Liberated

by Steve Anderson

  “What are you doing here?” he said.

  “Public Safety, sir. Reconning the black market.”

  The major pursed his lips, his eyes leaky and pink-rimmed. “Ah, yes. Of course you are.”

  In that moment, I had realized the major could easily conclude I suspected him of things far worse than any black market. The man might even infer that I was reconning for Colonel Spanner. Which might have been yet another reason why the major had offered me a part in his racket—to gauge how easily I could be bought off. Call me guarded, call me wary, but I had to consider every angle.

  That afternoon I navigated the last reaches of Heimgau’s medieval wall. It led me to the train tracks leading away from Old Town, out behind castle hill. Here stood Heimgau’s once precious garden plots, each with a garden hut like a miniature log cabin. Most plots were squares of barren dirt, the huts moldy and gray. 10A was looking much the same, though I noticed, as I neared, that its hut had cleaner, browner wood. The windows were boarded up. A short iron fence lined the plot. I lifted the gate latch, took five steps up the path. At the small green door, I knocked three times, hard. I heard latches unlocking and hoped they were latches, but I’d brought my Colt just in case. The door opened a crack and stayed that way, all dark. I unfastened my holster, raised my voice: “On orders of the United States Military Government, open up and identify.”

  “Why should I?” Katarina Buchholz asked from the dark.

  She wanted to put on another show, apparently. I could play along. “Because I say so. Now open wide or I’ll kick my way in.”

  “I have a choice?”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Send your men away first,” she said, louder. “Now.”

  It had stopped sounding like a show. She was scared I had GIs watching, ready to charge the place. “Look. It’s just me, I promise. There’s no one to wave off. Just me.” She said nothing. I stared into the darkness. “Listen to me, very carefully. All right? I saw your father. Your brother. What happened to them.”

  The door opened halfway. Half her face emerged, just the contours.

  “But, you came after,” she said. “You weren’t there during that … incident. This is what I hear.”

  “You heard right.”

  The door opened. I placed a foot in the single room and a musty smell like old attic filled my nose. The light was dim. On a table stood binoculars and a gas lamp, which illuminated a high rocking chair and a small bench painted with Alpine flowers. On the table was also a photo frame, face down.

  The room filled with light. Katarina stood at the window holding a shutter board over her head as if prepared to fling it at me. In the corners I could now see suitcases and crates stacked three high and canvas sacks and boxes, some of them GI rations. She had a secret general store going in here, about what I expected. You want to find her? Follow the food, Winkl had said.

  She set the shutter against the wall. Her hair was down, in a loose ponytail. She sat on the flowery bench, crossing her legs, then placed a hand on the rocker and began rocking it, back and forth. With her other hand she ran fingers through her hair, and I could smell it—roasted almonds, fresh from the fire, all warm and sugared sweet. After weeks of facing grubby refugees, stone-faced locals and starving children I found it overpoweringly sensual, and had to look away. She said in German: “You covered for me back there. At the train station. When your major came.”

  “Sure, I covered for you. I told you. It’s just me here.”

  She cocked her head at me. “Why? You want to deal somehow? Is that what you’re doing? But if I’m to work with you, ever, I must know your loyalties are good.”

  “I’m not looking to deal. I told you, it’s about an investigation.”

  She sputtered a laugh.

  It brought a hot rush to my face. “Look, doll, you can lose the tough mug with me. I thought you’d want to hear more about your father. Your little brother. I didn’t like how I found him. All of them. And I want you to know I plan on doing something about it.”

  She stared at the table, her face hard. Maybe I was finally getting to her.

  “There was a third man with them,” I added. “A Jew, I think. Know of anyone named Abraham? Anyone your father or brother knew?”

  Her head shot up. Her eyes searched the dark corners of the room as if trying to recall.

  “No? Nothing?”

  She held up her hands. “So many Jews are named Abraham. No. I do not. Not anymore.”

  “No one knows him, no one at all. Which just makes me wonder.”

  “Me? How can I know? I also just returned.”

