“You are Mrs Brandon Tobin?” She sat straighter and squared her little jaw.
As much as Jennifer was relieved that her “guest” spoke English, she was unnerved by what she seemed to know about her.
“Brandon was my husband,” she said slowly, and then, in spite of herself, began to tear. She pulled out one of Mackie’s shredded tissues.
The young woman looked surprised, then distraught.
“Oh, I’m sorry, pardon me, Frau … Fraulein …”
“No, it is I who am sorry. My name is Elsbeth Schmitt. And now I see how I have intruded on your grief. My apologies.” She stood and bowed her head slightly before taking her son’s hand and heading to the door.
Frau Muller, entering with a tray of tea and biscuits, was astonished to find Jennifer alone. “Fraulein Schmitt? She has left?”
“I guess so,” Jennifer felt dizzy. “Do you know her?”
“I used to. The minister’s daughter. But that was ‘before.’ She lives on her own now with little Willi.”
“I saw them at the Army Base this morning.” Jennifer gratefully accepted the tea.
“Ja, Ja, poor girl.”
“But why? What does she have to do with the Army?”
“I’ve said enough already, Frau Petrie.”
Brandon was a surprisingly good correspondent. He wrote once a week telling her how much he missed her, what he was doing, how much he missed her, where he had travelled, how much he missed her.
She wrote back telling him to be patient. They had five months to wait. Four. Three. Soon she would be living on the base with him in Germany. They could take occasional trips to the countryside. Perhaps they could go as far as France.
“Yes, yes,” he wrote back. “I’ve always been too impatient.”
Jennifer missed Brandon’s conversation, his arm around her as they watched television, his strong, gentle body in bed, her protective shadow. She threw herself into preparations for the trip—reading Thomas Mann and Christa Wolf and Gunter Grass. Attending Manfred’s Thursday evening classes in the teachers’ lounge. Manfred would write his family and they’d welcome Brandon and herself. It was good to get to know local people, he said, you could get caught up in an American ghetto on the base. Yes, she agreed, how lovely it would be to know some “real Germans” unconnected with the American Army.
Sergeant Mackie was delayed. Going to a military base was like going to the doctor’s, she thought. This is where they put the “W” in waiting room. She picked up a copy of The Daily Register out of boredom. On the second page she found a longer story about the soldiers’ “night on the town.” Apparently it hadn’t been as innocent as she first assumed. Four women claimed to have been raped by American soldiers. After years of trying to get the Army to take their complaint seriously, they had hired an American lawyer. The Army continued to dismiss the accusations, but the lawyer, with the aid of a local attorney, was demanding attention from the German courts. The women, once intimidated by military bureaucracy, had grown angry and outspoken. One of the plaintiffs was Elsbeth Schmitt. Jennifer’s hands shook as she read the article. Why would this have anything to do with her? With Brandon? Brandon was gone.
“Ms Petrie!” Sergeant Mackie held out his hand in greeting, in assistance, she couldn’t tell.
She stood on her own accord and took a long breath. “Sergeant Mackie.”
“Sorry to keep you waiting. Something came up. A small urgency, not really an emergency.”
Over his shoulder she watched several young women being guided from his office by a young soldier. One of them was Elsbeth.
“The weather is much more accommodating today, wouldn’t you say?”
She continued to stare at the women.
“Ms Petrie?”
“Yes, oh, yes, much cooler. Thank you.”
“Shall we go then?”
“Go?” she was numb, lost.
“Shall we visit your husband’s memorial?” he spoke slowly and loudly as if addressing an ancient. And then, brightening his voice, Sergeant Mackie said, “I hear they’re doing pink lemonade at the canteen today.”
She took a sharp breath. This was not the time to ask questions, to discuss things. She would wait until they had some privacy.
Again they passed the barracks, the sick bay, the shooting range as Jennifer and Mackie proceeded toward the chapel. For the most part, they walked unnoticed. Several soldiers paused and whispered to one another. One came up, introduced himself as a friend of Brandon’s, and conveyed his sympathy.
