Setting a bowl of creamed wheat down before Oskar, Edith watched his features soften. A slow, wistful smile moved the corners of his mustache, and for a moment, he looked far away. Then, placing his hands on the top of Sofia’s head, he leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “Of course you can. Of course,” he said. “You get the best mouse eater in the bunch and bring it here, and we will call it Munter.”
“Oooh, griessbrei!” cried Rosie, eyeing the hot creamed wheat.
“With raspberry coulis. The blackberries aren’t ripe enough yet,” Edith apologized. She knew Oskar loved blackberries. After serving everyone, she took her own seat and picked up her spoon. There were murmurs of appreciation from both sides of the table as the raspberries mixed with the warmed wheat on everyone’s tongues.
Marina was the first to break the rapturous silence. “So the last we heard, Captain Rodemann had left Meerfeld. Please tell me he’s been reassigned elsewhere and is marching his troops away as we speak.”
Oskar shook his head slowly. “For your sake, Marina, I wish I could tell you that. But there has been a new development that requires Captain Rodemann and his troops to return to the vicinity, at least for a day or two.” Oskar paused. All eyes turned to him. He met the collective gaze, but he was waiting a long time to speak, Edith thought.
“The Führer is coming for a visit,” Oskar said.
It felt to Edith as if the air had been sucked out of the room all at once. She gasped. “What? Here? To Blumental? Why on earth would he come here?”
“Technically, he is visiting Blumental to see his good friend, the composer Klaus Weber.” Klaus Weber. Famed recluse of Blumental. Edith hated Weber’s music. All of his compositions were loud and bombastic, but their martial, noisily Teutonic nature had been adopted by the Third Reich as inspirational marching songs. Toward the man himself Edith had no particular feelings of any kind, for he made himself as scarce as possible. The Weber estate was situated south of the lakeshore path into Blumental, the huge property shielded from public curiosity by dense hedges. Herr Weber himself was notoriously monastic.
“Apparently, Herr Weber has just completed a new march,” Oskar continued. “He wants to dedicate it to the Führer in a private performance at his home. But fear not, only I must attend.” Edith relaxed slightly. A private performance on the Weber estate was perhaps tolerable, especially if she didn’t have to go. Her peace did not last long. “However,” Oskar said, watching her carefully, “the Führer told me yesterday that, since he was going to be in the neighborhood, he would like to meet all of you. He is going to join us at our house for tea.”
“Tea?!” Edith and Marina cried out simultaneously.
“I told him we would be greatly honored to serve him.”
Edith closed her eyes and pressed on the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger, trying to center herself in a sudden whirl of vertigo. The Führer. That dark man with the dark hair and dark eyes. Edith’s instinctive reaction to him, when she first saw him in Berlin—thankfully from a great distance—had been to shrink away, to keep him from seeing her. Somehow, long before Kristallnacht and his policies of racial oppression, she had sensed the danger he posed to the world order. His black brows and upturned mustache (this was before he trimmed it) reminded her of that terrorizing tailor in the children’s book Struwwelpeter, the one who ran after thumb-sucking children with giant shears and cut their thumbs off.
Now the Führer was coming here. To this house, her home. The home that she and Oskar had created and populated with children and grandchildren. The home whose threshold had been crossed only by friends. The home that she had enclosed in beauty, deliberately planting layer upon layer of blooming plants and scented flowers around it, so that everyone inside, looking out, would be reminded how wondrous the world was. Or how wondrous it could be, if carefully tended.
And Oskar proposed to allow the Führer into this sanctuary. The Führer, a man whose philosophy was based on destruction and conquest, who proclaimed to love beauty but knew nothing about it. Because beauty was—wasn’t it?—based on truth, and he lived in lies.
“When?” Marina asked.
“Tomorrow afternoon.”
Edith didn’t notice Erich standing up. His griessbrei was untouched. Rosie quickly reached for his bowl and continued shoveling spoonfuls of the sweet wheat porridge into her mouth.
“I’m so sorry, Edith,” Erich said, placing his napkin on the table. “If the Führer is arriving tomorrow, people have no doubt been trying to reach me to arrange security, and I have not been to the inn to pick up my messages all morning. Would you forgive me for making a premature departure?” He walked over to Edith, took her hand, and kissed it. “Sir,” he added with a nod to Oskar.
