Motherland (39 page)

She waited for Herr Geiss to inform her that he would arrange it, that he would gladly carry out his longtime threat now that Ani was behaving like a bird and Hans was attacking the Dillman girls. Instead her neighbor looked down at his feet.

“I walked around Hannesburg today and I don’t know how you managed it,” he said. “I couldn’t walk a safe path by daylight and you did it in the dark. Both ways.” He cleared his throat. “Only a mother could do that.”

Liesl was so stunned she almost dropped her jar of vinegar. She didn’t know what to say. Footsteps thumped overhead.

Herr Geiss reached into his pocket and pulled out a sealed and dirty envelope. “Twenty-three,” he continued. “Twenty-three bodies we dug up yesterday, half of them holding letters in their hands. I can’t make out the address on this one, can you?”

He extended the envelope. Soot had streaked the ink past recognition. Only the first name of the addressee was readable.

“Heinrich,” she said aloud, still in shock.

“Yes, but Heinrich who and Heinrich where?” Herr Geiss shook his head, and slid the letter back in his pocket.

Later that day, ashamed by her own unneighborliness, Liesl resolved to sort things out with Frau Dillman. Yet when she encountered the other woman on the landing, Frau Dillman drew back with a haughty goose-like expression and hurried away. So Liesl started plotting instead for a moment alone with Frieda, but Frieda’s mother had somehow elevated the childish incident at the vacant lot into a premeditated onslaught on the virtues of her daughters. All night she kept her girls under strict surveillance, inside her apartment, except for quick, messy forays to the common upstairs bathroom.

After Jürgen went to sleep, Liesl decided to try one last time. She was pulling on her housecoat to go upstairs when she heard a voice coming through the vent in the wall.

“Irre, Irre, wo bist Du?”
the voice whispered.
Loony, loony, where are you?

Liesl stormed upstairs and hammered on the door. “Stop it,” she shouted through the wood. “Stop that right now.” She heard the girls giggling behind the door.

“I’d like to talk to your mother.”

“She’s not here.” The girls whispered, and Liesl heard Frau Dillman shushing them.

After that, it was too late. The moment was over.

She couldn’t think about it anymore. She didn’t have the space in her mind, which grew more and more preoccupied with her fear of Frank’s death. She’d denied it so long it had grown large and shadowed. She could be wiping her face dry with a towel, and the drag of the cloth against her cheeks would remind her of a sheet passing over the face of a dead man. She could be lighting a match and the flare would make her think of a gun firing, a bullet entering Frank’s body.

And then there was Ani. He had hardly talked after the night of the bombing, and for days all he did was ask for water. All day. Twitching and jerking.

“May I have some water?”

“May I have some water?”

Water had been hard to find, carried by buckets from a working well near the Louisenstrasse. The entire house depended on one full vat of it in the wash kitchen. The vat ran out fast and the Winter boys and Hans took forever to replenish it.

Yet Hans made life bearable. He ran all the errands and sat with Ani and tried to draw his brother out. Watching them together made Liesl realize how much the boys had splintered apart since January, since the arrivals of Uta and Berte. As Hans and Ani built vast block
castles and invaded each other’s kingdoms, she could remember the old days—when Ani had been able to get through a conversation without stumbling or looking vague, when he’d moved about like an ordinary little boy, restless and bouncy. The old days. Only three months ago.

She was dusting and straightening the fallen books in Frank’s father’s study when she heard a knock downstairs. She took the steps slowly, aware of the Dillmans’ ‘door opening and closing above her.
Let them spy
, she thought.
We have nothing to hide
.

At the bottom, she peeked through the glass beside the entry, catching the outline of a tall male figure. No doubt someone with bad news. She steeled herself and opened the door.

The man was white-bearded, his shirt half tucked. His pants had stains at the knees. His eyes twinkled. He reminded her of woodsmen she’d known as a child.

Without saying a word, he winked and handed her a note.

