Forever Fleeting

by Bret Kissinger

  “I’m sorry, did I wake you?” Petyr asked as he turned to pour the tea into a teacup.

  “No. I could not sleep,” Hannah said.

  Petyr handed her the cup and reached for another one. He filled his and brought it to his lips without first blowing on it to cool it off. Hannah assumed he had taken to tea to help with his insatiable cough. The two sat in silence. Petyr’s large hands completely covered his cup, his fingers tapping the glass. Hannah stirred her tea, and there appeared to be no end in sight as to when she would consider it properly stirred.

  “What are you doing, Hannah?” Petyr asked.

  “I guess I was deep in thought,” Hannah said, setting the spoon down.

  “No, I mean, what are you doing here?”

  “I want to help out until Wilhelm comes home.”

  “Hannah, the war has been over for almost three years.”

  Hannah knew where his conversation was going, and she looked around the room for anything that could make him change the topic. She did not want to hear any of it.

  “Hannah,” Petyr said, gently placing his hand atop her much more petite one.

  “They haven’t declared him dead. I will not give up,” Hannah said.

  “War does not give gentle deaths. There are no family members gathered around to say goodbye. There is no documentation. The battlefields are riddled with thousands of dead. The armies need to be able to advance, so the bodies are tossed into a hole and covered,” Petyr said.

  Hannah did not want to picture Wilhelm being one of hundreds bulldozed into a hole. She had seen the horror of that at Auschwitz and Normandy. Petyr did not want to say more, but he was not getting through to Hannah.

  “Hannah, Wilhelm is gone,” Petyr said. His hands felt a rush of power before the strength left them, the tea in his cup washing from edge to edge.

  “I can’t believe that. I won’t believe that,” Hannah said, avoiding looking Petyr in the eye.

  “Sometimes closure isn’t something that can be achieved through knowing.”

  “No,” Hannah said, shaking her head, refusing to believe.

  “He loved you, Hannah. If he were alive, he would have come here.”

  “What if he did return to Berlin and I wasn’t there and he is searching for me?” Hannah asked.

  Petyr admired her resolve but did not encourage it. His trembling hand squeezed hers with surprising steadiness. “You have suffered enough, Hannah. Live your life. Go back to New York while you still can.”

  Hannah did her best to stop the tear in her eye from falling. But when Petyr had been unable to keep his hidden, her tears cascaded down her cheeks. Hannah could not remember how long the two of them had been sitting there, but when she finished her last sip of tea, it had gone cold.

  Hannah gathered her things and kept the envelope next to her coat so there was no way she could forget it again. But there was something she had to do before leaving. She returned to the “Rote Blumen” and began the long, arduous process of dyeing a white rose blue. She cut the rose stem and set it in water and prepared the dye bath. She let the rose sit in the dye and returned to Petyr’s. She wanted the same vibrant blue Wilhelm’s rose had, and it would have to sit in the dye for much longer than the standard four hours. After dinner, she returned to begin the drying process. She let the rose hang upside down in the back of the shop and away from sunlight. She stayed another two weeks, and each morning, she continued to try and track down any information on Wilhelm’s fate. But there was no information to be had, and with each failed attempt, she knew her time in Germany was coming to a close. When the drying process was complete, Hannah took the rose and slipped it inside Wilhelm’s comic—the exact one he had been looking at when they had first seen each other a lifetime ago.

  Hannah took a piece of thick white paper and Petyr’s black ink ballpoint pen and wrote Wilhelm’s name. The paper had already been stamped with the day’s date—21 December 1947—using the stamp Petyr used on all orders at the “Rote Blumen.” The ink from the pen spread smoothly. She poured every memory the two of them had into the letter, but it lacked a set direction. But such is the way of writing when it is filled with passion. But as Hannah reached halfway down the back of the page, she knew she had to say goodbye. Hannah signed her name. The tears that had been hanging precariously at the bottom of her chin fell, and the ink blurred. She folded the paper into thirds and slid it into the comic book along with the blue rose.

