Liberated

by Steve Anderson

  Out on Cathedral Square a refugee girl was eyeballing me, hunched over a bowl of what looked like roots and wild greens. People had been calling her Märtachen—Little Marta. Often Little Marta ran with a chestnut-haired woman I’d seen out calming the frazzled locals, pointing refugees the right way, giving answers from the middle of a crowd. The woman had curves to go with that hair and was a real looker. One time we made eye contact—eyes locked, more like—among the crowds outside the train station and I had started her way thinking, telling myself, a gal in the know like that might just know something, but she only tossed her shoulders and showed me her back. And then she was gone, off beyond the throng. The only one in Heimgau, it seemed, who needed absolutely nothing from us Americans. This time, though, Little Marta was alone. I smiled at her and pretended to tip an imaginary hat. The girl laughed. I strolled on. This afternoon brought out all the Heimgauers. They gathered to gossip, rode bicycles or pushed carts, and a few had cars with stinky sputtering woodburning engines bolted on the outside. A group of Fräuleins passed, flapping eyelashes, and I put a bounce in my walk.

  I walked into City Hall, passing the usual candidates and contenders waiting in the usual lines trading leads and trying out their English on each other, hoping for some of that real sway one day. All but Uli Winkl. Up on my floor, my temporary police chief was waiting alone at my office door wearing the new police uniform I had cut for him based on MG guidelines—American-style blue jacket and trousers and a simple cap to replace those warlike old jackboots, tight Imperial tunic and peaked helmet. The jacket lacked a button at the belly, nothing a little thread couldn’t fix. Still, Winkl was fidgeting with it all and pulling quite a face, and I was feeling a little like a dad who’d sent his boy to school without shoes when it should’ve felt like I’d gotten him that new baseball glove. You know how many out there would kill to be police chief? I wanted to tell him.

  I forced out a smile instead. “Just look at you. Go and turn around, that’s good. Look like a real Ami bull now—a copper.”

  “Yes, sir. If you say.”

  I let us in, dropped into the chair behind my desk, and fingered through papers in my inbox. My office was still a foreign place. On the wall opposite someone had hung an antique map of the Holy Roman Empire—on it, Heimgau was as large as Munich. I had a basic wooden clerk’s desk and standard-issue Underwood typewriter, someone’s worn Persian rug at my feet and mismatched file cabinets, one oak, one black metal. A smell like mothballs. I really had to get some summer flowers in here, brighten up the place. I cleared my throat for Winkl as the man slouched in the metal chair before my desk. I told him: “Now, about the food situation: Tell people not to worry. I’ll get some more grub here if I have to rob it. Same goes for meds. Working on that right now, matter of fact.”

  “I hope so, sir. Because we can do little about it on our end.”

  What Winkl meant was, a real mayor would be able to do more. As new Bürgermeister, the unqualified and untested Baron von Maulendorff would be little more than Major Membre’s lackey, dedicated only to his sponsor and never the people he serves. After twelve years of Nazis, Winkl knew that old drill all too well. That’s why he’d shed the police getup back then and didn’t need it now, nice new copper threads be damned. He didn’t have to say it.

  I answered anyway. “That part’s out of my hands for now. I told you. In the long run, we’ll find a new mayor.”

  “And a police chief too?”

  “Yes. If that’s what you want.”

  Winkl probably didn’t believe me any more than I believed Major Membre. This was not going to be easy today, I realized. A darker mood was setting in fast, in both of us. Winkl stared down at his hands and out the window, anything but look at me.

  I leafed through the notes on my desk. I grabbed a folder, pulled out papers and moved my pencil down a page as if checking off items. “Well, we just got this in. Really been needing it, too. It’s a full list of locals and where they are, a real help to us. There’s a few prominent locals unaccounted for. That’s where we come in, where you come in as police chief.”

  Winkl nodded but clutching his new cap with both hands.

  No turning back now. I got up, walked over to the door, looked down the empty hallway, both ways, and pressed the door shut. I sat and grasped the edges of my desk, leaning forward. “Tell me what you know, Winkl. Don’t shake your head at me. You know who those dead were. It’s the only thing you’ve kept mum about, the only thing anyone around here is mum about.”

