Hidden Among the Stars

by Melanie Dobson

Annika wanted to hate Luzi Weiss because Max loved her, but she couldn’t do it. Luzi’s beauty on the outside, the beauty that Annika had tried to burn away when she clipped the newspaper photograph, was embedded inside her as well. And now she was expecting Max’s child.

  Annika had known it for a few weeks, but she hadn’t dared voice the truth, for voicing it would make it into a reality. She kept hoping that she was wrong, that Luzi had gained weight as the gash on her leg had healed, but each day it became more apparent that Luzi was pregnant.

  Annika’s heart had shattered at first, knowing that Max would always see her as a kitten, but there was more to care about in this world than her heart. She still loved him, always would. She just couldn’t tell Luzi—or anyone else—of her feelings.

  “When do you expect the baby to arrive?” Annika asked as they ate their dinner of broiled trout on the veranda. The air was cold, but neither of them wanted to be inside. No matter how big the house was, the walls seemed to close in on them.

  “In August, I think,” Luzi said quietly, her voice sad. “Why do you care for me, Annika?”

  She almost said because Max asked her to, like he’d asked her to hide the heirlooms for their Jewish neighbors, but it was about more than Max. The words in Mama’s Bible swept back to her. “Jesus said to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.”

  “Aren’t you afraid?” Luzi asked, her voice trembling with the question.

  “Terribly.”

  Luzi rested her hands on her stomach. “Do you think Jesus was afraid when He died?”

  In her heart, Annika believed that this man who loved and healed would be deeply grieved by what was happening in their world. Like Pastor Dietz said, He came to heal, not to kill. But she didn’t know if He was afraid.

  “I’m not certain, but I don’t think we have to fear if we serve a God who can conquer death,” Annika said, trying to cling again to those words.

  Hermann joined them on the veranda as he often did in the evenings, sitting beside Luzi. He blushed when she looked at him, and Annika’s defenses flared again. He shouldn’t be watching Luzi like that. Surely he must know that Max’s baby was coming soon.

  Hermann nodded toward Annika. “Herr Pfarrer needs to speak with you.”

  She glanced over at the parish church perched on the hill across the water. The Dornbachs had attended Mass there, but she’d never been inside. “Why would he want to talk to me?”

  “He has to arrange a time to transport the Eyssl casket.”

  Annika cringed. With the changes in their country, the Dornbachs gone, she’d thought the church would surely forgo those plans.

  Hermann scooted his chair toward her. “The Nazis want parishes to go about their business as if nothing has changed in our country. Herr Pfarrer thinks this will help with morale.”

  “But everything has already changed,” Annika insisted. Their lakes, her family, her home. In the past year, Germany had swallowed up the heart of her country. She no longer recognized the parts that remained.

  Moving a box of old bones across the lake wouldn’t rejuvenate anyone.

  “Annika—”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s only for one night.”

  The thought of having the man’s bones in the chapel . . . She would never sleep until they took them back to the church.

  “If you refuse, the Gestapo will ask questions. Maybe even return for another visit.”

  A Kuddlemuddel—that’s what her mother would have called this.

  “I don’t want his remains here.”

  “It’s necessary, Annika.”

  Luzi glanced between the two of them, her eyes wide. “What casket?”

  And Annika began to explain the tradition of old.

  CHAPTER 34

  Sophie meets me in the lobby of the gold-and-white baroque-style building in Minoritenplatz that houses the state archives. She’s a slight wisp of a woman, drowning in her black pants and baggy blouse, but she doesn’t need stature to command respect. She seems to be an institution of her own in this place that records the institutions from Austria’s history.

  Light filters around the edges of the heavy drapes in the reading room, across dozens of tables with cylinder lamps and researchers huddled over mounds of boxed materials and stuffed manila folders. Sophie motions to a table with two folders, and we sit across from each other.

  “Why do you want to find Luzia Weiss?” she asks, and I hear the concern in her voice, as if she’s not quite certain that she wants to pass along the information in these files.

