Forever Fleeting

by Bret Kissinger

  “He will not let us surrender,” a soldier said, melting a bit of snow in his tin cup over a fire.

  They were behind one of the few still-standing buildings and could enjoy a fire to warm them.

  Everyone in the circle knew who “he” was—Hitler. He would not have his pride wounded from such a defeat. They all knew what it meant. They would have to fight until they were killed, starved or frozen. No one would leave the cauldron alive.

  “A pilot has agreed to take letters back with him. If you boys have someone back home you want aware of your fate, I suggest you write a letter and give it to him,” an officer announced.

  Wilhelm still had the letter he and Alexander had swapped. It felt like it had been so long ago. So much had changed. Wilhelm had developed such a coldness to killing. He was an animal—a wolf who did not second-guess killing the sheep. Only the Soviets weren’t sheep. They were wolves too. Each fight and each victory was earned through blood and sweat. He knew if he had met Alexander now, he would have shot him instantly. He could not even trick himself into thinking otherwise. He considered himself fortunate he had met him at a different time and when he was a different person. The thought of Alexander made Wilhelm cling to what little humanity he had left. The rest had been jettisoned off a steep cliff, and what did remain hung on by its fingernails, its grip faltering. Was he still the same man Hannah loved?

  Perhaps, if Hannah was able to read his journal and all he had done and had been done to him, she could understand. But Wilhelm had lost his pencil, and by the time one was passed to him, the pilot had boarded his plane. They were brave to fly into the cauldron, and some never made it back out. They dropped off what supplies they could, and though it may not have seemed like much, the sight of canned herring was enough to make men cry for those who had feasted on rats and, in the extreme, other men. Word spread that General Paulus had given the pilot his wedding ring to return to his wife in Germany. If General Paulus did not plan on leaving the cauldron, no one should.

  “You know what I am thinking of?” one soldier asked.

  They were huddled together in the freezing blackness.

  “A warm bed and a woman to warm you?” a fellow blonde soldier answered.

  “I’m thinking of every plate of food I never finished. The bits of bread from my sandwiches. Never had a strong liking for bread. I’d pick the crust off. Now, I’d kill a thousand Russians for one piece of bread with butter spread on it,” the soldier said.

  Coughs echoed up and down the lines. Everyone had a cold, whether minor or severe.

  “I would have rather died in North Africa—my feet in the Mediterranean, my back on the warm sand as the sun beat down upon my face,” one said through a shiver.

  “Not me. I never wanted to be a soldier. There was a brothel I frequented in Hamburg. There was this Negro woman with breasts out to here. I want her to smother me to death with those,” one said, using his hands to demonstrate.

  They tried to laugh, but only deep, painful coughs were swallowed up by the brutal wind.

  “What about you?” the soldier directly across from Wilhelm asked.

  “Warm in my bed with my wife by my side,” Wilhelm said.

  Wilhelm thought about Hannah all that night. He could only hope she was well and that fortune had taken a more desirable turn for her. He wanted to pull her picture from his pocket, but his fingers were too rigid. The snow had stopped falling, and the winds had died too. The entire air around them was frozen. Wilhelm and the Sixth Army were freezing to death, and there was nothing he could do.

  Josephine Moreau

  The plane landed safely in Strasbourg and the two pilots, after their cargo was unloaded, took Hannah to a local restaurant for breakfast. Neither appeared to be Nazis or even Nazi sympathizers, but she had an impression that they were keeping a close eye on her. Whether they were worried about failing Brigadeführer Huber’s command or simply being gentlemen, she could not tell. Though she did not know their motive, she did know she was not getting back on the plane.