  Winkl set the cap back on his head. He stood. He went to my door, opened it and looked down the hallway each way. Shut the door. He had been muttering all the while in words I could not know. I supposed he was speaking to his brother, Udo, long gone. He’d probably been doing this for years. Then, he sat back down. “You must understand. How can I talk about your own people?”

  “Easy. Just open your mouth.”

  “Why do you care, Captain? About us? About any of it? You alone.”

  “It’s my duty. So stop stalling.”

  Winkl sighed. He signed a crucifix. He spoke fast, getting it all out: “At the end, when the SS were still here, some Americans came. They were combat soldiers, not like you. Sir, the officer that was here then was here again the other day. He was the one in the courthouse.”

  Colonel Spanner. “Yes. It’s okay. Slow down. Go on.”

  “The SS was already here, which was frightful enough. They’d put down our local anti-Nazis, locked up the leaders who’d survived.”

  “How many?”

  “Two. I don’t know who else.”

  “Where?”

  “Up at the castle, sir.”

  This was just as Colonel Spanner had said. “And then?”

  Winkl held out his palms, shrugging.

  The bottom desk drawer held a bottle of Bushmills and two glasses. I poured a glass and pushed it across the desk. “Remember, this is just between you and me.”

  “Like you promised? On that first day.”

  “Like I promised. I want to focus on the two. Why lock them up, keep them in the castle?”

  Winkl stared at the glass of whiskey. “Some of us had rebelled. Townsfolk. I had helped out, too, but I was able to hide. Others were not.”

  “I understand that. Good for you for standing up. But then what? The two—”

  “I told you! Locked up, they were, after good civilians were butchered. So you see, that’s what you get for standing up.”

  I poured a shot and threw it back. Letting it burn. Glaring at my ceiling of yellow-stained plaster, anything but look at Winkl. That was why Heimgau was so tired. Why no one wanted to speak up for the past. You finally take that stand, look what you get. I went to the window and opened it. Out on the square, a crowd of DPs was selling brown rotting apples. I could smell them from here.

  Winkl spoke much lower, almost in a whisper. “Sir, he’s a powerful man, your major, much more powerful than you.”

  I whipped around. “What exactly do you mean by that?”

  “Well, your rank, it is lower.”

  “That’s not what you mean. Spit it out.”

  Another of Winkl’s grimaces had spread across his face, this one closer to that sorry smirk all the defeated shared among one another. “Why, you are a German, too. It’s clear to me. So it is clear to them, is it not?”

  I had a good long sigh myself. Breathing in those rotting apples’ aroma. Winkl was calling it like he saw it, and why shouldn’t he? I was the one who’d demanded it. So who was the one breaking eggs now? I stomped back over to my desk and sat. “To hell with rank. Names, where a man was born. All right? I want you to go on, Winkl. Tell me about the two, up there. Did anyone hear the torture? Did anyone see it?”

  “No. Not that I know of.”

  “Major Membre was here by then, is that right? Up at the castle, when the two were still locked up? He was here before it all ended.”

  Winkl threw back his whiskey. He nodded. He bega
n to speak, but stopped. I moved to pour him another belt. Winkl waved me off and said, “Old Herr Buchholz, he had persuaded some of our most loyal Heimgauers to take a stand. Close to him, leading us, was his son Gerd, a carefree boy.”

  “The young one. With a fuzzy mustache?”

  “He had a poor mustache, yes.” Winkl added a sad chuckle. He went on to describe the two. They matched the corpses on the road. He had slumped in his chair. “We haven’t seen their brave souls since. Just like my brother in Dachau. And I tell you, that is all I know.”

  “There was a third. From a concentration camp, I believe. Maybe he broke out at some point. Could it have been your brother Udo?”

  Winkl’s eyes widened. “Did he look like me?”

  How could I tell him about the hood? “It was hard to say. This man had lost plenty of weight. He was taller than you.”

  “Udo looked like me. He had a build like me, and he was shorter. In any case, we got a death notice years ago. Influenza.” Winkl chuckled at that, more grim than sad now.

  “I’m sorry. That was a long shot.”