Edith was still reeling from Oskar’s announcement, wondering desperately if there was any way to rescind the invitation. Her mouth felt strangely unresponsive, her tongue thick and sluggish. She finally managed to say, “Dear Erich,” and patted his hand.
“I’ll walk you out.” Marina pushed her chair back. “Mutti, you stay and talk your husband out of this madness.”
The Breckenmüllers exchanged a knowing look. Karl Breckenmüller patted his belly and sighed. “Well, if you feed the Führer as well as you’ve fed me, you might have to cart him over to the Weber place afterward. This meal has quite done me in. I’m not sure I can get up anymore.” Edith heard Oskar’s strained laugh, but she refused to join. She knew he was hoping to lighten the atmosphere, but its heaviness was his own doing. He should feel her anger, she thought. He should bear the weight of what he had told them. Fortunately for Oskar, Rosie was still at the table. Her single-minded pursuit of every last grain of raspberry-flavored wheat had led her finally to hold her bowl up to her face and lick the inside of it. The persistent clanking of her teeth against china caught Myra Breckenmüller’s attention.
“Rosie,” she called, leaning over the table and tapping her forefinger on the wood in front of the little girl. Her voice held no tone of recrimination, just amusement. Rosie lowered the bowl from her face. A thin pink crust of griessbrei and coulis circled her mouth and dotted her nose, and her hair, hands, and clothing were all caked with patches of dried grain. Oskar’s laugh now was deep and genuine, and, looking at Rosie, even Edith had to smile.
“Lara, would you please take Rosie and help her get washed up?” she asked. Making a face, Lara grabbed Rosie’s sticky hand and headed out of the room to the washbasin beyond the kitchen. Seeing her sisters depart, Sofia, who had remained silent all this time, leaped to her feet. She turned her big blue eyes to Edith and pleaded, “Can I go to Irene’s?”
“Yes, you may go.”
“And . . . ?”
“And since I don’t believe in contradicting your opa’s promises, even if he doesn’t consult me about them”—Edith gave Oskar a glare—“you may choose a kitten.” Sofia ran to Edith and hugged her, then went to Oskar and kissed him on the cheek. She disappeared out the porch door.
“We should be going too,” Myra said, standing up with Karl. “But let me help you first with the dishes, Edith. We can catch up on gossip.”
“Oh, no need.” It was rare that Edith turned down an opportunity to chat with Myra, but she felt too overwhelmed at the moment to engage with anyone. She needed to process what was going to happen in the next twenty-four hours and how she would manage it with grace rather than resentment. And she needed to talk to Oskar. “You take care of the indigestion that Karl looks like he’s having.” Edith walked her friends out to the foyer. Oskar followed, keeping his distance. At the front door, Edith stopped and kissed her friend on both cheeks. “I’ll stop by later, perhaps.”
“Do,” Myra said, ushering Karl out the door. “Please do. I can help you plan tomorrow, if you need help.” Edith nodded. She stood on the threshold and watched the Breckenmüllers walk hand in hand over to their house. Myra was a lucky woman. Karl was a sweet man, and straightforward. There was nothing hidden or complicated abou
t a fisherman.
When they disappeared from view, Edith closed the front door. “Oskar, we need to discuss this.” But Oskar had gone.
– Seventeen –
Erich Wolf berated himself for not taking the field telegraph. When he had gone back to Schwanfeld this morning to arrange for his broken-down car to be hauled to the military depot in Friedrichshafen, he had considered pulling the telegraph kit out of the trunk. But he had left it where it was, thinking he wouldn’t need it in the next day or two. Now he was unprepared. Shortsightedness, he thought. He should have known better.
Oskar and Edith had a telephone in their home, but Erich couldn’t use it without raising all sorts of questions. Nor would it have felt right to send this telegram from Oskar’s home. His only way to communicate with Gottfried Schrumm was to send a telegram from the post office. He would have to trust the postmistress to be discreet. Hopefully the Führer’s impending visit would occasion a flurry of telegrams to and from Berlin, and his wouldn’t attract attention.
