The German Heiress

by Anika Scott

  “If you want to know, we got pretty close recently.”

  “In what way?”

  “Oh, I don’t talk about that stuff. Not in detail. I’ll only say the cold nights are a little warmer when she’s around.”

  The color emptied from Max’s face, and he took a step toward Jakob, who stood his ground. He had grown up on the streets. He and the neighborhood boys used to beat up Hitler Youth, boys like Max had been and still was: spit-polished, arrogant, thinking they were better than everybody else.

  “Where is she?” Max asked through gritted teeth.

  “I don’t know.”

  They held one another’s gaze in a silent challenge. Max was the first to take a breath, collect himself. “I’ve been looking for her. If you know where she could be, if you have any idea, tell me.”

  “Herr Relling?” The girl with the punch tray seemed reluctant to get too close. “Frau Heath is ready to see you.”

  “Was a pleasure to meet you, Herr Hecht.” Jakob followed the girl out of the hall. He passed from dreamland back to reality. Under broken ceiling lights, he limped down a cold, stained hallway to an office where Anne, in her furs again, sat in a battered chair. She motioned for him to sit beside her.

  “You’ve been limping,” she said.

  He tapped his thigh. “Wood.”

  “Light my cigarette, darling.” To do it, he rolled his chair close to hers, leaned into her perfume. She exhaled at the ceiling. “Now, tell me what happened to her. Every detail.”

  He told her as much of the story as he could without incriminating himself, the fury on Anne’s face alarming him. If she didn’t know what had happened to her own daughter, could that mean that Fenshaw was acting alone? “Nobody told you?” he asked.

  Her perfect white teeth clenched the cigarette holder. “I haven’t heard a whisper, and I know all the important men in the military government.”

  “Fenshaw can’t just arrest people and make them vanish.”

  “It looks as though he has. I should have had him dealt with after he came to search my house as though I was a common criminal.”

  “Could you ask around? Make sure she’s all right?”

  “I will find her and I will get her back, darling. Nobody kidnaps a Falkenberg without consequences.” She picked up the telephone on the desk. He was surprised it worked, listening with admiration as she barked for a line to Glückaufhaus, British headquarters. After that, her English was so rapid, he didn’t understand a word. Several minutes later, she banged the receiver back in the cradle. “Try getting anybody to actually do any work at Christmas. I’ll have to nudge an officer or two at the party.” She stood up, straightening her coat, a woman who was going to get things done. She would find Clara, he had no doubt about that. Anne seemed capable of charming or badgering anyone in her path until she got exactly what she needed.

  Jakob thanked her and put on his hat, but he still had a niggling feeling in his gut. He hadn’t yet done everything he could for Clara. She might be found, and Fenshaw punished somehow, but it didn’t feel enough to erase his betrayal. He rubbed his hands, remembering her fingers entwined with his outside the mine, and the look she gave him: tender, full of needs and regrets. That was the woman he’d betrayed. She was opening up old wounds, trying to understand parts of herself and her past that most people would firmly ignore. He wasn’t sure about her guilt or innocence. He’d seen enough in the war to know how close the two could be in one person. But her conscience was real and deep, and that had to count for something, even if Fenshaw believed otherwise. Jakob couldn’t sit back and wait for news that she was free.

  “One moment, darling.” Anne was watching him the way Clara had, still and inquisitive. “I was wondering, did you recognize my daughter or did she admit who she was?”

  “I recognized her. It’s not a face a man forgets.”

  “Did she tell you what she was doing in Essen?”

  He sensed the real question behind her question. She wanted to know if he knew about any of the family’s sordid little secrets. “She told me she was looking for an old friend. Elisabeth something.”

  “Did Clara talk about her much?”

  “Some.” He couldn’t resist probing. Clara hadn’t known Willy was her brother, but he’d bet a thousand marks Anne did; that was the kind of secret she’d have kept from her own daughter. “I think her friend was pregnant, and there was something about the kid’s father—”

  “A very gifted accountant named Reinhard. Good Nordic stock. I saw his skull measurements once. Divine.” Her lips hardened into a line the color of blood. “I’m curious, what did Captain Fenshaw give you when you betrayed my daughter? How low was your price? Hm? Some coffee and a can of ham?”

