All God's Children (3 page)

In the years since she had come to live with her aunt and uncle, she had gone back to Wisconsin only once, and that had been barely two years after she had first arrived. These days Beth had to wonder if she would ever be able to leave. More than just the need to stay and care for Liesl—and her aunt—kept her from leaving. A year or so earlier in a moment of impulsive reaction to the unfairness of life for many of her neighbors, Beth had given her visa to a friend who was frantically trying to leave the country. At the time, she had naively thought that as an American it would be easy to say she had lost her papers and get the precious document replaced. But that had been before the American consulate had been closed and the consul—a friend of her parents from Wisconsin—had been reassigned to Berlin. She had had no choice but to tell her uncle what she had done. She knew that he had tried everything he could to get the visa replaced—even making a trip to Berlin—with no success.

So if Beth wanted to leave Munich—and she did more than anything—without the proper papers, how could she? Her eyes widened in shock as she considered that perhaps this was why Dr. Josef Buch had come. He knew.

    CHAPTER 2    

A
re you certain that inviting me to live here is a good idea, Herr Professor?” Josef handed the older man a stack of books. “Your niece seemed a little reticent.”

“Everyone will adjust, and I thought we had an understanding.”

Josef paused in his work and looked at his former mentor. “Still, Herr Professor…”

“I am Franz, and you are Josef,” Franz reminded him. “Now suppose you tell me why you have decided to accept my offer to room here when you could just as easily—”

“I do not wish to live with my parents during this time. There are too many—distractions. And besides, I have a shorter distance to travel between the university and the hospital if I am here. But of course if you should ever change your mind…”

“Not at all. I’ve been outnumbered by the females in this house long enough. It will be so pleasant to have another male point of view.” He chuckled, and for Josef it was a taste of the days when he had been a carefree university student savoring Professor Schneider’s lectures in natural science. That had been such a wonderful time in Josef’s life. He and his friends had naively complained of the long hours and difficult coursework, never once understanding that they had been happier than at any time in their young lives—happier than Josef suspected they would ever be again. He thought of the one friend he missed the most.

“I saw Willi Graf at the train station last summer when we all left for our assignments,” he told Franz as the two of them continued sorting and cataloguing the professor’s library of journals and texts. “Do you remember him?”

“Quiet young man with blond hair.
Ja?
”

“Blond
thinning
hair,” Josef said laughing. “We were joking about that. He and some of the others from my class were sent east to Russia.” He flipped through a book of medical terminology, and a folded paper fell out.

“I’ll get that,” Franz said, his voice sounding slightly panicked as he bent to retrieve the slip of paper and stuff it into the sagging pocket of his cardigan sweater without looking at it.

The two of them returned to their work, but the mood in the room had undoubtedly shifted. Something about that paper had unnerved the professor. More to the point, Josef suspected that his simply seeing the paper had contributed to Franz’s sudden reserve.

They worked in silence for several minutes. Despite the closed door, Josef was aware of cooking odors and the muffled sound of female conversation coming from the kitchen. He thought about the paper the professor had been so anxious that he not see. The brief glimpse he’d had of it showed it to be something printed on a mimeograph machine. Something about the layout of the printing had felt familiar.

Then he remembered why the paper had triggered a memory. That summer, a flurry of leaflets had appeared, calling for Germans to rise up and take a stand against Hitler and for their country. The leaflets had not been signed except for the title on each: “
Flugblätter
der Weissen
Rose,”
Leaflets of the White Rose. As far as Josef knew, they had been distributed primarily at the university throughout the summer. Yet just as suddenly as they had appeared, they stopped. Josef had assumed that the authors had been caught and arrested.

But the words of that first leaflet had stayed with him during the weeks and months he had spent serving in France:

It was precisely what Josef felt every time he saw the black swastika and heard the ranting of Adolf Hitler broadcast across the land. Germany was Josef’s homeland and had always been a place of culture and refinement that set a standard for the rest of the world. But no more.