At least he would be able to see Marina again later. He had hoped to spend the entire afternoon with her, but when Oskar announced that the Führer would be visiting the next day, Erich realized that an opportunity he couldn’t ignore was presenting itself, and he had to notify Berlin as soon as possible. Before he left the house, he asked Marina to meet him in the garden after the girls were in bed. She understood that he had pressing business now. “Go. Do what needs to be done,” she said. Little did she understand the true meaning of those words.
Until now, the plan had been almost entirely theoretical, but he was about to take the first step to actualize it. The agitation he felt was familiar. He had experienced it countless times during cavalry missions in the first war: overlooking the enemy’s battalion, his horse, Loki, nervously picking up first one foot, then the other, poised to fly the instant their commander gave the order. Now too Erich felt poised to fly, like a hawk perched on a falconer’s glove, quivering in anticipation of the quick upward thrust of the gauntlet that would send it into motion. But now he didn’t have a horse to soothe him. He was alone in this venture.
His heavy boots crunched loudly on the gravel-strewn dirt of the lake footpath, sending the more skittish waterbirds up into the air. Thickets of aquatic reed alternated with small pebbled beaches all along the lakeshore, up to the Weber estate, where the shoreline was arrested by a five-foot concrete wall. It was an incongruous boundary in a town whose property lines were usually marked by hollyhock rows and lightweight crumbling fences. At the time of its construction, twenty years earlier, some pockets of Blumental citizens had grumbled, in the name of urban aesthetic integrity. Weber had quieted all opposition with a timely offer to finance the restoration of the Münster bell tower, which was on the verge of collapse.
Passing by the iron gate to the front driveway, Erich stopped to peer inside the grounds. A squadron of tall, closely planted hornbeams lined the long drive up to the Weber house and effectively reduced the view of the estate to what lay between them, which in this case was little more than tamped-down dirt. Erich hadn’t expected to see more, and he didn’t need to. This wasn’t a reconnaissance mission. He would have time to survey the grounds tomorrow afternoon. He felt a measure of relief. Finally, months of planning were about to culminate in one decisive, tangible action. He grimaced ever so slightly at the thought of how the world might change in the next week, and at the idea that he might have a hand in that change.
The man his father had raised him to be wouldn’t have contemplated the role Erich was about to play. That younger, prewar boy had watched with awe and reverence as his father polished the medal on the mantelpiece every Sunday: the cherished Blue Max, four golden eagles perched between the arms of a blue Maltese cross. That boy had enlisted in the army, eager to follow the path of heroism and glory blazed by his father almost half a century earlier in the Franco-Prussian War, which created a unified country out of a handful of bickering states. Through ritual and behavior, Erich’s parents instilled in him everything they believed in. Honor for the family name, for example, was located in the black leather Bible and its rote recitation before Sunday lunch. Reverence for family and ancestors hung in every word his father read from that heavy tome, its flyleaf inscribed with the names of generations of Wolfs—their births, baptisms, marriages, deaths—scrolling through the centuries in painstakingly beautiful ink scripts. That volume was permeated with the glory of Martin Luther and Carl Hildebrand von Canstein, who brought the word of God to the German people. The significance of the fact that, of all the languages in the world, God’s word should first be translated into German was not lost on Erich’s father.
His mother too did her part in showing him the beauty of his native tongue, lulling Erich to sleep every night with her soft soprano. Through his mother’s voice, the music of Schiller gently swept through Erich’s darkened room: O schlinge dich, du sanfte Quelle / Ein breiter Strom um uns herum / Und drohend mit empörter Welle / Verteidige dies Heiligtum.
Armed with this conviction in the strength and grandeur of his culture, Erich had entered the German army in time for the first great war. When he met Oskar Eberhardt, his sense of devotion to his country was still unbounded and unwavering. Over the next two muddy, bloody years, Oskar taught the young soldier a supplementary but indispensable principle: the unquestioning allegiance of a soldier to his commander. Years later, when Erich entered the Führer’s General Staff and took the oath of loyalty, he believed wholeheartedly in the military tenet of devotion to the commander in chief, absolute obedience to orders. He had, for many years, no reason to doubt that axiom.