Her heart was heavy. How would she imagine such behaviour from gentle, good Brandon? She’d feel better when she’d talked to Mackie, clarified that he wasn’t, couldn’t have been involved. But if he wasn’t involved, why had Elsbeth Schmitt visited her? Maybe, well, maybe because Brandon was such a friendly guy. He’d written to her about getting to know some of the local people. Maybe he’d befriended Elsbeth. Maybe he’d tried to speak up for her after the rape. Maybe that’s why the ordinance truck ran over him. Her mind raced and she could barely hear Mackie’s words.
“Ms Petrie, are you all right?” The tall soldier looked at her with concern.
“Fine, fine Sergeant.” She stood a little straighter and noticed they had just stepped inside the chapel. A properly non-denominational building, with simple pine pews and an unadorned altar. Just past the vestibule on the right wall hung a row of plaques.
Mackie led her to Brandon’s memorial.
“In memory of Brandon Tobin, who gave his life for another soldier.” It was a plain wooden tablet with a cross on top and Brandon’s dates at the bottom: 1974–2000. Such a young man she mused, as if he were a stranger. As she aged, would she become more and more a stranger to the 26 year old soldier? How would she feel when she was 50? 70?
“Would you care to sit down, Ma’am?”
“Thank you, Sergeant.” She chose the last pew.
He stood nearby.
“May I ask you a question?”
“Certainly, Ma’am.”
He looked impossibly tall from here.
“Would you be kind enough to join me?” she inched over so there would be ample room.
He sat. “How can I help, Ms Petrie? This must be a terrible time for you.” His brown eyes widened in sympathy. She could tell this man was more than fair.
“I have,” she took a deep breath, “a delicate question.”
“Yes?”
“It’s about the rapes of those four women …
“The alleged rapes,” he interrupted her.
Taken aback by the frost in his voice, she nodded, “Yes.”
Before she could say anything else, he added, “That’s nothing to worry yourself over, Ma’am. The Army is taking care of it. Whatever happened occurred a long time ago.”
“While Brandon was still alive.” She hadn’t meant to be abrupt, but she needed answers.
“Yes, Ms Petrie, but there’s no proof that …”
“Sergeant Mackie, I respect your loyalty, but I need to know one thing. Is Brandon one of the accused men?”
“Ma’am, yes, he was.”
She stiffened. Was. Brandon was. Brandon no longer is. But that didn’t erase what was or might have been.
“Fraulein Schmitt visited me yesterday.” She shifted uncomfortably on the wooden bench.
Sergeant Mackie stood and looked around. “Ms Petrie, we don’t want you talking with her. We don’t want you bothered. Everything is under control. You’ll be going home soon.”
Home? How could he understand that Brandon was her home? They were just beginning their life. Everything had been possible. Now she had an apartment empty except for her flea bitten retriever. Closure, her therapist had advised, and instead she had unlocked a whole new world of pain.
Jennifer declined the lemonade, thanked Sergeant Mackie for his time and kindness. She said she was feeling rather tired.
Elsbeth Schmitt had always been the brightest in her classes at school. But she was
friendly and unassuming—her father had taught her that vanity was what propelled Lucifer into Hell—so she had many friends among the girls. Even if she was a little serious. Oh, she wasn’t prudish, as you might expect a pastor’s daughter to be, and she could tease and tell jokes with the best of them. But she was determined to go to college in America. She loved all things American and when she was a little girl, she developed a passionate desire to attend the University of Washington. At first her parents discouraged her. There were so many excellent Christian men in the parish. She would have handsome blond children. The Schmitts were not a roving family. Yet Elsbeth dreamed of this campus near the Pacific Ocean, way up in the corner of the United States, hugging Canada. It sounded at once exotic and normal.
She would have to earn her own way because pastors’ salaries did not stretch to international tuition. Elsbeth was determined. After high school, she got a job typing on the army base and was saving much of her salary. A side benefit was the opportunity to practice her English. She knew it had to be perfect if she were to pass the S.A.T. Several friends—Clara and Renate and Kathe—also worked on the base and enjoyed flirting with these big American men who were often lonely, jingling loose change in their pockets.
