The White Rose Resists

by Amanda Barratt

  “I like potato pancakes.”

  “Maybe I’ll make you some sometime.” I pile clean silverware onto a towel.

  A smile crinkles the corners of his eyes. “I’d like yours even more.”

  “Any particular reason you came over?” I decide to let the dishes air dry, and I wipe my damp hands on my apron, turning to face him. Kirk’s presence in my kitchen makes the space shrink, becoming a little island of two. But instead of disquieting me, it makes me want to lean in. Draw nearer, shrinking the space all the more.

  “I just missed you.” We’re standing close enough our feet almost touch. Close enough I can smell the fragrance of peppermint on his breath.

  My heart skips a beat. Twice now, he’s said, “I missed you.” No one has ever told me that before. Mutter feels it, no doubt, but what she misses is the security and strength I bring, not me. Kirk’s words are intimate, conjuring images of me standing on tiptoe, the worn fabric of his shirt fisted in my hands, his mouth slowly brushing mine. My cheeks warm. “Did Hans and Alex catch the train to Stuttgart?” My words are rushed, a cover-up for my thoughts.

  He nods. “They’re going to talk to Hans’s friend Eugen Grimminger about our need for funds. After our meeting with Harnack, everything seems to be falling into place.”

  “It was really something, wasn’t it?”

  Kirk’s gaze shines. “I wish you could’ve been there. Listening to him talk about plans for a new government … it made me believe it could really happen. Think of it. We could be proud of our leaders instead of ashamed. A restoration of democracy and equality. For everyone, not just so-called Aryans.”

  I smile into his eyes. “What office will you hold in this new government?”

  “Something high-sounding, of course.” He laughs. “With my own private study. You’ll have to make an appointment to see me.”

  I cross my arms. “Oh, I will, will I?”

  “Absolutely. No barging in unannounced.”

  “You mean like you just did?”

  “That’s called a friendly visit.” We’re teasing, laughing, the distance between us whittling down to almost nothing. How easy it would be to bridge it altogether, to take one step closer and wrap my arms around him, heartbeat to heartbeat.

  His gaze darkens, looking into mine. His breath brushes my cheek.

  A knock sounds on the door. We both start, putting space between us. I cross the room, heart a dull thudding in my ears.

  I walk into the front room and open the door. My landlady stands outside.

  “Telephone, Fräulein Brandt.”

  “Danke.” I glance at Kirk, now standing in the middle of the front room. My landlady looks between the two of us, gaze sharpening, as if we’ve been up to something disreputable.

  If kissing is disreputable, give us another minute and we might have satisfied you.

  Faint red tinges Kirk’s cheekbones at her knowing look. “I should … um, be going too.” He moves to grab his coat and shoes.

  He may be a leader in our underground resistance, but give him a meddling old lady and he turns into the shy pastor’s son. I bite back a smile.

  “I’ll be downstairs,” I say. “This shouldn’t take long.”

  Kirk nods. I follow her downstairs to the telephone and wait until she disappears into her apartment before picking it up.

  “Hello.” I cradle the mouthpiece beneath my chin, glancing over my shoulder. Kirk comes down the stairs.

  “Annalise.” Mutter’s voice crackles across the line, followed by a heaving sound.

  A twist of alarm starts in my stomach. “Mutter, are you there? Are you all right?”

  Kirk stops on the bottom step. His gaze finds mine. Inexplicably, I cling to it.

  More heaving, followed by muffled sobs.

  My fingers tighten around the mouthpiece. “Mutter, can you hear me?” I make my voice firm. “I need you to tell me what’s the matter. What’s going on?”

  “Your … brother …” Sobs garble her words.

  God help me, I don’t want to hear what comes next. I don’t want to … I don’t—

  “We just … received word. Horst was killed in action.”

  December 9, 1942

  Berlin

  There is no memorial service for Horst Rudolf Brandt. Only a black cross next to his name in the newspaper serves to mark his death. Vater doesn’t return from the front, nor does he do anything other than pen a letter to his wife: Our son died honorably for a glorious cause. His death should make us proud and urge us onward in the work of obliterating all the Fatherland’s enemies.

