Behind the Bedroom Wall (11 page)

Korinna aimed the snowball carefully. Then, in one fluid motion, she let the missile fly from her hand, directly at Rachel's face. But when the snowball hit its target, it turned out to be a glass ball instead of one made of snow, and it shattered into a million brilliant shards, each one piercing Rachel's skin. And Rachel just stared at her attacker with wide, innocent eyes filled with tears. Then came the banging. A loud solid banging, sounding as if God were knocking on the steel colored clouds, demanding to be let down to earth.

Korinna woke up, but the banging continued. It wasn't God knocking from above, it was someone pounding on the front door below. She heard her father walking down the stairs.

Korinna's mother came into her room. “Are you awake?” she whispered through the darkness.

“Yes, Mother. What's going on? Who's at the door?” Korinna asked as the banging continued.

“It must be the Gestapo,” Frau Rehme said, her voice trembling with anxiety. “No one else would come in the middle of the night.”

Korinna's heart shuddered in her chest. “The Gestapo! But why? Will they find the Krugmanns?” She sat up, her hands clenched tightly on her blankets.

“Hush, there's no time for questions now,” her mother said as she softly knocked a rhythmic beat against Korinna's wall. She stopped, and then repeated the prearranged warning once again.

“Pretend you are sleeping,” she told her daughter, and she quickly left the room as they heard the front door open and the booted officers stomp into the small front hall.

“What's going on?” Korinna heard her father demand.

“This is a search,” said one of the officers in a brusque voice. “There are some stinking Jews hiding in this area, and we just want to make sure they're not here.”

“We are loyal Germans, loyal to the Führer,” Herr Rehme protested, glancing at the Führer's picture.

“It's easy to hang a picture,” said a second man.

Korinna recognized Hans's voice. Did Rita know her brother was searching her best friend's house? Maybe Rita herself had told him about her black notebook. But no, Rita wouldn't do that. She was her
best friend. And she'd promised she wouldn't tell anyone.

Korinna could hear banging and stomping downstairs. Soon the noise made its way upstairs.

“Go in there,” Hans said to her parents. She heard them move into their own room.When her door swung open she closed her eyes tightly, and she heard the heavy hammering of her heart pounding in her ears. She saw the bright stab of light behind her eyelids as someone aimed a flashlight at her from her doorway. Then the light moved away.

Korinna watched through slitted eyes as Hans walked into her room and looked under her bed. He walked over to her closet. She held her breath. He opened and shut each drawer with a snap. Then he opened the cupboard-like doors behind which she hung her blouses and skirts. Pushing aside the clothes, he felt the back of the wardrobe. Korinna was sure Hans must be able to hear the frantic pounding of her heart and her erratic breathing. Finally, Rita's brother closed the wardrobe doors with a bang and stalked out of the room, a frown pulling at his face. He looked as if he were disappointed at not finding anything.

Korinna didn't dare move until she was positive she was really alone in her room. Then she tried to relax her rigid body and her clenched fists, but she couldn't. She listened to the men search the bathroom and then move into her parents' bedroom.

She heard only the swish and snap of drawers
being opened and closed. Suddenly her father's voice rang out. “Leave those alone!”

“Bernd, no,” her mother cried.

Something heavy fell against her parents' desk. Terrified, she scrambled out of bed and raced into her parents' bedroom.

Everyone turned to look at Korinna as she ran into the room. She stopped abruptly, her heart pounding, as she took in the scene before her.

Her father was sprawled on the floor, partially raised up against the foot of the desk. A narrow line of blood, trickling from his nose, shone in the bright overhead light. Her mother crouched protectively beside him, and Hans stood menacingly over the two of them, holding the brass figurine in his fist, ready to strike again.

“No!” Korinna cried, immediately running to her father's side, tears stinging her eyes. “What have you done?” she demanded, looking up at Hans's face.

“Go back to bed,” her father commanded, struggling to stand up.

His wife took his arm to help support him. “Be careful, Bernd.”

Hans looked as if he would step forward to hit Herr Rehme again.

“No, Hans!” Korinna said, standing up and suddenly moving forward to hold back the officer's arm. “Leave them alone! Please!” she begged.

Hans shook his arm free and looked down at Korinna with a scowl. Korinna remembered playing
tag with Hans when he had been young. She even remembered having a crush on him at one time, giggling and following him around like a puppy. It seemed like so long ago. Did he remember?