  Silence found us. Somewhere out the window we could hear a baby crying, then a bell tolling. Winkl dabbed at his eyes with his handkerchief. “I don’t know if it’s the American or the Prussian in you, but it’s unrelenting the way you are.”

  “I’m not Prussian. We came from Holstein. Near Kiel.”

  “Ach, you’re a Northerner, same thing,” Winkl said.

  “Says you. Listen, I appreciate your honesty. You’re a courageous man.”

  “You mean it? Then let me be directly honest.” Now Winkl leaned into the desk, grasping at it with his thick white knuckles. “You won’t let it happen again, will you?”

  “No. You can forget that. You can try to, anyway.”

  “Then give me your word. Again. Because things are different. Because, now you know what happened.”

  “Yes. All right. You have it.”

  We drank another, on my good word.

  “I hope your word sticks. I hope so for me, and for you, dear Harry,” Winkl said, addressing me by my first name for the first time.

  The whiskey still warm in me, I shuffled the papers on my desk and stared down at one. Pretending. My so-called list of locals had been anything but. It was a standard roster of detachment personnel in quadruplicate. I was getting creative, just as Colonel Spanner had prescribed.

  “Joachim Buchholz, he was once the mayor, back in the days when I was a policeman,” Winkl was saying. He stood between his chair and the door, unsure if he could leave.

  I nodded, as if my lists already told me this. “Before you go? What about other survivors? The family of the killed, I mean. Any around?”

  “Should not your special lists tell you that?”

  “They’re, uh, incomplete.”

  Winkl had taken two steps forward, staring down at me. Nodding. It wasn’t the kind of nod that carried a smile.

  “What is it, Winkl? Don’t tell me Hitler’s alive and in town, too.”

  “God no. I’d know what to do with that crackpot Austrian.”

  “You’d like something? How about some coffee, the real stuff? No problem.”

  “Yes, but no. Not now.”

  “So, tell me.”

  “Old Joachim Buchholz also had a wife, who has gone missing.” Winkl paused, snickering. “You might want to add all this to your list.”

  “Yes, yes. I will.” I reached for my notebook and scribbled.

  “Also, there is a daughter. Gerd’s big sister. She is here now.”

  “Daughter, in town,” I said as I scribbled. “What is it? You’re still looking at me like that.”

  “You might have seen her about. Sometimes with the Displaced Person-girl, Märtachen.”

  “Maybe. What’s the name?”

  “Katarina.”

  “Last name? A married name?”

  “No, she’s not. Not anymore.” Winkl’s head had cocked at me, as if I really should know who she was, like a boy who should know a top ballplayer.

  “What? What is it?”

  “You must be careful with her,” Winkl said.

  “Sure, I will. How you mean? You know what, never mind. I’ll find out myself. Where can I find her?”

  Eight

  SIX A.M., THE NEXT MORNING. A Sunday. Months ago American bombers had swooped down on Heimgau’s train station before flying off to juicier ducks, leaving her roof with more holes than cover. Yet she was far from KO’d. Even at this hour traders, traffickers and greenhorn speculators filled the main hall, too busy dealing to be bothered by the heaps of charred bricks and twisted iron and shattered glass, the gritty dust with flies swarming around as big as bullets. This was the black market that regular civilians knew. This was about supplementing the rationing of only 1500 calories on most days—calorie levels far below those of 1940 or even 1943 when the war was raging. Blankets, silverware and coffee from town were traded for cabbage, potatoes and meats from the country and back again, a swap that sounded quaint compared to Major Membre’s fine plunder scheme but was not without its own gougers, hoodlums and bad eggs. It too was illegal, technically.

  I had come in here on my own. I wore a simple tankers’ windbreaker with no insignia and carried no sidearm. Wanton beams of dusk shined down and the din of bartering echoed as I approached the throng, moving along a field of hats—Fedoras and fake sables, faded caps, Tyroleans with feathers glowing in the light and cone-shaped Bavarian farmers’ hats tied with rope. Jackets covered satchels, cloaks shielded suitcases held together with strings and straps. A lookout eyed me, an old man with white beard and a U-shaped pipe. A peasant, in any other age but this. I showed him my upturned hands, old man lookout nodded okay, and I found a spot next to a shrapnel-scarred sign that read: DEPARTURES, FEBRUARY, 1945. TEMPORARY!