  I returned to Berlin to spend a week at home. Mutter scarcely leaves her room, intermittently weeping and staring out the window. Heinz has been sent away to a training camp for an elite branch of the Hitler Youth. Albert rarely speaks, attending school and Hitler Youth meetings as if in a daze, returning home and spending hours sitting on the upstairs landing, arms folded, eyes too serious for a boy so young. Loss is hard to reckon with at his age. At any age, even in a world where death announcements fill newspapers in endless lines of stark type. Each line, a life.

  Snow spits upon Berlin with pelting flakes. I drift through the house, a boat unmoored, trying to coax Mutter into rallying, cooking her favorites, suggesting we visit friends, brushing her tangled hair and plaiting it into her usual upswept braids.

  It’s early morning, barely six, and I’m taking the train back to Munich today. I can’t deny my relief. I sit upright in bed, propped against pillows, arms hugged around my knees. Blackout curtains wrap the room in darkness.

  I miss my brother. Not the man he’s been these past years, hardened under Vater’s tutelage, breathing party ideology like air. Nein. That man has been dead to me a long time, his life leached out as “Das Lied der Deutschen” played.

  I miss the big brother who called me Lisi and lifted me atop his wide shoulders so I could touch the sparkly star on top of our Christmas tree.

  The freckles on his nose. His high laughter as he ran through the park with his new kite, me just behind, our steps faster and faster until the kite sailed airborne on the autumn wind. We both cheered. Those cheers, so full of innocent jubilance, echo in my ears even now.

  They were to be the last.

  Four months later, our laughter was replaced with a roar of Sieg Heils as Hitler became chancellor. Horst became obsessed with Germany’s rising future and his place in it. There were no more kites, smiles, or Christmas-tree moments.

  It’s too late now. My brother’s laughter is silenced.

  Tears slide down my cheeks in the darkness, a long-held back release. I’m not like Sophie, with her loving family, nor Kirk with his. Alex has parents who adore him, and Christl’s wife and children look at him as if his were the hands that hung the moon.

  I’m alone. Empty, aching. Alone.

  “God goes with us everywhere.”

  Oh, Kirk. I clamp my hand to my mouth, hot tightness knotting my throat. I wish I had faith like my friends. All of them seem to possess a steadfast strength outside themselves, to have, in spite of everything, hope.

  During summer break, I paged through the Bible, my mind awakened to stories I’d never heard. While I read, I could never eliminate Vater’s scoffing voice.

  “The Bible is full of lies. God? There is none.”

  Then I remembered Kirk’s letters.

  God waits for us with arms outstretched. It’s up to us to run into them and choose to remain there, through joys and hardships alike. His is a love great enough to encompass this life and the one to come. There’s a future far outlasting earth in heaven, and it is free and beautiful and without pain.

  Life is a fraying thread that could snap at any moment. I honestly don’t know if this time next year I’ll be alive. My brother’s death—strong, invincible Horst—has painted this reality on a canvas of vivid color. Air raids decimate German cities weekly, leaving loss and destruction in their wake.

  Loss. Always, so much loss.


  I wish I felt something, a heavenly touch to affirm Kirk’s words. Right now, though, I’m just broken and scared, facing an unknown future.

  I don’t want to be alone anymore. But how can I escape it? We are born, we live, and we die alone. Thus, I’ve always believed, Vater’s words a reinforcing echo.

  There has to be more. Or else, what is the purpose in this vain, mad thing called life? We thirst for happiness, yet so often are handed misery. If there’s nothing beyond this earth, then what’s the point in going on?

  There is none.

  What is faith, anyway? An emotion, a belief, a combination of the two? I wish I knew, but I don’t. All I know is I don’t want to live like this anymore, my own strength the only thing holding me up, the span of this life the measure of my existence.

  With shaking fingers I form the sign of the cross. Somehow, though I’m not Catholic, it seems right to do in the moment.

