The Major's Daughter (5 page)

 • • • 

They all appeared comical, Collie realized as she followed the Chapman girls up the Old Mill Trail. They rode three of the draft horses, one wider than the next, all of them massive and sleepy and annoyed at being rousted out on a vacation day. The saddles the girls had dug up from Lord-only-knew-where, looked absurd on the gigantic animals. Like a postage stamp on an elephant,
Collie thought. They resembled a circus procession on its arrival into a new town.

Still, it was good fun. She liked the Chapman girls: Amy was her age, and her sister, Marie, was a lanky fifteen-year-old, all elbows and blushes. Marie, especially, amused Collie. She liked being with the girl, because Marie could not contain her curiosity about everything, and thoughts popped into her mouth before she had the adult sense to edit them. Her outbursts caused embarrassment or awkwardness at times, but nevertheless it was fun to be around her enthusiasm for life. She reminded Collie of a spatula leaping from one bowl to the next to stir the ingredients. She hardly cared what she baked as long as she was in motion.

Amy, in contrast, had a thin, nervous shell around her. At their first meeting, when Collie arrived from Smith, Collie learned that Amy had worn a chest-and-back brace as a young girl. The circumstances that required the brace had never been made clear, but it had left Amy with a rigid posture, as if she had been shaken out of a mold and left to stiffen in the open air. Her posture affected every aspect of her life, it seemed to Collie, and she wondered if Amy would ever loosen. Likely not. She was thoughtful, though, and intelligent: she had planned to become a schoolteacher before the war started. Now she helped around her family's farm and did occasional secretarial work for the Berlin Mill; she loved going to Berlin, and to the Rialto there. It was her favorite thing to do.

Collie rode Buster, a dark, gentle horse with a back as wide as a door. The muddy trail glistened in the late-afternoon sunshine; small rivulets of water flickered down the hillside like reflective veins of copper. Steering the horse was not required. It went where the Chapmans' horses went, climbing the grade with its heavy hooves sucking and releasing the damp earth. Amy took the lead on Barrow; Marie rode Sylvester, a slightly mischievous horse that was a household wizard at getting out of enclosures and running loose.

“. . . says the Germans can hypnotize people simply by staring at them,” Marie said, the last of a long litany of special powers apparently attributed to the prisoners by the local schoolchildren.

“Who says such a thing?” Amy asked, her body perpendicular to Barrow's large gray back.

“It's true!” Marie exclaimed in her eager voice. “Lenora walked past the camp the other day and a German soldier looked at her and she couldn't move! Her legs wouldn't work. Not
every
German has that power. . . . I'm not saying that. But some do. This one stared at Lenora until someone called him away. Lenora said she had to go home and lie down when it was over.”

“That's ridiculous,” Amy said. “Germans are people the same as we are. No one can mesmerize someone just by staring at them.”

“They can, too! Collie, tell my sister the truth. She thinks I make up everything.”

“No one has hypnotized me yet,” Collie said. “But anything is possible, I suppose. They seem like normal men to me.”

“Polly says they can dig through the dirt with their hands like moles or badgers!” Marie went on, turning back and forth to Collie, then Amy. “She says if you look closely, their fingers have curved nails.”

“These rumors are absurd,” Amy said. “You can't go into the store without hearing a half dozen crazy notions. It's embarrassing to hear such things. We're so provincial.”

“We should go by the camp now,” Marie said. “Please, can we? Everyone is going by today. The newspaper says people are coming over on a train from Berlin.”

“I did hear,” Amy said, turning all the way around to speak to them both, “that they took Mr. Chapin's rifle away. He threatened to go shoot the prisoners after what they had done to his son. But I guess his neighbors have agreed to watch him. His wife told the authorities about the rifle. They promised to give it back when the Germans are gone.”

“I don't blame him for wanting to kill them,” Marie said. “Daddy would kill anyone who touched a hair on our heads.”

“People get killed in war,” Collie said.

