sounded just wild enough to work—as long as none of them got caught or killed in the process.

  Rachel had come to understand through Jason that getting caught could mean arrest and a prison camp—what he called a “concentration camp”—for Kristine, grilling and certain deportation for Jason, and possibly one or the other—thanks to her dual citizenship—for Rachel herself. She couldn’t think of the consequences for Amelie.

  She was to stay at the hotel—to be visible to the hotel staff, creating her own alibi. But that meant she would know nothing of the outcome until word came from Jason, verifying Amelie’s safety. Rachel would pass that word to Kristine. Jason believed knowing little beforehand would enable the women to act naturally in response to whatever he had planned. But Rachel knew that merely waiting patiently was outside her capability. Acting innocent and alarmed was something she’d learned to do in theatre class.

  Kristine’s last days with her affectionate Amelie were too precious to share. She memorized every smile, every sleeping moment, every blink of her daughter’s eyes and blush of her cheek. She signed constantly, reminding her daughter that she loved her, telling her she was the joy and light of her life. Telling her, as best she could, all the things she would never be able to tell her again.

  Kristine rose early Friday morning and took great care in bathing and dressing her little girl and curling her hair. She pinned a pink satin bow to Amelie’s golden ringlets, one that perfectly matched her smocked cream-and-pink frock—Kristine’s favorite, one she’d stitched by hand.

  She packed her daughter’s case with only her best summer clothing, a few dresses, and a bright-red jacket for fall—as though she believed her daughter would need it. She signed that Amelie, now a big girl, was going on a journey without her mother. And then Kristine held her close, before Amelie could sign her lack of understanding.

  Several times Amelie reached up to trace her mother’s silent tears and taste the salt, then creased her small brow in worry lines. She poked her tiny finger between Kristine’s lips until she saw her mother smile. Then Amelie would smile as if all were right with the world and sign, “I love you, Mutti.” It broke Kristine’s heart.

  Twice Kristine sat down in defeat, knowing she couldn’t go through with it, knowing she must. There was no other way, no better plan. But it was so dangerous—dangerous for Amelie. If Jason Young and those he trusted made one mistake, if they were even a moment too late . . . But she couldn’t think of that. She must trust that they would do only and all that was necessary—that God would fight with them and allow the ruse to be accomplished.

  At nine o’clock, Kristine hefted the small suitcase by its handle, ushered her little girl along the hallway, and closed the door of their home behind her. She tucked Amelie’s small, pink hand in her own and walked toward the train station, desperately trying to stay in the moment, memorizing each breath her daughter drew.

  By the time they reached the medical center, Kristine trembled. Amelie, usually delighted by outings with her mother, crowded into her skirt, pensive and fractious. Kristine knew Amelie was only responding to her mother’s tension, but she couldn’t force herself to act more normally. She knew that whatever happened, she would never see her daughter again once she walked out the center’s door.

  “Do not frown so, Frau Schlick,” the admitting nurse chided. “You have made the right decision for your daughter. The girl will thrive under our discipline and receive the most advanced treatment.”

  Kristine’s eyes filled and she nearly sobbed as she signed the papers.

  “This is only your duty as a good German mother,” the nurse admonished, clearly put off by the young woman’s display of emotion.

  It was more than Kristine could take. “I am not a ‘good German mother,’ Frau Braun.” She threw the pen to the desk. “But I assure you that I am the very best of mothers, and I love my daughter more than I love my life. Now give me the papers.”

  Frau Braun colored, then made a show of concentrating, of signing and separating duplicate copies of the forms. Standing, she thrust one set toward Kristine. “You don’t want to miss your train, Frau Schlick.”

  Kristine folded the papers deliberately, placed them in her purse, and closed it with a snap. But her anger evaporated when she turned back to her daughter. Kneeling, she scooped Amelie into her arms, smothering her with kisses. Amelie, blue eyes wide, clung to her.

  Kristine squeezed her eyes shut, memorizing the feel of the muscles in her daughter’s arms as they wound round her neck, of the warm and tiny body, heart beating wildly, pressed against her own.

  “You must go, Frau Schlick. You’re upsetting the child,” Nurse Braun insisted. She pulled Amelie’s arms from Kristine’s neck.

  For one wild moment Kristine thought to grab Amelie and tear from the center, running, running with her forever.