  “I didn’t—”

  She wiped her hand across his forehead. “You did. The guilt is oozing from your pores. A Falkenberg tolerates no treason. We expect nothing less than total loyalty.”

  “You’re a Falkenberg again, are you? I thought you were an Englishwoman named Heath.”

  “You’ve done me a service telling me about my daughter. I will take over from here. But remember, if I ever trace one bit of slander about my family back to you, I will crush you, darling. Don’t forget that. Oh, and have a very happy Christmas.” She dismissed him with a pat on the cheek as if he were a boy at the party stuffing walnuts into his pockets.

  It made him burn, but he’d done what he’d come to do. Jakob limped quickly back to the party to collect Gabi. Her cheeks inflated like a squirrel’s, she looked up at him with big eyes and mumbled with her mouth full: “I don’t want to go.”

  “Sorry, little mouse.” As he was helping her with her coat, he glanced into the hallway. Anne was hissing at Max Hecht, who was listening with sharp attention and a readiness Jakob remembered having himself when he was a soldier ready to go to war.

  Cracks

  He was lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling, when he saw it. Right there, in his line of sight, was the black rock and the beam, and a fresh white jagged crack running through it.

  He got up for a closer look, ran his hand along the crack, the splinters prickling his skin. It was a deep cut. If the beam were an arm, it would have bled, dripping down on him while he slept. He couldn’t tolerate the idea of blood. Anything but that.

  Squatting on the ground and sweeping the black dust with the edge of his hand into a little pile at his feet, he added a few drops of water from his canteen, mixing it to a paste with a spoon and transferring it onto a tin plate. He slathered it onto the cracked beam. “That ought to do it.” Mama used to say, “You’re the most resourceful boy I know.”

  Gertrud hopped onto his bed and cocked her head, assessing his work. Right behind her, not a hand’s width away from her nest, was a split in the timber. That couldn’t be. Lantern up, he searched for more and found them on the tunnel walls, on the ceiling, everywhere. Had the cracks always been there and he hadn’t seen them?

  He smeared thick slabs of moist black dirt on the walls, on the ceiling, on the beams, on the timbers. The more he repaired, the more chinks he saw. He couldn’t get them all, couldn’t possibly. They were everywhere.

  He threw himself onto his bed. It felt as though his heart had shrunk and was rattling around in the cold empty cavity behind his ribs. “Gertrud, what’s happening?” He wiped his mouth and there was moist black dirt between his teeth. In the thick air, his eyes watered, and he chewed the grit in his mouth, a paste collecting on his tongue that he spat out. Spat and spat. And everywhere he looked, the cracks.

  23

  The parlor had no stove, only a broken radiator that seemed to pump cold into the room, but it was Jakob’s space and he chose it as the place to have a serious talk with his sisters. He didn’t want Dorrit tidying up while he spoke, so he did it himself, hefting boxes of wire and scrap metal organized from the ruins, sniffing the clothes on the worn armchair, tossing the rank ones into the basket and folding the cleaner ones into the suitcase he us
ed as a dresser. He rearranged the furniture too, angling the chair so that he could sit in it while his sisters had the sofa. If they all sat side by side, the girls could turn away from him too easily. He wouldn’t know what they were really thinking.

  Seeing them on the sofa now, hand in hand, faces closed with uneasiness and suspicion, Jakob’s courage almost left him. Dorrit’s belly was a constant reminder of what he had to protect at all costs. And Gabi, her hair over her forehead like the forelock of a pony, was too small, too fragile, a teenager who looked like a little girl. The pain he felt when he looked at them was love, he knew that. Seeing their mother die a few months ago had taught him how much love could hurt. But the rawest place inside him belonged to Clara. Wherever she was, whatever was happening to her, he was partly responsible. The pain of his guilt kept him up at night, his leg pulsing and enflamed: his own body punishing him for betraying her.

