The Major's Daughter (7 page)

“Now, this is an adventure,” Amos said, pulling away from the curb. “You girls ready for a little adventure?”

“Of course we are,” Dolly said, turning in her seat to glance at Charlene. “Aren't we ready for an adventure, Char?”

“My friend saw the German camp and she said one of the men had red eyes,” Charlene said. “You wouldn't notice it right away, not in full sunlight, but right near evening his eyes caught the sun and she swore they were red. Like a wolf or something.”

“A couple of them have tails,” Dolly said. “I know that for certain. I have it on good account.”

“What, were you in the showers with them?” Amos asked.

Dolly shrieked in mock offense. The car jerked across the road and Amos settled it back too rapidly and the tail fished out a little. Henry held the back of the seat in front of him. Charlene's perfume had begun to make him a little seasick. He rolled down the window beside him. Fog laced the roads and puffed as the car passed through it.

Henry dozed for a while. When he woke, Charlene had the rye bottle in hand and shoved it against his shoulder. They had arrived at the camp. It wasn't much of a place, Henry saw. He took a drink and climbed out when the car stopped. Amos leaned hard on the horn.

“Wake up, you German shits!” Amos yelled in between honks. “Heil Hitler, you Heiny bastards!”

Dolly giggled. Charlene walked close to the fence and stared inside.

“It's too dark,” she said. “I can't see anything.”

“The guards are going to chase us off,” Henry said. “We should go.”

“I'll go when I'm good and ready,” Amos said. “It's a free country.”

He honked the horn in one long blast. It sounded terribly loud in the darkness, Henry thought. He walked off a few paces and peed against a maple, happy to be away from the horn noise. Amos joined him. Amos had trouble staying steady on his feet. Henry offered to drive back, but Amos shook his head.

“I got it,” he said, zipping up.

He honked the horn some more. There was nothing to see, Henry reflected, except when the searchlight passed over the interior of the camp. He could make out guard towers posted on each side of a square, and he saw the fence topped by razor wire, but otherwise it was difficult to make out any details. It was too early, or too late, for the German soldiers to be about. They would still be in their barracks, asleep.

“Okay, let's go,” Amos said, letting off the horn. “You girls satisfied?”

“We didn't see anything!” Charlene said. “I wanted to see something.”

“At least you can say you've been here,” Amos said. “Climb back in. I have to put my little brother to bed.”

“I can put myself to bed,” Henry said, bored with Amos's constant reference to his age.

“No, it's my job to look out for you, little brother.”

Henry climbed into the backseat. Charlene climbed in, too. Amos grabbed Dolly and kissed her and rolled her a little on the hood of the car. Dolly fought him off and crawled into the car, laughing.

On the way back, near Eden Road, Amos pulled the car onto a dirt turnout and told the girls they had to take off their clothes to get a ride back.

“Stop it!” Dolly said, laughing. “You're so naughty!”

“I'm serious,” Amos said in a voice that Henry didn't recognize as coming from his brother. “Get out and peel off. I want to see both of you. The whole package. Either that or you can stay right here and walk home.”

A tightness entered the car. Henry couldn't read his brother's tone, though he imagined Amos was drunk enough to do anything, to mean anything. The girls didn't speak. Amos turned off the car. Light had begun to build in the east. It was a crazy situation.

“Amos . . . ,” Henry started, but Amos opened his door and climbed out.

“Both of you naked,” Amos said. “If you want a ride home, that is. That's the fare. You don't have to if you want to walk home.”

“What a bastard,” Charlene said. “I thought you were a bastard, but I didn't know you were this kind of bastard.”

“I'm not doing that,” Dolly said. “You stupid, damn gorilla.”

“Okay, then both of you out,” Amos said, his head propped in the driver's-side doorway. “Good luck getting back. Should be logging trucks along here pretty soon. Maybe you can hitch a ride with them. Now hop out. Henry and I are heading to Berlin.”

Amos's head jerked sometimes in its drunkenness, Henry saw. It was an ugly thing to watch. The girls didn't move, except to glance nervously back and forth across the seatback, trying to read each other.

“You won't tell if we do it?” Dolly asked, weighing her words, Henry sensed. “You won't spread it around town?”

“You're not serious, are you, Dolly?” Charlene asked. “For this jack wolly?”

“You give us your word you will bring us right back?” Dolly asked. “If we do. You promise? Afterward? You promise?”

“Of course I do,” Amos said.

His words slurred together so that it came out, “Course-sigh-dew.”

