Hidden Among the Stars

by Melanie Dobson

  Does Annika tend to this plot for her mother, or do her children help her?

  Josh motions me ahead. He doesn’t have to point out Luzia’s grave on the next aisle. The carpet of white blossoms and twin coral asters are identical to Kathrin Knopf’s.

  Confused, I search the other plots nearby, but no other two are alike.

  Does Annika tend both of these graves?

  Kneeling beside the cross, I read the epitaph. And my eyes fill with tears.

  Luzia Weiss

  1921–1939

  Greater love hath no man than this,

  that a man lay down his life for his friends.

  “You okay?” Josh asks me, his hand on my back.

  “I will be.”

  “Come on, Ella,” Josh says, reaching for his daughter’s hand. Ella squeezes my fingers, and they continue wandering down the aisle of garden plots without me. I know this is a gift he’s offering me, an opportunity to process this by myself, but oddly enough I don’t want him—them—to leave.

  I place the bouquet of peonies near the base of the cross and step back. My own gift feels cheap somehow, this leaving of flowers bought from a florist instead of lovingly planting and tending flowers to grow as a legacy. But it’s the only gift I have.

  Tears escape from my eyes like they did yesterday, flooding my cheeks. It’s so wrong what happened, this separation of families who longed for one another. Charlotte’s mother, I assume, sent her child away to protect her like so many desperate parents did. The parents who realized, before it was too late, that letting go was the only way to save their children. The parents who lost their lives.

  I reach up to wipe my tears but decide to let them flow like I did in Vienna.

  “Grüss Gott,” a voice says behind me.

  I turn abruptly, not realizing that someone besides Josh and Ella is in the cemetery. It’s an older gentleman dressed in a green folk jacket, matching trousers, and a red tie.

  Beside him is an elderly woman stooped over slightly, one hand resting firmly on his arm while her other hand carries a tin watering can. Her gray hair is trimmed short, and turquoise-blue earrings dangle from her ears. She’s wearing a yellow blouse and gray dress slacks with hiking shoes that just trekked up seventy steps. I can’t see her eyes—they are covered with silver-rimmed sunglasses—but I admire her resolve.

  For a moment, I feel as if I’m intruding on someone else’s story, but then again, Charlotte has invited me into her life, her world. If Luzia is her mother, then I am here as an ambassador of sorts.

  The woman stops beside the cross and takes off her sunglasses, her green eyes—the color of jade—studying me. Each wrinkle on her forehead, the tiny lines that spray out from her eyes, are like chapters, I think. She wears part of her story on her face, in a sense, both the hardship and the beauty. If I open the cover, I wonder what I’ll find inside.

  “Do you know of Luzia?” she asks, her English as good as mine.

  This time I swipe the tears away. “Only a bit of her story, but I think I know someone who cared about her very much.”

  She pats the man’s arm, a signal between them, and he moves away with the watering can. And I stand here beside this beautiful Austrian woman and wonder.

  “Sigmund is my oldest son,” she says, nodding as he fills up the can from the spigot on the chapel wall. “I call him my anchor.”

  “Are you typically adrift?” I ask.

  She sighs. “Some days it feels that way.”

  “My name is Callie Randall.”

  She shakes my hand but doesn’t offer her name. Josh and Ella have turned back toward us now, and she nods at them. When Ella waves, the woman waves back. “Is that your family?”

  “He’s a friend,” I say, much too quickly. “A friend and his daughter.”

  “Ah,” she replies. “It is good to have friends.”

  Numbers shuffle in my head, the places where lines from stories usually reside, as I try to calculate her age. “Are you related to Luzia?”

  Her gaze falls to the grave. “She was a dear friend to me.”

  I hear pain from almost eighty years past, the loss still fresh today.

  “She never should have died so young,” I say.

  When I look for Sigmund, I see that he’s joined Josh and Ella at the other end of the cemetery. And I’m grateful for these extra moments.

  “Do you tend both Luzia’s grave and the one for Kathrin Knopf?”