  Her hands link together, a chain of sorts across the top of the folders, and I begin to tell her the tale of two books and their owners, stories that didn’t end between the covers. About Annika and her list of heirlooms, Josh’s uncle Leo and what Annika told him about the treasure. I tell her about Charlotte and the orphanage in France, about the name I suspect to be her mother’s. And I tell her that I want to know the endings, whether happy or sad.

  Besides Brie, Sophie is the first person I tell about the possible connection between Charlotte and Luzia. It’s sacred, I think, this story of theirs, but I’ll never know for certain what happened unless someone in Austria helps me.

  “This Frau Stadler . . . ,” Sophie says slowly. “Why do you think she found treasure on the estate?”

  “What else would she be record—” I stop.

  “Perhaps she took things from the homes of Jewish people who’d already been sent away.”

  I take off my glasses and set them on the table. Annika, in my mind, is a hero, but what if she was really the perpetrator of a crime? What if she and Hermann stole heirlooms from the Nazis’ collection or even from her Jewish neighbors after they were gone? Frau Stadler could have been trying to steer Josh’s uncle away from some sort of treasure instead of to it.

  “People were prosecuted across Austria and Germany after the war for keeping things that had belonged to people killed in the camps.”

  “What if, in some way, they were trying to help?”

  “After the war, no one in Austria would have believed them,” she says. “Help was a rare commodity back then.”

  I glance down at the folders again. “What’s in the files?”

  “A memorandum,” she says as she opens the first folder. “It mentions a Luzi Weiss from Vienna.”

  I skim the typed document from across the table, but it’s all in German.

  “It’s written by a Gestapo agent,” Sophie explains. “A Kriminalassistent by the name of Ernst Schmid. He’s lost track of Luzi, it seems, and he’s inquiring about her whereabouts.”

  The warmth in this room doesn’t stop my shiver. “Why was a Gestapo agent searching for her?”

  Instead of answering my question, Sophie turns the memo around, and I see Luzi’s name in the midst of the writing.

  Is this the same person as Luzia Weiss from the article? And Luzia Weiss from Charlotte’s book? I don’t know that either woman is related to Charlotte, but seeing Luzi’s name in print here, even recorded by the Gestapo agent, gives me hope.

  Perhaps Luzia hid with Charlotte in France while Ernst Schmid was looking for her.

  The other folder contains a second memo and a newspaper photograph of a young Luzia playing with an ensemble. This caption says Luzi Weiss, but it’s clearly the same woman who danced with Max at the ball.

  “The Gestapo reported that they found a Luzi Weiss.” Sophie inches another paper across the table to me.

  My glasses are on again, and I’m trying desperately to decipher the words. “Where did they find her?”

  “Hiding inside a castle on Hallstättersee.”

  I suck in air so loudly that several researchers turn to look at me.

  “They arrested her in April of 1939.” She points down at the paper, and I see the name of the lake clearly, no need for translation.

  Where was Max Dornbach when they arrested the woman he seemed to love?

  “Perhaps Annika decided t
o turn Luzi in to the Gestapo,” Sophie says, and even though eighty years have passed, I feel the wounds. Betrayal—one of the worst kinds of pain.

  “Was Luzia a Jewish woman?” Sophie asks.

  “I believe so.” I glance down at my handbag as if the photocopy of Luzia’s name inscribed in the magic balloon story might talk. As if it would lead me to the truth.

  But to what end? If Luzia was Jewish, if the Gestapo sent her away, there was no hope for reconciliation. No healing to be had in the truth of what might have happened to her. Reunion would need to happen on the other side of this life.

  I take a picture of the memo before Sophie closes the folder. “I’ve searched everything that is public here. You must rely on the private sources now or the records kept by religious communities in Vienna and perhaps in Hallstatt.”

  I reach for my handbag. I don’t want to stop until I’m able to at least link Luzia with Charlotte.

  “Many died during the war,” Sophie says, trying to comfort me.

  “I know. I’m just holding on to the hope . . .”

  “There’s nothing wrong with grieving your loss.”

