Saving Amelie

by Cathy Gohlke

  But we’re not likely to bite the hand that pays our bills, are we? Still, she doesn’t look Jewish, or even Polish. But who can tell these days? “How did you get here?”

  “Excuse me?” The woman leaned closer, anxiety apparent in her eyes.

  Hilde sighed. She was never good at refusing to help beggars, no matter that she could not afford another mouth to feed. “You couldn’t have walked far with that bag, meine Frau. Where did you come from? Who’s with you?” Hilde wasn’t about to be reported for harboring fugitives—Jews or others—or at least she wouldn’t be tricked. If she harbored anyone, it would be with full information and because she chose to help.

  “No one—I walked from the train station in the village.”

  Hilde walked to the street and looked up and down. Not a soul in sight.

  “Please,” the woman begged, “please don’t do that. Let me talk with you in private.”

  “Whatever you want to say to me can be said out here—in the bright light of day.”

  The woman’s eyes widened, looking even more agitated. Hilde thought again that there was something familiar in the woman’s expression, but she determined to hold her ground.

  “Oma,” the woman whispered.

  Hilde felt a catch in her heart. “What did you say?”

  The woman, still stooped, stepped closer. But her voice lost its crackling as she whispered, “I’ve news of your daughter.”

  Breath sucked from Hilde’s lungs. She recognized the eyes—her daughter’s eyes. Lea’s eyes. But she insisted, “My daughter is dead.”

  “Yes, yes, she is. But I’m her daughter—your granddaughter, Rachel.”

  The garden spun in all its lovely colors. As Hilde tottered, the woman dropped her carpetbag and caught her, but with the surprising strength of youth. Confused, desperate for her rocker in the kitchen, Hilde motioned toward the house.

  Tenderly, Rachel settled her grandmother in the rocker just inside the kitchen door, then filled a stein from the spigotted barrel on the counter. While her grandmother drank, catching her breath, Rachel retrieved her bag from the garden, careful to take up her slow gait while outdoors.

  Once inside, she locked the door and drew the nearest curtain across its rod. She pulled a low stool near the rocker and waited. But she could not take her eyes from those that mirrored her own.

  She searched the lines of Hilde Breisner’s face, the cheekbones, the length of her knotted fingers—more similarities than she could count. It was as if she gazed upon herself fifty years into the future.And it was all she could do not to laugh, to cry over the old woman before her.

  When the woman seemed to calm, Rachel reached for her hand. “I’m Ibine’s daughter.”

  Hilde pulled back, her eyes wide and brow furrowed. She shook her head. “You’re from the Institute. The SS sent you, didn’t they? Please, please leave us alone!”

  Rachel’s heart sank. Jason was right. Gerhardt had already been here, had probably tormented her grandmother, perhaps Lea as well. She brushed the powder from her hair to show its mask.

  Hilde gasped, sputtered, but no words came.

  “I know this sounds fantastic—impossible.” Rachel leaned forward. “I have so much to tell you, to ask you, but I must warn you that there are people looking for me. If I’m found here, it will be dangerous for me and certainly for you and Lea.”

  “Why are you doing this?” The old woman’s eyes filled with tears, fury and fear and wonder so clearly mingled. “What do you want?”

  “Oh no—please—I don’t want to hurt anyone. I wanted only to meet you, to ask you—”

  The door latch rattled, and a knock came at the door. “Oma?” a lilting voice, tinged with worry, called. “Are you in there? What’s going on? Why is your door locked?”

  But the older woman didn’t answer, didn’t seem able to answer. She couldn’t catch her breath, and then a wheezing started. Panic sprang to her eyes, and she motioned toward the far wall. Rachel dropped her hand, not knowing where to turn, what to do.

  The knocking became a pounding. “Oma—open the door! Are you all right? Who is with you? Will you not open the door?”

  The old woman grasped her throat, her chest. Rachel threw open the door to the young woman with the pounding fist—a young woman who looked for all the world like a provincial mirror image of herself. “She’s having a seizure—a heart attack—I don’t know! Help her! Oh, please help her!”

