Saving Amelie

by Cathy Gohlke

  Jason turned to pack up his desk for the night.

  “I have a kid brother back home.”

  Jason hadn’t imagined Eldridge with any family. He was too competitive, too isolationist, not the family-man type. “Lucky you.” The thought of his kid sister so far away made Jason shove his rough draft into a folder so hard that it missed and slid off the desk. Embarrassed, expecting a gibe, he stooped, picking up pages.

  “He can’t hear—can’t even see so hot.”

  Jason stopped.

  “But every thought in his head is worth three times that stupid Kraut brandishing his riding crop and raving about increased living space.” Eldridge’s jaw worked back and forth, his lips tight over his teeth.

  “How do you know?” Jason realized how that sounded, felt the heat creep up his neck. “I mean, how do you know what your brother thinks?”

  “We talk.” Eldridge looked at him like he was stupid.

  “You said he’s deaf.”

  “Sign language, facial expressions, lip reading, touch—even some finger spelling into his palm.”

  “You know how to do all that?” Jason couldn’t form that picture of Eldridge in his mind.

  “Our mom made us learn—the whole family. Not hard—just takes practice.”

  “So, you could show me?”

  Eldridge looked ready to rip Jason’s face off, as though Jason were messing with him.

  “I mean it. I have a friend. But I can’t talk with her.”

  “You have a deaf girlfriend?”

  “I didn’t say she’s my girlfriend—just a friend. She signs, but I don’t know what she’s saying or how to communicate with her.”

  Eldridge pulled his jacket over his shoulder, ready to push off for the night. “Why not? But if I were you, the first thing I’d tell her is to stay out of the Fatherland.”

  He was out the newsroom door before Jason could reply.

  Stay out of the Fatherland—right. What are the chances of hiding long-term a child the Reich wants to kill? Jason knew the answer, and he knew Amelie must be moved.

  Rachel turned to the right and then to the left before Oma’s bedroom mirror.

  “Lea’s dress fits you perfectly! You are two peas in a pod.” Delighted, Oma clapped her hands.

  But for each praise Oma lifted, Lea bristled.

  “You really think this will work?” Rachel wasn’t so sure that even her best acting skills could turn her into a provincial mountain woman.

  “Why not?” Oma cooed. “By the time we finish with your hair and wardrobe, no one could tell the difference between you.”

  “That’s not true, Oma.” Lea spoke softly. “She needs to stand, to sit, to walk and talk like me if we’re to fool anyone enough to get her through the train station.”

  “You’re right.” Rachel eyed her sister critically. “I must practice your accent. It’s close, I think, but not quite true.”

  “Nothing about this is true,” Lea countered.

  Oma pinched her lips. “You girls will get it right. You must, for all our sakes.”

  “Yes, Oma,” Lea acquiesced.

  Her very demeanor annoyed Rachel. Why does she have to be so two-faced and mousy? She’s obviously jealous. She despises me but won’t say it—would never say it to Oma. Rachel cast her twin a glance meant to put her in her place, but when Lea’s flaming face and iceberg eyes made clear she’d understood, Rachel felt an unfamiliar twinge of regret. She turned away to tie her stout German shoes—Lea’s shoes, which Rachel thought ugly—pretending she hadn’t seen.

  But Rachel knew neither of them had fooled Oma. Their grandmother was observant, quick, and still the most patient, grace-filled woman Rachel had ever met. She’s not taken in by either of us. And still she seems to like us—to love us!

  Oma was Rachel’s picture of a Bavarian grandmother living in her quaint gingerbread cottage. But there was something different—something not so “Oberammergauish” in her home and garden, in her very nature, that Rachel couldn’t articulate. She wanted time to unravel that mystery—time she wouldn’t have.

  Many houses and cottages in Oberammergau were painted with scenes, either from Bavarian community and life, German fairy tales, or the Passion Play. Oma’s cottage bore no scene but was painted a plain cream-colored stucco with black shutters—not so different than the basis of the others. Traditional black window boxes lined the base of each window, brimming over with scarlet geraniums, trailing ivy, and another green filler plant Rachel didn’t know—all quite Bavarian. But her narrow, hedged back garden ran deep with winding fall flower and hedgerow trails, little benches tucked here and there beneath flowering or weeping shrubbery—more like an English fairy garden than a Hansel and Gretel sort.

