by Dean Hughes
“Oh, too bad for you. You’re so good looking, you might have collected many wives for yourself.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“No? How was it?”
“It was spiritual. It was—”
But she was laughing. Elder Thomas decided not to talk to her about this. “I think I’ll watch the chess game,” he said.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you.” But her eyes were still toying with him. “Don’t go.”
Elder Thomas sat down again, but he looked toward the other room. He could hear Elder Mecham trying to tell Peter something about football. He was having a hard time explaining the difference between Fussball—soccer—and the American game.
“So what do you and Bruder Mecham call each other when you aren’t here by us?” Anna asked.
“Bruder. Or Ältester.”
“Ältester? Are you so old?” She laughed.
“It’s our priesthood position. In English, it’s ‘Elder,’ and that’s easy. But Ältester is hard to say all the time. We usually say Bruder when we’re speaking German. Or we call each other Mit—short for Mitarbeiter.”
“Don’t you ever use your Christian names?”
“No. It’s part of . . . respecting each other. We have to remember we’re missionaries, and we have a sacred calling.”
She was still smiling, although she actually seemed to be trying not to. “So what is your given name?”
“Alexander,” he said. “My family calls me Alex.”
“Alex,” she repeated in a whisper. “All-ex,” she said it, and it sounded better than it ever had before. “I like that name.”
“My grandfather was David Alexander, and he was called David. My father is D. Alexander Thomas. But people call him ‘President’ most of the time—or ‘Al.’ I’m also David Alexander, so I was left with Alex.”
“Why is your father called President?”
Elder Thomas explained about stakes and wards, and a little about Church leadership, while Anna continued to smile, that little arch in her lip appearing again. “So, will you be a president someday. Or a bishop?”
“It’s possible.”
“And all so serious. At least your church lets you get married. It’s not like Catholics.”
Elder Thomas smiled in spite of himself, but then he finally took the wiser course. “Why don’t we see how Bruder Mecham and your father are doing?” he said.
“Yes. All right . . . Alex.”
“Don’t call me that. I’m not supposed to—”
“Oh, don’t worry. I won’t.” But she was still using her eyes to tease him. And he could tell she knew how pretty she was—and how awkward that made an Ältester.
As Elder Thomas approached the door to the kitchen, he heard Herr Stoltz say, “What do you mean? Who has been following you?”
It was another subject Elder Thomas didn’t want to talk about. But now Herr Stoltz had turned to look at Elder Thomas, and the question had become his.
“We’re not sure,” he said. “Sometimes we see a man outside our apartment. Actually, we’ve seen three different men—at different times. And sometimes we’ve seen the same men in other parts of the city. It seems more than a coincidence.”
“Trust me—it is not a coincidence. You must tell your leaders. You should leave Frankfurt immediately.”
“They haven’t seen us go into the ghetto.”
“You can’t know that. These people are not easily fooled. You must leave. It’s important you do so.”
Elder Thomas didn’t know how to respond, so he said, “Maybe I can talk to our mission president and see what he thinks.”
Herr Stoltz pushed the chess board aside. His eyes looked clouded, thoughtful. Finally, he said, “I’m sorry, but it would not be wise for you to come here again. I must think of my family. We can’t be drawn into this.”
“No, Papa,” Peter said. He stood up, stepped to his father, and put his arms around his shoulders. “They’re our friends.”
“I know. I’m very sorry.”
Elder Thomas nodded. “I understand,” he said. He wanted to offer some argument, but he could think of nothing to say. “Maybe we’d better go,” he said to Elder Mecham, who nodded and then got up from the table.
“Oh, Heinrich, is this necessary?” Frau Stoltz asked. She was standing across the kitchen, near the sink. She had clasped her hands together, and Elder Thomas saw tears in her eyes.
“Maybe it’s better—for now,” Elder Thomas said. “Maybe later, when we’re sure we aren’t followed, we could call on you again.” Elder Thomas glanced at Anna and saw that all the playfulness was gone from her eyes. She looked shocked.