  “You knew of your father, brother.”

  “Only that they were killed.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Call me clever,” Katarina said, pointing her index finger at her head like it was a loaded Luger. “The war was ending. The SS were here. And now my father and brother are gone …” She turned and gazed out the window. I could see the light softening her cheeks. I could stare a while at that, could let her think all she wanted.

  She turned to me. “I wish to move into my parents’ old home. Hopefully your major hasn’t ransacked that too. Can you see to this?”

  “I don’t know. What’s the address?”

  “Cathedral Square Seventeen, second floor. Right on the square.”

  “I know the building. Nice roost. I’ll try and see that it’s secure.” I studied the room again. “I’d make sure this stuff isn’t restricted before you unload it, rationing rules are getting tighter every day—”

  “Please. This is not for me. This is not some commodity! It is for the children, for the elderly. Whoever needs it.”

  So she wasn’t just a dealer? My face flushed. “Oh. Well, I can appreciate that. I’ll have you know, it’s not all cops and robbers with me. I’m working on scoring more for them.”

  Her eyes shimmered. She shot up and stepped forward. “How? Tell me how?”

  “I helped score a heap of CRations last week, for the children. There’s that.”

  “And? What else, Captain? What else can you score?”

  “Said I’m working on it. There’s … there’s Red Cross coming. Medicine. Sulfa tablets. Small load of morphine if we’re lucky.”

  “Liar,” she said, but I’d gotten her grinning. “Not even you can get that right now. Where is it? Tell me.”

  I hadn’t meant to say it, but I’d wanted those eyes shimmering again and it had to be meds, the most impossible goods of all. “I don’t have it yet. Still, it’s coming. I put in for it, I got a source, well, not really a source really but a certain benefactor—”

  “No, no, no,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re doing it all wrong. Never reveal how much inventory you have—especially if you don’t have it yet.” She crossed arms across her chest. “Besides, you’ve been talking to von Maulendorff.”

  “Talking? Maybe I listened. But I’m not hearing.”

  “You should hear this: During the war, von Maulendorff never lifted a finger. After the assassination attempt on Hitler failed and the arrests came, the baron stood back and let old friends die. He could have vouched for them, could’ve warned them, but he only hid out in Karlsbad the rest of the war—at a spa!—right until the last man was hanging from the Nazi judges’ meat hook. Understand? It wasn’t his problem. He didn’t want to lose business.”

  “Like I said. I trust him about as much as I trust the major.”

  “He is in business with your major, correct?”

  I shrugged.

  “Yes? No? You don’t think it matters? I tell you it does. One never knows what that first trade will lead to, does one? Do you?”

  She had switched her attack yet again, and I was feeling a little punch-drunk. I backed up, feeling for the door. “Seems I’m getting nowhere here. If they’re not deaf, they’re dumb. So, anything you know, you let me know and I’ll use it.”

  “And, that’s really why you came?” she said. />
  “Yes.”

  “The only reason?”

  “Well, apparently now I’m scoring meds for you.”

  “And, that’s it?” she said, taking a step toward me.

  “Yes. No.” I stepped around her and grabbed the photo frame. I saw a lanky old man, his long face bright, yet the color of charcoal where the eyes sat. It was her father, Joachim Buchholz. I recognized him. Attached to his arm, smiling, was a black-haired woman with a wide face and high cheekbones like Katarina’s.

  She turned her back to me.

  “Your mother. I take it she’s missing, right? Maybe I can find her. Now that I know what she looks like.”

  She snatched the frame out of my hand. “I know nothing that will help you. Nothing that can change any of it. But, let’s promise each other something, shall we? We’ll promise to tell each other about any good thing, especially if it can help someone. Promise, Captain?”

  “Swell. Give me a ring when you have something.”

  She grinned again, but this grin was different—a curl at one corner of her mouth. Her tongue might as well have been in her cheek.

  “I’m no soft touch,” I said, “I told you.”

  “No, perhaps not. But I’d guess you’re relatively new at this, eh Mein Kapitän?”