  Lea boasted that before blackout regulations had plunged the community—the entire country—into darkness, their grandmother had lit a dozen small lanterns at night tucked here and there along her garden paths. Her neighbor had fussed at Oma’s extravagance, but Oma loved them and claimed their flames made the night come alive, like fireflies.

  “Are there fireflies in Germany?” Rachel couldn’t imagine it.

  “Not many,” Oma had admitted. “But you’d be surprised the places I’ve lived and traveled, my dear. The things I’ve done . . . England, Ireland, the Netherlands. I wasn’t always an old German Hausfrau.” She’d winked and said no more, but it was one more enticement for Rachel, and one more reminder that Lea had lived an entire lifetime knowing and being known and loved by their grandmother.

  Oma and her home were ideally placed, Rachel decided, against the backdrop of the snowcapped Alps. Early snowfall had painted the mountains white against the brilliant-blue October sky—the thing of storybooks.

  But as Lea quickly reminded them, those beautiful snowcapped mountains portended an early winter, more difficult travel, and uncertain rations. The sooner they could get Rachel and Amelie out of Germany, the safer it would be for everyone.

  Oma had chafed, clearly not wanting Rachel to go so soon. But Rachel knew Lea was right. She must leave with Amelie as soon as Jason found a way to get the child to Oma’s. Impersonating her petulant sister was part of a potential exit plan, and Rachel determined to focus on those preparations.

  “Sit here, my dear,” Oma ordered, “and let me braid your hair.”

  Rachel straightened her dress—Lea’s dress—and sat, returning her grandmother’s smile in the mirror.

  “I’ll do that, Oma.” Lea took the brush and comb from her grandmother. “You see about the coffee.”

  Oma released the tools reluctantly. Rachel, too, was sorry. She would have liked to have her grandmother brush her hair—once, before she left. That thought was cut short by Lea’s sudden twist of her long hank of hair and the coarse digging of the comb through her roots.

  Rachel bit her lip, determined not to let her sister see her wince. Lea jerked the comb, not bothering to untangle the knot that always formed at Rachel’s neck. She carved a deep part straight down the middle of her scalp—forehead to base of neck. Dividing the hair on either side of the central part, Lea wove tight braids, yanking each time she overlapped, and tied off the ends. She wound them round Rachel’s head and pinned, pushing the pins into her sister’s scalp.

  Rachel said not a word, no matter that she’d had to grit her teeth to keep from crying out.

  Both sets of eyes met in the mirror. “Do you feel better now?” Rachel asked.

  Lea’s face flamed, but she wore the mask of triumph.

  “I look nothing like you. Your braids are loose and full,” Rachel accused. “Do it again.”

  The red in Lea’s cheeks rushed to her ears. She glanced at Rachel’s hair in the mirror, a foot below her own. Rachel saw that she’d hit her mark and waited to be obeyed.

  Lea threw the comb to the vanity and turned. “Do it yourself.”

  Rachel grabbed her sister by the wrist and spun her back. “What is your problem?”

  “Your coming brings nothing
but trouble, and when you leave I’ll be picking up the pieces of Oma’s heart. You’ve put her—all of us—at terrible risk.”

  “I wanted to find you, to meet you. We’re sisters—twins! I wanted to know about our parents, and I want to know Oma. I need to know her!”

  Lea jerked her wrist free, but stepped nearer, closing the space between them. “Well, that’s just it, isn’t it—it’s what you want. I imagine you’ve always gotten what you want, haven’t you?” She walked out.

  Rachel felt as if she’d been slapped. This was certainly not what she’d wanted—not like this. She sank to the vanity’s bench. She has no idea what it is to grow up believing you’re loved, believing you’re special, then have it torn away, to learn it was all a lie without love—worse than without love.

