by Bodie Thoene
“Legends,” she scoffed. “We would be better off to have Othello standing at stud right now, passing on some of his legendary qualities to his offspring.”
The colt found the faucet and latched on with an enthusiasm that made the mare stamp her rear hoof three times.
“Starbright has taken to motherhood,” said the old man. “She was such a flighty thing. It always settles them.” He did not look at Katrina as he spoke. “It will be good for Horst to see her and the colt. It will cheer him.”
“He is not coming home for Christmas.” She raised her chin regally, as if expecting an argument.
“That is a shame. I would have liked for him to see this one.”
“You are too kind, considering.”
“Considering?”
“What he is part of.”
Brezinski pushed his cap back on his head. “Horst is like Othello, Katrina. Have you not noticed?”
“I have noticed all right. I have asked him to leave me, to gallop off and fight his war, even though he does not know what he is fighting for.”
Brezinski appeared to contemplate her bitterness before he replied, “He is fighting because he must fight.”
“For the Nazis?”
“For us, perhaps.”
“You are a Jew. How can you say such a thing?”
He gestured broadly and turned his eyes upward at the sound of children’s footsteps. “Your husband is a Wehrmacht hero, Katrina. His loyalty is unquestioned. Though the Nazis do not have his heart, they have his oath as a soldier. And as long as he continues to fight well for the Fatherland? Well then, we might remain relatively safe. If there is any safety for a Jew in Germany, it is only that he might be useful in the service of a German hero.”
She blinked at him in astonishment. “But, Brezinski . . .”
He turned his gaze on her. “Your brother-in-law? Kurt Hulse? His plane down in Belgium? Lucky fellow. Your sister and parents are in Switzerland. You think the Gestapo is not watching you now?”
“How do you know this?”
“Everyone from the kitchen to the stable knows it. The little girls whisper about it. The nuns pray. Are you leaving the Reich as well?”
She frowned at the back of the colt. “I had no plans to leave.”
“Why?”
“This place . . . all of you.”
“You are fighting in your own way then, instead of running. If you leave us, you know they will come for us.”
“Yes.”
“And if Horst is disloyal to his oath?”
Her eyes narrowed. “He is not fighting for us. He is fighting because he loves it.”
“Not every man in the Wehrmacht is evil, Katrina. You know the Nazi law. If one family member commits a crime, all are punished.” He took her hand. It was ice-cold. “So now the only honest men left in Germany are in concentration camps. Holy places, those prisons. Full of saints and martyrs. Everyone else? Hostages, true fanatics, or terrified liars . . . or fools who rage at a wind that will blow them away.”
“It has become so complicated. I can’t sort it out anymore.”
“It is simple for me because I am a Jew. Hitler made the decision for me. But what about you? And Horst?”
She sat sullenly, considering the old man’s words. “We should have left before the war.”
“And what would have become of us? My family . . . the others you hide here?”
“I cannot guarantee your safety even now.”
“Nor can you guarantee your own. But at least we are still breathing.” He smiled.
“Why didn’t you leave Europe?”
“I wanted to go to America. I was there for a short time with the Kellogg Arabians. But I could not get visas for my family, so I returned, even knowing that this was a possibility. You see? For the sake of my family.”
“That is different.”
“Is it? Horst loves you, Katrina. Love sometimes calls for a peculiar kind of duty.” He shifted his weight on the narrow rail and rubbed his chin. “I used to think of it when I was young. When my wife, Tanya, was alive and the pogroms were so fierce against the Jews in Poland, here was the question I put to myself: A man comes up to me on the street and puts a gun to the head of my wife. He tells me he will blow her brains out if I do not break into the house of my neighbor and steal his gold. What will I do?”
He shrugged. The choice seemed obvious. “For the sake of her life, I will become a thief.” He looked away as some terrible image crowded into his mind. “In Poland now the Nazis have made Jews to be policemen to arrest their fellow Jews. Good men are made to be traitors to their own friends. Their wives and children are hostages. The Gestapo learned that trick first in Germany, did they not?”
“What can I do?”
“You are doing all you can. You have put yourself at risk for all of us. So be smart. But you must have mercy also on your husband. They hold a gun to your head, and he loves you. Believe that he will do what he can, but also what he must.”
15
A Margin of Safety
It was a chance meeting with a major in a Wehrmacht artillery regiment that turned Horst von Bockman’s interest back to Poland.
“Holiday leave?” The major swirled his glass of whiskey and soda like an Englishman. “I’m taking my pay back to Poland. Why should the SS swine get all the profit, while those of us who fought and won the war end up buying Polish goods in Germany for double the price? I tell you, von Bockman, there’s a profit to be made in Poland in everything from lace doilies to horseflesh. The best for practically nothing!”
The wealth of Poland was finding its way into Germany. Coal and grain flowed west with antique furnishings, tapestries, and art. Jewels, furs, china, silver, and gold that had been smuggled out of Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution were now in the coffers of the Reich or for sale at bargain prices for Christmas.
The trains ran unhindered across former Polish territory into Danzig and East Prussia and the now-humbled, broken Polish cities of Lublin, Krakow, and Warsaw. Enterprising merchants with the permission of the Reich general government traveled east to examine the possibilities of establishing manufacturing centers manned by slave labor.