  New at what? Why did everyone keep saying that? It wasn’t like the old hands had done much good with the world, had they? I ignored her and turned for the door, kept going with my back to her. Actresses didn’t like to be ignored, I knew that much.

  I reached the door. But she was at my heels.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll learn this,” she continued.

  I stomped out. I found the path.

  “Thank you for my home back, Captain!” she yelled after me. “Give me a ring when you have something!”

  I snagged my belt on the gate latch, which made my Colt flip out of my unclasped holster and bounce into the dirt. “Scheisse.” I snatched up the gun and re-holstered it, dirt and all. Pushed through the gate, saying nothing. Don’t look back.

  “And do not worry too much! You will get the hang of it!”

  Nine

  ALMOST CURFEW, NEAR DARK. I kept peering over my shoulder as I crossed Old Town, lurking in doorways, listening to the alleys I passed. It wasn’t these verboten streets that worried me. Sergeant Horton and his team of CIC GIs had left town, and Major Membre now had us using Yugoslav Displaced Persons of dubious origin as curfew guards. He even had them wearing our OD uniforms. I had to suspect most were in the major’s pocket.

  I found the yellow-washed, eighteenth century building with its rows of ornately framed windows overlooking Cathedral Square. Tucked down deep in my briefcase were two packets of sulfa tablets, two vials of morphine and a syringe.

  It had been a few days since Katarina Buchholz had led me to her stocked garden hut, more days in which I made little ground in my investigation, hampered as I was by constantly picking up Major Membre’s slack in the face of each new county crisis. Then, just this morning, a Red Cross truck had rolled into town with medications and food parcels, just as Colonel Spanner had promised that afternoon in the courthouse. After the truck unloaded, I offered our detachment’s young medical clerk all manner of booty for two vials. The fellow could have anything in my villa, including the baron’s cart with the expensive Meissen porcelain. But the clerk had more than enough booty. He only made me promise my grab was for a good cause. So I promised him. We were alone in the hospital storage room, whispering. “I need to hear that,” the clerk had told me, “because I don’t know how much of these meds will make it to the patients.”

  “Who’s it go to? The major?”

  “Who the heck else, Captain?”

  “He sells it? Taking it himself?”

  “Runs the gamut, I figure.”

  Katarina’s building once housed some of Heimgau’s finest citizens. Now it sheltered refugees of all stripes and a few headstrong yet cooperative Heimgauers, sometimes ten or more people to one room. I realized I didn’t know which floor so I sat on the foyer steps, lit a Lucky and let the vapors of Virginia tobacco curl around the banister and drift up the stairs.

  I heard footsteps. They bounded down the stairs. The refugee girl Little Marta jumped to a stop before me. A wiry thing, no more than eight years old, she had on a tattered pullover and clutched a worn longhaired teddy bear missing one arm and an ear. “Cigarette?” she peeped in German, “Or perhaps it’s chocolate you have.”

  I winked. “Little Marta, right? That’s a nice name: Märtachen.”

  “Yes, sounds like Märchen, no? A fairy tale.” Little Marta frowned at her comment; no fairy tales around here, her frown was saying.

  She told me the Buchholz flat was on the fourth floor. I started up the steps but had to stop. Little Marta had squared her narrow shoulders, like a toy soldier. I smiled but she only stared back, her small gaunt face hard and defiant. I reached to pat her teddy bear. She pulled back, glaring at me.

  “Whoa. All right. I just wanted to give him a present. That all right?”

  “It’s a she. The name is Sally.”

  “Right, Sally. Here, Sally …”

  I pulled two Hershey’s and my pack of Luckies from my pockets. Keeping herself between me and Sally, Little Marta bent her other arm to take the goods. I set them in her little cradle of an arm.

  “Sally says, ‘thank you, sir’.”

  On the fourth floor I found a door with a tarnished brass plaque reading “Familie Buchholz.” I knocked. The door flew open, Katarina. I held up my briefcase.