Until the invasion of Poland. After conquering Warsaw to help satisfy the Führer’s insatiable appetite for territory, the Twenty-Fifth Panzer Division was ordered to head east to secure the outlying towns and head off the Soviet army marching westward. Erich was detailed from the Führer’s General Staff to support the army’s Nineteenth Division, which remained critical in Warsaw. Their duty was to maintain order before the arrival of the einsatzgruppen, elite security forces being trained for occupation. Erich understood the ultimate military mission in Poland to be annexation. He did not then comprehend that the Führer’s real purpose was to raze the entire Polish civilization.
Stuck in Warsaw, Erich chafed at his assignment. He wanted to be in charge of the military action to the east. Not because he enjoyed the task of overpowering foreign citizens, but because one particular place east of Warsaw beckoned to him: Niebiosa Podlaski. Every true cavalryman knew of it. An expanse of lush meadows and dense forests, Niebiosa Podlaski was a renowned stud farm, famous for its incomparable Arabians, especially the great stallion Witrez, a grand black-and-bay male whose athleticism and beauty reportedly left onlookers speechless. The farm was tantalizingly close. It felt impossible that Erich should not see it. So, leaving Captain Rutger Moritz in charge of Warsaw one overcast afternoon, Erich ventured out to see the fabled estate.
It took two hours by car to reach the turnoff to Niebiosa Podlaski. Erich had been surprised to see dust swirling over the dirt driveway that veered from the main roadway, as if there had been recent visitors. He shut off the car’s engine and waited at the turnoff, listening, not sure what he expected to hear. The sounds that came to him once the engine no longer drowned them out almost stopped his heart.
The air was cleaved by high-pitched screams, spluttering whinnies, and agonized screeches. Horses in pain. Their cries pierced his ears and lashed his soul. Erich turned his car into the long driveway and sped past rows of dense Norway maples bleeding yellow leaves onto the ground. When he reached the long thatched residence building, he saw tracks from what must have been a fleet of jeeps and squad cars. Mounds of moist earth had been spun out of carefully tended beds and spit onto the macadam walkway, speckled with the severed heads of multicolored zinnias. Erich leaped out of his car and ran in the direction of the stables. In the five minutes it took him to get there, the screaming stopped. He ran qu
ickly up an incline of grass, desperate to move faster, though his feet kept sinking into the fertile sod. Finally he crested the hill and stood still, looking over the meadow, the horse stables, and beyond.
In every direction lay dead horses, their heads pierced by bullets, their bodies slashed open by bayonets. Soft velvety muzzles lay lifeless in patches of clover, unresponsive to the flies settling in their nostrils. Not a single majestic rib cage rose and fell. The only movement came from the insects and a light wind.
The carnage was complete, no animal spared. The senselessness of the slaughter enraged him. There was absolutely no reason to murder these magnificent creatures. There was nothing whatsoever to be gained by eliminating them. Erich slowly walked over to a silver mare whose body lay next to that of her foal. He knelt before her head and reached forward to close her eyes. He had known a few Arabian horses in the first war, had marveled at their grace and fluidity, their intelligence and vitality, their courage. But it was the eyes, he thought. Large, dark, lustrous eyes that followed every move you made, drew you in as you approached them, reached your spirit and invited it to dance. That light in hundreds of pairs of eyes had been cruelly extinguished.
There was no doubt in Erich’s mind who was responsible for this slaughter. For the first time since he’d joined the German army, he felt ashamed. There was nothing admirable about sharing a uniform with these butchers.
That was the first crack in the foundation of Erich’s loyalty. The men who had done this were men with whom he shared a country and a culture. Presumably, these men had been raised to love Goethe and Bach and had learned the same histories of Prussia and Bismarck, war and triumph. Yet they were rogues, contemptible and vile, unworthy of serving a nation that, in Erich’s mind, should champion beauty, grace, strength, and intelligence—the same qualities embodied by the senselessly murdered horses scattered before him. Erich’s subsequent report to Berlin summarizing the incident and recommending that the officers involved be stripped of their ranks was ignored completely. Later that winter, at a cocktail party in Warsaw, Erich confronted Field Marshal Brommer about the matter. Brommer looked at him in disbelief. “Erich, those were Polish horses. I’ll grant that they might have been better than the Polish people, which, as we all know, is not saying very much. But the fact remains that they were Polish. Expendable.”
The Good at Heart Page 14