  She ate her order of apple-cinnamon French toast and excused herself to use the restroom. She discretely, filled with shame, took the tip from a table as she passed by and entered the woman’s bathroom. A woman was at the sink, washing her hands. Hannah entered a stall and waited for the woman to leave. When the woman left and the door behind her closed, Hannah stepped out and hurried to the window over two meters from the ground. Well out of her reach, she ran to the garbage can and turned it upside down. She took quick glances to the door, praying solitude would continue for moments longer. She climbed onto the garbage can and was able to reach the window sill. She slid it open and pulled herself up through the opening. She dropped onto the hard ground and rushed to join the huge crowds on the street. Even if she was in occupied France, it was unwise to speak German and expect to be given directions to the train station. As an alternative, she asked in English, and only after asking nearly ten people did she get an answer.

  The two Austrian pilots surely had discovered she had escaped. The only question was would they alert the Nazis? If they feared repercussions from Brigadeführer Huber, they more than likely would.

  The train station was less than ten blocks away, and Hannah had to balance a fine line of looking to be in a hurry and looking like she was running from something. When the train station came into view, Hannah had to stifle her relief. She had only arrived at the station. She still needed to acquire a ticket, board the train, and the train needed to leave. She walked to the window and bought a ticket for the next train to Paris using the stolen tip money.

  “Twenty minutes,” the older, gray-haired woman said.

  Twenty minutes was a lifetime—far too long. It would not take a genius to figure out someone wanting to run away would look for a method to do exactly that. Hannah took her ticket and stood next to the tallest men she could find. She wanted to turn her head and look, but one glance was all that was needed to be spotted. She checked the pocket watch the farmer had given her. It had to have been broken, only three minutes had passed. And the next time she checked, only a minute.

  After seventeen more anguishing minutes, equating to nearly fifty glances at her watch, the train finally pulled into the station. After the passengers stepped off the train, Hannah, fighting visions of a human cattle car, stepped on and occupied a window seat. She blocked her face with her hand and looked toward the aisle. Whenever she saw black leather boots walk past, she fought the urge to look up. When the last passengers were seated, the train jerked forward, and Hannah left the eastern French city of Strasbourg and the two pilots behind. The tracks passed south of the city of Verdun and the famed battlefield of the Great War.

  Nearly thirty years earlier, the fields would have been littered with French and German men. Petyr Schreiber had fought on that very field and, according to Wilhelm, a part of him had died there. The fields looked too peaceful to be the resting place of hundreds of thousands of men. The rows and rows of white crosses of the memorial Douaumont Ossuary were perfectly in line and stretched past what the human eye could see. History had been ignored. Would anyone have wanted war after walking the hallowed grounds?

  The forty-six-meter high bronze death bell was silent. The lantern of the dead, rotating red and white, only shined at night, but the white crosses sparkled in the sun. The sacrifice of so many was impossible to forget. But the deaths of thousands at Auschwitz were unknown to the world—no bells chimed for them, no lights shone. Thousands disappeared with nothing to remember them by but the mountains of possessions in Kanada.

  Hannah’s thoughts were depressing and reflective until the Eiffel Tower broke over the horizon. When the train shrieked to a stop, most passengers began retrieving their luggage. Hannah had none and was the first to step off the train. The next batch of passengers waited to step on, and Hannah disappeared into the crowd.

  Hannah had used all her stolen money on the ticket to Paris and, not that she had wanted to, she could not make a
habit of stealing. It was a sure way to get into trouble. There were few cars on the streets, but cafés were on every street corner, serving Parisians and German soldiers alike. The entire city was romanticized—from its historic beautiful buildings to its narrow streets of cobblestone.

  Of all the cafés, there was one busier than all the rest, and all points led to it. The name of the café, “Givre Strudel,” or “Frosted Strudel,” was in white letters against a red canopy. It had both indoor and outdoor seating and no vacancy for either. The chairs were wicker and the tables, glass. The plates were filled with edible art, and judging by the food, the place specialized in pastries. Clouds of smoke wafted off the end of cigarettes from people enjoying an after-lunch smoke. Bust boys cleared and washed tables while waitresses flirted for better tips.

