Children of the Promise

by Dean Hughes

  Later, after dinner had been cleared away, Bobbi went upstairs to pack. When she walked downstairs after a while, she heard her dad and her brother talking. “Can I kill and still have the Spirit with me?” Alex asked.

  She didn’t hear the answer, but she remembered the question, and it haunted her long after.

  Chapter 4

  The Stoltzes were sitting on their mattresses in the cellar. Each had taken a turn exercising, and now they were reading. President Hoch had brought home a copy of Goethe’s Faust from a bombed house, and Anna was reading it once again. She and her father spent hours discussing Faust’s decision, and Anna liked the way those discussions filled her attention and made time pass. It was June now, and the family had spent almost a year in hiding. Sometimes Anna wondered how much longer she could stand the tedium.

  The Stoltzes were from Frankfurt, but when a Gestapo agent had tried to rape Anna, she had lashed back, cut his face with a kitchen knife, and the family had been forced to go on the run. They had made their way to Berlin, where they had found the branch president of the Mormon Church, and he and his wife had let them hide in their cellar. Every week Brother Stoltz vowed that they had to move, find some other place to wait out the war, but there seemed no options, and so their lives had become a monotonous daily attempt to stay healthy and sane. Brother Stoltz was decidedly anti-Nazi, and so he hoped for Hitler’s fall, but he loved Germany, and he hated to think what it would take for the Allies to bring Hitler down. Berlin had been under attack for a long time, and from listening to British radio, he knew that many of the cities of Germany were being bombed repeatedly in nighttime Royal Air Force raids. Lately, huge armadas, with a thousand airplanes or more, had pounded Cologne, Essen, and Bremen.

  But this day had been uneventful, and it seemed certain to remain so. Then the cellar door flew open and President Hoch hurried down the steps. “Everyone upstairs, immediately!” he insisted.

  Peter bolted to his feet and then helped his father. Sister Stoltz was asking, “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

  “A man will come to the door in a minute or two. He’s a block warden for the Gestapo. One of his informants has seen us carry more food into the house than seemed necessary, and he reported us. I told the block warden that you were bombed out of a house in the city, that I merely brought you here until you could find a place to live. But he wants to talk to you; I don’t think he believes me.”

  Brother Hoch turned and hurried back up the stairs, but from upstairs he called back, “You’ll have to give him names, and—”

  “We have names ready,” Brother Stoltz said. “We’ll tell him our papers were lost in the fire—after the bombing.”

  Brother Stoltz struggled to climb the steps. He always had a hard time walking when he first got up. Herr Kellerman, the Gestapo agent who had tried to rape Anna, had beaten Brother Stoltz unmercifully, had broken his kneecap and his shoulder blade. Brother Stoltz had probably recovered as much as he was going to.

  “Ursula Hofmann,” Anna whispered out loud, reminding herself of the name she had chosen for a time like this.

  “I’m Karl,” Peter said.

  Someone was already knocking on the door. Brother Hoch pushed the rug back over the entrance to the cellar, and then he walked to the door and opened it. “Herr Biedemann,” he said, “please come in.”

  The man stepped in, a short man in a rumpled suit and a tie that was angling crookedly under his double-breasted coat. He looked around the room for a moment, his eyes darting quickly back and forth, and then he finally focused on Brother Stoltz. “Your name?” he asked.

  “Hofmann. Norbert Hofmann. This is my wife, Maria.” He gestured to Sister Stoltz, and she nodded to Herr Biedemann.

  Biedemann wrote the names in a little notebook and then looked at Peter. “And you?”

  “Karl,” Peter said.

  Anna heard his nervousness. She waited and then tried to sound natural as she said, “Ursula.”

  Biedemann took a look at her. Anna knew that men considered her pretty, but this little man leered at her, and she wished she could turn away from him. Instead, she smiled just a little and tried to seem friendly. He looked around at the others again, and then he stepped closer to Peter. “Tell me, young man, how did you and your family get here?”