  Slowly, as the tears she’d held back trickled down her scrubbed cheeks, she pulled the pins from her hair. She brushed it out, gently, and massaged life back into her burning scalp. She braided her hair in loose coils, then wound them round her head, pinning the braids gently into place, a nearly perfect copy of Lea’s. Her dress and shoes were Lea’s. Her hair matched. But the soul that stared back from the mirror was someone different—neither Rachel nor Lea. Someone Rachel no longer knew.

  Jason figured it was a game for Eldridge to pass the time during the long hours of waiting at the news office for a phone call from New York, an assignment, the whiff of a scoop. At least Jason hoped his colleague saw it as a game, hoped he believed that Jason’s fascination with learning sign language was because of his crush on some girl back home.

  He picked up the finger spelling quickly. It took longer to grasp common hand signs. Some made sense, were sort of intuitive, but there were so many.

  “Not bad,” Eldridge conceded. “Guess pounding the keys keeps those fingers limber after all.”

  Jason grunted. He’d kowtow to Eldridge long enough to learn for Amelie’s sake—whenever, if ever he had the chance to communicate with her. He hoped the hand signs were universal. He imagined she was too little for finger spelling. Learning to sign was his only means of helping her now, or of easing his own desperation to do something—anything.

  But Jason’s lessons were cut short. The message from the farmer’s wife came sooner than even he had expected. Jason translated the crude note folded into the sandwich thrust into his hands by some youngster in the street pretending to hawk lunches: Storage costs doubled—pay immediately. Surplus not wanted. Remove or destroy. It couldn’t be plainer than that.

  26

  JASON HAD ONE CONNECTION—one hope he’d met through the Confessing Church—and he tried it before sundown.

  It was nearly blackout when he rang the back doorbell on Potsdamer Strasse. A stocky kitchen maid came to the door and cracked it open. “What do you want?”

  “I need to speak with Frau Bergstrom.”

  “You are American.” It was an accusation.

  “I can’t help that. I still need to speak with her.”

  “Come back tomorrow. It is time to black the windows.” The maid pushed the door, but Jason was quicker, planting his foot over the threshold. She grabbed his coat collar and sleeve, almost bodily lifting him from the floor and out the door.

  “Tomorrow might be too late,” he pleaded. “Frau Bergstrom knows me. I’m a friend of Pastor Bonhoeffer—a friend of Dietrich.” It was a stretch, but he was desperate.

  “You do not need to roughhouse my poor maid, young man.” He heard a smile in the cultured voice coming from the darkened room to their left. “Let him in, Greta. Let us hear what he has to say.”

  Jason gasped as the short but burly maid he now respected more than the Tiergarten police thumped him to the kitchen floor.

  “You were saying?”

  “Frau Bergstrom—we met when Dietrich spoke here. You gave me his book.”

  “I remember you, Herr Newspaperman. But I do not remember that you knew Dietrich personally.” She drew him into the next room and closed the door. “Could you not come in daylight?”

  “I’m in a bind, and I’m hoping you can help.”

  She waited. He couldn’t read her face.

  “There’s a kid—a little girl—who needs a place to stay.”

  “Ah.” Frau Bergstrom hesitated. “She is Jewish?”

  “No, she’s deaf.” He knew he must be up-front. “And she’s the daughter of an SS officer.”

  She blanched. “Surely this officer can find a place to . . . to care for his own daughter.”

  “He believes she’s dead. He wants her dead.”

  “But how did you—no—no.” Frau Bergstrom stopped. “What is it you want of me?”

  “I want you to hide her, to save her, and if you can, help me get her out of the country—to the US, if that’s possible. I don’t know if this is something you can do or help with, but after hearing Dietrich preach, after reading Nachfolge, I . . . I just want to save her. I only have a room at the Adlon—no place to hide a kid. But she’s a good kid—a great kid.”

  She shook her head. “And how do you know this child—this wonderful German child for whom you feel such compassion? This child of an SS officer for whom you risk, and ask me to risk, everything?”

  “That’s a long story, ma’am.” Jason felt the weariness descend as the craziness, the audacity of what he was asking caught up with him.