Elsbeth always went home after work to help her mother with dinner. It wasn’t that she was such a good girl. She simply had bigger things on her mind than dancing to old Elvis Presley tunes and smelling the beery breath of lonesome Yanks. Besides, she had a beau. Gerhard was a serious boy, too. They went to films on Saturdays. Sometimes to an exhibition on Sunday after church. But during the week, they stayed close to their own families and their own interests. Gerhard was an avid backgammon player.
One night her life took a different course. Elsbeth’s parents were away at a church conference. Her friends had teased her mercilessly and she finally acquiesced. She agreed to go dancing because that pleasant, rather oafish man Brandon would be along. She knew he would brook no nonsense, would escort her home, if necessary.
What actually happened, the precise sequence, would remain unclear to Elsbeth. Still, the consequences became all too apparent. The other Americans were teasing Brandon about some film star, saying that he was gay. Elsbeth had seen Brandon mooning over a photo of his wife, so she laughed at them. He asked her to dance, to escape the other soldiers, she knew. That worked for a while, but he was exhausted by the day’s exercises, so they returned to the big booth with her three friends and the other soldiers. They all drank too much, except Elsbeth, who didn’t drink at all.
In retrospect, she realised the short blond man had put something in Brandon’s beer stein when he was in the rest room. She saw the soldier take out a small vial and drip liquid into the glass. Another soldier winked at her. She looked away, sudden shyness turning her mute. Once Brandon returned, the Americans got louder and louder. She whispered to Renate that it was time to leave.
Her friend ignored her.
She tried Kathe, who called her a “goody two shoes.”
The soldiers laughed at her rich German accent wrapped around this epithet.
Before Elsbeth knew it, they were all piling into a car and headed for the river. Why hadn’t she left then, said farewell and taken a taxi home? She asked herself a dozen times. Well, she was worried about Kathe and Clara and Renate. She trusted Brandon, but how could he overpower her friends’ “dates”?
Elsbeth awoke the next morning bruised and blooded, “safe” in her bedroom. Her parents still at the church conference. She was filled with fear and mortification and guilt. Who could she talk to? Gerhard wouldn’t want to hear this story. Mama and Papa would disown her. She was too angry with Kathe and Clara and Renate to speak to them.
That would have been that, except that Willi was growing inside her. She knew even before her first period was due. She understood this was the end of life as she’d known it, as she’d planned it. Her religion forbade abortion. Her boyfriend was not heroically inclined and soon found an opportunity to move to München. Pastor Schmitt kicked her out of the house.
Elsbeth kept her job at the base because she needed an income, but each day was a trial. Always a slight woman, she grew larger and rounder quickly; everyone tracked her pregnancy. Brandon no longer came by to chat, of course, but they would see each other across the room or out on the base, see each other and look away. Sometimes she allowed herself to dream of his contrition, followed by his divorce, followed by his marrying her and taking her home to America. And then one evening: the catastrophe—Brandon was killed by an ordinance truck.
She quit her job before she had another. By then Kathe and Renate and Clara had broken the ice. She moved in with Renate. Clara’s mother hired Elsbeth in her café. And as the young women began to talk, their anger grew until they made their first protest to the Army shortly before Willi’s birth.
Jennifer lay on her bed and cried. She sobbed quietly into the pillow, lest she alarm the kindly, and slightly too attentive Frau Muller.
After several hours, she sat up and tried to read, but her eyes roved over the sweet little guest room with the cornflower stencils on the wall, the blue and white curtains, the flounced dressing table, the carved frame around the mirror. Europeans had such refined taste. She’d hoped to grow more sophisticated from her adventures with Brandon here, from their travels, from their lively encounters with German people.
Jennifer pulled a letter from her purse. His last, which arrived two days after that terrible scene in Mr Thompson’s office. He wrote again how much he missed her, how he counted the days until they were together, how she was the most wonderful woman in the world, how he wanted to talk through his love to her in person. Three months. Half their separation over. They would be together in 12 weeks.