  Another flicker in her eyes, something I can’t read. “Why do you ask?”

  “We’ve been trying to contact a woman named Annika Stadler, Kathrin’s daughter.”

  The woman hands me her trowel, and I clutch the metal handle, warmed by her glove. “Will you pull the weeds for me?”

  And so I kneel and begin to extract the green intruders that have overtaken the white petals, the sunbaked dirt caking on my hands. I pull each weed slowly, and this act of purging feels more honoring than my offering of the peonies.

  When I stand up, I hand the trowel back to her, and she nods her approval at my work. “Luzia would like knowing that you cared for her.”

  The church bells ring out, echoing across the cemetery and lake, keeping time for the people on this hill who still care about such things.

  “A legacy, it’s like a song, isn’t it?” I say when the church bells fade. “The musicians may change, but we can keep it alive.”

  Her eyes fill with tears, and I apologize for upsetting her.

  She waves away the apology. “Who is this person who still cares about Luzia?”

  “Her name is Charlotte Trent,” I say. “She’s been like family to me.”

  “How does she know Luzia?” The tremble in her voice returns with the question.

  My gaze falls to the white-petaled grave. “I believe Luzia might have been her mother.”

  Breath catches in the woman’s throat, and a pale film glazes her eyes before they close. When she teeters forward, I catch her, and she leans into me like a rag doll, limp and worn from years of play.

  Sigmund, the anchor, has noticed as well. When I glance over my shoulder, he’s rushing toward me with Josh and Ella close behind.

  “Mama,” he whispers softly, holding her in his arms. And another word, fainter yet. Meant for her ear alone.

  He calls her Annika.

  CHAPTER 39

  LAKE HALLSTATT, AUSTRIA

  APRIL 1939

  Luzi spent the night in the sliver of room behind the wall, sleeping in fitful stages. Twice she turned on the battery-powered lamp to check the time, but she never opened the panel to check on Annika or see who had come to the door.

  By morning, her skin was slathered with sweat. The hiding space was warm, her body radiating heat, but more than that, it was the walls. In the darkness, they felt as if they were inching toward her. Black jaws ready to bite.

  The third time she turned on the lamp, the clock read nine.

  Baby pressed down against her bladder, and she would need to either leave this hiding place soon or maneuver her body over the chamber pot in this sticky, cramped space.

  Leaning against the pillow, her mind wandered, back nearly a year ago when she’d been playing her violin at the Rathaus, entertaining the elite of Austria, dancing with Max around the polished floor. And now, in such a short time, everything had changed. At one time, she’d prided herself on being Luzia Weiss, daughter of the esteemed Dr. and Frau Weiss, but the Nazis had stripped the honor from that name. There was no honor or dignity left for her.

  Baby kicked again, and if she didn’t move quickly, she’d leave more than sweat on the floor.

  She pulled on the panel, cracking it open. Then she heard pounding in the room. The angry voices of men.

  Her heart hammering, Luzi sealed up the space in the wall again, praying they hadn’t seen her. Her body began to tremble, and she curled up like a caterpillar, wishing again that she had wings. In the darkness, she could see the faces of these men, their brown shirts and ba
dges, the black web etched of their arms. Every one of them looked like Ernst in her mind, wanting to hurt her and now her baby.

  She heard them draw closer to her space, the echo of their pounding.

  Tears fell onto her belly as she awaited her fate, praying for God’s mercy. When they found her, she wanted to go in strength as her father had, without fear marking her face.

  Minutes passed—an eternity—and then just as quickly as it had started, the pounding stopped.

  Luzi pressed her ear against the wood, straining to hear—she must hear—but the sound eluded her.

  One and two and three and . . .

  Triple time.

  Not the pounding in the room outside, but the beats of her heart. The aching in her emptied soul. The music still escaped her but the measures remained, the steady pace keeping her mind from finding relief in madness.

  Another hour passed counting the beats, her bladder long since emptied on the wooden floor.