  She gave the shop one final look and thanked God that she and her mother had wandered into it all those years ago. There were a handful of moments that shaped—that defined—a person’s life. They had deliberated on if they wanted to enter but had some time to waste until the train to Berlin would leave.

  Hannah returned to Petyr’s, and even if he had encouraged her to leave and live her life, he looked shaken up at losing her. He recognized the pain that came from losing your soulmate and at too young an age. He had experienced it himself, and even if they were different genders, had nearly a fourteen-inch height difference, amongst hundreds of other physical differences, he saw himself in Hannah’s blue eyes.

  “Goodbye, Hannah,” Petyr said, trying his best to smile, but the sadness showed in his eyes.

  “Goodbye,” Hannah said. She wrapped her arms around him, resting her face against his chest.

  He placed his large left hand on the back of her head. “Take care of yourself.”

  “And you,” Hannah said. She had her worries of how his cough showed no signs of ever going away, but Petyr kept assuring her it was something he had been dealing with off and on. Some days, it was worse than others.

  Hannah had only her suitcase and her purse and made sure the manila envelope filled with the photographs and the blue rose was inside. She would not risk losing them again. Petyr walked her to the train station and waved her off, and she returned to Berlin. Hannah had told herself on the walk over she would not look, but seeing Petyr waving goodbye brought her back to when Wilhelm had left for war. She could not have imagined how drastically their lives would change. It was the last time she would ever see Wilhelm. She thought about that moment when she stood in their apartment as he and Heinrich walked outside to the cold, blowing snow. She had run after him and now, almost eight years later, she seemed to have known even then it would be the last. She was unwilling to let him go, but he was unable to stay.

  She was seated on the train as the last few passengers took their seats. There was nothing she could do to stop herself from looking out the window. But as Petyr fell out of sight as the train sped by, Hannah was grateful she had taken the moment to look at him one last time.

  The sights of ruined cities did little to improve her mood. It was not just her life that had changed over the last ten years but all of Europe. But now, she had only photos and memories of Wilhelm. She had already forgotten the smell of his pillow and knew that, over time, she would forget more. It was that that caused her additional pain. With each passing year, she would forget more and more about him. All his idiosyncrasies that made him who he was would be lost.

  Hannah barely remembered getting off the train in Berlin and moving through the busy airport. But she found herself at her seat beside the plane’s window, and the roar of the engines, signaling take off, was but moments away. As the plane lifted off the ground and soared high above Germany, she was not only saying goodbye to Wilhelm but to Germany and to Europe itself forever.

  Freedom

  There are many emotions that drive a person—emotions that elicit change, emotions that demand actions, emotions that can defeat a person’s will. But Wilhelm had found there was no stronger emotion than hope. It was the promise of better. And by God, there had to be.

  After the war had ended and the Germans had found out they would not be returning home, many men had lost hope. They accepted their fate, and hundreds of men died two or three months after the ending of the war.

  During summer, Wilhelm worked the fields from sun up to sun d
own. During winter, he was often placed inside a cell large enough only for his bunk to fit in and a bucket to use for the bathroom. Solitude drove most men crazy. Minutes felt like days, and the walls did little to silence the screaming and crying coming from the other cells. But Wilhelm envisioned himself living a different life. He planned out his entire day in his fictitious life—everything from his scheduled alarm clock wake up time of 5:30 a.m. to shaving and showering. He would make Hannah breakfast before he went to work as a shift manager at a car manufacturing plant and discover hand-written notes from Hannah in his lunch. Each night, the two would go for walks and dance in their living room. Every three days in the make-believe world equaled one day in the real world. It was an exercise many would consider abnormal, but who was to say what was normal when presented with such a dire situation? Hope was something Wilhelm had not yet abandoned because hope had a name and a face. Hannah’s voice, even if imaginary, kept his mind strong.

