Forever Fleeting

by Bret Kissinger

  “Hello, can I help you?” the man asked.

  The nameplate at his desk read “Karl Heikmann,” and his desk was stacked with manila folders and a picture frame facing Karl.

  “Yes, I need help locating my wife,” Wilhelm said.

  “Please sit down,” Karl said, offering the seat in front of the desk.

  Wilhelm was far too worried to think about sitting, but his frail body could not support itself any longer, and he nearly fell into the chair. Karl looked at Wilhelm and could tell he had just returned home from a Soviet Camp. He was unshowered, unshaved, his hair longer than normal, and the clothes given to him upon his release looked like baggy bedsheets. Wilhelm also knew he undoubtedly smelt awful, and it was hard to tell if Karl was feeling sympathetic to his beaten-down appearance or suppressing a gag.

  “Can I get you something to eat or drink?” Karl asked, but he decided he would call his secretary regardless of what Wilhelm answered.

  “I’m fine,” Wilhelm said.

  Karl was already off the phone, and a woman popped in seconds later. It was impossible to tell if she had sprinted from across the building or was right outside the door.

  “Yes, Mr. Heikmann?” the woman asked.

  She had long blonde hair that hung over her left shoulder, and she appeared to be nearly the same age as Karl.

  “Yes, Mrs. Heikmann, can you please bring my lunch in?” he asked.

  “Certainly,” Mrs. Heikmann said. She left, and Karl smiled like a child on Christmas morning.

  “She is my wife. Try to keep it professional in the workplace and call her Mrs. Heikmann. Honestly, I just like reminding myself we’re married,” Karl said. He realized his comment was to a man searching for his missing wife, and his face blushed and his eyes bulged in horror.

  Mrs. Heikmann returned with a paper bag and set it on the desk and disappeared without another word.

  “I am so sorry. That was cruel of me. Please, tell me how I can help,” Karl said, passing his lunch to Wilhelm.

  “My wife, Hannah Schreiber. Her maiden name was Goldschmidt. She is Jewish. I have been in a prisoner-of-war camp somewhere in Russia since 1943,” Wilhelm said.

  As Karl wrote the name down, the awfulness of the end of the sentence connected. He paused briefly before he finished writing and pushed the lunch forward further.

  “Please eat it. I’m fine. I had a large breakfast,” Karl said.

  Wilhelm was starved, so he opened the bag and removed the sandwich and potato salad inside. He emptied the paper bag, and a fork fell onto the desk. Wilhelm had never cared for mustard or mayonnaise, but that was before he had been starved for nearly fifteen years and ate only half a dozen types of food. Even thinking about kasha made him sick.

  Karl asked a hundred questions, and Wilhelm was grateful for each of them. If he had asked only a few, it would have made him think Karl was going to do little to help. He asked everything from her address, previous address, next of kin, friends, and family in other countries. He asked Wilhelm for his place of residence, but Wilhelm struggled to find an answer.

  “There are programs to help rehabilitate you—a hand to help you back onto your feet,” Karl said.

  But Wilhelm gave Karl his father’s address and telephone number, and his eyes lit up. Perhaps, Hannah was there right now. The thought warmed his chest, and he could feel strength flowing back into his bloodstream. He was an absolute fool to not have checked there after visiting their old apartment and her parents’ house. As Wilhelm rose to his feet, the realization also dawned he had no money for a train or bus ticket to Schönfeld.

  “Is there something else I can do for you?” Karl asked.

  Wilhelm had now eaten Karl’s lunch and taken his money for the bus fare. Karl assured him it was not a problem, and Wilhelm could tell he was trying to rectify his poor choice of words earlier.

  Wilhelm had missed the train by less than three minutes and was forced to wait another two and a half hours before the next one. He spent the remaining bit of money Karl had given him to buy a sausage and a Coca-Cola, just one example of American marketing all over West Berlin. The ice-cold soda was the most delicious thing he had drunk in over twelve years. His beverages at the camp had consisted of water or watered-down coffee or tea.

