The Amber Room

by T. Davis Bunn

  For it wasn’t just the Berlin-based warriors who were being shipped Stateside; the same post-Cold War demilitarization was taking place all over Europe, with the same loose trail of cheap tobacco flooding the markets. Polish border guards were eating well these days, their meager income supplemented with bribes from dealers like Kurt.

  But that wasn’t why the quartermaster continued his foot-stomping inspection of the frozen ground at his feet.

  “I read the file three times,” he grumbled. “Can’t figure out what you guys want this junk for. I mean, the guy’s been dead for forty-seven years! He some friend of yours?”

  Kurt made do with a nod, knowing a question had been asked but not at all sure what the man had said. Kurt had decided the quartermaster’s blustering was all show. He was going to hand over the documents; he was just easing his conscience. So Kurt waited, stifling his need to shiver. He could feel the freezing air grab hold of his face and pull the skin taut.

  He himself did not know what was so important about these records of an interrogation in a World War II American prisoner-of-war camp of a German soldier who had died of dysentery four months later. All Kurt knew, in fact, was what Ferret had told him—the man’s name, his date of birth, date of capture, and date of eternal release. That much was included in the official record Ferret had plucked from his ever-present pile of yellowed documents. It was a copy of the death certificate that should be on top of the file Kurt was bargaining for. It was Kurt’s only way of authenticating what was to be passed over.

  A shout rose from the darkness behind the trucks. The quartermaster signaled to his men. He stomped across the frozen earth, reached into his inside pocket, and drew out a thin manila envelope. “Let’s see the money.”

  Kurt pulled out two envelopes and hefted one in each hand. “Cigarettes,” he said, raising the right. Then, raising the left, he specified, “File.”

  Erika emerged from the shadows long enough to wave one impatient hand. Kurt handed over the right-hand packet.

  With a final oath, the quartermaster gave in to greed and passed over the envelope. Kurt backed off before the money could be grabbed, opened the envelope, drew out the slip of paper from his pocket, and compared it to the top paper in the file. They were the same. He flipped through the aged papers. Three additional pages. Not much for almost the entire profit they would gain from this shipment.

  “Read it on your own time, buddy,” the quartermaster said and gestured impatiently for the money.

  Reluctantly Kurt handed it over, and wondered at the waste. The man slit the packet with a practiced motion, counted swiftly. Another shout came from the trucks. “Inna minute,” the quartermaster called back. He finished counting and stuffed the packet in his coat. “Don’t ever ask me for stuff like that again.”

  Kurt nodded. “Next week, more cigarettes?”

  “Maybe,” the quartermaster growled. “I’ll be in touch.” He turned and stomped away.

  CHAPTER 9

  Jeffrey and Katya celebrated the end of her exams by traveling to her mother’s home in Coventry. It was a strangely silent trip. Jeffrey found it impossible to do as he wished—to caress the dark, wayward hairs spilling across her forehead, or kiss the line of her neck, or confess that her weeks of absence had positively wounded him. Too much was trapped inside him to come out just then. Even to say he had missed her remained an elusive goal. He made do with brief glimpses into those violet-gray depths, an occasional squeeze of her hand, and fleeting conversation about anything but that which filled his heart to bursting.

  “I received a letter from my brother yesterday,” he told her. “The first ever.”

  “I’m glad,” she answered, her voice little more than a sigh, a velvet breeze that wafted gently by him. “It’s time you two made peace.”

  He nodded agreement. “He wrote like there hasn’t been any break at all, like it was yesterday the last time we were together. He’s going to AA every night, and he’s been sober for two hundred days. That’s the way he said it, counting it one day at a time. He says he rewarded himself with three chocolate sodas and this letter. And he’s started writing poetry.”

  “Your grandmother must be very happy,” Katya said.

  With that expression of quiet understanding, the dam controlling his emotions and his thoughts threatened to yield. But he could not do it, not then, not without saying it all. And he was determined not to rush, not to push himself upon her when she was still so tired from her studies. So he settled back and said nothing more the rest of the trip.

  Once inside the Coventry train station, he gave Katya’s gloved fingers a quick squeeze. “I’ll be right back.”

  When he came running back a few minutes later she asked impatiently, “Where did you go?”

  “I remembered something important.”

  “What are you trying to hide behind your back?”

  “A bag of switches.”

  “No, they’re not. They’re flowers. Did you get those for Mama?”

  “Don’t tell me she’s allergic or something. Breaks out in hives at the sight of a bloom.”

  A look from the heart and to the heart passed for a fleeting instant across her features, the first since her return. She raised up on tiptoe and kissed him soundly. Dropping down, she grabbed his hand, swung him around, and said, “Time to go.”

  “You’re blushing.”

  “I said it was time to go, Jeffrey. Mama’s waiting. Look, there’s a taxi.”

  Magda’s place was just as he had last seen it—cluttered and hot and overly close. The old woman opened the door, grimaced her greeting, accepted Katya’s kiss. Then she hobbled back to her seat on feet swathed in stretch bandages and covered by lumpy support hose. Her dress skewed to starboard, her head was a mop of disorderly gray. Once seated, she said, “Good evening, Jeffrey.”