  He looked forward to the end of each workday so he could disappear into his imaginary world. He thought so often of his other life that his dreams soon brought the world to life in a way his imagination could not. In his dreams, he could smell the banana bread in the oven or the popcorn on the stove. He could taste the wine and feel the snowflakes fall on his head. But, most importantly, he could feel Hannah’s body against his. Her soft lips pressed against his chapped lips.

  Torben could not understand how Wilhelm was so resilient, and Wilhelm could sense he had lost his will to care. Francesca, most likely, had moved on. But, most of all, Torben could not delve into his imagination the way Wilhelm could. He had nothing but the harsh, soul-breaking reality. Wilhelm did his best to lift his spirits during their workday but, no matter how hard he tried, he was unsuccessful.

  It was 1950, and Wilhelm had turned thirty years old. But he was far younger than he was in his alternate-reality where he was forty-five. In that life, he had four children. His oldest was a daughter named Evelyn, two sons, Jonathan and George, and their youngest was Dolly (Dolores).

  In July 1950, a horrible outbreak of typhus ran rampant through the camp. Wilhelm awoke each morning and checked his body for purple rashes and his forehead for any signs of fever. Ninety-seven people died that month alone from the disease. On 2 August, Wilhelm stepped out of his cell and waited for Torben to step out, but he never did. His body was carried out by two Soviet guards. Whether the fever had taken him or Torben forced Death’s hand was something Wilhelm would never know. Torben was Wilhelm’s last friend, and after his loss, it took Wilhelm weeks to disappear into the sanctity of the life he had crafted in his mind.

  The weeks became months, and the months became years. But the hope Wilhelm held onto finally proved its worth. A commotion broke out in the camp. The prisoners whispered about and peaked toward the entrance.

  “What’s going on?” Wilhelm asked.

  “They are letting us go home,” a soldier said.

  But he, like Wilhelm, had not allowed the news to be met without skepticism. The Soviets had held them so long, why would they release them now in 1955?

  The Soviet officers approached them, and the forty-seven German prisoners stood at attention. They looked like skeletons covered in a thin layer of skin. No trace of fat or muscle could be found anywhere on their bodies, and their frames could not even support their backs, causing their shoulders to droop forward. But hate was a powerful emotion, and it rose in Wilhelm’s chest.

  Captain Sokolov finished what must have been his hundred thousandth career cigarette. Torben had wanted to see the man die but, again, life was far too cruel to allow such a minor victory. The Captain’s visits were limited, and he was no longer a captain after achieving at least two promotions, but Wilhelm did not care to remember him as anything else.

  “I am here to inform you that terms have been agreed upon between the Soviet Union and West Germany. You are no longer prisoners of the Soviet Union. You are free to leave,” Captain Sokolov announced.

  The Germans, although confused at Sokolov’s mention of a West Germany, were too struck by his words of “no longer prisoners.” They looked at one another, each wondering if the first man to move to the entrance would be shot. But Wilhelm had found a peace mostly derived from his alternate life. The feelings, the sights, the sounds he experienced in that life were things he would never feel, see or hear in his life as a prisoner. He had been too scared to try and claim his freedom years ago when he and Torben were forced to run from the factory to the camp. Perhaps, he and Torben would have been in Germany that second instead of Wilhelm still at the camp and Torben, dead. He moved past the other Germans and toward the fence entrance. Captain Sokolov inclined his head slightly as Wilhelm passed. Wilhelm looked up at the watchtower, but the normal guard on duty was gone. The fence was pulled open, and Wilhelm stepped out. It did not take long for the other Germans to follow him. Wilhelm was free.

  A man greeted them outside the gates and introduced himself as a representative of West Germany. His name was Adolf Jung, and he looked to be in his early forties. He said he worked for Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. But neither the man nor his position meant anything to Wilhelm.

  As Wilhelm sat on the transport truck, he thought of how many times he had sat on a similar truck and wished it was taking him home and not to a factory to work. He and Torben had talked about it often. The last five years had been the toughest without him. Over the course of the long ride to Germany, every friend he had made during the war and the fact none of them survived came to his mind. He thought of Höring and Jonas. He and Höring had almost escaped the Battle of Stalingrad. How different would the last twelve years have been had they succeeded?