Then for a while they rode in silence. The sun hung on the tips of the mountains, still traveling in its springtime arc. When they reached Scooter Pond, a small impression at the base of a rocky outcropping, Amy climbed down. They always dismounted at Scooter Pond. Twice they had come across moose wading in the waters, but on this day the moose remained back in the woods. A kingfisher flicked along the shoreline, occasionally diving into the water to snap a dace from the shallows. Once they tied the horses to a line of shrubs, Marie climbed on a log that extended into the pond and began singing “Mairzy Doats.” She had been singing it until she had driven everyone around her nearly mad, but now she pointed her toes as she balanced along the log, her arms out, singing the familiar phrases:

Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey

A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?

She sang it three times through. She also used the lyrics from the bridge:

If the words sound queer and funny to your ear, a little bit jumbled and jivey,

Sing “Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy.”

“I don't know why you like that ridiculous song so much,” Amy said, taking a seat at the shoreward end of the log, “but you're driving me to distraction with it.”

“Sing it with me. You'll like it,” Marie said, breaking the song for a moment while she spun on the log to return to them. “Everyone likes it except you.”

“Even the Germans sing it,” Collie said, sitting on the opposite side from Amy. “They say it's popular in Europe, too.”

“It's catchy, I'll give you that. But to hear it over and over . . .”

Marie began singing it again. Collie laughed at the pained expression on Amy's face. She couldn't help herself: she chimed in with Marie, and Marie, delighted, began singing louder. The sun felt good and warm and the camp felt far removed, Collie thought, and she sang right out, glad to follow Marie's nonsense. She grabbed Amy's hands and tried to get her to dance, but when she refused Collie hopped onto the log and danced with Marie. They did a silly minuet, pointing their toes and pretending to be grand ladies, all the while singing the delirious lyrics. It was infectious. Collie couldn't resist, and she led the next round, kicking higher now, laughing when Amy shook her head.

“Please, please, please, please, please, can we ride to the camp now? It's right on our way home,” Marie asked when they came to a good stopping point.

“Will you promise never to sing that song again in my hearing range?” Amy asked.

“Never?” Marie squealed.

“For a week, then.”

Marie jumped down off the log and ran to Sylvester. She turned and made a face, pretending that the words of the song tried to force their way up through her throat. She slapped her hand over her mouth, but her cheeks puffed wider, and she crossed her eyes to demonstrate the pain of not singing. Collie laughed. It felt good to be in the sun and good to laugh, and she linked her arm in Amy's and made her friend run with her to their horses.

 • • • 

August watched the traffic pass by: children laughing and pointing, cars creeping slowly past, civilians walking as if on an after-dinner constitutional, except that they had obviously come to gawk. It was difficult to avoid doing something to satisfy the American voyeurs. How odd the circumstances seemed to be, he thought. If the situations were reversed, and Americans were held prisoners in a camp, he could not imagine the German citizenry paying much attention. Prisoners, like sawdust to a carpenter, came from wars, plain and simple. To gaze at tanks and cannons on parade made sense to him, but to wander past Camp Stark and spend a day watching German men do nothing struck him as peculiar. He wished he could ask an American about it. He supposed it had something to do with the fact that Americans had little experience with war on their continent.

Boris—his barracks leader—had issued orders to do nothing about the audience. August had no intention of disobeying Boris, but it seemed like an opportunity lost. Wasn't it their sworn duty to attempt escape? If so, he thought, it made sense to speak with the citizens in order to find out as much as possible about the surrounding area. That only stood to reason. Boris had consulted with the Nazi leadership committee and had repeated the instructions to ignore the Americans staring at them through the fence. The Nazis were a group of older, brutal men, and August did not think seriously about defying them.

In any case, he was glad to have a day to recover. His hands hurt from the saw and ax, and his back ached from lifting and moving wood. He had eaten a good dinner—yes, Red, the Munich cook, was a talented chef—and now felt restless and bored in the growing shade. He considered walking to the canteen, where he might use his scrip to purchase cigarettes or beer, writing paper and soap, but he imagined the Nazi men would be stationed there. Better, he knew, to stay clear of them.

He had not moved from his station near the barracks when the PA system crackled once and Mozart began to play over the speakers. For a moment, he could not believe what he heard. The radio sputtered several times, then seemed to fix on the appropriate station, and the music came through the system with quiet joy. He looked around him; everyone had suddenly slowed, their eyes meeting one another's with wonder. Such a thing hardly seemed possible, but as he listened more closely—what was the piece? He couldn't remember, but he recognized it as Mozart, his fellow countryman—he knew he hadn't been mistaken. Someone had gotten the notion to broadcast a concert, perhaps as an Easter present, and the music danced out into the muddy courtyard with incomparable beauty.