  But I’m not ready to grieve yet. “I need to search . . . to see if Luzia died in a camp.”

  She nods. “The Holocaust Memorial Museum keeps a record of victims online.”

  There’s no WiFi access in the reading room, so I wander back outside and across cobbles of gray stone that wind between buildings and through a park. My thoughts are as flighty as my feet, not certain of exactly which direction to go, but I know, even if I don’t want to check, that I must search the database to see if the Nazis killed Luzi or Luzia Weiss from Vienna.

  A sign in the window of a coffeehouse promises WiFi gratis, so I order a cappuccino and find a marble-covered table. Outside the window is a white statue of a horse and packs of students, professionals, and tourists.

  Typing Luzia’s name and birthplace into my iPad is tremendously painful, each letter a hammer to my heart. It’s only a screen in front of me, only words, but words that carry significance far beyond this room.

  Nothing is recorded in the database for Luzia Weiss, but when I input Luzi, the screen flashes, opens to a new window. And I see the truth of what happened to her.

  Ravensbrück.

  The word slams against my chest, the pieces of my heart splintering.

  A hundred thousand women, I read, were killed in that German camp alone, each with a family and perhaps children as well. I never knew Luzia Weiss, yet for Charlotte’s sake, I feel keenly the pain of losing her. All those years Charlotte searched, Luzia was already gone. Exterminated.

  This wasn’t God. Isn’t God. A beautiful young woman dying for who He created her to be. I didn’t know Luzia, but tears, I think, are one of the greatest tributes of all. Perhaps that was why Jesus wept for the loss of his friend in the Bible, before He raised him from the grave. Perhaps, even when we know there is life in the after, we can still grieve for the now.

  I may be the only one left to grieve for Luzia. To remember. And so I cry for her tragic death, mourn in that coffeehouse what might have been.

  I’d hoped to be able to bring Charlotte information about what happened to her mother, but this news . . .

  As I walk back to the train station, along the regal lanes with shops and restaurants and houses built for opera, I wonder how many people in Vienna remember what happened in the war. My world of books confronts the realities of life, but the endings—at least the ones I prefer—clean up the mess at the end. Everything is resolved when I close the cover, but the ugly realities of this world—what man does to man—bleeds right off the page.

  Tears flow down my cheeks again, and I decide in that moment that Sophie is right—there’s nothing wrong with the sadness. With remembering a dance of life that ended much too soon. A star captured from the freedom of sky.

  Perhaps this woman wasn’t Charlotte’s mother, but even if she was, I don’t have anyplace else to look. The search for Luzia Weiss has ended for me, the final page closing at the gates of Ravensbrück. And I can almost hear the slam of those gates echoing in my head.

  CHAPTER 35

  VIENNA, AUSTRIA

  APRIL 1939

  The information Ernst had been waiting for finally arrived. The Salzburg agents hadn’t found anyone except the caretaker’s daughter at Schloss Schwansee, but an agent at Dachau had convinced Herr Fischer, one of Dr. Weiss’s patients, to speak.

  When the Gestapo arrested this man in November, they’d searched his lavish home for the jewelry his wife once displayed, but nothing of value remained. They’d interrogated Frau Fischer at length before taking her to jail. She’d seemed shocked at the disappearance of her jewels, but Jews lied about everything, especially their valuables.

  The men who’d survived the roundup returned home with directions to leave Austria immediately, but the Gestapo held a few, like Herr Fischer, who refused to answer the simplest of questions. The Jew had kept his secrets for months, but they’d finally extracted the information they needed. And it was much more valuable than anything they could have found in his house.

  Herr Fischer had been a regular patient of Dr. Weiss, a victim of chronic bronchitis, and he’d trusted the doctor with his health at first and then the jewelry that he’d wanted to keep safe, he said, for his wife and children. He claimed that he didn’t know where Dr. Weiss had hidden the things, but eventually, after a brief reunion with his wife, he recalled a fact that intrigued Ernst most of all.