“Yes. Maybe a little later,” Frau Stoltz said.
“It’s not just for us. It’s for you,” Herr Stoltz said. He stood up, and Peter stepped aside. “You need to go back to America and get away from all this. It would cause us great pain if something happened to you.”
“I know that,” Elder Thomas said. He and Elder Mecham got their coats and then shook hands with everybody, and all the Stoltzes apologized and wished the elders well.
As Elder Thomas walked out the door, he glanced back and caught a quick glimpse of Anna. The shock was gone from her face; what he thought he saw now was sadness.
The missionaries hardly spoke on the way home. Elder Thomas was feeling all sorts of emotions. He had held high hopes that the Stoltzes would eventually accept the gospel, and that chance seemed remote now. But with his disappointment was a good deal of fear. An uneasiness had been nagging at him these past several weeks, but after hearing what Herr Stoltz had said, the fear had turned into a darker, larger presence.
As the elders turned the last corner and then coasted to a stop, Elder Thomas looked up and down the street. The building they lived in was drab and narrow, with only two one-room apartments to a floor. Next door, on the ground floor, was a Gasthaus with an outdoor eating area under two big sycamore trees. In September, when the elders had first moved in, the noise from below had been bothersome, and that had seemed inconvenient; now the trees represented shadows, a place for someone to stand out of sight from the window above.
But no one was there tonight. The street was empty. A few remnants of a snowstorm—piles of dirty snow—were not high enough to hide anyone. There were alleys, however, and alcoves at the front of buildings. It was a bitterly cold night, and it seemed unreasonable that anyone would be out there just watching. But Elder Thomas kept scanning the street anyway.
The elders left their bikes in the courtyard out back, and then they walked up the stairs to their room. They were silent, aware of the darkness, and once they got to the room, Elder Thomas took a look out the window. He felt more secure in the lighted room, but that only allowed the other emotion to come back. “I hope someone gets a chance to teach the Stoltzes someday,” he told Elder Mecham. “Or that we still can.”
“I doubt they’ll ever accept the Church,” Elder Mecham said. He tossed his hat onto the top of the wardrobe and then pulled his coat off. “Frau Stoltz might, and maybe Peter. But Herr Stoltz has no faith in anything. And Anna doesn’t take us seriously.” Elder Mecham walked over to the stove. “I’m going to build a fire, unless we’re going to bed right away.”
“Go ahead,” Elder Thomas said. The room had felt warm when they first came in, but now that he had his coat off, he could feel how cold it actually was. He sat on the bed and loosened his tie. “What do you think we ought to do?” he asked.
“About what?”
“About the Gestapo—or whoever is following us.”
“I don’t know. I don’t see how they can arrest us. We haven’t done anything.” Elder Mecham had stuffed a piece of newspaper into the bottom of the stove, and now he added a few sticks of kindling.
“We can’t go see Bruder Goldfarb anymore.”
“We have to, Elder Thomas. We can’t desert him.” Elder Mecham placed a couple of lumps of coal on top of the wood, and then he
lit the paper at the bottom. He waited then, and watched. Sometimes the coal didn’t catch fire and the whole process had to start again.
“Maybe we should talk to President Wood,” Elder Thomas said.
“Maybe so. But if we do, he’ll transfer us for sure.” That’s what bothered Elder Thomas, too. Elder Mecham held his hands over the stove, which was apparently putting out some heat by now, although Elder Thomas couldn’t feel it. “I notice that you and Anna can’t keep your eyes off each other.”
“What?”
“You heard me.” Elder Mecham laughed.
“Come on, Elder. She’s a swell-looking girl—but she’s just a kid.”
“Yeah, well, she’s seventeen, and you’re only twenty-two. I doubt she thinks you’re quite over the hill yet.”
Elder Thomas didn’t reply. He wasn’t going to talk about this. “Let’s get some studying in,” he said. He got his German Bible down from a little shelf by his bed, and then he sat at the table in the center of the room.