  “This is the best plan, I assure you. Shall I call for help?” the nurse threatened.

  The plan—yes, the plan. I must stick to the plan—for Amelie. Kristine whispered into her daughter’s hair, “I will love you forever—as long as I have breath, and beyond.” Kristine knew Amelie could not hear her, but she knew with all certainty that the girl understood her heart.

  Kristine stood, pushing Amelie away, and signed that she must go with the woman. But Amelie didn’t want to go. She struggled, her eyes large in alarm, reaching for her mother. “You must go, my darling.” Kristine straightened her arms, increasing the distance between herself and her daughter.

  Frau Braun pulled Amelie by the waist. The child cried out in panicked, guttural yelps. The nurse called for assistance. An orderly appeared and swept up the kicking Amelie, hoisting her none too gently beyond a door that closed with a resounding click as the latch fell into place.

  Kristine could see nothing for her tears but Frau Braun’s grim-set mouth. She could not hear or comprehend what the woman was saying to her. All she could think was, Amelie! My Amelie!

  Love for her Amelie drove her from the office, down the hallway, and into the street. Distraught, but desperate to know the plan would be carried out and her precious daughter safe, she slowed her steps. She’d not walked a full minute when the explosion came from behind her.

  Jason had watched Kristine kneel before Amelie at the door of the clinic, tuck something inside the neck of the little girl’s dress, and press her forehead against her daughter’s. They communicated something between them through their fingers, a sign Jason could not understand. A perfect picture—mother and child.

  Jason turned away, feeling an intruder into such intimacy. He’d waited for Kristine to exit the building before signaling the all clear to his coconspirator. The resistance group was so secret, so tightly woven, that he didn’t even know who’d set the bomb, who proclaimed loudly that they’d called the fire department, who blocked the roadway with delivery carts and a faked bicycle accident, further delaying the firemen who’d been sent to the wrong address.

  He didn’t know the name of the woman who argued vehemently with Frau Braun and the medical staff in the courtyard, or from where the sudden influx of pedestrians came to rescue the remaining children from the burning building. He didn’t know who stole away in the smoke and confusion, a child-sized bag bundled beneath his arm.

  Jason held no part in the resistance, and his peripheral contacts were there one day and gone the next. But he’d dug up and shared enough Nazi dirt to make friends with those who knew people who knew people who made things happen. He trusted his “friends of friends” to do their job, and concentrated on badgering the medical staff for a story—how could such a thing happen and why weren’t they more responsible with their equipment and didn’t they realize the children could have all been killed and the detailed spelling of names. Confusion reigned as he ordered photographers to capture the burning building and the f
rightened but safe children from every angle.

  Before the fire brigade finally arrived in force, a crowd of genuine locals had gathered, further blocking access. By the time hoses were pulled from the truck and turned on the blaze, the building had been gutted, the heat so intense there was no hope of entering.

  Kristine Schlick, eyes wide and hair wild, ran from child to child, from nurse to orderly to nurse again, searching for Amelie—crying and screaming for the daughter she’d only just left behind. She played her part well, but Jason knew it was more than acting.

  It was all Jason could do not to grab her, comfort her, tell her that Amelie and the other children with secret places to go had been safely spirited away. But he could not, dared not even speak to her for fear of giving everything away. Instead he sent photographers to capture on film the nearly hysterical, grief-stricken mother. And all the while he invented good copy for the news story that he prayed would rock Berlin and New York.

  11

  RACHEL WAS HORRIFIED when she read the heartbreaking story buried on page five of the morning paper. The story outlined the bungling phone call that first sent firefighters first to the wrong address, and lauded heroic locals who’d appeared from the streets to rescue most of the children when the medical center’s ancient boilers exploded. No bodies had been recovered. The intense heat had prevented firemen from entering the building until everything inside was in ashes. Four-year-old Amelie Schlick and two others from the greater Berlin area were presumed dead. Case closed. A memorial service for the three children would be held Sunday morning after services.

  Rachel would never have agreed to the explosion, never have risked such danger. Her stomach churned for Kristine’s sake. If only she could place Amelie in her friend’s arms once more, or at least assure her that her child was safe. But she could do neither, and there was no proof that all was well. She dared not contact Jason for fear she was watched or that her phone—or his—was tapped. She, and therefore Kristine, could only wait.