Secrets She Kept (21 page)

The clock struck ten and the cake was cut, more toasts made. I couldn’t imagine our wedding being happier than that night, though I was eager to move the calendar forward. To imagine that in five days
I would be Frau Lieselotte Kirchmann, wife and love forever of Lukas Kirchmann. That when I woke each morning he would wake beside me. Those nearly iridescent blue eyes would be the first sight I would see. My heart nearly burst its chamber.

And then the doorbell rang. Doktor Peterson waved away the butler who’d been hired for the evening and answered it himself, as if he’d expected someone. I felt a flicker of concern, but turned away, determined not to let that man rob me of joy.

But when he returned to the room, tucking what looked to be a telegram in his jacket breast pocket, and glanced from Lukas to Frau Kirchmann in triumph, my heart sank. When his eyes found mine, I knew this evening would not end well.

HANNAH STERLING

FEBRUARY 1973

I took a tray to Grandfather’s room in the early afternoon, but he was sitting in his chair, staring out the window, and did not acknowledge me. I took another tray to him at supper, but saw that he’d not eaten, and there was no sign that he noticed me now.

“Grossvater, you must eat.”

He kept staring out the window.

“You must keep up your strength.”

“For what purpose?”

It was all he’d said since our time in the library. But the question was too hard for me. I pitied my grandfather as I pitied any old and feeble person, as my heart went out to the brokenhearted. But I was quite sure I didn’t like him very much, that he had not told me all
 
—even of his own version of the story
 
—and that I should not trust him.

“Do you want Dr. Peterson to stop by?” It was the last thing I wanted, but I knew Grandfather depended on him.

“
Nein
. They both warned me against
 
—what’s done is done.”

I didn’t know what to say. I’d not asked him to leave me anything, and yet I felt caught, trapped in a web of guilt. “Do you need help in getting ready for bed?”

“I am not so feeble as that, Hannah.” He nearly spat my name.

I picked up the untouched luncheon tray. “If you need anything, just call for me. I’ll come.”

He didn’t answer.

It was a long night. Every time I closed my eyes I saw my mother as a young woman, furtively throwing things in a bag
 
—clothing, a photograph of her mother, her favorite book
 
—and stealing away in the dark of night in the midst of blackouts, curfews, and frightening uncertainty.
Did she have any money? Where did she go? Did anyone help her? Who was the Jewish boy she ran off with
 
—the one she was “besotted” with since childhood? Could he have been my father? What did Grandfather mean about his mother nursing Grandmother? They must have been longtime friends or servants. And yet they were helping Jews . . . my mother was helping Jews right under Grandfather’s nose . . . my mother, part of the resistance. I rolled over, punching my pillow. That did not describe the reserved and closed off-woman I knew to be my mother . . . the young Lieselotte sounded so brave, so passionate, so in love. What happened to change you, Mama?

I replayed Carl’s words about questioning Grandfather on his activities during the war, and the Confessing Church.
So much for that. “Ask him what happened to your mother.”

Grandfather had given me his view, his version of the Confessing Church’s sins, but he’d skillfully avoided answering questions about Mama, except to accuse her of ruining his life.
What was the tipping point? What was the shame that made him disown her, force her to run away? Why didn’t he go after her? His pride, certainly. But was there more?

If Carl’s parents knew Grandfather during the war, might they also have known Mama?
Why hadn’t that registered before?

It took me less than ten minutes to dress and reach the phone in the hallway. It rang seven times before being answered. “Carl?”

“
Ja?
Hannah? Isn’t it a little early?”

“Is it? I need to ask something.”

“Anything, my early bird American friend.”

“I want to meet your parents.”

There was silence on the other end of the line. “Carl? Are you there?”

“
Ja, ja,
I am here.”

“Well, what do you think?”

“You are very eager and I am flattered
 
—a bit surprised, but, no, I do not think that it is too soon.” I heard his smile. No one else I’d met in Germany could melt the phone lines with their teasing. “I will phone them in a couple of hours. They will not yet be awake.”

I glanced at the grandfather clock in the hallway and realized it was four thirty in the morning. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how early it is.”

“I will forgive you if you meet me for breakfast. And I will take you to them afterward.”

“You’re not driving today?”

“This is my day off. You’re in luck, Fräulein Sterling.”