  I stood there and focused on the faces under all those hats. I knew her face. In case anyone else here needed refreshing, I had a thin German-language newspaper called the Bavarian State News, fresh off our MG presses. On the last page was a studio still of Katarina Buchholz singing with hands clutched at her heart, the photo so fetching I had to remind myself they were talking about a successful actress in Nazi Germany. The story read: “Hitler’s Movie Stars: What’s Their Fate? Here’s our own Katarina Buchholz. Is Bavaria’s high-society darling of the stage and screen one more victim of the senseless war that Hitler, his party brutes and the Prussian war machine unleashed with your blessing? Bavarians: you share the blame! …”

  I saw her, deep within the mob. She seemed to be holding four, five debates at once, calling and gesturing and twirling as if dancing. Workman’s overalls hung off her, leather gloves capped her hands and her chestnut hair was stuffed under a wool cap, but a few strands had eased out, shining as bronze. Soft dimpled chin, those high cheekbones and full lips. Talk about a looker actress. She was saving this whole sorry train station scene, like some lone smiling cherub in a dark Bosch painting of fear and misery and want. A lock of that hair had fallen over one eye. She touched a finger to the lock and lifted it back in place.

  She pushed through the crowd, coming right for me.

  She got in my face, poking at my shoulder. “Why do you follow me?” she said in English. “I’ve done nothing suspect. I know nothing. So why?”

  All the faces had turned, snickering—finally, someone was scolding an Ami officer.

  “Maybe you should lay off the lip, sister.”

  “Perhaps you should answer my question.”

  The crowd circled us, chattering away in German and Ost-Deutsch, Russian, Polish, Czech. I hadn’t expected an audience. She was in her element. I switched to German: “They say you trade here.”

  “Trade? They?” Katarina’s hands found her hips and she flashed a grin at the crowd. “I was hoping to catch a train, that is all. Yes, I truly enjoy rail travel.” All laughed. “So, what can I do for you?” she added.

  What could she do for me? She was speaking to me like I was j
ust another German. I went flush in the face. I really hadn’t thought this out. “You think I’m a soft touch,” I blurted.

  She shrugged. “Prove that you are not this.”

  A hawker stumbled our way calling her name. She pushed him away. She glared at me, waiting for an answer. Prove it how? What the hell did she want?

  I grabbed her arm, led her away far down the platform and found us a bench of cold iron out in open daylight. We sat overlooking stretches of littered, rusting tracks. Out there vagabond gimps hobbled among burnt-out rail cars.

  Katarina Buchholz had gone quiet, arms close to her sides, out of her element now. The curtain down. “So, you come alone,” she said.

  “I like to be discreet. It’s S.O.P.” What was I saying? I hated our acronyms and abbreviations, especially the army gobbledegook.

  “S.O.P.? Explain please.”

  “Uh, Standard Operating Procedure. For me it is. I didn’t want to scare you off, or anyone for that matter. People need to eat.”

  “I see. Is this too S.O.P.?”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Your sympathy.”

  “You tell me.” I placed two Luckies between us. “And let’s quit the small talk.”

  She snatched up the smokes.

  I said: “You’re the daughter of Joachim Buchholz, correct?”

  Her eyes pinched. She threw the Luckies in my lap and stood.

  I pulled her back down. “Look, I’m trying to help. All right? Just give me a chance here.”

  But something had made Katarina freeze. She pressed her fingernails into my forearm and peered over my shoulder, her eyes narrowing.

  Inside the station, Major Membre was working his way through the crowd, shouldering men out of the way and barking in broken German.

  “I’ll take care of him. Wait here.”

  She whispered: “Garden plots outside of town. Number 10A. This afternoon,” and she jumped off the platform.

  “Wait.”

  “No. And come alone,” she said and ran out across the tracks, slipping past the unaware gimps and vanishing beyond the rail car carcasses.

  I pushed back through the crowd and found Major Membre buying, for a few Pall Malls, what looked like a fake Fabergé egg. He had a runny nose that really needed wiping. He kept yawning. I stood next to him. It took him a good minute to notice me there, and he didn’t so much as start.