  “Our apartment was destroyed,” Brother Stoltz said. “We were struck in a bombing raid, but fortunately we had all—”

  Biedemann turned to Brother Stoltz. “I didn’t ask you,” he said with force. “I want to hear it from the boy.”

  Peter nodded as Biedemann turned back to him. Everyone was standing stiff, the Stoltzes all in a line, with Peter on the end. Anna glanced at Sister Hoch, who was white with fear.

  “It was as my father said,” Peter began. “We were in a bombing raid, but we had gone to the basement. The building was blown apart, and we lost everything. At least we were not hurt.”

  Peter had done well. He might have seemed a little tight, but that was only natural, with this man staring at him. He was fifteen now but still small for his age. His voice had changed, but under pressure, it could still become tight and squeaky.

  “And I suppose you have no papers.”

  “No. Everything was lost.”

  “I thought you would say so. How long ago was this?”

  Peter looked at his father. “Let’s see,” he said, hesitating.

  Brother Hoch was quick to say, “Almost two weeks ago.”

  “I don’t want any of you answering for the boy,” Biedemann said. “I won’t put up with it again.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yes, it was almost two weeks ago,” Peter said. “I know. Because it was on a Tuesday.”

  “I don’t remember a raid at that time,” Biedemann said. “Are you certain?”

  “Yes. I am.”

  “Are you a Jewish boy?”

  “No.”

  “What religion are you, Karl?”

  “Evangelisch.”

  Anna wondered why he wanted to know. She couldn’t think where all this was going. She could hear the big clock ticking, like a drumbeat. The very air around her seemed to have turned solid. Brother Hoch was standing too rigid, his wife too wide-eyed. Biedemann had to know something wasn’t right.

  “Tell me this, Karl. What was your old address?”

  “Thirty-one Gerhardtstrasse.”

  “Gerhardtstrasse? I don’t know that street. Where is it?”

  “Near the Tiergarten. Just north of there.”

  “I know of no Gerhardtstrasse in that area.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. It’s there. Go look. I lived there all my life—until now.”

  Peter was warming to this, doing better all the time. But Gerhardtstrasse was in Frankfurt, the street they had lived on there. Anna hoped Peter hadn’t accidentally given something away—something the Gestapo could end up tracing. She also knew that once Biedemann checked, the Stoltzes would be in trouble. They would be on the run again. After all the dreadful time in the cellar, suddenly Anna wished she could go back to it and stay.

  “Tell me this, then,” Biedemann was saying. “What kind of work does your father do?”

  “He’s a teacher.”

  Anna saw Peter hunch a little as though he regretted the words already. But he had had to answer quickly, and he had done the best he could.

  “Teacher. What kind of teacher?”

  “At a grammar school.”

  “What school?”

  “I’m at the Holzheimer school,” Herr Stoltz said. “It’s on the—”

  “I told you not to answer,” Biedemann shouted. And he rushed at Brother Stoltz. “Why are you covering for this boy? Why are you lying?”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “If I call the school, will they verify that you work there?”

  “Of course they will. Call them immediately.”

  “Is there a telephone here?”

  “No. I’m sorry,” Brother Hoch
said. “We have none.”

  “I thought you wouldn’t.” Biedemann ran his hand along his cheek. He had not shaved very evenly, the stubble of a beard visible on one side of his chin and not the other. He appeared anything but intelligent, and Anna hoped he didn’t have the sense to keep pursuing the questions. She began to pray, silently, for some sort of miracle.

  “Herr Biedemann, I don’t understand this,” Brother Stoltz finally said. “We are a good German family, hard-working people, and we’ve lost our home to these stinking British bombers. I have no idea what you suspect us of. Please, just call my school. You’ll find that all is in order.”

  “I will call,” Biedemann said. “And I will be back very soon with Gestapo agents. They will talk this over with you in more detail.”

  “What is it you think? That we’re Jewish? I would hope you could look at us and see that we’re not that.”

  “One never knows. You may be Jewish. You may not. But something is not right here. I know of no Gerhardtstrasse. Not in that area, in any case.”