  “God.” My voice is choked, wrested from the raw, desperate places inside. “If You’re really there …” A sob shudders out. “I want to belong to You. I … don’t want to be alone anymore. I’m sorry I’ve never believed in You. Please … save me …”

  When I open my eyes, I draw in a long breath. Though I’m still bone-weary, the tension in my chest has lessened for the first time since Mutter’s telephone call. Perhaps that in and of itself is a miracle.

  I wash and dress, pick up my suitcase, and leave my bedroom. The house is cold and empty, my steps an echo. I pass my brothers’ rooms, a row of three closed doors. Like their lives, cut off from mine.

  I stop beside my parents’ door and turn the knob. It creaks softly open.

  Mutter sits by the window, clad in a nightdress and shawl, bare feet scarcely touching the floor. Both garments seem to swallow her, as if loss stole her flesh, along with her will. She stares out onto the street, the blackout curtain pulled away. The sky is pewter.

  “Mutter.” I set down my suitcase. “It’s Annalise.” I kneel beside her chair.

  She turns, looking at me with eyes that seem a void in her pale face. “Annalise.” The word emerges reedy from her cracked lips.

  I shouldn’t leave. But I can’t bear to stay, to leave our work with the leaflets and the university behind. It will only be for a few more months anyway. Then the winter semester will end, signaling the close of my time in Munich, and I’ll … what, return home for good? I don’t know yet, but I’ll find some way to care for Mutter regardless. In the meantime, our housekeeper is a capable woman, kind even. She can be trusted to care for Mutter in my absence.

  “I’m leaving today.” I try for an encouraging smile. “I have to go back to Munich to finish school.”

  She nods, but I’m not sure she really hears me.

  “Will you be all right?”

  Another nod.

  “It won’t be much longer. In a few months, I’ll be home. I promise.” I smile again. “We can go visit Tante Grete in the country. Would you like that?”

  No response.

  “You can call me anytime.” I pull her into an embrace. As if my touch awakens something inside her, she puts her arms around me, hugging me with a strength that belies her brittle exterior. In that moment, she’s my mutti again. Mutti, whose laughter used to echo through our little apartment before Vater’s striving moved us away, who wiped my forehead with a cool cloth when I was feverish, whispering soothing words, and who, every day before I left for school, would always wrap me in a hug before I hurried out the door.

  I pull away and look into her eyes, framing the side of her face with one hand. A spark flickers through her gaze.

  “I love you.” I press a kiss to her cheek. Her skin is like tissue paper. She doesn’t respond.

  I stand and turn toward the door, picking up my suitcase. There, I pause.

  Framed by the gray light of dawn, gaze toward the window again, she looks old, tired, and very alone.

  Kirk

  December 11, 1942

  Munich

  Wrapped in coats and scarves, boots slipping on the slick cobblestones, Annalise and I walk toward her apartment, the sky a canvas of star-studded pitch. Annalise has her hands in her coat pockets, and she keeps her gaze on the frost-glossed cobblestones as if unsure of her footing.

  I have so many questions I want to ask about her time in Berlin, her brother’s loss and how she is bearing up beneath it, but broaching them doesn’t seem right. So I wait and walk beside her, our shoulders almost brushing, my hand at the ready to steady her if she slips.

  We reach an intersection just as a car drives past, headlights off. Our steps pause and my gaze follows the car. One can never be too cautious when traveling on foot in these days of blackout and frequent accidents.

  “Look.”

  I turn. Annalise points at the sky, head tipped back.

  “The stars. Look at them.”

  I look into the sky, cold air tingling my cheeks, the warmth of her shoulder brushing mine. Countless pinpricks of light, some brighter than others, are scattered across the darkness like little diamond chips. “Beautiful, aren’t they?”

  “We all see the same stars.” Her words are so soft I almost don’t catch them.

  “What?”

  She meets my eyes, face half shadowed. “We all see the same stars. It doesn’t matter whether we’re a servant of the Reich or an enemy, Jewish or Gentile. All of us look up at the same night sky and see the same stars.”

