The Roses Underneath (15 page)

Anna sighed. She whispered the story about finding Oskar at the villa, leaving out the repository, the Runge, the secret mountains of art. “So we took him to that displaced persons camp and that’s why we were so late,” she finished, beginning to peel the egg anyway.

“So where did he come from? Is he all alone, the poor child? How old is he?” Madeleine asked.

“You found a boy, mama?” Amalia perked up. “Can I play with him? What’s his name?”

Anna put a finger to her lips to remind Amalia to lower her voice. “His name is Oskar. He came from Darmstadt. He says he’s eight years old. He’s got pretty fixed ideas about how this all should have turned out and he’s not happy. A real
Hitler Jugend
poster boy.”

“Well you can’t blame him for that. He’s just a child. His parents died in the Darmstadt bombing? That was nearly a year ago.”

Anna nodded. “Last September. That’s what he says. I’ve not had much luck getting more out of him. Captain Cooper says he’ll try to find a place for the boy to go.”

“Mama, he could come live with us,” Amalia squealed. “We have a place to live. We should take care of him.” She crawled over to Anna and grabbed her arm.

The door at the end of the ward opened and the robust figure of the matron marched toward them. “Frau Wolf? What do you think you are doing? Visiting hours are over. You are disrupting the entire ward.” She glared at Anna. “Who are you?”

“This is my family, matron, they have come to visit me. Were we being loud? Did we interrupt your nap?” Innocence washed over Madeleine’s face. Anna looked down at her hands to hide a smile.

The matron snorted. “Frau Wolf, I see you are feeling much better, hosting parties at your bedside. I suggest you return to the comfort of your own home and give this bed to someone who truly needs it. I have too much to do to play nanny to you. I will prepare your papers for the doctor.”

“Don’t bother. He won’t miss me anyway.” Madeleine waved a bony hand. “I’ll let myself out tomorrow morning. Send me your bill.”

The matron glared at Anna, turned on her heel, and was gone.

Madeleine’s eyes gleamed and her face revealed her younger self. “I just love to let them have
it. There’s no medicine anyway. All they do is take my temperature and look at me accusingly, as if I am taking a vacation on their watch. And what can these old witches do to me now? Stupid woman.”

Amalia wiggled. “Auntie you are coming home.” She threw her arms around Madeleine and knocked her back onto the pillows.

Anna gave the old woman a motherly look. “Madeleine, you should be in the hospital where they can take care of you.”

“You are assuming they are taking care of me. I’ve been here nearly a week already and I was better off at home.” She winked.

Anna exhaled. “We’d better go, it’s almost curfew. I’ll come and get you in the morning and make sure you are settled at home.” Anna kissed the old woman’s forehead and tucked the basket onto the bed next to her with an admonition to eat. Madeleine sank back into her pillows and closed her eyes.

In the morning Anna and Amalia walked the three kilometers to the Gustav-Freytag-Strasse. The day was warm but the heavy clouds threatened afternoon rain. Anna was glad to return Amalia to Frieda’s care, and when they arrived they found little Liesl already there. The two girls took each other’s hands and walked into the playroom. Where Amalia was tall and thin, Liesl was short and round. Her blond hair was pulled into braids so tight they threatened to separate her hair from her scalp. She wore a pair of boy’s overalls and a white shirt with little red flowers. Like Amalia, her shoes had the tips cut out to make them fit longer. No doubt this little indignity had bonded them together. Anna watched, standing in the doorway to the playroom. Amalia seemed happy to act as a big sister to the child, even though they were the same age.

“How wonderful to be a child, no?” Emil said as he looked over her shoulder.

“Why do you say that?” Anna spoke without taking her eyes off the two girls.

“Look at them. They are so resilient. It takes so little to make them happy.”

Anna laughed. “Spoken like a man who’s never lived with a six-year-old.” When she turned to look at him, she saw that her remark had hit a tender spot.