  “Please check. You’ll find that it’s there.”

  Biedemann walked to the door. “Do not leave this house. I will be back very soon. Herr Hoch, if they are gone when I come back, I will hold you responsible. So will the Gestapo—and you don’t want that.”

  “They have no reason to leave. Certainly, they will be here.” But the instant the door shut, Brother Hoch turned to the Stoltzes. “You must go. This moment.”

  “How can we do that?” Brother Stoltz said. “The Gestapo will take it out on you.”

  “I’ll tell them you must have been lying to me all along, that I took you in out of pity, and I believed your story. I’ll tear my shirt, tell them I tried to hold on to you, and you fought your way loose.”

  Brother Stoltz nodded. “I pray you’ll be all right.”

  “Let’s all pray, together. Quickly.”

  Everyone knelt—except Brother Stoltz, who bowed his head—and Brother Hoch said, “Father, I call on you to bless this good family. Guide them and protect them. Take them to a safe place. I ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.”

  Everyone said amen and then got up.

  “Listen. I just thought of something,” Brother Hoch said. “I worked on a row of bombed-out houses last week. There was little warning, and many people lost their lives there, but it might be a place where you can hide if you can get in without being seen. Go straight into the city, to the Kreuzberg area. Near Mehring Platz, on Lindenstrasse, you will see all the damage. There is a large, gray building—or the remains of one. It’s the biggest in the row. Go to the back. You can crawl through the back window and get into the basement. It’s not so bad down there. There is an apartment with some of the furniture left inside. It’s a place to hide for a time. I’ll try to contact you there if I can find a way to help you.”

  “All right. We need to go.”

  “Yes. Hurry.” President Hoch grabbed his hand, then pressed some money into his palm.

  Anna was already pulling back the rug and lifting the cellar door. She wasn’t leaving without Alex’s picture. She ran down and got it, and then she looked for the laundry bag they had used the year before. “Gather up our other clothes,” her father whispered, but that’s what Anna was already doing. She also grabbed her picture of Alex and the little Delft plate her mother had saved from their apartment in Frankfurt. Then she hurried up the steps. She stopped only long enough to hug the Hochs and to wish them God’s protection, and then she followed her family out the back door.

  The Stoltzes hurried down an alley, crossed a street to another back lane, and got through the block. They turned then and walked in the opposite direction they wanted to go but toward the bus they needed to catch. When they saw the bus in the distance, they waited at a stop and anxiously watched to see whether they had been followed. But no one appeared, and so they stepped onto the bus and were soon heading into the center of Berlin.

  This much had been easy, but Anna couldn’t think what her family would do after tonight, and she wondered what might be happening to the Hochs. Brother Stoltz reached forward and touched Anna’s shoulder and then Peter’s. “We’ll manage somehow, just as we did before. Stay calm.” And then he added, “Peter, you did a good job. I was proud of you.”

  “I said too much.”

  “No. You thought fast. You did the best you could.”

  “Will the Hochs be all right?” Anna asked.

  “I don’t know. I hope so. It was a noble thing they did. Now the Lord needs to help them.”

  “He didn’t pray for them—only for us,” Sister Stoltz said.

  “I know. But we’ve all been praying for them, haven’t we?”

  And it was true. Anna had prayed for them almost as soon as she had left the house.

  The Stoltzes had to change buses once, but when they got off at Mehring Platz, they had no trouble finding the destroyed buildings. When they walked down a back street, however, they realized they wouldn’t be able to get to the apartment house without being seen. It was a busy area, and the buildings had been turned into piles of rubble. The Stoltzes would have to climb over the heaps of debris to get to the window Brother Hoch had told them about.

  “We’ll have to wait until dark,” Brother Stoltz said. “Keep walking, and we’ll find a place to wait.”

  In all the hurry and fear, Anna had not taken any joy in being outside. She began now, however, to notice the sounds of the city, even birds, and the movement of her hair in the breeze. She wanted to enjoy all that, but she felt vulnerable out here, and she wondered about every person she passed. Was she being watched? Followed?