  He was suddenly very shy. “I wanted you to have these.”

  She showed genuine surprise. “You brought flowers? For me?”

  He made do with a nod.

  She accepted the bundle, peeled back the paper, looked a long moment. “Orchids in the middle of winter. And carnations. Did Katya tell you they were my favorites?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Katya replied, her eyes resting on Jeffrey. “They’re beautiful.”

  “Yes, aren’t they?” She lifted them up to her daughter. “Be a dear and put these in water, won’t you?”

  When Katya had disappeared into the kitchen, Jeffrey eased himself into the chair nearest Magda and ventured, “I owe you an apology.”

  “I don’t recall being offended, young man.”

  “It wasn’t for anything I said.”

  She inspected his face. “My daughter was correct. You are indeed an honest man.” A bony hand covered with age spots reached across and patted his arm. “The flowers are a splendid peace offering. Thank you.”

  His heart hammering in his throat, Jeffrey forced himself to say, “I need to ask you something, Mrs. Nichols. Well, two things, if I may.”

  “Mrs. Nichols, is it?” She raised her gaze as Katya entered the doorway. “Please leave us alone for a moment longer, daughter.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Go see to Ling. He’s probably getting lonely out in the back room. The poor thing sings all the time nowadays, and there is no one to listen except me.” Since being deposited in Mrs. Nichols’ care last summer, the little bird had become a permanent member of the household. “We won’t be long, will we, Jeffrey?”

  He shook his head, not willing to look in Katya’s direction, and waited for Magda to say, “Very well, young man. I am listening.”

  He swallowed. “I love your daughter very much, Mrs. Nichols. I want to ask your permission to marry her.”

  “I see.” The piercing gaze did not waver. “And how does my daughter feel about this?”

  “I think she agrees. I hope she does.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  “I’ve learned to take nothing for gra
nted with your daughter, Mrs. Nichols.” He swallowed again. “And I decided that I wanted to ask for your permission first.”

  “So. You do me much honor.” The sharp gray eyes crinkled slightly. “Wise and honest and honorable besides. Very well, young man. You have my blessing. You may return to calling me Magda now.”

  He permitted himself a shaky breath. “Thank you.” The words seemed totally inadequate. “I’ll try—”

  “Yes, yes.” She silenced him impatiently. “I know you will, Jeffrey. Do not embarrass yourself. It is not necessary. Polish women are good nurturers, and my daughter has enough Polish blood in her to make a good wife.” She looked at him a moment. “Katya is most fortunate to have found a man such as you. I hope she realizes it.”

  “You’re very kind.”

  “Not at all, young man. I simply seek to answer honesty with honesty,” she replied. “Now what was the other thing you wished to speak about?”

  “May I ask you how you came to faith?”

  “What a remarkable question.” The piercing gaze returned. “What an exceptional husband you shall make. Young man, I would have to go back many years and many miles to answer that question.”

  “I’d really like to know.”

  “Yes, I see that is true. Very well, I shall tell you.” Magda grimaced and shifted one leg. “Would you please be so kind as to place another cushion under my feet?”

  “Sure.” He selected a pillow from the pile by the settee, then helped her raise her feet and set the pad in place.

  “Thank you so much. Do you know, my very first memory is of pain in those feet.” She stared down at them. “I have not thought of that in years.”

  Jeffrey settled back in his chair, immensely glad to have his first question behind him, but too full of the strain to feel any elation—yet. He inspected the sagging, wrinkled features and decided he had seldom seen a more unattractive face, nor one with more determined strength.

  “It was around the time of my third birthday. I know because of what my mother told me years later. It is the only memory I retain of my earliest years. Yet it is so clear that all I have to do is close my eyes and I can still see it, hear it, and feel the cold. We were walking, you see. Or rather, my father was walking. He carried me on his back. He and my mother had lined his knapsack with blankets and placed me inside it. Once I was strapped into place, they began their trek.

  “There were seven families on this journey, mostly German Volk who had been hired by distant landowners to come and work on their vast estates. My mother was Polish, from a small village near what then was the German border. I remember that she made the most beautiful lace I have ever seen. My father was a skilled tanner and leather worker. They had worked for a landowner in what today is Hungary, on an estate so big it contained eleven whole villages. But the First World War wiped out much of landowning families’ wealth, and the Depression finished them off entirely. Whole regions were starving, cities throughout Europe were filled with bread riots, Communists battled Fascists for power, and peace was nothing but an empty word.

  “In 1935 my father and mother, along with six other families related by blood or marriage, decided that if they stayed where they were, they would perish. My mother had a sister who was married to a Polish farmer, a landowner with many serfs, who said in a letter that he would offer us roof and bread and a warm hearth. My father was not pleased with leaving behind a home he had built with his own hands, but a starving man cannot afford the luxury of argument.