Several men wept at the sound. August stood, unable to determine a course of action for himself. What to do with the sudden happiness the music brought? He closed his eyes, positioning himself in the last strong sun rays of the day, and allowed his mind to travel back to Vienna, to the wonderful coffeehouses, the
kaffee mit schlag
steaming as the waiters carried them to the table, the snowy drift of a newspaper turning slowly, the steady pluck of the pendulum in the Black Forest wall clock, the scent of chestnuts cooking on an open brazier in late winter. The music carried everything with it, and it suddenly felt dangerous, as if it might puncture his heart in a way that would not mend. Nevertheless, he could not resist it.

When he opened his eyes he saw Collie, the major's daughter.

She stood on the other side of the fence with two young women beside her, three draft horses waiting like forgotten balloons on the leads behind them. Her beauty struck him; he had tried to see her every day, a glimpse of her as important to him as food or drink. All the men talked of her. She was like a lovely shooting star that came into view only briefly, always when least expected, and now, meeting her eyes, he raised his arms as if to dance with her and bowed. She smiled and looked down, but her younger friend, a slim, happy-looking girl, bowed back and held up her arms to mirror his own. He began slowly moving, pretending to dance, and the girl—how happy she looked, and how she blushed—followed his lead. They should have stopped, he thought, because it was a silly game, but he found he wanted to keep dancing, and she became bolder as the music continued, despite one of the other women saying a word that sounded like a name. Then the other woman—not Collie, but a third woman—reached out and put her palm on the young girl's arm to stop her, but the girl shook her off and continued dancing anyway. August felt tears build in his eyes, and he felt tremendously grateful for the girl who danced as his reflection. Other people along the fence line smiled, too, at their pantomime, and when the music built to a conclusion and then halted, they received a round of applause from the onlookers.

The girl blushed again and August bowed his thanks. The girl curtsied in reply, then scrambled onto her horse as lithe and as quick as a mink. For a moment longer he gazed at Collie, and he believed she gazed back, and when she moved to mount her horse, she could not keep her eyes from returning to his, the world around them gone while their stare continued, his heart following her.

Chapter Four

T
ime passed quickly. That was one thing Collie determined as the weather progressed and became warmer. The days seemed like a string of white beads, each one linked by news of the war, by more absurd songs pouring out of the radio, by mounds of paperwork and by the occasional shipment of new guards or the exchange of prisoners. Everything seemed transitory, impermanent, changeable. It struck her occasionally how adaptable humans could be. Three weeks before, the Germans had been a faceless enemy living somewhere distant and remote. Now, while they were still exotic, and remained the source of a thousand gapes from slack-jawed visitors, and continued to be the subject of hundreds of mostly ill-informed editorials, the fact of their existence had become widely accepted. “The prisoners at Stark,” people said, as if mentioning a landmark or a geographical feature. They had become part of the community's mental landscape.

Except, of course, for Private August Wahrlich. Dressing on a fine May morning, Collie wondered if she would see him that day. He cluttered her thoughts, and when she saw him her heart grew heavy in her chest and she had difficulty breathing. It was a schoolgirl crush, she knew, something more fitting for Marie, who had not stopped talking about the day she had pretend-danced with the gallant German soldier. It had been the highlight of Marie's young life, Collie knew, and she enjoyed talking about it whenever she had a willing ear. As much as Collie pretended to be bored by the story, or disinterested, she relished hearing it again because she remembered the way she had exchanged a look with the young soldier. She remembered how handsome he had looked, his arms out, his eyes closing at times—she loved that detail—and how they had nodded slightly at each other. Yes, she remembered that, though at times she wondered if she had made that last part up. Had they really nodded? She couldn't say for certain, but she believed they had. They all agreed, especially Marie, that August Wahrlich was the most handsome German soldier by far. He was the most handsome soldier in the camp, Collie thought, challenged only briefly by a dark-haired young American guard who had been transferred to Houlton, Maine, after only a week of duty.