  “We’ll need some food,” Sister Stoltz said. “We can’t be going in and out of that basement very often.”

  “Yes. That’s right,” Brother Stoltz said. “I have enough money for now, but . . .”

  For the first time, the true enormity of their situation struck Anna. They had run from immediate trouble, but there was nothing ahead. A place to hide for the moment really solved no problems at all. They had to eat, and if they couldn’t find another family to help them, they would need to work. But they could never do that without identification papers. The other fear was that the Gestapo might put all this together and realize who the so-called Hofmann family really was.

  But the Stoltzes kept doing what they had to do. They bought bread and cheese and a few other things, and they waited in a park for the long June evening to pass. Anna lay on the grass and let the angling sun warm her face, but with every sound her eyes popped open. Sister Stoltz kept asking what they would do next, how long they would stay in the basement, but her husband only repeated, time and again, “I don’t know right now, Frieda. I’m trying to think everything through.”

  Anna looked at her parents and seemed to see them clearly for the first time in a long time—here in the sun, in this setting. They had aged so much lately. Her father was a broken man. He was not yet fifty, but the lines in his face were deep, and his thin hair had grayed a great deal in the last year. He still had those powerful shoulders, the bulk in his chest, but his face looked delicate, sad, not forceful at all. Even the intensity of his blue eyes—that were so much like Anna’s—seemed to have diminished. And Mother, who had such a lovely, sculptured face, looked pale and thin. The skin around her eyes had tightened, it seemed, and her mouth was drawn at the corners. She was hardly the same person Anna had known all her life.

  By the time the sun finally set, Anna was eager to get to the hiding place. What she hoped was that they could all find a decent place to sleep. She wanted to escape all her worries for a time before she had to deal with the next day.

  The Stoltzes walked back to the building. Twice they approached and then kept going when they saw people passing by. Finally, they climbed over the rubble from the back and found the open window to the basement. It was only a small window and awkward, especially for Brother Stoltz. Everyone helped him, but twisting his body was agonizing. Stil
l, he made it, and once inside, it seemed unlikely that anyone would find them, at least for the night.

  The problem was, they had no light, and it was difficult to find their way about. Peter went exploring, and after a minute or so, he called out, “There’s a bed in here but no bedding.”

  “It’s all right. It’s not cold,” Brother Stoltz called back.

  “It’s covered with dust or dirt—or something.”

  “Yes. That’s only to be expected. We can turn the mattress over. Check the other rooms. Are there other beds?”

  Anna heard Peter moving about again. “This is the kitchen,” he called. “I think there’s only one bedroom.”

  “We must be in a living room,” Brother Stoltz said. “There must be some furniture—a couch perhaps.”

  “Let me find what’s here,” Anna said, and she stepped carefully forward, reaching out. In a moment, her legs bumped something low and hard—a coffee table. She felt around it and then found the couch. She followed it along and found a rather stiff chair at the end. “There’s a couch and chair,” she finally said. “They’re not very soft. And they’re covered with filth.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Brother Stoltz said.

  But Anna could hear how strained his voice was. And Sister Stoltz was silent. Anna knew she was disheartened. All the same, Anna tried to wipe away the dust from the chair, and then she came for her father and led him there. “It’s not a good chair for sleeping,” she told him.

  “I’ll manage. Your mother can sleep here on the couch. You and Peter lie down on the bed. Check the closets. Maybe there is something we can put over us.”

  And so everyone made the best of things. But when Anna lay down without a pillow and pulled an old coat over her, she felt as though she were hiding in some dismal cave. She had no idea what was around her, or whether the building was safe. She remained stiff and scared and wide awake. Out in the living room she could hear her father shifting in his chair and breathing with strain—not the peaceful sounds of a man sleeping.

  All the same, when morning came and light filtered into the basement from three little windows, the place didn’t seem quite so bad. Anna got up early and explored a little—found that the apartment had been cleared for the most part. Only the larger pieces of furniture remained. At least the toilet worked all right, and an old broom in a closet would help.