Emil pursed his lips and looked away. “No, I guess I have not had that particular pleasure. Are you coming?” He pulled the door open.

Anna would rather have walked alone, but she nodded. “
Tschuess,
Maus.” She waved at Amalia, who waved back and blew a kiss before returning to rocking a doll in its cradle. Anna took a deep breath and willed herself to walk away. “Yes, I’m coming.” She took her bag from the bench next to the door.

Emil shouted a farewell to Frieda who was in the kitchen rinsing potatoes for lunch. She had greeted Anna and Amalia with smiles when they arrived and proudly shown off the potatoes, outlining how she would prepare them: sliced with the skins on and fried in the drippings of fat. Anna’s mouth watered just thinking about it and she was happy Amalia would have such a good meal.

As they walked down the hill to the Collecting Point the morning dew was still heavy in the air and sun filtered through the canopy of the tree-lined street, creating a shifting mosaic on the ground. Emil seemed to relax, and Anna, softened by the warm breeze, wanted to make amends.

“I am sorry for what I said earlier. About living with a six-year-old. It’s just that it’s not all happiness and laughter. Amalia is the light of my life. She is everything to me.” Anna’s voice choked around the words, and she covered the emotion with a cough.

“It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it. Sometimes we forget how fortunate we are,” Emil said.

They walked on in silence, their rhythmic footsteps echoing off the houses along the street. Anna thought of Emil’s frostbitten fingers. “Are you doing all right Emil? I mean, really?” She suddenly wanted to know.

Emil bristled and said nothing for so long that Anna thought he had ignored her.

“I think of my friends. Every day. I guess I am lucky too.”

“Your comrades from the Wehrmacht
,
your army buddies?” Anna’s mind saw the rows of bright young faces from Göbbels’s propaganda film reels marching toward an impossible promise. She always had this image when she thought of the Wehrmacht.

“Yes. I was in the first wave of Operation Barbarossa in ‘42. And you know how that all ended. We barely made it to Stalingrad. Then I got a load of shrapnel in my leg and got sent home. I was on the last transport out before the siege—on my twentieth birthday too. I never got back to my unit or saw my comrades again. They either froze to death or are starving now in some godforsaken Russian prison camp.”

Anna searched for words but found only an apology.

Emil shrugged and exhaled. “No need. We all went through the shit didn’t we? Each in his own way.”

“Well, some of us more than others,” she said, mostly to herself. Anna knew she had been spared. It was the
why
of her dispensation that gave her trouble. “That must have been very hard, the Russian campaign,” she said. She felt useless.

Emil stopped and Anna passed him with several strides before she turned to look at him. He stood, hands in pockets, shoulders tensed as if supporting some invisible load.

“You are the first person to say that to me. No one wants to know anything,” he said, his voice taut. “If we don’t expect to be treated as heroes, no one will tell what we did. Isn’t that the bargain?” His eyes darkened. “I was just a child when I went into Russia. What did I know? I was only a soldier. I did what I was told or they would have shot me, too. I was as dispensable as any one of those…people. In Russia. Those Jews. So I survived. For what? For this?” He spat into the street and sat down on the curb.

Anna stood by uncomfortably, regretting she had opened this door. She sat down next to him and placed a tentative hand on his back, but he pulled away.

“Don’t,” he said. He hid his face in his hands. “You know, Anna, I think my soul is already condemned because of things I did. Hell can’t be any worse than what happened in Russia. I’ve already been to Hell.” He lowered his hands and stared into the distance, reliving some unseeable specter. Anna sat in silence. She tried to envision Emil’s horror but her mind wouldn’t allow it. There was nothing to do but sit. She looked at the tree-lined street and wondered once again what it was in humanity that drove people to such unholy cruelties under such a beautiful blue sky. They sat for a good while.

“People like you, people that stayed here stoking the homefires of the
Vaterland
, you have no idea.” He turned his gaze on her. He was breathing hard and his boyish face had contracted into something she didn’t recognize. He spat again.