  “I’ve decided.” He cleared his throat, wishing he’d brought a flask of schnapps. “I’m going back to the mine.”

  “We have food,” Dorrit said quickly. “What you brought from the mine, and what the Englishman gave us. It’s enough for a few weeks if we’re careful. You don’t have to go back so soon.”

  He’d known she would say exactly this. He knew how scared she was of him leaving again and not coming back. It made what he was about to say even harder. “I’m going back for Willy.”

  “But the first time you were in that mine, he shot at you. The second time, he threatened Fräulein Falkenberg. He’s dangerous. You said so yourself.”

  “He won’t pull that kind of thing in this house. I’ll see to that.”

  The girls looked at one another, and at him, incredulously. “You’re bringing him here?”

  “If I can get him out—”

  “Why? Why here?”

  “It’s the mine that’s making him crazy. I mean, he’s been there almost two years. Once he’s out and living in a normal family, he’ll get better.”

  “He’s not your responsibility, Jakob,” Dorrit said.

  He slumped back in the chair. He wasn’t being all that convincing because he wasn’t convinced himself that this was the right thing to do. For his family, it was a potential catastrophe. But for Clara, it was right. If Elisa couldn’t be found, maybe helping Willy was the only thing Jakob could do to make up for his betrayal. It was an act almost large enough to erase what he’d done. He would show her what kind of man he really was.

  “I’m going to tell you a secret and you got to swear not to say a word to anybody, all right?” After the girls crossed themselves, he said, “Willy is Clara’s little brother. I’m not going to tell you the details because we are not a family that’s interested in the personal business of others.” Dorrit had bowed her head, and he put a warm hand on her arm. “I don’t judge you, little mouse, and we’re not going to judge Willy’s mother either. The kid doesn’t have anybody right now. We can help him until he finds his own way.”

  “What if he doesn’t want to be helped?”

  “I can only offer him a home. A temporary home until he gets used to how things are out in the real world. I know it’s a lot to ask of you. We don’t have much space and there’s the cooking and cleaning and he’s a stranger. But he’s fifteen, right between you two. Gabi, you could take him to school, maybe. Oh, and Gertrud, his bird, would come too. She could be free here in the parlor.”

  Gabi’s face brightened as she looked around, imagining, he assumed, the yellow canary hopping across the sofa back. Dorrit was unimpressed. “Where’s he supposed to sleep?”

  “In here. On the floor or in this chair, I don’t know. But he won’t go near you at night.”

  “He better not.”

  “And I’ll put him to work. We got repairs needed all over the house. We can string some electrics, we got to do something about the water pipes, there’s that hole in the kitchen wall . . .” He went on, detailing the chores he’d put off, wanting the girls to imagine Willy hammering down loose floorboards or up on a ladder funneling wire through a hole in the ceiling. If they could envision Willy being useful—and sane—Jakob had all but won.

  Dorrit was stroking the dark blue wool stretched over her belly. Jakob squeezed onto the sofa between her and Gabi and put his arms around them.

  “I have to do this.” He stopped, his words lost, too twisted up as he pictured Clara in the bare cell of an Allied prison or the rough barracks of an internment camp. “I have to do this for Clara. She’d want to know her brother is safe until she comes back.”

  He didn’t say the next bit. That if she came back and Willy was living in this house, he knew that she would come here, right here to this parlor, looking for him. If that was the only way Jakob could see her again, so be it. If she stormed at him or turned away from him in disgust, he could live with that if he had to, but at least he’d see with his own eyes that she was all right. And she would see that he had tried to help her, in the end, the only way he could.

  “All right,” Dorrit said, sighing, “he can come. For a little while. As long as he does his own laundry. I’ll have enough to do when the baby comes.”

  They shook on it, and then he pulled her into as tight a hug as he could manage with her belly between them. Gabi joined in, the three of them—four, actually—wrapped in a warm embrace that Jakob tried to imprint in his memory just as he had years ago when he was about to leave for the front.