Three months, she thought, was the first trimester of pregnancy.
Of course Sergeant Mackie had been correct to advise detachment. What proof did these women have? Two had become pregnant—now really, what were the odds of that, after a one-night stand? No, she felt chilly, rape wasn’t a one-night stand. Still, what was the likelihood of one sexual encounter producing a child? Hadn’t she and Brandon tried often enough? They were probably in trouble before going out with the soldiers. And there was no way to prove paternity without a DNA test. Brandon’s DNA had gone with him to the grave in Oregon.
No, his genetic signature was registered at the Scottsdale fertility clinic. Their embryos, they could prove or disprove this easily.
She walked to the window and stared out at Frau Muller’s tidy garden. Roses and ranunculas and marigolds on one side. Small lettuces and tomato vines on the other. Everything in its place. She was beginning to get irritated by all this orderliness. She felt acutely homesick for the ragtag beauty of the desert—the seemingly desolate patches of road where you would suddenly pass a cactus bursting with yellow flowers.
Willi was orphaned as Brandon had been. Certainly he had a mother—an uneducated woman with few financial prospects. This was the point of the law suit. The survival of these people. And justice. Actions had consequences. And there was something constructive about the truth. Brandon was an upright man, but perhaps not unflawed.
After, several days, she found the café. Frau Muller pretended she didn’t know exactly where it was. She knew she’d have no luck with Sergeant Mackie. The American attorney refused to speak to her, saying it wasn’t ethical. But after an hour’s entreaty, the lawyer told Jennifer where Elsbeth worked.
She chose three o’clock, a quiet time of day, and negotiated her way with a map to a working-class quarter of town. Outside the modest restaurant, she watched a middle-aged woman helping her mother to a chair. Elsbeth handed them menus. She looked even younger in her blue and white uniform. Several other people entered. A married couple. A single man in his sixties.
What did she want from this encounter? What had Elsbeth wanted from her visit to Frau Muller’s? She was connected to this woman, somehow, some way. She felt she might learn a bit of truth. Jennifer could go
home now and commemorate the story about Brandon, the modest, inadvertent hero. But what she had loved about Brandon the most was not his ideals or his looks or his prospects, but the solid person he really was. She’d always had trouble imagining him as an inadvertent hero. She knew there was another chapter to the story.
Still, she couldn’t bring herself to enter the restaurant; it was too much of an intrusion. At one point she thought Elsbeth noticed her at the window, but she gave no indication. Maybe Jennifer would return the next day. She hoped Elsbeth worked on Tuesdays.
At five o’clock, she strolled to the bus stop. As she waited in the busy evening among horns and construction drills and farewell conversations in this profoundly foreign language, she noticed someone pulling on her sleeve. She looked down to see Willi, whose other hand was held tightly by his mother.
They went to a rathskeller and found a corner table. Elsbeth knew the owner, who had a child slightly older than Willi and the two kids ran off to play behind the bar.
This wouldn’t have been Jennifer’s choice of venue because so many other people were talking loudly and merrily over large steins of beer. Even the decorations seemed loud—red and blue and yellow flowers dancing on green stalks.
Suddenly, Jennifer was being served bratwurst, kraut, black bread and beer. She never ate such heavy foods at home and wondered how Elsbeth could stay so slim.
The younger woman nodded to her. “Please join me for a little supper.” Simple words. She could handle simple words.
Before Jennifer could respond, Elsbeth was spreading mustard on the sausage and chewing enthusiastically.
They ate in silence—with the exception of several long sighs of satisfaction from the exhausted, hungry Elsbeth—for about five minutes.
Finally, Jennifer summoned the courage to say, “I have come to find the truth.”
Elsbeth laughed lightly, thinking about her father’s attachment to the Eighth Commandment, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.”
“The truth is not such an easy thing—the finding it, or the telling it.” She hoped she was making sense in her elementary English.
The Night Singers Page 7