  Hannah opened the door to the café, and the waitresses dropped their heads at the sight of another customer. A woman with olive skin and thick, flowing brunette hair spoke. She studied Hannah’s confused expression.

  “We have no seating available at the moment,” the olive-skinned woman said in broken German.

  “I would like to ask about a job,” Hannah said in German.

  She followed the woman as she cleared tables and loaded the dirty dishes into a plastic tub. The woman studied Hannah once more. Her eyes, blue and green in color, each fighting for dominance, pierced through Hannah. The woman nodded, indicating Hannah to follow her. Hannah did, and the woman made meandering past the customers and staff look like an elegant dance. She used the plastic tub to push open the kitchen swing door. She dropped the tub down next to the sink, the dishes inside clambering against one another. The woman spoke in French again, and a man dried his hands on his apron and hurried through the swing door.

  “You speak German. You are in Paris,” the woman said.

  “Do you speak English?” Hannah asked in English.

  “I do. And I speak some Boches too,” the woman answered.

  “Boches?” Hannah asked.

  “German,” the woman said.

  She paused ever so slightly and wore a look that told Hannah to get to the point.

  “I would like a job,” Hannah said.

  “Yes. I understood you when you said it in German. You are from Germany?” the woman asked.

  “I am,” Hannah replied.

  There was no point in denying it. Her accent would betray any lie she told.

  “Why are you here?” the woman asked, mixing a bowl of white frosting with a spatula.

  “I need a job. I have no money,” Hannah explained.

  “Not much of a dresser either, are you?” the woman said.

  She cleaned the spatula on the edge of the mixing bowl and grabbed a whisk and whipped the frosting.

  Hannah was still dressed in the clothes the woman from the farm had given her. The farmer’s wife had a huge heart but little taste. The clothing was fine for the farms of Czechoslovakia, but it was not fine for one of the most fashion-conscious cities in the world.

  “I have nothing,” Hannah said.

  The woman slid the bowl down the counter to the pastry chef and wiped her hands on a towel. Again, she studied Hannah.

  “Michelle, I will be leaving for lunch. I will return shortly. With more help,” the woman said.

  “Okay, Josephine,” Michelle said.

  “Follow me,” Josephine said to Hannah.

  Josephine was the most popular person at the “Givre Strudel” and, perhaps, all of Paris. She could hardly make it past a table without the patrons starting a conversation or throwing their hands up, waving and flashing giant smiles. She was voluptuous but could hold a conversation with the brightest mind, and her wit was as sharp as a tack. Her kindness was not exclusive to the French but to the Germans as well, and it took twenty minutes to travel three tables.

  “How is everything, gentlemen?” Josephine asked in German.

  “Perfect as always, Josephine,” the highest-ranking officer said in French.

  The other German officers nodded politely between their puffs of cigarettes. Josephine returned the smile, and after twenty-five minutes, they had finally made it outside. Luckily for Hannah and Michelle, who was told Josephine would return shortly, Josephine only offered waves and smiles to the outdoor patrons.

  “How long have you been in Paris?” Josephine asked.

  “Just today,” Hannah said.

  “Fresh off the train. There are some things to remember. The city is a different place during the day than it is at night—beauty and the beast. There are rules. We have strict regulations on everything, but there are ways around that,” Josephine explained.

  “Where are we going?” Hannah asked.

  She did not want to sound rude but wanted to be cautious, even skeptical, of everything.

  “If you wish to work for me, you will dress like a woman and with clothes that fit. You look like you are wearing a potato sack.”

  Somehow Hannah did not take offense. The outfit certainly would not have been in her wardrobe.

  “There are so few cars,” Hannah remarked.

  During the flight out of Vienna, the roads were filled with headlights, but in Paris, they were ghost-like.

  “The Germans take the gasoline,” Josephine explained.

  They walked five blocks and crossed three intersections before Josephine ascended four steps to the entrance door of an apartment building. She inserted her key and opened the door. They stepped inside. Most of the doors on the floor were open and rooms, vacant.