Dolly slipped out the passenger side. Henry felt the booze and the lilac perfume linking together in his guts. He wasn't sure if Amos was being serious or not. It was low behavior, no matter what, but it still felt remotely like a prank. Amos told Charlene to get out, too.

“You're as bad as he is,” Charlene hissed at Henry as she slid out on her side. “Letting this go on.”

“Now right over here in the headlights,” Amos said, pointing to a patch of grass in the center of the beams. “Just a little show, that's all. That's all you're doing. Just putting on a little theatrical performance. A little entertainment for the troops.”

The women stood side by side. Neither made a motion to start. Amos reached into the car and grabbed the bottle of rye and took a swig. He stuck it through the window at Henry. Henry took the bottle and pretended to drink. He kept his tongue in the opening. That was easier than refusing his brother.

“You ready, ladies?” Amos asked.

He started clapping his hands slowly, wryly punctuating striptease music he made with his tongue and lips. A few June bugs rattled around in the headlights, creating a buzzing noise; twice, the bugs flashed off and bounced against the women and they flicked their hands at them to get them away.

“Okay, that's enough,” Henry said through the window when Dolly started unbuttoning her blouse. “It was just a dare. Just a stupid dare.”

“Like hell it was,” Amos said, still clapping. “This is the cost of the ride home.”

Henry climbed out of the car. He thought he might be sick.

“Come on,” he said, and held out his hand to his brother. “Give me the keys and we'll head home. Drop the girls off and head home.”

Amos made the striptease music louder. Dolly's hand paused on the buttons of her blouse. Charlene had reached behind her waist to undo the band of her skirt, but now she stopped. Henry reached for the keys in Amos's pocket, but his brother slapped his hands away. Amos kept his eyes fixed on the women. He clapped and smiled, egging them forward.

“They want an excuse to take off their clothes,” Amos said, his mouth wet and borderless. “Don't you get it?”

“Let's call it a night,” Henry said. “Let's head home.”

Unsteady on her feet, Dolly took her clothes off. She did it quickly, automatically, her hands covering her breasts and her groin when she had dropped all the clothes into a mound beneath her feet. She kept her eyes down on the ground. Charlene didn't strip. Amos kept clapping slowly, then made a motion with his hand to have Dolly spin around. She did. Amos nodded. Henry looked despite himself. Dolly appeared white and pale in the early light. Still, he had never seen a woman completely naked before. Not like this, not right out in front of him.

“There,” Dolly said, stepping into her skirt. “Satisfied?”

“I'm telling the police,” Charlene said. “First thing when I get back, I'm telling them.”

“The police won't do anything to them,” Dolly said, snapping her bra closed. “Not in Berlin, they won't. It's their word against ours.”

“Now, don't be sore,” Amos said. “Because Dolly was so pretty, I'll let you ride home for free, Charlene. See? I can be generous.”

Amos took a drink of rye. Then he walked the bottle over to Dolly. She slapped at him a bit when he held it out for her, but when she had her top back on she reached for the bottle and took a long drink. Amos put his arm around her until she kissed him. She laughed, too. She squealed as they climbed back in the Oldsmobile and said Amos was a devil.

Chapter Five

“W
e are used as
verheitz
,” Boris hissed at lights-out. “Kindling wood for a larger fire burning beyond this camp. Bread and water!”

That had been the theme all evening. August listened from his bunk, tired of the virulence of the Nazi leaders. Camp life had made their extreme views more pungent than ever. They refused to believe the war had turned against the Fatherland. The reported appearance of Hitler at the funeral of Gauleiter Adolf Wagner had reassured them, despite the fact that the Führer had not spoken publicly. The mere fact of his ongoing life had heartened them, and they filled the camp with vows to continue fighting, to have faith, and all manner of other nonsense. Now William Zimmerman's somewhat absurd escape had proved a rallying cry. It had fanned the nationalistic flames and restored honor to men removed from combat months before. August wanted to point out that the German war effort now relied on schoolchildren to carry out the necessary labor, but he didn't dare raise his voice.

He turned restlessly on the bunk and tried to bury his hearing in the pillow at his head. Other voices replied to Boris's imprecations, their tones angry and layering on Boris's original statement. Yes, they were kindling wood. No, they would refuse to work if asked to subsist on bread and water. A general strike. On and on the voices went, hot and bitter, and August tried to send his hearing outside to the tree frogs calling in the spring air. Occasionally he heard the river passing over stones, the whisper it made as if carrying secrets from the mountaintops.