  Rachel hadn’t finished her plea before the young woman pushed her aside and ran to the gasping Oma.

  Oma threw her hand toward the far wall.

  “Your tablets? In the cupboard?” Jerking open a cupboard door and rummaging through a host of small pottery and jars, the young woman grabbed a brown bottle and pulled the cork. “Hold on, Oma, I’m coming.”

  But Oma seemed to be losing focus.

  “Open your mouth.” She forced two tablets between Oma’s teeth, beneath her tongue, then sat back on her heels, gently rubbing her arm, her back. “Rest there. Just rest a bit.” She waited until Oma calmed, began breathing easier.

  Never had Rachel witnessed such a tender and proficient bedside manner, not in all the doctors she’d encountered through her father’s work.

  But when the young woman turned toward her, her back to Oma, her face clouded and her eyes threatened. She pulled Rachel into the next room. “What happened?”

  Frightened as much by the younger woman’s anger as by Oma’s attack, Rachel sputtered, “I don’t know. She just . . . What’s wrong with her?”

  “Her heart is weak. She can’t—” But the young woman hesitated, staring, as if she’d just seen Rachel.

  “Lea. You’re Lea.” The wonder Rachel felt at seeing her twin nearly stopped her own heart.

  “Who are you?” Lea looked as if she gazed upon a ghost.

  “I’m Rachel. I’m your sister.”

  “My—sis—?”

  “Your twin,” Rachel pressed. “Ibine Breisner was my mother—and yours.”

  But the woman named Lea paled, shaking her head. “That’s not possible. My mother died in childbirth. I was her only child.”

  The old woman gasped again. Rachel and Lea both turned. “Oma!” they said, almost in unison.

  Lea’s brows rose and she stepped between her grandmother and Rachel. “Did Dr. Mengele send you to torment us?”

  “No!”

  “Dr. Verschuer, then,” Lea accused. “We’ve had enough—enough. Get out!”

  “I’m not from the Institute!” Now Rachel was very near tears. “I’m trying to escape them!”

  “It was you they were after. The SS came looking for you. They terrified Oma and nearly destroyed her house—and mine. They said there is a woman who looks like me. They said if she came, not to believe anything she said. They vowed they’d be back, and if we took her in, we’d pay.”

  “I’m sorry they hurt you, but that should say something for me—that I’m not part of them.” Rachel leaned forward. “Our mother birthed twins. We were separated when she died.” She lowered her voice. “I think they let her die, may have even helped her die. They sent me to America, to be raised there, but sent you to be raised by our grandmother.”

  Lea shook her head. “You’re making this up.”

  Rachel hardly knew how to respond. Her script had fallen apart.

  Oma groaned again, trying to regain her breath.

  Lea fetched and rolled a towel, tucking it beneath Oma’s head at the back of the wooden rocker. “Just rest, Oma,” she crooned.

  Rachel knelt before her. “I’m sorry I upset you. I just wanted to meet you—to meet you both.”

  Oma reached her hand out to Rachel. Rachel grasped it like a lifeline.

  “Well, you’ve met us,” Lea said coldly.

  “Lea, Lea,” Oma scolded gently. Her eyes turned again to Rachel, back and forth between the two young women. “Can it be—?”

  “No, Oma. Don’t let her fool you. Meine Mutter had only one child
.”

  “That’s what I thought too,” Rachel asserted, the words thick in her throat. “That I was an only child. That’s what I was always told at the Institute and by my adoptive parents.”

  “My Ibine—twins,” Oma said in wonder.

  Rachel bit her lip. “I would not hurt you for the world, but I must talk with you. I must know about my mother, my father—so many things.” She hesitated. “And I must ask you to hide me.”

  It was a full hour before Oma had sufficiently recovered, before Lea felt she could take her eyes from her grandmother. In that time, Rachel told them enough that Lea came to believe her—though Rachel’s story was fantastic, something she might read in a suspenseful thriller novel brought from England by one of Friederich’s customers.