  “The building used to be full. Many left before the city was taken,” Josephine said.

  No doubt the Germans had broken into every apartment and had taken whatever they desired. Josephine’s apartment was on the top floor, and Hannah was not surprised at how well kept the apartment was. Josephine was a sharply dressed woman who had an eye for fashion and decorating, and every hair on her head was where she wanted it to be. Hannah discretely looked over the apartment. A framed photo hung on the mantel—Josephine was surrounded by four men, one her age and three much younger. It was far too personal to mention and, instead, Hannah acted like she had not noticed it.

  “You do not like the Germans?” Josephine asked.

  “I like them fine,” Hannah said.

  Josephine grinned. “I saw your face at the Strudel. I’ve cast that look at a man or two before.”

  “No, I do not like them,” Hannah said.

  “That is your right. But when they are eating at my café, you will treat them no differently than you would a man from Paris. Understood?”

  It came as a surprise she owned the café and an absolute shock she did not mind Germans.

  “Why did you leave Germany?” Josephine asked.

  “Paris was calling,” Hannah answered.

  It was a lie and one Josephine did not appreciate. She stared at Hannah with her dagger-like eyes and then resumed searching through her closet for clothes that would fit two criteria—one, clothes that would fit Hannah and, two, clothes she was willing to part with.

  “Put these on,” Josephine said.

  She turned away from Hannah. But for Hannah, after Auschwitz, changing in front of a strange woman caused no discomfort.

  “How does it look?” Hannah asked.

  Josephine turned. Hannah was in a sky-blue summer dress and a pair of white heels.

  “Dress is a bit baggy. I will put a belt around to tighten it to show your petite figure,” Josephine said.

  “I have a belt,” Hannah said, reaching for the leather belt she had worn.

  “No leather belts. It will warrant questions. All leather is to be used for boots for German soldiers. Do not wear it again,” Josephine said.

  Hannah nodded. She knew at that moment there would be as many rules to surviving in Paris as in Auschwitz.

  Josephine wrapped a cloth belt around Hannah’s waist and tightened it.

  “For the finishing touches…” Josephine said, twisting open a tube of lipstick, nude in sha
de. It was not nearly as vibrant as Josephine’s fierce red, and Hannah approved of that. Her goal was to blend in, not to be noticed by every man in Paris.

  “Are you planning on staying in Paris?” Josephine asked.

  “I would like to get to London,” Hannah answered.

  Josephine laughed.

  “Is that funny?” Hannah asked.

  “The Germans will not allow you to go to London,” Josephine said.

  She led Hannah out of the apartment and locked her door and wiggled the door handle to ensure it was locked.

  “Do you speak any French?” Josephine asked.

  “No,” Hannah answered.

  “That won’t fly. I’ll let you serve the Germans. Pick up what the other waitresses are saying. We close at seven. We will talk again after that.”

  Hannah was being thrown into a lake, and she would either sink or swim. But she had survived much worse than learning to speak French on the fly while serving the very soldiers who rounded up people like her.

  Inside the café, it was nearly eighty degrees, and Hannah had to fight the urge to roll her sleeves up and risk her tattoo being seen. It would mean nothing to Josephine or any of the French, but high-ranking German officers were sure to know what it was. A vacant table was occupied by a group of German officers. Hannah prayed silently that none of them had been to the Hauser household.

  “Welcome. Can I start you off with something to drink?” Hannah asked.

  “Just water for the table, please,” the oldest of the group said.

  “Very well. Do you need more time to look over the menu?” she asked.

  “Your German is quite good. Are you not from France?” the soldier asked.

  He looked like the poster child of Hitler’s Aryan race fantasy.

  “I grew up in Germany. My parents moved here when I was fourteen,” Hannah lied.

  “Your first day?” he asked.

  “It is. I am sorry, but did you want to order something to eat?” Hannah asked.

  “My apologies. Of course, you are quite busy,” the German said.