He also thought of Collie. He wondered if she had read the poem by now. He had copied it out as accurately as he could recall. He had memorized it many years before for a school exercise, but he could not be certain he had it right. It was a blessing, really, a poem by Ludwig Uhland called “Faith in Spring.” He pictured her reading it, her golden hair catching the light as she turned to the lines. She spoke German! What kind of miraculous luck was that! She spoke German better than he spoke English, but between them they might make up a new language. It made him smile to think of it.

He fell asleep and did not wake until morning. That was a benefit of working outdoors logging; one slept like the dead. Boris, large and dark, his chest hair spilling over his undershirt, stood in the center of the barracks, stirring the pot once more. August ignored him as much as possible. He skirted around him and went outside, following the raised boardwalk to the latrines. He washed and used the toilet, and on his return ran into Hans the Butcher, a member of his work party, who informed him that William had been seized in Portland.

“He made it that far at least,” Hans said, a towel draped over his neck. “A conductor asked a few too many questions and eventually William gave in. He's been sent back to Fort Devens. That's the report, though there are some here who won't believe it. Some think he was taken out and shot.”

“Where did you hear it?”

Hans waved at the air to indicate it came from anywhere, everywhere, from the wind. Rumors.

“Will we work today, then?” August asked.

“If they give us breakfast, we will.”

“I'd rather work than sit around all day.”

“It's all the same to me,” Hans said, and passed by to return to his barracks.

They served a full breakfast. August drank two large cups of coffee and ate a seeded roll with butter and a slice of sausage. He had been hungry since the dinner of bread and water. Rumors flashed around the refectory. Canteen privileges would be restored, he heard in one ear, and in the other heard the canteen would be closed indefinitely. William had been beaten horribly, one rumor maintained; in another rumor William had been captured not on a train, but in a high-priced cathouse with two women sharing his bed. In each new telling William gained the strength and cunning of a superman, and it was all August could do to stop reminding his fellow prisoners that William was a simple lad who had barely grown into his bones.

They assembled shortly after breakfast and Major Brennan addressed them.

William had been caught in Portland, Maine, the major said through his daughter, Collie. William had surrendered peacefully and was now being sent to Fort Devens, where the security would be greater. He said he understood it was their duty to try to escape, but given the rural quality of the camp, and the unlikelihood of their being able to return to Germany under current circumstances, he hoped they would reconsider their responsibility to their fellow prisoners.

Then he ordered them to work. It concluded that simply. August mustered with his work crew, now short one man for William's disappearance. As he passed through the front gate, he turned to the window where Collie worked. He saw her bent over a paper and he smiled at the sight of her. He willed her to look up, to catch his eyes, but she seemed intent on whatever she was doing, and he passed out to the twitch horses, a day in the woods before him.

 • • • 

The poem lived in her pocket as if it were a pet mouse. She was embarrassed to admit how carefully she had worked to translate the lines, each one desperate with meaning. She had already copied out her translation to Estelle, sending it with the morning post. In the letter to her friend she asked her opinion of the lines as if she meant the question merely as an academic exercise. She asked her, too, to bring a book of German verse. To bring anything, really, that might increase her understanding of the language. She passed it off as something required for camp life, but in reality she wanted the German verses to share with August.

That thought made her stomach flip and her blood push closer to her skin. How ridiculous she was! At certain moments she could take a step back and see herself clearly. She saw this absurd young woman poring over the scant German lines, ascribing meaning to each syllable, giving them the attention reserved for biblical passages. What had he said? It was merely a poem he remembered from his school days, so she should, she felt, attribute no special qualities to the poem, but she could not resist. The poem mixed with her memory of him standing before her desk, his broad shoulders nearly blocking out the light from outdoors, the sweet flow of his locks over his forehead and shoulders. She was worse than Marie in her romantic turn of mind.

At lunch, however, she carried a sandwich to the pole barn where the horses were kept. They were all out cutting now, so she sat in the sunlight on a cobbled bench someone had slapped together beside the horse stable. The air smelled of early summer, or late spring, and the scent of manure mixed in was not unpleasant. In the right breeze she sometimes caught the moist fragrance of the river, too, its water pressing southward toward the Pemigewasset and Merrimack. She ate slowly, taking pleasure in the silence. Noon felt sleepy and still, and it had come to be her favorite time of day. Red, the German cook, had prepared a sort of meat-loaf sandwich that was quite good. She ate it slowly and let the sun warm her, and tried, unsuccessfully, to resist pulling the poem out to read.