“I’ll see you at the café then
 
—at eight?”

“I count the minutes.”

Thank You, God, for Carl.
I replaced the receiver and waited, but this time did not hear Grandfather prowling the house, did not catch him listening above stairs.

There was no point going back to bed, so I washed and dressed, curled my hair. I picked up a photograph of Mama from the dresser and stroked her face. A very little like mine. Enough to tell I was her daughter, but I bore other features more prominent
 
—wide brown eyes, a fuller mouth, broader at the cheekbones, a little higher forehead. I was not as small or delicate as my mother had been
 
—more tall and lean, but sturdy. Still, I wondered if I’d have been up to running away in the middle of a war.

I pulled back my hair and wound the sides up into soft rolls, pinning them to look like Mama’s picture as a young woman. The oval dressing table mirror reflected some resemblance. Perhaps it would be enough to jog the memories of Carl’s parents.

Carl’s entrance into the café filled the room like May-morning sunshine on the mountain back home
 
—a breath of fresh air after a long and frigid winter.

We’d drained second cups of coffee by the time I finished telling him about Herr Eberhardt, about Grandfather’s making me a co-owner of all his assets, and finally about his tirade against Jews and the Confessing Church. “You said your parents knew of my grandfather. I’m hoping they’ll remember Mama.”

“
Ja
, they remember her.” He set his cup on the table, wiping the ring it left with his finger. “They will tell you all they know.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“You weren’t ready to hear. You were angry because I questioned Herr Sommer’s character, his ‘contribution to the war effort.’”

Heat rose from my stomach to my hairline. “Well, I’m ready now. Grandfather was furious over the idea that Mama helped Jews. I’ve never heard anything like it
 
—the hateful way he talked. It was almost like hearing people in the South talk about blacks when Rosa Parks sat down on the bus
 
—so denigrating.”

“So, you understand. Prejudice does not disappear because laws change. Even losing a war rarely changes the passions of the fallen.” He pushed back from the table. “In America there is a saying, I think: ‘Does the apple not fall near the tree?’”

“I’m not like Grandfather. I despise prejudice. I marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for civil rights in 1963. I took the bus to Washington D.C. I was only eighteen years old, but I knew right from wrong.”

“Civil disobedience.”

“Civil disobedience, but conscientiously required.”

“Perhaps the apple does not fall far from the mother-tree after all.”

“For the first time in my life, I hope that’s true.”

Carl smiled and threw coins to the table. “My parents are ready to receive us.”

I don’t know what I expected, but Carl’s parents looked so much older than Mama and Daddy had. I supposed they must be older
 
—Carl himself had been ten years old when the war ended and he was the youngest of three children. His mother served coffee and cake at the kitchen table.

“Your mother was a brave woman,” Herr Schmidt remembered. “She bought and sold on the black market to feed many. It was dangerous, so very dangerous.”

I felt Carl sit back.

“For Jews? She was buying for Jews? Did she hide them herself?”

“Nein!”
Frau Schmidt intervened. “She was but a girl; where would she hide them, and her Vater a member of the Nazi Party? He
 
—”

Herr Schmidt placed a hand over his wife’s. “Remember, Helga, Hannah is the granddaughter of Herr Sommer.”

“Please, I understand that my grandfather embraced Nazi political views during the war. I don’t know what my mother did.”

The older couple exchanged a meaningful glance.

“It wasn’t only that he embraced Nazi political views,” Herr Schmidt said. “Many did that.”

“Vater, perhaps you should begin with the church.”

“
Ja, ja,
that is good.” Herr Schmidt pulled a pipe from his pocket, tamped the tobacco and lit it, the ritual helping him step back in time. “Do you know of the Confessing Church?”

“Carl told me a little about it. That’s all I know.”

“Some saw early that the Reich was trying to replace the church with its doctrine, that Herr Hitler was trying to stand in the place of our one true teacher, Jesus Christ. Men and women banded together to confess
Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Many
 
—not all
 
—also stood against the maltreatment of our Jewish brethren.”

“Especially after Hitler declared that Christian Jews were not really Christian,” I remembered what Carl had told me.

“It never mattered to the Reich if Jews were Christians or Communists or Orthodox or atheists. To them they were a people to be eliminated. And so they began.”

Frau Schmidt spoke up. “But that’s when some in the Confessing Church stood up and began to help the Jews in a more concerted effort.”