He considered whether he could ask the professor if he had ever seen the leaflets from the group known as the White Rose. Surely Franz would be in complete agreement with their cause. Perhaps he even knew what had become of them.

But these were unusual times, and friends did not ask friends about things that might be controversial. Friends showed their friendship by respecting the silence, the caution that permeated daily routine. There was no longer the luxury of casual conversation—not in Germany.

Clutching her mother’s letter, Beth stood at the window and stared down at the bustling street below, tears of disappointment leaking down her cheeks. Earlier she had seen workers leaving their jobs for the day to gather at the café on the corner. Across the street was the bookstore that had been owned by the family taken from their apartment. The shop was dark and closed now, although the window still featured a display of books gathering dust.

Through the open bedroom window, she could hear the jingle of the bell on the bakery that occupied the ground floor of their building. On mild October days like this one, the baker opened the rear door to get more air circulation in the hot kitchen. She and Liesl so liked waking to the aromas of fresh bread and pastries baking. A streetcar passed. The wind rattled through the trees, scattering their brilliant red and gold leaves. In the distance she heard the piercing siren of an ambulance.

She settled her gaze on a woman entering the rear courtyard of the building next door, a straw shopping bag in each hand. From the looks of her parcels, she hadn’t gotten much at the market. Beth recognized her as the woman who, with her husband, had moved into the apartment that had been suddenly abandoned. This new couple had been taken into the camaraderie of the neighborhood without question. She watched the woman greet another resident of her building who was sitting on the rear steps, smoking his pipe. The man gestured broadly as he apparently relayed some news. The woman’s shoulders sagged a bit more, and then she shrugged and shook her head before continuing on her way.

Turning away from the scene below, Beth’s thoughts returned to the letter she held. She stared at the blacked-out lines, then smoothed and folded the thin sheets of stationery and placed them back in the envelope. How she longed for some positive news—at least something that might make her heart lighter. How she longed to return to a place where she didn’t have to censor her words or thoughts.

But even if Beth could return to Wisconsin, then what? How would Aunt Ilse cope? How would Uncle Franz be able to concentrate on his research and teaching so that his position at the university remained secure? No, her place was here—not just because she had no exit visa, but because everything told her that this was the right thing to do—this was God’s plan for her at this time in her life. She had prayed about it in meetings for worship over the last several months, asking God to show her His way, and in the end she had come to the certainty that she was meant to be where she was. She could only hope that in time she would be able to go home.

She turned her thoughts back to the immediate situation. The arrival of the doctor presented a new puzzle. He was here—as apparently he would be tomorrow and for days to come—his sudden presence only adding to the confusion and uncertainty that roiled through the house these days. Oh, what did it all mean?

Beth sighed, for in their faith there was only one answer to such a state of inner turmoil.

“Be still and know that I am God.”

She should wait for the following day when the few remaining Friends living in Munich would gather in her uncle’s simply furnished sitting room for the weekly meeting for worship. But as her mother often told her, at times a person could not wait for the gathering of others to seek God’s guidance. So Beth sat in the rocker, folded her hands in her lap, closed her eyes, and waited for the calming beacon of that inner light that Friends around the world believed dwelt in every person—even Chancellor Adolf Hitler.

After several moments she was able to shut out the sounds that floated up to her from the street through the open window. She was less successful in shutting out the sound of Uncle Franz’s laughter, which found its way to her like a whiff of the rationed and treasured pipe tobacco he smoked. Determined to find the calm and comfort of silence and to have all thoughts focused on God, she pushed away each concern that plagued her—her mother’s censored letter, the unexplained presence of the doctor, her nonexistent documents for going home….

But her efforts to find inner peace were short-lived as she was startled back to reality by Liesl’s howl of distress and Ilse’s strident and impatient attempt to settle the child. Her prayer would have to wait.

At supper Josef sat on the bench across the kitchen table from the professor’s niece and the child, Liesl. The professor sat at one end of the narrow table and his wife at the opposite end. He tried to concentrate on his food and the conversation—stilted as it was given that the professor’s wife was decidedly uncomfortable in his presence. But again and again, his attention returned to Beth.