She wrapped up the second half of the sandwich in waxed paper, cleaned her hands on a small handkerchief, then edged the poem out of her pocket. Her copy lay within his. She read his German version first, then slowly read the English translation aloud.

Now everything, everything must change.

The world becomes more beautiful with each day;

one doesn't know what may yet happen.

She loved its simplicity. She had wrestled with the word
change
in the first line, debating if it had meant
turn
instead. The difference was subtle but substantial.
Turn
changed the meaning into something more agricultural, she felt, while
change
spoke to the human condition. She preferred
turn
for its poeticism, but
change
, she concluded, was more accurate. It was something she would like to ask August himself if given the chance.

Naturally the poem meant more than that to her. What had he intended by giving it to her? That was the question her mind could not resolve. At the least he had meant it as an overture of friendship, not merely as an exercise in translation. It felt impossible to know what a man thought; add to that his German ancestry, and the task seemed insurmountable. She wondered, for instance, if he saw her as a woman apart from her role as daughter to her father, the camp commandant. Or was he, perhaps, of genuinely scholarly disposition, so that he saw the exchange of poetry as simple cross-cultural exchange? She wished Estelle would hurry, because she would like to put the question to her.

In the afternoon, while her father and Lieutenant Peters were out checking on two of the cutting teams, she transcribed a clean copy for Private August Wahrlich. She made a mistake the first time, blotting ink on the second line, and had to start over. It took her a half hour to make the copy to her satisfaction, then she stalled as she realized she might write a brief note of explanation to him concerning the translation. Her first attempt sounded too formal and condescending, as if she were doing him a great favor by tendering the translation. She scrapped it and began again, this time speaking directly from her heart. She kept it brief. She said—truthfully, she felt—that she had found the poem lovely and challenging at once. She raised the question of the word
change
versus
turn
, then concluded by saying she hoped soon to have a book of German verse that she might share with him. The last part, about the book and hoping to share it with him, made her nervous. Before she put the letter and translation into an envelope, she nearly crumpled the entire enterprise up and threw it in the waste can. But that wasn't honest; she yearned to pass along the note to him, and she finally sealed the envelope as quickly as she could and put it in the center drawer of her desk. It remained there beating—like Poe's “The Tell-Tale Heart,” she thought—until the men began streaming back from the woods.

Luck worked in her favor. She heard a lot of yelling and laughing, and when she glanced out she saw the men—Germans and Americans together—ringed around something at their feet. Lieutenant Peters stuck his head into the administrative building and told her the cause of the excitement.

“They have a bear cub!” he said, obviously pleased with the discovery. “Come take a look.”

“Where—”

“It was in a tree when they cut it down. No one saw it beforehand, and the mother bear must have been scared away. They've named it Bruno. Come and see.”

On impulse she grabbed the letter and tucked it into her waistband. Then she followed Lieutenant Peters outside. The men formed a fence to keep the bear in the middle of their circle. She had a brief impression of something small and black scuttling around at their feet. The men pulled back when they noticed her, many of them holding out their hands as if, presto, they unveiled a great treasure. One man, a German, rested on his knees before the tiny bear and provided a base when the bear needed reassuring. Collie felt her heart melt at the sight of the little orphan. Clearly it missed its mother, but it still toddled around, trying to make sense of what had occurred. The men treated it sweetly. The man on the ground, especially, seemed to feel some proprietorship over it. He guided it when it seemed shaky and twice lifted it up and held it like a baby. Whenever he let it run as it liked, it bawled for its mother and traced the interior of the circle.

August arrived with his cutting crew before long. Collie saw him, but he was quickly lost in the swarm of men who came to look. The bear served as a magnet; no one could ignore it. August, however, pushed his way to the front of the ranks. When the man in the center saw August he spoke to him rapidly in German. August smiled and translated, his eyes directly on Collie's.

“He asks if you want to hold it,” he said, nodding toward the man in the center and the little bear.

“Yes, I would.”

That seemed to please all the men in the circle. The man in the center lifted the bear carefully and handed it to Collie. Whatever discomfort she felt at being the only woman in a circle of men, disappeared the moment she held little Bruno. He was a darling! His fur felt fine and dense, and his black, inquisitive eyes did not leave hers. He weighed little, but what there was of him seemed vital and eager. He had four paws of good claws, and his pointed snout angled out in a brown muzzle. Around her she heard men exclaim in German. She wondered if they understood that she comprehended most of what they said. As if reading her mind, one man—the man who seemed the bear's owner—spoke to her directly in German.