  Several times during Herr Fischer’s medical examinations, Max Dornbach had paid the good doctor a visit even though he’d been in excellent health. Once Herr Fischer heard them talking about Schloss Schwansee.

  Ernst tapped on the edge of his desk, his arm throbbing. A constant reminder of what he needed to do.

  Hands trembling, he removed a glass bottle and spoon from the bottom drawer of his desk. The doctor had prescribed tablets to relieve his pain, but the tablets had done nothing to take it away. He poured the clear liquid into his spoon and chased the bitter taste of morphine with a cup of coffee.

  Had Max taken the jewels to his fancy castle? Perhaps he was hiding even more than jewels there. Perhaps he was hiding a certain woman as well.

  His commander wouldn’t let him leave Vienna to search for Luzi, but if these jewels were hidden at Schloss Schwansee, surely the man would let him take the train west. He’d find the jewels, and then he’d find her.

  An elevator delivered Ernst to the third floor, to the office of Major Rosch. The commander was two decades older than Ernst, a man of impeccable grooming with his pale-gray tunic, hair shaved short above his ears, Iron Cross that hung in the middle of his stiff collar. He’d been ruthless in Vienna, a perfectionist who wanted the city as pressed and starched as his uniform.

  Ernst read him the report on Herr Fischer.

  “Call the headquarters in Salzburg,” Major Rosch said, tapping the silver nib of his pen impatiently on the desk.

  “I’ve already been in contact with their agents, but they haven’t found anything of significance in the house.”

  “Have them search both the house and the grounds this time.”

  “This time—” Ernst lowered the paper—“I want to search instead.”

  “They are competent, Officer Schmid.”

  “Of course,” he complied, trying to find another angle. “But I’m the only one who knows what Luzi Weiss looks like.”

  Major Rosch waved his arm. “She’s of no interest to us.”

  “I suspect she will be of great interest if she’s been helping Max Dornbach hide this treasure.”

  The commander stopped tapping, his eyes narrowing. “Then send a photograph.”

  Ernst’s heart quickened. If they found something, he doubted they would leave any for him. “This is my find.”

  “It’s a few trinkets and a girl, Ernst. We have plenty of both here in Vienna.”

  “Major—”

  “If they
find something of value, then you can go.”

  Ernst stewed in his office for an hour before he finally called Salzburg and asked them to search Schloss Schwansee one more time.

  “If you find a woman named Luzi Weiss, phone me right away.” He swallowed another spoonful of morphine. “And don’t touch her until I arrive.”

  CHAPTER 36

  A fishing boat creeps below the inn, trawling for the day’s catch, and the air—it smells like roasted coffee and sweet pine, rose petals and alpine snow, mountain wind and memories.

  Most of the lake is hidden in these early morning hours before the fog slips back up the mountains, settling into crevices and caverns to hide for the day. I sip from one of the two coffee mugs that I retrieved down in the lobby, the caffeine slowly clearing the fog from my mind even as it lingers in the air around me.

  No one seems to be awake in the room across the balcony, not that I’ve wandered over to knock. I returned so late last night from Vienna that I didn’t see either Josh or Ella. And I miss them.

  My feet propped up on the chair across from me, I return an email from Brie. Eventually I’ll tell her what happened to Luzia, but not over the phone.

  It won’t impact Brie like it has me. She’ll be sad about the truth, in her way, but then she’ll remind me that Charlotte has both of us, and the ties of family can go far beyond blood in one’s veins.

  Perhaps I will tell Charlotte what happened to Luzia and what I suspect about Max. Perhaps she and Liberty Dornbach could even test to see if they have a DNA match. I want to protect Charlotte, and yet in some way, the information about Luzia might comfort her. At least she would know that her mother wasn’t able to return for her in France. And that she might have remaining family in Liberty and her brother.

  The glass door slides open on the other side of the balcony, and Josh steps outside, swiping his hand through messy brown hair to push it back from his eyes.

  “Good morning.” I slip my feet off the chair, and he pulls it out.

  I feel self-conscious for a moment in my long-sleeve T-shirt and pajama bottoms, my hair tied back in a knot.