Anna wanted to make him feel better. He was still just a boy. “Emil, I…”

He held up a hand to stop her. “Don’t even try. Don’t tell me it will get better. Don’t tell me anything.” He exhaled and stood up, offering a hand to help Anna to her feet.

“I’m sorry I brought it up,” Anna stammered. “That was stupid.” She searched his face.

He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and began walking. “I’ve made you late. Come on. Don’t want you to get into trouble with that
Ami
of yours.”

As they neared the Collecting Point, noise and activity echoed from the courtyard. At the back gate, a group of Americans were gathered, laughing and slapping backs. A radio had been brought outside with a long wire, and more Americans and some Germans were gathered around it. All at once cheers rose up from the crowd.

“What’s all the fuss?” Anna asked a GI at the back of the throng.

“Truman says the Japs surrendered. The war is over! It’s all over. And we won the whole goddamn thing!” He slapped Emil on the back and laughed into his face before turning back to his friends and being absorbed by the crowd.

Anna looked at Emil and was about to translate but he waved her off.

“I got it,” he said.

She felt vacant, as if someone had scraped her insides clean with a dull knife. She searched for the place where the happiness, the relief, the joy should be, but couldn’t find it. It was like turning a faucet only to discover there is no water. The moment she had hoped for, the one she had held on to for so many years, had finally come. And now it had passed just as any other. She simply felt nothing. Looking down at the worn shoes on her filthy feet, she wanted to cry but didn’t dare. She looked at Emil. His eyes were as blank as hers.

“So that’s that, then,” he said. “Everything’s
back to normal.” They looked at the celebrating crowd. Even Frau Obersdorfer seemed more flushed than usual as she stood, her hands to her cheeks.

“I don’t feel much like celebrating,” Anna said. “But I am happy the war is finally over everywhere.”

“Me too,” said Emil.

Cooper was crossing the courtyard, hands in pockets and sleeves rolled up past his elbows. He spotted Anna and Emil standing apart from the crowd and made toward them. Emil let out an extended sigh, like the air being let out of a tire.

“Morning,” Cooper beamed.

“Good morning, Captain,” Anna replied.

Emil straightened and gave a single nod. “Captain.”

“So how about that? The whole damn thing is over. It’s a great day. We made it.”

“Yes, we did,” said Anna glancing at Emil, who looked away.

Cooper looked from one to the other and tried to fill the silence. “Well. I guess we’d better get started. Big delivery still on schedule for Monday.” He turned to Emil. “That perimeter security needs to go up ASAP.
Zaun?
Fence, yes?” He waved his arm in a circle and nodded expectantly.

Emil nodded back and offered formal goodbyes before heading toward his work crew, already busy at the far corner fastening wires to the fence posts.

“Well, congratulations,” Anna said. She contracted her face into a smile.

Cooper studied her. “No need to congratulate me. I’m just glad it’s over. Come on, let’s get to work.”

She followed him inside the building, dodging the manic activity. Inside, the sounds of hammers and men working echoed in the marble halls and the smell of paint lingered in the dense air. Paintings and other art objects leaned against the walls in the downstairs foyer, waiting to find a home.

“They’ve got to get the heating working by Monday or we’ll be in trouble,” Cooper said. “If we can’t control the humidity, we’ll do more damage than good to those paintings.”

They went up the stairs, squeezing past two Germans repairing the banister. One of them nodded at Anna as she passed and she still felt strange to not be required to at least mutter the Hitler salute and make a perfunctory gesture. It was as if the whole country had it on the tip of their tongue but had to stop themselves every time. As if they all spoke a different language now.

“Oh good, it’s quiet up here,” said Cooper as they arrived at his desk. “I need to talk to you.”

Anna preempted him. “Could I please have an hour off this morning? I can stay a bit later, but I need to see my aunt home from the hospital. She’s just here at St. Josef’s.” She gestured toward the window. “I won’t be long.”