  “They set off in late October, a week after the letter from Poland arrived. If you have never tried to gather seven men and seven women, along with their children and their grandparents and even a cousin and great-uncle or two, and point them toward an unknown destination, with no money and very little food, you will not understand the arguments and indecisions and hesitations that filled their lives. They were leaving behind the only life they knew, risking everything for a future that was utterly unknown. Still they went, because as they looked around them they were impressed with the fact that to stay meant to die.

  “That week of indecision almost cost them their lives. An early snowfall blanketed Europe, and rumors swept their village of signs and portents pointing toward the century’s worst winter. It was this same snowfall that silenced the arguments and finally pushed them to move, for there was no fuel in my father’s village. The train of wagons bearing coal for their stoves had never arrived.

  “The morning my family set off for Poland, others began the trek to Budapest, where later that month more than six hundred thousand people rioted for bread and heat. It was a very bad winter, young man. There were riots in cities and hamlets from Berlin to Paris, from Königsberg to Constantinople. We heard rumors of war in Spain—and speculations that the war would spread. Women gave birth to babies and cried when tiny mouths first sought the breast, for they didn’t know if a world would exist where the little ones might live and grow strong.

  “But all of these things were told to me much later, long after we arrived in Poland, and after my father had learned of the madness that swept the land of his forefathers. My father hated the Fascists with a loathing that frightened me as a child. He was a gentle, caring man, with great strong arms and a warm lap and a barrel of a chest. The only time I ever recall hearing him curse was when he would speak of the Fascist regime. No doubt he would have viewed Stalin and the Communist lies with the same contempt, but by the time the Communists arrived in Poland my father was already dead, killed by a Nazi bullet in the Warsaw Uprising, fighting for a country he had come to call his own.

  “My father sought out the good people in Poland, and what he found in them he loved. The Poles are a great people, Jeffrey. They truly are. Their sense of honor and duty and love of God is very great, great enough to sustain them through a century and a half of military occupation, followed by two world wars, the Nazi demons with their death camps, and fifty years of the Communists. Ask yourself this, young man. If two hundred years of such hardships had befallen the United States of America, would your people—those who survived—still be capable of calling themselves a nation?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied softly.

  “Well, on to my story. The estate where my parents settled lay in Upper Silesia, and that region was soon to be the flash point kindling the German invasion. You see, Poland had ceased to exist as an independent nation in the eighteenth century. It remained parcelled out between the Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Prussian empires for one hundred and fifty years. At the end of World War I, when the Austrian kings were vanquished and the empire was destroyed, the boundaries of Europe were redrawn. Upon this new map Poland once again existed, and it included a portion of what once had been the Prussian empire. There were many, many Germans still living there, some of them landed and titled gentry. So the Fascists claimed this land as their own, a part of the Fatherland usurped by foreigners. But it was nothing but an excuse, you see. The Fascists intended to rule the world, and Poland was simply a good place to start.

  “My father hated lies of all kind. To him, truth was the bond that held the world in place. It was the gift that one man of honor offered to another without expecting anything in return. For him, the Fascists were transforming Germany into a land built upon lies, cemented into place with hatred. It was evil spawned and evil bred, and if truth had no place there, neither did he.

  “I grew up knowing only Polish friends, speaking Polish except in our home, where I spoke German. My father was very proud of my ability with the difficult Polish language. He never did learn the language very well, but he made friends even in those suspicious times by the fervor of his hatred for the Fascists. Everyone in the area could see his horror when Germany invaded. He joined the local underground, and he spent the war years helping to hide and transport Jews seeking to escape the Nazi massacre. Because he was German, you see, there was less suspicion cast his way by the local military authorities.

  “My childhood memories are a
ll of faces appearing in the darkest night. Frightened faces. Exhausted faces. Faces who looked as though they never expected to see the light of day ever again. They were hidden in a secret cave my father dug beneath our coal cellar. Sometimes they stayed in that dark, airless hole for as long as a week, until the next stage of their passage was prepared. They came and they went, and I would scarcely ever hear them or see them unless I helped my mother take them food. I knew without anyone telling me that I should never speak of the ghost people living in my cellar. Even at nine and ten years of age, I knew that to speak of them would be the death of us all. And I burned with pride for the bravery of my dear papa and mama.

  “It was in those days that I learned to pray, sending off these silent families into the darkness of an evil-laden night. Hard times and hatred allowed bad people to take over our homeland, my father often said to me. These new rulers were intent on killing all who challenged their ideas of racial purity or political loyalties. We had only one recourse, he told me every night as he opened the worn Bible and sought out a passage. We had only one refuge, in faith. Over and over he said to me, we must climb the stairway of prayer and enter into the most Holy Place.”

  The kitchen door creaked open and Katya’s face emerged. “Mama?”

  “What is it, daughter?”

  “Do I have to stay in here all afternoon?”

  “We won’t be much longer,” Magda replied, her eyes remaining on Jeffrey.

  “Can’t I join you?”

  “Your young man and I are just getting better acquainted,” Magda replied. “Give us just a few more minutes, daughter. I am almost done.” She waited until the door had closed, then asked, “Have I bored you, young man?”

  Jeffrey leaned back in his chair, felt as though he had been holding his breath. “Not at all. I have a thousand questions, though.”