  When the trucks stopped, food rations and water were handed out. Every German drank theirs without a moment’s pause. They were each given another refill, but Wilhelm saved his, knowing that most likely they would not get a third. Food had been so scarce and rationed over the years that even when the men told them to eat it all, Wilhelm and the others hesitated.

  When they reached Berlin, there was a small gathering of mothers, wives, family, and friends waiting to greet them. Mothers wept into their son’s chests, and children who had been one or two now greeted their fathers as teens. Wilhelm searched the crowd for Hannah. Every time his eyes fell upon a woman with blonde hair, his heartbeat increased, and his hope rose, but none of the women were his Hannah. Would she even recognize him anymore? Would he even recognize himself? He had not seen his reflection in a mirror in years, but his weight was down eighty pounds, he had a beard, and he was fifteen years older.

  The city Wilhelm had fallen in love with was barely recognizable. The surviving buildings looked like skeletal fingers pushing up through the freshly dug earth of its own grave. He rushed past the spectators, trying to get to his apartment as soon as humanly possible. He passed the area where the New Reich Chancellery had once been. But it was gone. The building that had been the pride of the Nazis and cost millions of dollars to build had not even lasted twenty years. Wilhelm expected the city to be the same as when he had left. He had to keep reminding himself he had been gone fifteen years and nothing was immune to the changes of time. But it was his destroyed apartment building that caused his spirits to nosedive and skip along the hard ground. The rubble had been cleaned, and there was nothing to show he and Hannah had once shared a home on that very spot. The terrible fist of worry punched Wilhelm’s stomach and clawed its way toward his heart. He had feared for Hannah ever since he had found out about the abominable Holocaust camps. Even more terrifying was the fact he was fifteen years behind the events.

  He jogged as long as he could on his way to the Goldschmidts’ home. But after two blocks, his weak body could no longer run, and his legs shook from malnourishment. He rounded the final corner and hoped to see the sign “Tailor, Tux, and Touch Up.” But there was no sign. The windows Wilhelm had helped Josef put up were gone. Instead, the entire building was bricked. Wilhelm knocked on the door, and an older, c
hubby, gray-haired man answered.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry. I’m looking for the people who used to live here. The Goldschmidts,” Wilhelm said.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know anything about them,” the man said, already closing the door.

  Wilhelm received another sucker punch, this time to his kidneys. Berlin had never felt too large for him before. It had been a land of unlimited possibilities with a horizon he would have never reached in the best of ways. But now, the city was a haystack and Hannah, the needle. The only information he had was Hannah was Jewish and the Jews had been rounded up and put into camps. He needed to know if Hannah had been one of them. But getting the Soviets to help him out seemed doubtful. He wanted to go to the Americans, but Captain Sokolov had said it had been the Soviets who had liberated the camp, but that was only one camp of thousands. A man named Konrad Adenauer had given him his freedom, perhaps he could give him his life back too.

  Wilhelm crossed into the western portion of the city, and it was like he had walked across a sunset separating darkness and light. The western portion of the city had been rejuvenated and was well underway toward the process of healing while the east seemed to be caught in permanent gray skies and an eternal bleakness.

  Wilhelm asked anyone he could where he could speak to either the German or American in charge and was pointed into the direction of Clayallee near the upscale suburban part of West Berlin called Zehlendorf. The guards stopped him and searched him before they allowed him inside. The building had a dozen offices, and Wilhelm went to the closest one with a worker who was not busy helping others. The man looked to be over a decade younger than Wilhelm, and Wilhelm tried to stifle the jealously bubbling in his stomach over his youth. The man was fortunate he had been too young to fight. Hitler had called upon the Hitler Youth to fight near the end of the war, and soldiers as young as fourteen were thrown into the fray. But this man must have been ten or eleven during that time. After missing the war, he had gone to school and received a great job right out of it.