Major Horst von Bockman presented his request to enter the occupied territory to a minor clerk in the Offices of Commerce in Berlin.
“Yes, Major von Bockman. You say you wish to examine and purchase livestock from the general government of Poland?”
“That is correct.”
“What is your purpose?”
“In private life my wife and I own a stud farm. Arabian horses. I understand there are still many more to be had in Poland. The Poles are slaughtering horses and selling the meat on the black market. It is a waste beyond contemplation.”
It had occurred to Horst that somewhere in the horror of the stock pens of Poland were the finest Arabian horses waiting to be butchered and hung on hooks in a meat shop. If he could purchase a dozen of the best and return them to the farm for Christmas, Katrina would have to speak to him again.
“How much cash do you intend to take into the general government?”
“Five thousand Reichsmarks.”
“A considerable sum.”
“We purchased a number of Polish horses from Reichsmarschall Göring. The amount seems modest for the quality of animal I have in mind to bring back to the Reich.”
At the mention of Göring’s weighty name, the eyebrows of the clerk raised in respect. The rubber stamp bearing the eagle and the swastika thumped down on Horst’s travel permit.
Andre Chardon had clumsily wrapped the doll in red tissue paper and tied it with string. His efforts at packaging his daughter’s gift embarrassed him, as did the fact of his paternity. Driving Josephine north from Paris along the Chemin des Dames, the highway named for the daughters of Louis XV, he felt awkward.
To the wonder of Josephine, who had not been able to secure passes into the zones des armees, his documents gave them unhindered admittance thr
ough the concrete chicanes that blocked the roads leading toward the border of Luxembourg. Sentries saluted him, bade him good day, and sent him on his way.
He spoke little, although there was much he wanted to share with the beautiful woman beside him. She must have sensed his uneasiness, for she filled the silence with conversation, answering his questions about her life in America.
Born in Fort Smith, Arkansas, Josie had moved to California with her family when the drought and the Depression withered their world in 1930. She confided, “We lived in a tent beside a river until my father found work in the oil fields. I was sixteen, gangly, and self-conscious. The girls made fun of me because of my Southern accent. Like the teasing done to the evacuated children from Alsace who are billeted in Paris—just the same. In California, the more of us who came west, the uglier things got. Compassion wore a little thin.”
Andre wished he could have known her then. He glanced at her. Thick chestnut hair was plaited and pinned up. A strand curled at the curve of her cheek. Her gaze held the knowledge of sorrow too great for her years. Had such depth come with the privations of her childhood? Or was it more recent grief that had burned its image onto her soul? There was something in her expression that made him want to gather her into his arms, stroke her face, and hold her. “But you were beautiful. The young men? They were all in love with you, no doubt.” He slowed the car behind a troop transport till the road was clear, then accelerated around it.
She laughed at him in genuine amusement as she had laughed at the Ritz. “Plain brown hair . . . ordinary . . . too tall. I’m glad of it now, but back then? I hid in the library and read until my eyes crossed. I excelled in French class. When I spoke French no one noticed my Southern accent, you see? I spoke as well as—better than—the other girls in French class. In the summer I worked as a laborer in the vineyards outside a little shantytown called Arvin. See how much we have in common, Andre? You own vineyards in Bordeaux, and I once harvested grapes in Kern County, California.” She laughed again. “But I was good in school. I got a scholarship to UCLA.”
“And your husband?”
“We met in a literature class. Danny was the first man I ever loved. The only man up until then. I thought when two people were in love they got married, had children, worked, and went to church on Sunday. Danny surprised me. He married me, got a job with AP, and left for Europe.”
“And you followed him.”
“Not for five years. I taught in a little one-room school in the mountains above Bakersfield, California. When I came to Paris, I thought we were finished. But I fell in love with my husband all over again . . . then I lost him.”
Rows of leafless poplar trees slid past like a picket fence bordering snow-laden fields.
There was so much Andre wanted to know about her. She was different than any woman he had ever met. From a childhood of poverty she had a nobility of spirit and a strength untainted by bitterness. She was far from ordinary, yet she accepted his compliments only with amusement, as if she had never really looked at herself in a mirror, as if his attentions were simply empty attempts at flattery.
“You have loved other men?”
“One.” Rubbing the fog from the window, she gazed at the countryside.
Her silence made Andre wonder if she still loved the Other One. “Where is he now?”
She smiled. “Probably out here somewhere chasing a story about the war, wishing he could befriend some French colonel who would get him through the roadblocks as easily as you! He is a newsman, a cameraman. I promised myself after I lost Danny that I would not get involved with another journalist. So common sense prevails over love, and he’s gone.”
“But you are a journalist.”
“Danny didn’t believe in life insurance. I have to eat. I love Paris. No one in Paris minds the fact that I was born in Arkansas. No one in France even knows where Arkansas is. America is just one big dreamland to the people over here. Writing for AP beats harvesting grapes in the vineyard of Colonel Andre Chardon.”