Elder Mecham got his scriptures, too, placed them on the table, and sat down across from Elder Thomas, but he didn’t begin to read. “What was your family doing today?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Taking their presents back probably, trading everything for the right sizes.”
“Oh. I don’t mean today. I mean yesterday. It still seems like Christmas to me.”
Elder Thomas wasn’t sure this was a good thing to talk about, but he told Elder Mecham, “In the morning, everyone gets up early and goes downstairs to see what Santa brought.”
“What do you do after the presents are open?”
“The kids play with their new toys, and Mom scrambles up some eggs. She’s always telling the little girls not to eat too much candy before breakfast.”
“Mothers must go to the same training school. They all say the same things.”
Elder Thomas laughed, and now he was seeing the whole picture: the little girls on the floor in their flannel nightgowns with their new dolls or playhouses; Wally and Gene figuring out a new board game; Mom fussing around the house, telling Bobbi that her new sweater will go “just perfect” with her tan skirt.
“My big sisters were quite a bit older than me,” Elder Mecham said. “They’ve been gone from home quite a while. So I remember mostly the years with my little brother going wild with a toy truck or horse trailer, and my little sister telling him to quiet down so her doll could sleep. And Mom saying, ‘Now, kids, let’s not have any fighting today. It’s Christmas.’”
Elder Thomas nodded. He felt the nostalgia seeping in from all sides. He also saw it in Elder Mecham’s eyes, and he tried to think of a way to cut it off.
“The bad thing at our house,” Elder Mecham said, “was that my dad had very little to do with it. The cows had to be milked no matter what day it was.”
“My dad always called us together for a family meeting,” Elder Thomas said. “He’d talk to us about ‘the true meaning of Christmas.’ And then he’d read the Christmas story from the Bible. And that was something to hear.” Elder Thomas suddenly felt the deepest stab of homesickness he had known for a long time. He looked down at the table.
“My dad never preached,” Elder Mecham said. “He said he’d never stop smoking Bull Durham because if he did, he might get called to be the bishop.”
Elder Thomas laughed. “Did he go to church?”
“Not a lot. He always said the farm wouldn’t wait, but I don’t think he liked dressing up and sitting around in meetings. I’m not exactly big on it myself.” Elder Mecham broke into a sudden, huge burst of laughter.
“When I was little, it seemed like my dad was the Church in Sugar House. For as long as I can remember, he was always sitting up front.”
“Why is it called Sugar House?”
“The early settlers tried to farm sugar beets, and they set up a sugar processing plant out there. It never really worked.”
Elder Mecham nodded. “Your dad must be a good man,” he said.
“Yeah, he is. But he’s not a man who could talk to me about anything very personal. And he has awfully strict views.” Once again, Elder Thomas picked up his Bible. He turned some pages, but he didn’t really look at them. He was thinking about his father, his family, wondering what was happening at home.
“Elder Thomas?”
“Yes.”
“Could we maybe take some time between now and New Year’s and do a little sightseeing? I haven’t seen a thing.”
“You weren’t sent here to be a tourist.”
“Hey, I know that. But most of the elders take some time to look around a little. I talked to Elder Daniels at our district conference. He and his companion took a train trip down to the Black Forest. Have you ever done that?”
“No.”
“What would it hurt for us to do something like that? Elder Daniels said that President Wood knew they were going, and he didn’t mind.”
“It’s still a waste of the Lord’s time and our parents’ money, if you ask me.” Elder Thomas planted his Bible squarely in front of him.
“So your dad’s pretty strict, huh? That must be rough.”
When Elder Thomas looked up, Elder Mecham was grinning. Elder Thomas smiled a little too, but he was actually surprised. He never thought of himself as being like his father. “Look, Mit,” he said, “it’s hard even to think of relaxing right now. I’m worried about those guys who’ve been watching us. I don’t want to make a mistake and get in trouble.”