  AFTER THE GIRLS left the parlor, Jakob switched on the lamp and began packing the things he would take to Willy’s mine. First, his beloved calendar. The American girl smiled at him as always, but she bored him now. Compared to Clara, she was as sticky sweet as an old toffee. Just the thing for a fifteen-year-old boy who hadn’t seen a girl his age since the war. The year was printed in bold next to each month. Crazy as he was, even Willy couldn’t think Jakob had somehow manufactured a 1946 calendar to fool him into believing that time had passed.

  Next, Jakob carefully tore off the front pages of the newspapers he’d kept to use as toilet paper or to light fires. He looked for dates, headlines, photos, news of Allied conferences. If Willy had any sense left in him, he couldn’t read them and think the war was still on.

  The last thing Jakob had to do was the hardest. His family didn’t have much that anybody else would call precious, but the wooden trunk his mother had brought into her marriage had always seemed so to him. It was good German oak, and that meant it would last forever. Jakob hadn’t so much as opened it since she died. Gently, he lifted the lid, and a musty smell rose from his mother’s dresses. He didn’t have the heart to sell them right now, but he knew he would if he was hungry enough. Beneath them was his photograph album from the war. In gold engraving: My Adventures on the Front. He browsed the pictures, warm with shame, but longing too for the man he had once been, the one who strutted down the street in his uniform, enjoying the looks thrown his way. The one who danced. Who kicked a ball around in the alley behind his house. In one photograph from early in the war, he posed on the edge of a French forest, cigarette in his mouth, cap slanted at an angle to show what a saucy bastard he was. He looked like a soldier who knew only victory. He stood on his own flesh and bone feet.

  He closed the album quickly. There was nothing left in the trunk but the false bottom his mother had installed toward the end of the war. He prized it up and, underneath, the bundle was still there. Nobody wanted to touch this, including him. But he had no choice.

  The first thing he unfolded was the gray tunic, all Nazi symbols and signs of rank cut away. There was no sign he’d been wearing this when he was wounded. After the Americans demobilized him, his mother had scrubbed the uniform, repaired it, preserved it. She’d told him it was the sensible thing to do with a perfectly good uniform. Who knew when he might need it again?

  He put on a clean white shirt, then pulled on the tunic. His muscles recoiled from the weight of it, the old, familiar sensation of his arms sheathed in army wool. A sense of dread descended, the sam
e feeling he’d had the last time he wore this as a soldier in a losing army. The tunic’s gray was washed out in places, like a rainy sky seen through cataracts. Out of the pocket, he took a wrap of cotton. Inside was his Iron Cross, earned for whatever they were calling valor back when he was in the army. He pinned it on and rooted in the bundle of paper where his tattered trousers lay. His cap was underneath. Jakob fitted it on his head in a gesture that was natural, something he’d done all his life. Feeling a fraud, he checked himself in the mirror. On the outside, he was a soldier again, the wrong kind. If the British caught him like this, he wouldn’t be around to see Dorrit’s baby born. It was a risk, but he had no doubt Willy would listen to him dressed like this.

  HERE AND THERE, public transport was running again. Jakob rode on whatever streetcars or omnibuses he could find heading south, his army tunic hidden under a borrowed civilian overcoat. He was relieved when he left the more crowded districts of the city for the quiet meadows along the bank of the river. Almost all of the snow had melted, leaving wet soil and grasses that had immediately frozen. Each step crunched under Jakob’s feet, and he chose his steps as carefully as when he had only one leg and a crutch. He reached Willy’s mine exhausted, and rested on a flat stone on the slope. The only sound in the valley was his own breathing, the exhalations he made when he blew smoke from his cigarette. The clouds hung low and dark in the early twilight.

  Ready, he stowed his coat in the brambles outside the entrance.

  In the first tunnel, he paused where the daylight suddenly ended. He was shivering and his nose was running, and when he went back out to piss, he realized he wasn’t just cold, he was nervous. The uniform, the damned uniform, reminding him of the old fears.

  Back inside the mine, he entered the concrete corridor. He took down the burning lantern from its hook, and the shadows shifted around him.