  Waiting for the train was agonizing and, several times, Wilhelm contemplated walking. But reasoning would overcome the desire, and he would sit back down and glance at the clock behind him, roughly every forty seconds. It did not make waiting any easier when at 3:20, the designated boarding time, the train had yet to arrive.

  Finally, at 3:45, Wilhelm and the train moved south toward his hometown. But the Schönfeld that had raised him was no longer. There were buildings he did not recognize and empty lots that had once been home to some of his favorite places. The candy shop he frequented with his mother was gone, as was his school.

  He breathed a sigh of relief finding his father’s home still standing. He turned the doorknob, but the door was locked. Wilhelm knocked and waited, but there was no movement inside. He looked for the spare key hidden in the dirt of a potted fern. Wilhelm scraped a layer of dirt away and pulled the stained silver key from the pot. He unlocked the door and stepped inside. The lights were off, and the house had more dust and spider webs than Wilhelm had ever remembered seeing. But cleaning the house was a chore Wilhelm had always done. But apart from the cobwebs and dust, the house had not changed. What a comfort it was that while everything in his life had changed, his childhood home stayed the same.

  Wilhelm crept to his bedroom and opened the door. Possessions he had left in 1938 were still there in 1955—magazines that had not been touched in nearly twenty years and clothes he had not worn since he had moved to Berlin. He looked at every photograph on the wall, and with each glance and stare, his morale climbed out of the pit it had been stuck in for so long. He stared longest at the photograph of his mother. He would never forget her face, but seeing her smiling for the first time in years made him tear up.

  He waited for an hour before he decided to visit his father at the “Rote Blumen.” He was eager to see him and the look on his father’s face when he saw he was still alive. But first, he needed to shower and shave for his appearance would not go undiscussed.

  Wilhelm went into the bathroom and opened the drawer to the left-hand side of the sink and removed his father’s clippers. He sheered his hair like a sheep, and the sink filled up with his long, wavy hair from his head and beard. He cut it the best he could, keeping it shorter on the sides and a bit longer on top. He looked for his father’s razor and some shaving balm and shaved. He went to turn on the water, but not a drop came out from the sink. He stepped to the bathtub but, again, no water poured out. The city still looked to be healing and, perhaps, it was normal for the water and power to go out every so often. He grabbed a towel from the cupboard and wiped his face. His face had not been cleanly shaven since he had left for war, and it burned. His touch with a razor was not what it used to be. Small red pools of blood formed around his face. He felt ten years younger but didn’t mind, as those years had been stolen from him anyway.

  He went back into his bedroom and sifted through his shirts. He changed out of his baggy clothes and into a pair of slacks and a black shirt that, much to his disappointment but not shock, were just as baggy. He went to his father’s room and sprayed some of his cologne on to mask his awful smell. Even without the shower, he felt more like a man and a human being than he had in longer than he cared to remember. He had not only looked like a savage, but he had also committed savage acts in the name of war. There would be no shower that could wash them away.

  As he walked along the sidewalk, he blended in, and no one gave him a second look. It was all he wanted. It was a drastically different experience for returning German soldiers than it had been for American or Soviet soldiers. There had been an indelible pride for those who had fought for freedom around the world. The Germans received no fanfare, and those who had committed awful a
cts for the Nazi Party hoped they would return with no one the wiser.

  Wilhelm arrived at the “Rote Blumen,” but it was locked. Wilhelm stopped an elderly lady walking by.

  “Excuse me, Miss, do you know what happened to the flower shop?” Wilhelm asked.

  The elderly woman seemed the best able to answer his question amongst the people walking past. Wilhelm had a strong suspicion he knew her, but if he did, she had worn a younger face free of wrinkles.

  “It closed two years back,” the woman said.

  “Do you know where the man who owned it moved to?” Wilhelm asked.

  The woman’s face changed. “Oh, I am sorry, dear. Mr. Schreiber passed away.”

  Wilhelm’s head spun, and he put his hand on the wall behind him to secure himself.

  “You are Petyr’s boy, aren’t you?” the woman asked.