Dear heart
:

Onkel Bernd is an old friend, and he’s taking good care of your “medicine.” Send him back with Ani, if Ani’s well enough to travel
.

Kisses
,

F

Liesl read the note three times, unable to keep a huge hiccupping sob inside her chest. She closed her eyes against the weak March sun. She closed out the cherry tree, the branches already nubbly with dark red buds. She closed out the iron gate, the cracks in the neighbor’s roofs, the soot smell on the wind. A stillness spread like water from her center. Frank was safe.

“Perhaps you’d like to invite me inside,” said the man.

“Onkel Bernd,” Liesl exclaimed. “I’m so glad you got my letter. Come upstairs.” She herded him inside, his heavy boots announcing their passage across the foyer. “We live on the second floor now,” she said loudly. “I think last time you visited the Kappus family had the whole house.”

She saw the other apartment doors open a crack as the Dillmans and Winters investigated the new visitor. The cracks were not wide enough to see who was looking—mother, or daughter, or sons. Liesl tried to make her face look pleased but unsurprised.

Onkel Bernd ducked to enter the apartment and stood, spraddle-legged, while she called the boys. Hans emerged from the study looking puzzled.

“Go get your brother, too,” Liesl said. She wanted to ask him everything about how Frank arrived, how he’d escaped Weimar—but she was afraid their voices would carry.

After a moment, Ani appeared, holding his bandaged arm. The long red burn was healing but his color was still poor and his eyes hollowed by exhaustion.

“Boys,” said Onkel Bernd, nodding at them, but looking curiously at Ani.

Liesl ran forward and showed them the note. Hans read it first and faster, his face lighting up. Ani puzzled over the words, frowning. “It’s Vati,” Hans whispered. “He’s back.”

“Shh,” said Liesl, looking at the door.

“He wants you to come, Ani,” Hans whispered to his brother. “Why not me?”

Why not me?
Liesl thought.

“I’m scared,” said Ani.

Frank was asking the impossible. She couldn’t send Ani alone. She wouldn’t divide their family. She ushered their visitor deeper into the room, setting him down on the sofa in Uta’s old spot. She turned on
their radio, blasting a replay of one of Goebbels’s speeches, hoping it wouldn’t wake the baby from his nap.

Two thousand years of Western civilization are in danger. One cannot overestimate the danger
.

“I got your letter,” said Onkel Bernd. “But I’d already heard from Frank. He planned to use the farm all along. He’s been working for me and sleeping in the hayloft.”

“He’s well, then,” Liesl said, trying to keep her voice low. “He’s really all right.”

Onkel Bernd nodded. “He had a narrow miss with officials in Bad Vilbel.” He rubbed his chin with the back of his palm. “He’s lost some weight,” he added.

Total war is the demand of the hour. We must put an end to the bourgeois attitude that we have also seen in this war: Wash my back, but don’t get me wet!

She waited for him to say more, her hands straying to the boys’ soft heads. Onkel Bernd gave an uneasy glance at the radio.

“I don’t know what else,” he said.

The nasal voice of Goebbels pulsed over them, his shouts punctuated by rising cheers. Liesl recognized the speech. It had first aired the winter around the fall of Stalingrad. They had played it at the spa, and the S.S. officers talked about it while they were eating boar and pheasant off white tablecloths, and hundreds of thousands of men were dying in the east. It made her sick to hear it now, but its volume would drown anything out.

She lifted her chin. “This farm—is it secure?” she asked. “Couldn’t we all go?”

The man shook his head. “I wouldn’t leave this house if I were you,” he said. “Americans roll in, and you’re not here? You may never get it back.”

He had to take them all. How could she make him understand that she had to escape this house, too?

“But surely—” she said.

“There are still sympathizers in my neighborhood,” interrupted Onkel Bernd. “You all come, and they start asking questions. A boy could be anyone’s kid—nephew, cousin.”

“I don’t want to go,” Ani said, grabbing hold of her skirt.