So she tried to see him, and that proved more difficult than she might have imagined. She could hardly lean out the window and gaze at the men like a lovesick heifer. Besides, the prisoners were gone most of the day, transported as far as Vermont to cut wood. She had her responsibilities as well, though they had changed slightly. Now, in addition to her responsibilities for translation, she concentrated primarily on the logging paperwork, attempting to keep track of what came in, what went out, who took it, at what cost, and so forth. The men proved to be unreliable accountants, and that made the bookkeeping more difficult. The Brown Paper Company wanted more pulp, always more pulp, but her father had remained a steadfast advocate for the fair treatment of the prisoners. He refused to be bullied. They met their quota, but he would not permit the Germans to be used as slaves as some factions desired.

After breakfast, she ignored Mrs. Hammond's admonition to wear a heavier coat, and she walked to the camp beside the Ammonoosuc. The trees on both sides of the river hung exactly on the edge of blossom. The leaves seemed to disappear if you looked at them directly, Collie thought, though they reappeared in slant gazes. The air smelled deliciously of pine and mud, and around the boardinghouse massive heads of lilacs painted the air.

She stopped at her stone bench halfway to the camp and pulled Estelle's latest letter from her pocket. She had deliberately avoided reading the letter earlier at breakfast for fear of spoiling it. Estelle had promised to see if she could arrange a visit; it felt too much to hope for. Collie opened the letter and immediately felt comforted by Estelle's lovely handwriting. She clutched the tissue paper to her chest when she spotted Estelle's promise to arrive in two weeks' time, early June at the latest. She smiled at the letter and teared slightly as she forced herself to slow and read it carefully. It had not been an easy thing to arrange, Estelle confided. She felt somewhat guilty, as if she were going off on a vacation while the rest of the world fought against the enemies of peace, but the war seemed to be tipping in favor of the Allies and it could not continue forever. Her mother had sensed Estelle's restlessness, and she had encouraged her to take a trip. Frankly Estelle had not been faring too well, she confessed, and her parents agreed a change of scenery might be the needed thing. So the plans, while still tentative, seemed promising. She couldn't wait to see her friend Collie, she wrote, and she wanted to experience everything Collie had written about: the funny horse rides, the grim German prisoners, and the bright forests of New Hampshire. She wanted most of all to take mountain walks and to have long conversations with her dear friend. She closed by extending her best wishes to Collie's father.

Collie read the letter twice before she folded it carefully and returned it to her pocket. Estelle! How she longed to see her friend! Collie felt an eager thrill in her stomach. Plans rushed it like a mad torrent: things to do, walks to take, small adventures to pursue. She would show Estelle everything, confide in her about every element of her life, and, in turn, hear all the many thoughts and emotions that had been stored in her friend's days. She patted the letter in her pocket and promised herself that she would read it again at lunch. Finally, reluctantly, she stood and began walking toward the camp in a quick march.

She had not gone far when she heard a siren begin to shriek. It built slowly, cranking until it filled every hollow space in the world. She knew immediately what it meant: someone had escaped, or had gone unaccounted for, and the siren meant the camp had been locked down. It had gone off twice before, both instances terrifying, but each time it had proven a false alarm. Once, in fact, a young American guard had said he had seen a German Messerschmitt, or a Japanese Zero streaking at them in a deadly line. The boy had been relieved of duty a few days later, sent back to Rhode Island, where he made his home.

But this time the siren conveyed more seriousness. By the time Collie reached the camp, the guards ran about like hornets. The Germans had not been sent out for work; they lounged in apparent amusement, watching the Americans hurry to establish who was present. The siren died as Collie passed through the front gate, and she saw her father step out of the administration building, a cup of coffee in his hand.

A pair of strange thoughts assaulted her at that moment. The first was that her father did not look particularly alarmed at the possibility of an escape. He resembled a man going out to check on a delivery that had disturbed him at his breakfast. Her other thought was that her father had grown gray. It may have been the angle of the sun, or his placidity in the face of the turmoil caused by the siren, but he looked considerably older suddenly. She wondered how she had missed such a thing. She went to him quickly, as if she could somehow prevent his aging by staying near him. But he turned and smiled, then took a sip of coffee.

“Seems one of our birds has flown,” he said. “It's a wonder it took them this long.”

“Just one?”