  “God’s view of equality, right there.”

  “No matter how wrong the world is or how hard it is to live in it, if it’s a clear night, we know there will be stars.” She tilts her head. “Maybe that’s faith. Knowing that no matter how dark it seems, God’s light is there, even if we can’t always see it.”

  Her words give me pause, but in a good way. She’s spoken of faith in the months since summer vacation, but never with this note in her voice. Almost … peaceful.

  Unable to resist, I slip an arm around her shoulders, and we continue down the street. “That doesn’t sound like the Annalise I used to know.”

  She nods. “I know. Something’s changed. Nein, not something.” She leans closer into my side as we walk. “Everything. God is real, Kirk. He’s real, and I believe in Him. I’ve given my life to Him.” Her eyes shine as she looks up at me.

  “What? Annalise …” My words trip over each other. “That’s … that’s the best news I’ve had in a very, very long time.” A grin stretches my cheeks, matching the one on her lips. “How did it happen?”

  “It started over the summer, with your letters.” She laughs. “The whole thing is practically your fault.” Then her expression turns serious. “I was miserable in Berlin. The family I used to have, even the family I thought I had six months ago, they’re gone. Not just my brother, but all of them. I was lonely and scared and I thought a lot about life. The point of it all. I’ve been reading the Bible, and well, it has to be true. If it isn’t, then there’s no purpose in life at all. And I’ve never believed that.” She lifts her face toward the sky as we walk. “If there’s evil, there has to be good, somewhere. If there’s hatred, there has to be love. If not from mortals, than surely from God.”

  I nod, her words sinking deep inside, overwhelmed by God’s goodness. I’ve prayed for her salvation but knew that to push her beyond our letters and natural, not forced conversations, would only drive her away.

  “There couldn’t be a greater form of it than Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.” I meet her gaze. “My vater always says it’s ‘love too pure for human language to describe, a gift that begs to be encompassed by all mankind.’”

  We reach her apartment and climb the steps. Her back pressed against the door, she faces me, cheeks pink with cold, her eyes sparkling like stars themselves. “I’d like to meet your vater.”

  “He’d like to meet you too.” I smile, her sweet nearness warming me until I no longer notice the cold, the street around us, or anything except the woman before me.

&nbs
p; Her eyes widen. “You really think so?”

  “I know he would. He’s said so.”

  She gasps. “You told him about me?”

  I shrug, grinning. “How could I help but tell him about someone as wonderful as you?”

  She looks down, lips pressed together as if to hide a smile. “If I had a family like yours, I’d tell them about you too.” Her words are little more than a breath, all but stealing my restraint. A moment of her lips against mine. One soft, glorious kiss.

  But tonight isn’t the right time. Not on the steps of her apartment in the bitter night air, when any stranger could walk by. I would never kiss her without her consent, and I could not ask for it unless I followed with the right words. I love you. Will you marry me?

  More than anything, I want to say them.

  Yet I do not.

  Reluctantly, I take a step back, putting distance between us, cold dousing me that has nothing to do with temperature. I make myself smile. “Well, I suppose I should say good night then.”

  A look of confusion, almost of disappointment, dawns on her features. “Good night,” she says quietly, then turns and fumbles with the door.

  I walk away, steps quick, head lowered against the cold. My steps have to be quick. If I delay, I might do something crazy. Like turn around, bound up the steps, pound on the door until she opens it, take her in my arms, and kiss her as hungrily as I’ve ached to do. Just the mental image is enough to make me walk faster.

  In the opposite direction.

  I should pray for her as she begins this new journey of faith, and I will. Both for her and for myself.

  Because with the tension of our work digging below the surface of every move I make, the endless uncertainty of the war, and the near pain it is to be close to her and then leave her, I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to do as I’ve just done and walk away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Sophie

  December 14, 1942

  Munich

  COAT BUTTONED TIGHT, HANDS shoved in my pockets, I walk briskly toward Lindwurmstraße. It’s been snowing on and off all morning. A layer of dirty gray coats everything—the street, the buildings, the sky.