  Katarina rolled her eyes. “It’s about time you came.”

  “I didn’t know I had an appointment.”

  Katarina pulled me inside whispering, “Voice down.” She led me through the dark room, forcing me to step over dark figures sleeping on the floor. The air heavy and pungent. I looked back to see Little Marta following, tiptoeing around the people without looking as if she could see in the dark. We reached another room, the air just as stifling. One of the dark figures rose to hug and hold Little Marta as Katarina and I passed on through.

  “Where is it?” Katarina said.

  “Where’s what?”

  “The medicines.”

  “Ah. I got sulfas, and some morphine, but small amounts only. I couldn’t get penicillin, too rare, but I got a syringe. I feel like some dope fiend dealer, sneaking around like this.”

  Katarina released a curt laugh. “We’ll only need that morphine.”

  She rushed me through a kitchen, down a hall and into a bedroom. The odor turned more sour than stifling here. On the bed, next to an open window, lay a woman naked except for long white underpants like bloomers and a towel across her breasts. Her skin was so white it glowed blue in the moonlight. Her thin muscles stretched like strings. Wads of blood-soaked linen filled a small pot at her side, and on a night table stood a bottle of clear brandy. Katarina closed the door. The woman opened her eyes and nodded, and Katarina unclasped my briefcase. She found the morphine vial and syringe and readied them.

  “Your mother? That’s your mother.”

  Katarina nodded. “It’s worse at night, much worse the last couple days.” She slid the needle into a blue vein, which forced me to look away. Her mother groaned, her eyes shut.

  Katarina frowned at the syringe, now empty. “It’s Tuberkulose,” she whispered.

  “Tuberculosis? She has TB?”

  “Yes. I’m afraid your penicillin won’t help her, in any case.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Katarina gave half a shrug. “I just want her to die comfortably now.”

  “Die?”

  Katarina gave me a curious look, as if I’d just guessed her favorite color. “Of course. It won’t be long.”

  “What about the hospital? It’s reopened. We reopened it.”

  Katarina shook her head. “I will have nothing to do with your occupation hospital.”

  What could I say to that? She had returned home to find h
alf her family dead, her mother dying, and a raving Ami major in charge of the whole mess. No wonder she was so guarded.

  “So that’s how you knew. Your mother knew they were dead.”

  Katarina nodded. I watched her stroke her mother’s forehead. Her mother moaned and rolled over, facing the brandy. Katarina poured her mother a glass, tipped it to her mouth, whispered in her ear and her mother rocked, and rocked, and then stopped, heaving a great sigh. Katarina pulled the duvet to her mother’s shoulders. She grabbed the bottle. “Now what about you? You got any cigarettes, Joe?”

  Katarina led me into the kitchen, her hand warmer from handling her mother. In the corner stood a pantry cabinet on wheels, which I helped her push aside. Concealed behind was a narrow old door. Stairs rose up to a ceiling door, which delivered us onto a compact roof courtyard walled in on all sides. In the middle stood a waist-high grill made of stones. “Have a seat,” she said, nodding at the red corduroy sofa along one wall. She made the fire and sat next to me on the sofa. “It does grow quite warm up here,” she said in English, “when the fire burns.” She pointed a finger and moved it in a circle. “See? The thick walls around us keep it so.” Loosening her overcoat, she revealed a delicate white blouse.

  I was feeling a little warm, too. I tried a joke to cool me down. “Haven’t you heard the directives? The lighting of bonfires is restricted.”

  She ignored it. “I love it here. Few of the refugees know of this. Sometimes I sleep here.”

  I could sleep here, I was thinking. I had to get a hold of myself. I sat up straight. “How long has your mother been ill?”

  “One year? It’s become worse now. It’s not only the lungs; she’s developed a need for morphine. It makes the pain leave her. All the pain.”

  “How does she get morphine? How do you get morphine?”

  “How do I? How do you?” Katarina pulled two glasses from under the sofa and stood them on a crate before us. “In any case, when my mother passes? I’m going back to Munich.”