“Apparently so. He slipped off into the woods from a cutting crew. That's the current theory. The two guards on his crew each say the other fouled up. It's hard to know what happened exactly. We'll sort it out eventually.”

“What's protocol?”

“We'll put out a bulletin. Lieutenant Peters has already taken care of some of that, but there are still calls to make. It's doubtful the prisoner will get very far, but you never know. If he can get on a train and pass himself off as a Dutch soldier, or camouflage himself somehow, he might make it to Boston or New York. If he gets that far, he'll stand a good chance of permanent escape. If he tries to stay in the woods, he'll be out soon enough.”

“You don't seem particularly worried.”

“This is not a high-security camp. If a man is determined to get away, he probably can. The big thing is, people will panic when they hear about the escape. Once word gets out, the reporters will be calling.”

“How can I help?”

“We're going to bring in his crew for questioning shortly. I will need you on hand to translate.”

He smiled and bent down and kissed her. Yes, she thought as she looked at him more closely, his age had started to show.

She went inside and helped Lieutenant Peters make phone calls for a half hour. They notified all the proper authorities. She glanced out the window now and then and watched as the Germans remained in ranks according to their barracks. The headcount, distant and rhythmic, went on and on. Apparently they were having trouble determining the missing party, or perhaps, she thought, they had decided to keep the men outdoors while other guards searched the barracks. In any case, the Germans seemed somewhat smug at the guards' confusion. The vaunted German precision, Collie thought, would never have difficulty tallying a prison count.

When the count finished, her heart stopped to see August Wahrlich and his cutting crew being led across the parade ground to the administration building. It occurred so quickly that she did not have a moment to prepare herself. Guards flanked the Germans, herding them forward, and the Americans spoke gruffly to them. The missing man made more work for everyone.

Collie hoped she did not blush when the men halted on the small porch of the administration building. She leaned a little in her seat to see them. August stood a good head taller than the other men. Seeing him nearby for the first time, she realized she had underestimated his good looks. He was truly handsome, with a firm brow and fine eyes, a head of blond hair that lifted and inspected the breeze as it passed. His body looked trim from lumberjacking, and his stomach fell away from the cliff of his ribs into a valley that collected at his belt. He might have been a movie star, truly, and when he turned at something one of the guards said his profile rested in perfect symmetry. Studying him, she felt her blush deepen and she glanced quickly at Lieutenant Peters to make sure he wasn't watching. But he was still on the phone, repeating himself for the tenth time concerning the details of the escapee, and when she looked back to see August she nearly cried out when she discovered his eyes had again found hers.

She lowered her eyes instantly. A guard pushed through the door and asked if Major Brennan was ready for the crew. Did he want them one by one, or all in a group? Lieutenant Peters covered the phone with his hand and replied that the major would interview them one by one. Keep all the men here after they are debriefed, he added, in case the major decided to speak to them as a unit.

Collie felt grateful for the interruption the guard afforded her. He cut off the line of sight out to the porch, but when he peeled back outside she again found her eyes met by August. He smiled. She couldn't help herself from smiling in return. It could not be coincidence, she decided, that their eyes continued to meet. He deliberately found her gaze. No other explanation suited the facts.

Fortunately he was not the first to be summoned inside. A prisoner named Gerhard came in first. Her father called for her to translate and also brought in a stout, humorless guard who stood beside the prisoner. She entered the office and sat to her father's right. Gerhard remained standing. He was a square, blocky man, with unusually large forearms above heavy hands.

From a translating perspective, the questions were simple: who, what, where, when. The German answered straightforwardly. Collie listened to his responses carefully, trying to pick up on any discrepancies in his account. She reported the German's responses to her father faithfully. One by one the men came in, stood before her father, and reported the same story. They knew little; they had no idea where the man had gone. Each testified that the missing soldier had not confided in them. Her father treated them sternly and asked a rigorous series of questions to cross-check against previous answers, but it became apparent after the third man that they knew nothing of the escapee's whereabouts. Collie surmised the facts of the escape required little plotting. The man had drifted away on the walk back to the camp. That was the essence of it. He had gone precisely as the men reached the larger group of men returning for the day. He had mixed in, found his opportunity, then wandered away. It suggested nothing systemic. Nonetheless, it would have to be punished.