  It was the details of the link through the abominable Institute in Frankfurt that convinced Lea—that and the fact that when Rachel had washed her face and combed the powder from her hair, she looked like Lea’s own reflection, only more modern. She could only shake her head at the impossibility of it all and do her best to push the besetting weight from her heart.

  Lea couldn’t think only of herself or her fear that the SS might appear on their doorstep again in search of Rachel. She saw in Oma’s eyes the horrific realization that the Institute had allowed her precious Ibine, her only child, to die in order to conduct experiments on her identical twin daughters. Help us, Holy Father; help us.

  But what could they do with Rachel? How could they help her leave Germany with border patrols searching for her?

  “You’ll stay here with us, of course!” Oma proclaimed. “Lea’s here while her Friederich is away.”

  “They’ll come back looking for her. We’ve no place to hide her!”

  “Then we’ll make a place.” Oma reached for her granddaughters’ hands.

  “There’s more,” Rachel confessed.

  “More?” Lea wasn’t certain they could take more.

  “A child,” Rachel began.

  “You’ve a child?” Oma gasped. “My great-grandchild!”

  Lea’s heart tripped.

  “Not mine; she’s the child of a friend. But I’m . . . responsible for her. I’ll take her to the United States, just as soon as we can find a way out of Germany.” She told them about Gerhardt Schlick and the T4 program, about the ruse to make him believe his child had been killed and about Kristine’s murder. It was evil beyond Lea’s imagination or Oma’s ability to speak.

  “So now this madman is looking not only for you but for his child! Here, in Oberammergau!” Lea nearly cried.

  “He doesn’t know that Amelie is alive! He’s certain she’s dead, and he doesn’t know I’ve come.”

  “We can’t hide you—and can’t hide a child.” Lea couldn’t believe she was saying it. “The neighbors see everything—know everything!”

  “She’s here?” Oma’s eyes clouded.

  “No, but a friend will bring her here—if you’ll allow it. I’m to send a note through the mail in a kind of code. She’s very small—only four years old.” Rachel’s eyes pleaded.

  “Bring her!”

  But Lea squeezed Oma’s hand, urging her to slow down, to think.

  Inspiration sprang to Oma’s eyes. “Lea teaches children from the orphanage, from town, and from the refugees trickling into the village. We can say we’ve taken in refugees. She can blend right into the village.” She half smiled in wonder. “But you must remain in disguise. If anyone saw the two of you as you are—even separately—they would know immediately that you were sisters.”

  “Amelie’s deaf—she can’t blend in.” Rachel looked the most uncomfortable Lea had seen her. “She wouldn’t be able to sing, and she can’t be seen. She truly can’t be seen by anyone.”

  23

  AMELIE HADN’T sucked her thumb in a long time. But in the dark of night, tucked into a makeshift pallet beneath the eaves of the farmhouse attic, she slipped it into her mouth. It comforted her a little, though it was no substitute for her mother.

  She couldn’t understand what had happened, what she’d done to deserve being pulled from her mother’s fragrant arms weeks and weeks ago, or shoved into the smoky, smelly woolen blanket, or jostled over bumping roads and finally thrust into the arms of a woman she’d never met—a woman who immediately cut the curls from Amelie’s head and shaped her hair like a boy’s.

  Amelie didn’t like the scratchy shirt or the lederhosen or the dirty woolen cap she’d been dressed in. She missed her pretty dresses and her mother fussing over her hair. She missed the soft ringlets that her mother sometimes twitched to tickle her cheeks, and she even missed bath time.

  She dreamed of her mother, but when she woke the image of her smile faded as quickly as the morning dew outside the kitchen window. Amelie feared that if she forgot her mother, her mother would forget her.

  The woman with the greasy apron fed her, smiled sometimes, and moved her mouth in kind ways—much as her mother had done. But she couldn’t speak in signs at all, no matter how desperately or often Amelie signed her questions. “Where is Mutti? Where is Mutti?” brought no response. Amelie placed her hand on the woman’s chest, her throat, her face, and felt the same sort of soft rumbles that she’d felt when leaning against her mother.