“We’re a family,” she protested.

“Now, young man. Your father’s waiting for you.” Onkel Bernd reached out and put a hand on Ani’s shoulder.

“No!” Ani shouted, twisting away. “No!” He danced off, flapping.

“Ani, quiet,” Liesl said, putting her hands over her ears. If the neighbors heard him—

“What if I go, too?” said Hans. “Ani, what if I go?” The yearning filled his face.

Goebbels yelled over rising cheers:
Everyone knows that if we lose, all will be destroyed
.

Onkel Bernd nodded reluctantly. “That could be managed,” he said.

Hans flipped the radio dial. “I’m ready,” he said into the sudden quiet. Ani looked confused, but he’d stopped dancing.

“Go kiss your baby brother good-bye, but don’t wake him,” Liesl said, and went downstairs to the kitchen to pack a rucksack for the boys. She didn’t have much besides bread and cheese but her hands kept dropping things, so it took forever, and when she tried to write a note to Frank on the back of his, her fingers shook too hard. There was too much to say, and then Frau Winter walked in carrying two buckets of water, so she crumpled the paper and stuffed it in her apron pocket, then pulled the drawstring of the rucksack closed.

Frau Winter poured the water into pots. “You have a guest?” she said.

“The boys’ uncle,” said Liesl. “He’s taking them to the country. So Ani can have a little peace.” Her voice quavered on the last words. Let them hear it. Let them all hear it. She was sending the boy away. “Only the older ones,” she added. Her smile felt like a grimace. “The baby and I will stay here.”

“Oh,” said Frau Winter, setting down her buckets. “I’m sorry you can’t go, too.”

Liesl burst into sobs. She reached for her handkerchief and the crumpled paper fell on the floor, Frank’s words just visible,
Dear heart
. She saw Frau Winter scan them before Liesl grabbed them and shoved them back again. She hurried from the room.

Wiping her eyes with her sleeve, Liesl cradled the rucksack like a baby all the way up the steps. Then she sat down and wrote a real letter to Frank, explaining as best she could about Ani’s lead poisoning, about the doctor’s advice, her fear that Ani would be taken away, her telegram, the second doctor from Hadamar, Uta’s bribe, and his departure. Her description of events sounded like a series of complicated excuses and mistakes, but she couldn’t let Frank see Ani now and not know how hard she’d tried to keep the boy well. She handed the letter and rucksack to Hans, who was already dressed and standing by the door. He wore his grandfather’s heavy, threadbare coat. Ani wore Hans’s. Liesl kissed Hans on the forehead, ignoring his blush. She turned to Ani and held his cheeks gently in her palms.

“One thing about growing up in the country,” she whispered, “I used to see all the stars at night. Will you look at them for me?” she said. “Will you look at all the stars I can’t see anymore?”

“How will I know which ones they are?” said Ani.

She kissed him, tears spilling. “You’ll just know.”

She straightened and faced Onkel Bernd, looking into his crinkled brown eyes. “Tell him,” she said, “tell him I miss him.”

With the older children gone, the upstairs neighbors not speaking to her, and the Winter children sick with a flu, Liesl submerged herself in the baby’s routine—eating, drinking, diapering, naps—grateful for its dullness and warmth. She watched the weather outside the window, and listened to the radio, knowing most of it was lies. The March wind had brought warmer air, but the nights still frosted the garden, making black icicles where cinders had fallen on the roses. Downstairs the Winter children sneezed and coughed. She could hear their illness through the vents and shrank from it. Sickness crawled over the earth. Hundreds more refugees had been arriving in Hannesburg each day, pushing their wet carts and wheelbarrows, the children hungry-faced and solemn, the mothers chattering in their sloppy Eastern dialects. They clogged up the air raid shelters until locals drove them away, and then they settled at the abandoned paint factory at the edge of town. Wet laundry and shabby little fires sprouted around the once-tidy building. If the Amis bombed Hannesburg again, the factory would likely be a target.