“Are you really that scared?”
“I’ve been worried all along, but Herr Stoltz made it sound pretty dangerous.”
“We haven’t seen those guys for a few days. Maybe they’ve lost interest in us.”
“Yeah. Maybe. But they can really stay after people. When I first got over here, a couple of elders got hold of a Nazi flag, and they thought it would be funny to wrap themselves up in it and take pictures. They tried to develop the film and got turned in for it. They had to hightail it out of Germany just to stay out of prison. The Gestapo was only one step behind them all the way.”
“Yeah, well, I think maybe the Gestapo takes Christmas off—even if you won’t.”
Elder Thomas laughed. He suddenly felt a little lighter. “Look,” he said, “I don’t feel good about running off to the Black Forest, but maybe we could take some time tomorrow and see a few things here in Frankfurt.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“All right. We’ll do that. And now let’s study.”
But Elder Thomas still had a picture of home in his head, and he couldn’t concentrate. He saw his father sitting in his big gray chair, reading in that deep voice of his. He wished he could be home for a few hours, long enough to hug the little girls and Mom and Bobbi, throw a ball around with Gene, and maybe have a talk with Wally. He always had the feeling he wasn’t as close to Wally as he really ought to be.
Elder Thomas looked up after a time, and he saw that Elder Mecham wasn’t even pretending to study. He was staring straight ahead. “Are you a little homesick tonight?” Elder Thomas asked.
“Either that or my insides are turning to clay.”
“Is it that bad?”
“Naw. I’m all right.”
“Are you sorry you came on your mission?”
“No. I just wish I could catch on to the language. And I wish the Nazis would go away. I don’t like watching what I say.”
“What if Herr Stoltz is right? What if we end up in a war with Germany?”
“That won’t happen. The Germans won’t let Hitler take things that far. They’re going to stop him one of these days.”
Elder Thomas got up and walked to the window. He looked at the corner lamppost and the circle of light around it. But he was much more aware of all the darkness beyond the light. “I hope you’re right,” he said.
Chapter 4
It was another gray day—and cold. Elder Thomas always had branch work to do, and members to visit, but he and Elder Mecham tried
to tract every morning for two or three hours. On such cold days, they wrapped themselves up in all the clothes they could get on: long johns, sweaters, overcoats, scarves, hats. Inside the apartment buildings, out of the wind, they trudged up steep flights of stairs and got sweaty. But back on the street—and especially on their bikes—the damp cold cut through everything, and the elders wished they could pile even more layers on.
It was almost noon, this late January day of 1939, and the hours had crawled by with no success. The Hausfrauen peeked out of their doors rather than swinging them wide. Then they stayed back in the shadows, in their dark housedresses. Their noses were often all that poked out, perhaps their red cheeks. And in this poor section of town, they showed their browned or missing teeth as they barked, “Nein, nein—Keine Zeit” and pushed the door shut in the elders’ faces. The missionaries held out their tracts, tried at least to get a little information into the homes, but more often than not the women refused even that.
The grumpier people sometimes complained: “We have our religion. Go preach to the heathens.” Or, “Why do you bother us? We wouldn’t join a sect.” Only Catholics and Lutherans—called Evangelisch—were considered members of “real” churches.
Door-to-door work was always difficult, but lately, with all the talk of war, and with Hitler’s tight controls, it had gotten harder. Most Germans had nothing against Americans, but they were wary of doing anything that might be viewed as careless or even different.
When the elders were about to call it a morning and were finishing one last building, an elderly man opened his door. “Yes, what do you want?” he said.
“We have a pamphlet for you,” Elder Mecham recited. “It costs nothing. We won’t come back to pick it up later. We only ask you to read it.”
“What are you?” the little man demanded to know.
Elder Mecham wasn’t sure what he meant. “We’re from the Church of—”
“No, no. Where do you come from?”
“America.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Nothing. We want to give you this. So you can learn about our religion.”