  “It is a story you must tell me if you want me to help you, to risk my family.” She opened her hand, indicating Jason should take a seat at the dining room table. She nodded to the maid, who slipped coffee between them as Jason talked.

  Jason told her—all he knew. He never doubted he could trust this woman who’d opened her home to a dissident preacher watched by the police, the Gestapo, the SS—a preacher who risked his life helping, teaching, warning Germans and foreigners alike, encouraging all in need of backbone. That kind of guts in the midst of Nazi brutality was contagious, and he’d seen the fire in her eyes.

  Frau Bergstrom placed her cup in its saucer when Jason finished his story. “Perhaps the safest place for the child would be with her mother’s American friend. She is a link to the mother—someone who evidently cared enough for both of them to try to save the child.”

  “I haven’t heard from her yet. She might have found a way to leave the country,” Jason hedged. “We didn’t realize the Nazis would move so soon.”

  She folded her hands. “Few did. Dietrich saw so much of their evil in its infancy—before Herr Hitler came to power. And he saw the weakness, the crack, within the church—the church’s refusal to stand up, to shout back, to protect before the evil spread so far, so wide.” She sat back and observed him. Jason felt he was weighed in the balance. “You said you read his book?”

  “I did. That’s why I hoped you’d help me—help Amelie.”

  “Bring the child here by night and I will help you get her to her mother’s friend, because I believe that is what my Lord would have me do. But I think, Herr Young, before you ask others to risk their lives and the lives of those dear to them, you must answer this question: Why am I doing this?”

  Jason swallowed. “It’s the right thing. It’s wrong to kill little kids.”

  “Why? You must ask yourself why it is wrong to kill this child if by doing so you can make room for others who are strong in mind and body.”

  Jason couldn’t believe she’d said that.

  “That is what our Führer maintains—that some are more worthy of life than others. Indeed, he asserts that an elite few in the world are worthy of life and procreation.” She paused. “Ask yourself, if you do not believe that to be true, why is it not?” She waited again. “If this child is not able to contribute to society in the same way you and I are able, does it make her less valuable? How do you know?”

  Jason knew Hitler had it wrong, but Frau Bergstrom’s run around the issue and his lack of sleep made his head hurt.

  “Are you doing this for a newspaper story?”

  “No. I can’t print this—not n
ow.”

  “But later? Are you hoping, laying the groundwork for a sensational story? Or are you willing to lay your life down for the sake of this child?” She waited. Jason squirmed. “Will you abandon her if things do not go smoothly? If no one else can take her?”

  “I thought . . . I just thought someone could—someone would.”

  “Who, if not you? When, if not now?”

  Jason felt his chest tighten. They were the questions that confronted him each time he turned out the light at night, each time he tried to sleep. Bonhoeffer’s challenge rose before him, shadowed him, haunted him. He wanted to do the right thing but was in over his head.

  “This is the cost of discipleship.”

  “Costly grace,” Jason remembered, knowing he understood so little.

  She nodded and stood, taking his hand. “Bring the child here. I promise to help you find out about your friend—if she is still in Oberammergau. If so, I have friends able to transport the child there. In return, you must promise me to read the passages I will mark for you in my Bible. And then you must tell me what you think, whom you do this for, and why. And then you must tell me if you are willing to do it for others.”

  Jason nodded, returning the pressure of her hand in agreement.

  He was halfway back to his apartment, Frau Bergstrom’s Bible hidden inside his jacket, before he realized he’d just agreed to a long-term relationship with Frau Bergstrom and her friends—friends whose convictions might draw his neck in a noose alongside theirs. Oddly enough, he felt a weight lifted and wasn’t one bit sorry.

  27

  STURMBANNFÜHRER GERHARDT SCHLICK read the dispatch from Frankfurt a second time, then threw it to his desk. Rachel Kramer could not have disappeared without a trace—not in Germany, and not in New York.

  Her passport had been found aboard a liner in New York Harbor, but Rachel had not appeared—not at her home, not at the Long Island Institute, not at her New York University, and not at the Campbell Playhouse, where a job was reportedly being held for the young woman. She was presumed dead, having stowed away aboard ship and disappeared en route to New York.