He looked at her with surprise. It had never occurred to him that she was actually working because she had to. She was smiling, but her words seemed like a rebuke. Driving into the courtyard of a small inn, he shut off the motor and set the brake. Andre turned to face her as sleet began to fall. Taking her hands, he raised them to his face. For the first time he noticed the remnants of callouses on her palms.
She eased her hands from his grip and closed her fists, suddenly self-conscious. “Everyone in France did something else before the war, Andre. How does the song go? ‘The colonel owned a vineyard. The correspondent tended vines. . . .’ Something like that. ‘Like riding a bicycle, you never forget.’”
He pulled her against him and touched her cheek. “I would make you forget, if you will let me.” Then he kissed her as the sleet drummed on the roof of the car.
It was bitterly cold in Warsaw. With some relief Horst von Bockman noted that the snow covered some of the scars of battle. Trams had been righted and the rails repaired from the Umschlagplatz to the hotel. On the streets, open-backed lorries transported prisoners to shovel snow or to work on repairing the roads. Horst did not look at their gloomy faces as they passed.
In the late afternoon, Horst retraced his steps to the Vistula River. There was no sign of what had transpired here some months before. Sections of the river were frozen, yet black water lapped around the pilings of the bridge that joined the right and left banks of the city.
He imagined the body of the woman, Sophia, still beneath the water. Or, in death, had she escaped Poland and drifted down to the sea? It seemed so long ago now. Why could he not forget her face? Why did he hear her repeat the name of her child each night as he lay down to sleep? “Jules! Oh, poor Jules.”
He thought about the child of the dead woman. Once again he replayed the incident in his mind, wondering if he could have done anything different. Would the SS have arrested him if he had not stepped aside? Would they have shot her regardless? And if Katrina had been there with him, would her courage have brought about a different ending to the tragedy?
Katrina had a way of changing the world by her will. Perhaps that is why she believed that her will would change him now. How he ached for her approval and her love, yet her self-righteousness angered him. Why had she chosen to reject him now when he needed her more than ever?
“Herr Major!” A ragged boy of about eleven approached from behind a heap of rubble. His coat was thin. Dark circles were beneath his eyes. He had the look of malnutrition. His German was barely passable.
“It is almost curfew, boy. You should get home.”
“You look lonely, Herr Major. I have a pretty sister for you to spend time with.” The boy took a cautious step closer.
“Little beggar,” Horst scoffed, even as he wondered how evident his loneliness was in his expression. “Any sister of yours would not be something I want to spend time with.”
“Oh no, Herr Major!” the boy blurted eagerly. “She is not like me. A beauty, I assure you!”
“I am not interested in Polish women or Jews, boy.”
“We are not Jews,” the child spat. “She is very Aryan. Blond. Blue eyes. Young. Pretty. Better than the whores in Berlin.” He moved his hands in the shape of an hourglass. “And she does not cost much to make a major very satisfied indeed! Come see! It cannot hurt to look. There is a gramophone for music. Vodka to drink. A pleasant way to pass a lonely evening. If you do not like her, you can leave. But you will be well pleased; I promise!”
To forget. That seemed the primary concern of Horst this evening. He was in need of diversion, he told himself. And what harm was there in just taking a look at the merchandise the boy was selling?
The sky was steel gray as a thick fog descended over the city. Horst followed the beggar, keeping in mind that German soldiers had been led to ambush by partisans with the promise that a pretty woman waited at the end of a short walk.
“I will be discreet, Herr Major. You must not
seem to be following me.”
The boy was cheerful, walking a few paces ahead of Horst like a native guide. On deserted streets, he pointed at the windows of shops and flats whose shattered glass was pieced together with lead and putty. Those spaces too large to be repaired were simply boarded up, the boy explained. It would not matter until summer when the weather turned hot. Maybe by then everything would be back to normal. Maybe by then there would be no more war, and the Germans would see that the Poles were really their friends. There would be whole panes of glass in the windows of Warsaw again.
They crossed a bomb-pocked street and passed a knot of sullen Poles who separated at the sight of Horst, retreating into shadowed alcoves as if they did not know one another.
At twilight Horst and the boy entered a building that had been moderately damaged in the bombardment. The stonework of the five-story building was scarred by shrapnel. The cornice work was broken, and the windows here were more boarded up than patched.
The door into the lobby had once been glass. Now it was completely covered by bits of scrap wood. The interior of the entryway seemed entirely without light. Holding the door wide, the boy peered past Horst into the fog. “Come on, Herr Major. No one will see you.”
Horst unsnapped the leather flap of his holster and rested his hand on the butt of his Luger. After a second’s hesitation, he stepped in after the boy. The door swung shut as the child leaped onto the narrow stairway. A glimmer of light from a single lightbulb identified the spiral staircase and each vacant landing. Other than that, there was an oppressive gloom. Horst listened for the sound of any footsteps besides their own. He glanced at each door as they passed, half expecting an ambush.
“It was a very nice flat before the war, Herr Major,” the boy chirped as they passed the landing on the second floor. “Maybe next year . . .”
Horst was sweating by the time they reached the third floor. The climb had been uneventful, but he still felt the presence of danger as the boy knocked softly and called, “Smyka?”