  Sleeping relieved her temporarily from her fear. Then she awakened to more pounding. At first she thought it was the measures beating again in her head, but someone was knocking on the panel. Steady taps.

  She pressed her ear to the wood, listened for the voices of men.

  Someone knocked again, five times in a row.

  The signal for her to slip safely back outside.

  Still she didn’t unlock the panel. She was safe in this locked shell, or at least as safe as she could be inside a wall. What if the men were trying to trick her? They could be waiting for her on the other side.

  Five taps again, slow and deliberate. And then she heard someone call her name.

  Luzi tentatively slid back the bolt that held the panel in place, peeking through the crack until she saw Hermann. Relief surged through his eyes, but there was no smile on his face. She crawled out quickly, embarrassed at the stench.

  She pushed her wet hair back, and he helped her stand. Her legs wobbled from the cramping in her muscles, but she was no longer focused on herself. The library around her—books scattered across the floor, lamps lying on their sides, one of the windows broken. It looked like her apartment in Vienna, the night they took her father away.

  Her eyes wide, she turned to Hermann. “What happened?”

  “The Gestapo came.”

  “They were looking for me,” she whispered.

  He nodded slowly.

  “But they didn’t find my hiding place.” She stepped forward. “Annika?”

  When no one answered, she called Annika’s name again.

  “Luzi—”

  She pushed around Hermann and ran into the foyer, panic rising inside her chest. “Annika!”

  Hermann followed her, but he didn’t yell for Annika. Instead he collapsed on the front staircase, his head buried deep in the grave of his hands. The entire weight of the Alps seemed to press down on his shoulders, and she feared knowing the reason. She didn’t think she could bear to lose someone else. “Where’s Annika?” she demanded.

  “The Gestapo. They took her away.”

  Luzi felt as if she might collapse on the floor. “Why would they take her?”

  “She claimed to be you.”

  His words washed over her, slowly at first. Then they nailed themselves to her heart, one at a time.

  “Why—?” But she didn’t have to ask; she knew why Annika would do this.

  Greater love had no man or woman.

  Greater love had Annika for her and . . .

  Her heart seemed to cave in. She had known Annika loved Max, had seen it clearly in her eyes when Max brought Luzi to her. Max was oblivious, but women—they knew these things.

  Still Annika had done the unthinkable for her.

  In that moment, Luzi knew that she could never marry Max Dornbach. He belonged with Annika.

  “We must stop them,” Luzi said.

  Hermann shook his head. “They will arrest you, too.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “It should matter.” He looked back up at her. “They will punish her even more severely for hiding you.”

  “Then you must go.” She glanced toward the window. “Or Max.”

  “We will do everything we can.” But any strength left in his voice broke.

  She shivered. “What will they do to her?”

  “Take her, I fear, to one of their work camps.”

  She crumpled onto the tile floor, wishing she could crawl back into her hiding place, make it all go away. Wishing she could open the panel one more time and see Annika on the other side.

  “I must do something,” she said.

  “Come home with me, for the sake of your child.” Hermann reached for her hand. “It’s no longer safe for either of you here.”

  “It’s no longer safe for us anywhere.”

  “I told you to wait for me,” Ernst yelled into the telephone.

  The line buzzed back at him, an awful, whining sound.

  “Why must we wait?” the man on the other line finally replied, sounding bored. The tone infuriated Ernst.

  “Because I wanted to interrogate the girl.”

  “She had nothing to tell us.”

  “You, perhaps, but she had plenty to tell me.” He wrapped his fingers around the glass ball of his paperweight and squeezed it. These idiots had sent Luzi away even though he’d never once told them to send her to a camp. She was supposed to be collateral to draw Max out of his hiding place.

  “Our commander put her on a train.”

  “My commander said she was supposed to stay!”

  “Then he should have communicated that to Salzburg.”

  He’d overstepped his bounds, perhaps a meter or two, and as he paced in front of the desk, the phone cord scraping the edge of the wood, Ernst decided to change tactics.

  “What else did you find?”