  Wilhelm could only nod. He had always believed there would be a time when he and his father would grow close—a time when their friendship would take off, a time when Petyr would no longer have to be a patriarch. He had seen glimpses of it after he had moved out. And now that he was a veteran of combat too, he wanted to speak to his father about the common horror they had experienced and their tour in hell.

  “I am sorry,” she said.

  Wilhelm nodded, and the woman hesitated, unsure if she should stay to console him or give him space. She elected for the latter, squeezed his arm and left.

  Wilhelm wandered aimlessly for hours. The comfort his childhood home had brought him earlier was now gone. It was a house full of memories, the good trumped by the bad, but the good were great. The house was now a mausoleum. Wilhelm had spent almost twenty years of his life in the city, yet it was a friend he no longer kept in touch with or had anything in common with.

  He slept on a city bench that night, and before the sun rose, he forced himself to return to his father’s home. He stopped at the utility department to have his water and power turned back on. He contacted Karl to see if he had made any progress. Wilhelm had no intention of waiting for answers and wanted to ensure Karl was properly motivated. But Karl had no answers to give.

  When he forced himself to return home, he flipped the light switch on to test if it was working. When the bulb lit up, he went to the bathroom and showered for half an hour. The water circling down the drain was tinted brown. He scrubbed the bar of soap across his body a dozen times, and each time, he discovered places resilient to cleaning. He found that it gave him something to do—a task that kept his mind preoccupied. When he shut the shower off and dressed, he went to cleaning the next thing.

  He started by wiping the cobwebs from the house and then washing the floors. After a week of calling Karl and cleaning the house until the floors could be eaten off of, he received a call to come to West Berlin. He boarded the train, and the vibration in his stomach from the fear of what he would be told did not go away when the train stopped. He approached Karl’s desk, his back sweating, his hands shaking.

  “Please, sit down,” Karl said. Wilhelm took the seat and covered his mouth with his hand in an attempt to hide how nervous he was. “I have found Hannah’s name on a list. Hannah Goldschmidt. But I’m afraid it’s awful news, Wilhelm,” Karl said.

  Wilhelm’s hand trembled. His stomach dropped. Fifteen years of worrying and wondering would be answered in the next few seconds.

  “Hannah was sent to Auschwitz concentration camp between 1940 and 1941,” Karl said.

  Wilhelm’s heart imploded.

  Karl had been too young to have worked in the department after the war had ended in 1945 when thousands upon thousands of people had to be told a beloved friend or family member had perished in the war. It was something no compassionate human being could feel comfortable doing.

  “Are you sure?” Wilhelm asked, his voice cutting out on him.

  “It’s her name. Her parents are on the list too—Josef and Emma. But beyond that, we’ll never get more evidence. The Nazis destroyed much before their retreat,” Karl said.

  Wilhelm rose from the chair and wanted to say something as he left, but there was a golf-ball size lump in his throat that would not let him. He wiped his eyes and left the building. He wanted to disappear into the alternate reality he had created back in Russia. He tried to sink deep into his consciousness to try and walk up the concrete pathway leading to the eggshell bricked house he and Hannah had owned. But he could not. There was no house at the end of that driveway anymore. He wandered the streets of both reality and fiction.

  Everything that was and everything that kept him alive was gone. There were so many moments when he thought his time was up—so many near misses where a bullet whizzed by his head or an explosion went off far enough away to keep him from harm. He had survived a shot through his chest and the infection that followed. He had survived Typhus fever, starvation, freezing, and Captain Sokolov’s sadism. He had considered that maybe God had a vested interest in his survival and that his good graces were what had kept him alive. But it was the devil playing a trick on Wilhelm to keep him alive long enough to see there was nothing worth living for anymore.

  But Wilhelm had known Hannah’s fate when Sokolov broke the news of the concentration camps. Even if he had held onto hope, deep down, he knew. Hannah had asked him not to go—pleaded with him not to. But Christmas day 1939 had sealed their fate. Hannah had been dead for fourteen years. Wilhelm could only hope she was at peace and that one day, he may see her again.