  But the woman didn’t smell the same, and her skin was not soft and silky as her mother’s had been. The woman carried the lingering fragrance of the animals in the barn and farmyard just outside the kitchen door—the big-eyed cow, the strutting goose, the wallowing pig, even a tinge of the humble brown donkey with the rough and scruffy coat. All of that was enveloped with the yeasty smell of baking bread.

  Never had Amelie tasted such delicious freshly baked bread or such creamy yellow butter, spread thinly though it was. The woman even spread her buttered bread with sweet black-currant jam—a rare thing. Her mother had tended to withhold the dark-purple sweet, smiling but shaking a gentle finger when Amelie reached for the crockery pot.

  Still, Amelie cried herself to sleep at night. Sometimes the lady would climb the attic stairs and scoop her up and rock her gently. Amelie never knew when or if this would happen, or why she chose to do it. In those tender moments Amelie tried signing again, but it seemed to frustrate the lady, and she pushed Amelie’s hands away.

  People came and went all times of the day and night, and sometimes Amelie was quickly shown to sit beneath the kitchen sink, behind a curtain that draped to the floor. The woman motioned for Amelie to keep very still, and Amelie tried her best to obey. She usually fell asleep obeying.

  That first night, Lea’s pen dripped a blot of ink on the kitchen table as she hesitated over her letter to Friederich. Another secret—a litany of secrets. Another “something” I will not tell my husband . . . for fear he’d worry about things he can’t help or prevent? For fear he would have me turn Rachel out for the danger in which she and this hunted deaf child will place us? No. For fear he would have me embrace them beyond my ability. For fear she is so like me—but more of everything than I can ever be—and comes with a child in need of love! How she would appeal to Friederich—to his manliness and protective nature. Lea bit her lip. She’s said nothing of whether the Institute— She choked back a sob.

  Lea did not finish the letter, but folded and placed it in its envelope. She’d work on it again tomorrow. She turned out the light, checked on Oma, who breathed softly and rhythmically in her sleep, and walked to the little room she’d grown up in. She slipped her shoes beneath the bed, turned down the coverlet, and slid in next to her sister.

  Lea turned to her side, facing away from her roommate. Rachel might indeed be her twin, her decidedly more beautiful twin, but Lea was the one married to Friederich, and she was the one Oma had raised as her own daughter. She must make certain this interloper did not forget she was exactly that. And she’d remind her, at every opportunity, of the danger in which she’d placed them.

  24

  THE CLOCK in the newsroom ticked off the half hours: four, four thirty
, five, five thirty, six in the morning. Jason stretched, pushing the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to rub some life into his spent brain. He’d met his deadline an hour before but couldn’t bring himself to dodge the overzealous early-morning patrols back to his hotel. He’d wait an hour longer, then try to find someplace that served breakfast on a Sunday morning.

  There might be just enough time to get to his hotel, shave, and grab a fresh shirt before the underground church service. He stood, stretching again, reaching for the ceiling and plunging his hands toward the floor, arching the ache in his back like a cat.

  He wasn’t a churchgoing man—no time or inclination, and nobody made him go growing up. But this was for the sake of a story about some rebel pacifist preacher who’d helped found that new church he’d covered before—the Confessing Church—and who’d dared to thumb his nose at Hitler’s policies. He’d declared, when Hitler had barely settled into office, that no one but Jesus Christ is the true leader, the true teacher. For that first tirade, his radio program had been cut midstream. More recently, Bonhoeffer’d been banned from preaching in Berlin.

  The thing that puzzled Jason and interested his editor was why Dietrich Bonhoeffer had returned to Berlin at all. Granted, his family was here. But Bonhoeffer had been safely stowed away in America, according to Jason’s sources. He’d returned to Germany because he said he couldn’t allow his church to go through these days alone, that he’d have no right to take part in the restoration of Christian life in Germany after the war unless he shared the trials of this time with his people. That sort of rebellion and heroism—misguided or not—was right up Jason’s alley, and fodder for a great story.