  “Nothing of significance.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “If you are referring to the jewelry and other valuables, there’s nothing of worth in that castle.”

  If it wasn’t in the house, it must be nearby. He only needed to retrieve it, and then he would find Max and send him off to a camp like Luzi.

  Ernst no longer cared what his commander said. He’d been patient long enough, sending photographs and memos to Salzburg that were promptly ignored. Major Rosch would show his gratitude once Ernst returned with something to line both their pockets.

  Early the next morning, Ernst left Vienna via train and traveled almost four hours to the desolate Obertraun Bahnhof. No automobiles or even a bicycle were available for hire, so he hiked through the forest until he located the gates of Max’s summer estate and walked right through them.

  One day he’d own a castle much like this one . . . or perhaps this estate would be his home. He would marry someone much more prominent, more beautiful, than Luzi Weiss. An Aryan, of course, with the purest of blood to make Hitler himself proud. Someone who would show Ernst the honor and respect that he deserved.

  Luzi deserved whatever the work camps gave to her.

  He searched for a day but found nothing from Max and Dr. Weiss’s cache. The Gestapo, it seemed, had emptied the house of anything that would be of value, and they’d dug up a plot of land near the chapel. Perhaps they’d found things there and kept them.

  Or perhaps Max was smarter than he imagined and stole the treasure himself.

  His return ticket to Vienna was tonight, 22:00 Uhr. On the trip home, Ernst concocted and schemed and determined his course forward. Max, he knew, would return eventually to Schloss Schwansee. Ernst could wait for weeks, even months, if he must. He would travel to the castle again and again until he found Max Dornbach and his treasure.

  His plans had solidified into stone by the time the train reopened its doors under the iron awning in the Wien Westbahnhof. But when he returned to Hotel Metropole the next morning, his commander wasn’t pleased that he had traveled to the lakes without permission.

  If he wanted water, Major Rosch
said, he could have the entire North Sea. Then he reassigned Ernst to an office in Hamburg, a thousand kilometers north of Hallstättersee.

  CHAPTER 40

  Hours passed as she sat in the library recliner, staring at the instrument handcrafted from black willow by Karl Lang, a master violin maker from Salzburg. She’d had Sigmund remove it from the dressing room and place it on the upholstered window seat. Then he slipped away to let her rest.

  Sleep wouldn’t come, though. Not that she wanted it to.

  She twisted the ivory chiffon of a handkerchief between fingers that grew stiffer each day as she eyed the violin. Decades ago, when this violin showed up at their door, it had terrified her. Someone knew her secret, and this gift . . . at the time it felt more like a threat than a present, but over the years she’d wondered if it was actually a gift, from the man who had saved her life.

  The music had begun returning to her mind in small pieces after Sigmund was born, the notes on her music sheets dancing like ballerinas in her head. God had used that child to breathe life back into her as well. Still she hadn’t touched this violin or any other, though every week she attended a concert—outside at Mirabell Gardens, inside the gilded Stiftung Mozarteum, it didn’t matter.

  She lived in Salzburg now, had for decades. While she came each week to tend the garden plots, she hadn’t been inside this castle in more than fifty years.

  Hermann’s mother had gently cared for her back in 1939, and then she and Hermann had married, a month before Sigmund was born. The pastor in Hallstatt had been quite willing to certify them after Hermann shared a glimpse of their story.

  When the war began, the Nazis asked—no, they commanded—the caretaker’s daughter and her husband to oversee the estate and their new camp since the caretaker seemed to be missing. She and Hermann built a new cottage by the castle, and he tended the land while she cleaned the house and prepared meals for boys forced to grow up too soon.

  Her little family stayed here after the war, having no place else to go in their divided country, a new Austria parceled out for occupation by the United States, France, England, and the Soviet Union. The entire country gained independence again in 1955, more than a decade after the war, but she and Hermann didn’t leave the estate until 1962, after Hermann was offered a position in agricultural sciences at the newly reestablished University of Salzburg.