  Days Gone By

  Time is a funny thing. Wilhelm’s mother had passed away when he was only nine years old. Yet, at such a young age, a year felt like a decade, and by the time he was eighteen, her death, although something he would never get over, had felt like a lifetime ago. But time is on a hill, and it moves past in a way that years are more like months and months like weeks.

  Wilhelm found little comfort in anything except the quest to reach the end of a bottle and the “Rote Blumen.” He had opened the shop back up as a way to fill his nights. His daily nightmares subsided to once or twice a week and often were about Hannah living in Auschwitz, the horror of which was plastered on every newspaper, magazine, and news station, and his war-time friends being shot, stabbed, burned or frozen to death.

  After three months of complete isolation, he went back to Karl to ask about his friends, Erich and Heinrich. But there was only more pain to be had. Erich had died in battle and Heinrich was last known to be a prisoner-of-war, but after a decade after the war had ended, he had not returned home. The Germans had been released by the Americans and British in 1945. It all added up to another heartbreaking truth—Heinrich was dead too.

  The Americans and Soviets could not find any common ground, and tensions boiled to the point of eruption. They came to a head in 1961, when the Soviets built a wall through the city of Berlin to separate the American West and the Soviet East. Wilhelm took frequent trips to the city, and as the bricks were put into place to keep the East Berliners from fleeing to the West, it was impossible not to think the Third World War was only a few months away. Schönfeld was in East Germany, and although there was a strong number of East Germans retreating west, Wilhelm stayed. The flower shop and his home were the only constant things in his life, and he kept mostly to his hometown. There was a strong fear that the world was moving toward nuclear Armageddon. Neither side backed down after Soviet missiles were discovered in Cuba, just ninety miles from American shores. But that war would not require the sacrifice of young men. With one switch of a button, hundreds of thousands would die instantly—a terrifying thought—but for those who had fought in Europe or the Pacific, it was far less cruel than Normandy, Stalingrad or Iwo Jima.

  Wilhelm’s world consisted of the “Rote Blumen,” the bar, the market, and his job at an automobile manufacturing plant—the only thing of his alternate reality to come true.

  It stayed that way until 26 June 1963, when the charismatic and charming American president came to Berlin to speak. President Kennedy stood near Rudolph-
Wilde-Platz with tens of thousands cheering for him. Wilhelm was on the other side of the wall along with another ten thousand trying to hear the president speak. Wilhelm was blown away by his speaking ability. He held the tens of thousands of spectators in his hand. Hitler had held a similar power of speech. But the two men had polar opposite ideals, where one saw power as the end goal and the other as a necessity to do good. How different would his life, the lives of millions, had been had John Fitzgerald Kennedy been the Führer of Germany and not Adolf Hitler? But five months later, the savior of peace and the leader of the free world was shot and killed.

  Wilhelm spent his days assembling cars and his nights at the flower shop. Women came in and out of his life, but none lasted even as long as the flowers he sold. His longest relationship was with the “Zerbrochene Flasche,” a local bar, which he frequented every Friday and Saturday night.

  It was 1989. Wilhelm sat and watched the television as the Berlin Wall, which had divided a city, a nation, and the world, was torn down. His jet-black hair was now gray and thinning, and his face showed the stress of life. His nose was red from years of alcohol abuse and his ears had drooped. The next night, the news coverage was filled with drama surrounding the Wall. Many from Schönfeld had taken train, bus or automobile to Berlin to see it firsthand. But Wilhelm was not among them. He sat in silence and solitude in the “Zerbrochene Flasche.” His only companion was his pint of beer.

  The doors of the bar opened. A man, appearing to be in his mid-thirties, with a dark gray dress shirt and a black suit coat over the top entered the bar.

  “Good evening,” the man said in German. The man’s accent was unmistakably American, an odd thing, considering he was in East Germany.

  He took a seat beside Wilhelm and scratched his shaggy, slicked back, wavy black hair. Alfred, the bartender, stood in front of the man silently.