“Some more than others,” Carl nearly accused. “Not everyone helped.”

“
Ja,
” Herr Schmidt replied, “this is true, and to our shame.” The prolonged glance and tension between father and son was confusing. “Your mother, God rest her soul, was one who helped.”

“She was fearless.” Frau Schmidt’s eyes watered. “And she was faithful. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise.”

“Please, I beg of you, tell me about her.”

“When we met your mother, she was already deeply involved. About the time her mother died
 
—your Grossmutter
 
—she had begun coming to church with the Kirchmann family.”

“‘Kirchmann’? Did you say ‘Kirchmann’?” Mama and Daddy’s wedding certificate flashed through my brain.

“Ja, ja.”
She nodded. “Frau Kirchmann became, I think in many ways, a second mother for Lieselotte.”

Herr Schmidt snorted. “It was not Frau Kirchmann who drew her.”

“No.” His wife smiled. “It was Lukas. I believe Lieselotte loved Lukas since she was a child. He was her older brother’s friend.”

“Uncle Rudy.” I made the connection, but the name resounding in my ears was
Lukas
. Who was this Lukas who Mama loved? And if she loved him, could he . . .

“
Ja.
Only the young men divided paths when the Sommer boy joined the Wehrmacht. He never came home. Lukas’s father arranged
for his son some kind of ‘essential war work’ with the Abwehr
 
—the intelligence-gathering organization
 
—that kept him out of the army.”

“But all the while the Kirchmanns helped Jews
 
—hiding them, moving them across the borders into Belgium and France, some even to the Netherlands and through others further south, to Switzerland.” Frau Schmidt shook her head. “They were daring, and your mother with them.”

“They weren’t alone,” Carl insisted. “A number of Confessing Church members helped.”

“
Ja
, but not many in such overt ways. The Kirchmanns stole ration cards, forged identity cards, siphoned benzine from the trucks of the Gestapo. They were brazen, and fearless,” Frau Schmidt repeated.

“Or foolish,” Herr Schmidt reproved. “They risked their lives and all those connected with them. In the end they were caught.”

The Schmidts exchanged their worried glance once more.

“Tell me, please.”

Herr Schmidt began, “Lieselotte and Lukas had just announced their engagement in the church that Sunday.”

“It was not a secret.” Frau Schmidt poured more tea. “The announcement appeared in the newspaper
 
—such a happy couple. I remember hearing your Grossvater did not approve Lukas’s lack of involvement in the Party. Still, he held a grand event to celebrate their engagement, in his home. He invited his Nazi friends
 
—a good chance to show off his newfound wealth, to make his way into their social circle, I always thought. Lieselotte and the Kirchmanns were terribly afraid of such exposure, but determined to carry it off. It was the kind of thing they did, part of their ruse to keep above suspicion.”

“Something must have happened that night.” Herr Schmidt puffed on his pipe. The air grew thick and Frau Schmidt waved the smoke away. “We never knew what. But the next day
 
—late in the afternoon
 
—Herr Kirchmann came to the door and left a package.”

“He left it with me.” Carl’s color deepened. “My parents were out and he asked me to give it to them
 
—asked that we get it to one of the
other church members. He said they were going away
 
—that they must go away very soon. It had all been arranged by Lieselotte’s father. I can see Herr Kirchmann standing in the doorway as if it were yesterday.”

“It was over twenty-five years ago, Carl,” his mother admonished.

“And every day I relive it. We should have done as he asked. It was so little to ask!”

“I don’t understand.” I glanced from Schmidt to Schmidt.

“Herr Kirchmann had risked his life to gain a dozen passports and new identity papers for Jews in hiding. He said he must go away, that they would no longer be able to help as they had before. So he asked that we get the passports to them.”

Herr Schmidt removed his pipe and I saw the lines in his forehead deepen. “I take responsibility. I refused to deliver them, refused to allow Carl to deliver them. It would have put my family in jeopardy. If caught, I would have been sent to prison; my family would have starved. They might have taken us all away.” All these years later, Herr Schmidt sounded weak, but defensive.

“It was a choice made daily by the Kirchmanns, by a dozen others, but we broke the circle,” Frau Schmidt whispered. “And for that break
 
—for our refusal to help
 
—a dozen Jews were sent to camps.”