Slowly he lowered his arm and tossed away the figurine. It thudded onto the floor. “Come,” he said to his fellow Gestapo officer. Then he took another sweeping look around the room before turning sharply on his booted heel and marching out of the room.

The Rehmes didn't speak as they listened to the two men stomp down the stairs and finally out the front door, leaving it gaping open behind them. They heard the car roar to life, then drive off. Apparently they were through searching the neighborhood for the night.

Not until the sound of the car was swallowed up in the quiet of the night did Korinna dare breathe again. Then all the tension left her, and her knees started to quiver.

Now her father sat on the edge of his bed, his red hair an unruly mass around his head, holding a white cloth to his nose. Korinna's mother came over to her daughter and hugged her, rocking her back and forth.

“It's over now, dear,” she crooned.

Korinna sniffed back her tears. “What happened? Why did Hans hit Papa?”

“They were searching through my drawer with the photographs in it. Papa worried they would ruin them with their rough hands. See? They ripped that one there,” she said, nodding toward a precious photograph of Korinna's grandfather, which now lay on the floor, practically in two pieces.

“Damned Nazis!” growled Korinna's father. “Insanity,” he said. “That's what it is. Insanity.” He turned to his daughter. “Are you all right, Korinna?”

She nodded.

“It was very brave of you to step forward like that, but also very stupid. Next time stay in your room,” he ordered.

Korinna felt the sting of the reprimand. “But I know Hans.
You
know Hans. He shouldn't have been treating you like that.”

“We knew the
old
Hans, Korinna. Things have changed. People have changed. It's too dangerous to intercept the Gestapo. They don't listen to reason, Korinna.”

“Now go to bed,” her mother said gently.

Korinna slowly walked back into her own room and got into bed. She wasn't too anxious to rejoin the dream of throwing the ball of glass at Rachel, but she closed her eyes anyway. She blew into her icy hands, trying to warm them. They still trembled.

A few weeks ago she never would have believed she could be as frightened as she was right now. Hadn't she recently told her mother she had nothing to fear from anyone because she was a loyal German? And now, what? Now she was a traitor and it seemed she feared almost everyone. Suddenly no one could be trusted. Should she trust Rita, her best friend? Or should she trust the Krugmanns, the hated enemy?

And who did she love? Of course she loved her
parents, but they were traitors to the Fatherland. And she had always loved her Führer, but now his officers were frightening her. Nothing made any sense anymore.

Korinna didn't see the Krugmanns again except at meal times when she helped her mother deliver food and later take away the dirty dishes.

Sunday afternoon, Korinna felt restless. It was hard to imagine little Rachel cooped up behind her bedroom wall, day after day after day. She was bored, yet she could go anywhere. Rachel must be going crazy, Korinna decided.

On sudden impulse, she knocked on the wardrobe and then pulled it away from the wall. Two faces peered anxiously up at her. Because it was daylight out, it would be too dangerous for Rachel to come out into her room with the curtains open. And it would be too suspicious looking to close the curtains this early in the day, so Korinna knew if she wanted to keep Rachel company, she would have to venture into the dark, smelly hole the Krugmanns had been forced to call a home for the past week.

Without giving herself a chance to think and thereby change her mind, she grabbed a few sheets of paper and, taking one last deep breath of fresh air, squatted down and crawled into the narrow space between the walls.

She knew she wouldn't suffocate in the small room because air holes had been drilled into the bathroom. But the space was so confining, Korinna still felt short of breath. Pulling the wardrobe almost closed, she couldn't help smiling to hear Rachel's excited chatter.

“You've never been in here before,” Rachel said, sounding pleased to have a visitor. “Mama sleeps there,” she said, pointing to a pile of old blankets which Korinna supposed served as a mattress. “And I sleep here, next to my baby.”

Korinna looked in the empty, makeshift cradle. “What's that?” she asked, pointing to some rough hewn boards propped against the narrow wall behind Frau Krugmann's sleeping space.

Rachel giggled. “That's the bathroom.”

“Oh.”

The room was narrow, fitting somehow between her bedroom and the bathroom, and also between the hall and the outside wall of the house. The space would have been impossibly small if it hadn't been for the closet in the bathroom which had a fake back to it. Towels were placed in the closet to make it appear deeper than it was, but in fact, it was shallow to allow more room behind it in the hidden room. The other night her father had explained that no one would ever
guess the room was hidden there, unless they were specifically and carefully looking for it. And that would never happen, her father had promised.