The Roses Underneath (24 page)

“If the Nazis thought he was a communist he’d have been hanging from a light post on the Wilhelmstrasse years ago,” Anna said.

“I was kidding. Truth is, we are desperate for experts and we do need locals like him on our team. When we first started up, Farmer inadvertently hired a bunch of ex-Party members to work with the art. They had the best qualifications, you know? When the brass found out who they were, he had to fire the lot of them, and rightfully so. But it’s nearly impossible to find anybody with the knowledge we need who has completely clean hands. So I guess now the higher ups are ready to make concessions. They sit up there in Frankfurt pushing papers around and looking important, but nobody gives a damn—not really—about what we are trying to do.” He pulled out a handful of grass and tossed it into the breeze. “There’s no way someone like Schneider just decides to change out of the goodness of his heart. I know he’s up to something. I just have to prove it.” He leaned toward Anna. “Will you help me?”

Anna straightened. “What do you mean? What can I do?”

He waved her closer and they leaned toward each other like children sharing a secret on the playground. “I thought of this when you tailed Schneider the other day. Didn’t you say he sent you that basket of food?”

Anna nodded.

“See, he thinks of you as a potential friend. Why don’t we make him think the bribe worked. That you are ready to help him if he’ll just do one little thing for you first. Kind of a pact with the devil. Like us with Stalin.”

“I don’t know,” she hedged. “What do you want me to do?”

Cooper looked around. “I want you to sell him a painting. Tell him you need the money and that you’re on his side. I’ll give you one to use. You won’t really sell it of course, it’ll be a sting. If he takes the bait, we’ll arrest him and the case will be closed.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Then I guess I’ll have to hire him. But I know he’ll flunk the test. Once a thief, always a thief. And maybe the brass can forgive what he did before, but they can’t look the other way if he’s breaking their own laws now.”

Anna looked around. “I agree with you, I really do. But you are setting him up. Is that legal?”

Cooper shrugged. “Sure it is. Paragraph 51 states that no cultural property may change hands. Period. If he gets an offer and he takes it, he’s broken the law. If he’s as upstanding as he says, the worst that will happen is he’ll be offended.”

“If he’s as upstanding as he says, he’ll denounce me!” Anna said. “Have you thought about that?
Me
being arrested?” She dug in her bag for the Lucky Strikes and Cooper obliged her with a light.

He waved her off. “Don’t worry about that. You’ll be acting as an agent of the great United States Occupying Forces. With my considerable authority.” He waggled his head and grinned.

“What about Frankfurt’s authority? What if they don’t like it?”

“I’ll deal with Frankfurt and I’ll take the fall if I have to. Look, the stakes are too high. If he’s crooked, he has no business working with us. It’s too important. We are trying to clean up the mess that people like him made. These pieces need to get back to their rightful owners. And that’s not so easy when most of them are dead or, if we’re lucky, displaced. It’s such a mess. I need people I can trust one hundred percent.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Look, I already can’t sleep at night, with all this business about the shipment and the security. Shit, I haven’t slept since I got here. The whole place has me jumpy. Come on, you gotta help me with this.”

Anna pursed her lips and watched the smoke curling from the cigarette in her hand. “How exactly do you see this working?”

“We’ll figure it out. You find him and tell him you’ve got something for him. See if he bites. If he does, you can set up a meeting. I’ll follow you there of course, and I’ll bring
back-up. You walk in with the painting, he walks out with the painting, we arrest him. Easy as pie. I promise you won’t be in any danger. These are greedy art dealers, not...”

“Brownshirts?” Anna volunteered. She thought about Cooper’s blood on her bathroom floor. The swelling on his lip had just started to go down.

Cooper snorted. “Look, I’ve got no one else who can do this. You are the only one.” He paused. “Here’s a chance to make yourself useful.” He waited another beat. “It’s the right thing to do, Anna. And...” he put his hand on her arm, “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think you could handle it.”

She looked at the ground.
Bastard
, she thought. She knew what he was doing. She had to pick a side. She waited a moment to see if maybe the ground would swallow her. It didn’t. “All right,” she said loudly enough to drown out yesterday’s warnings from Miller that still buzzed in her ears. “I’ll do it.”

Oskar was running around inside the communal hall, where a few women supervised several dozen children who would rather be playing outside. Cooper was right, Anna thought as she spotted him. They really were little feral creatures. All the structure gone from their lives and with the fear slowly ebbing, the ones that had survived this long were letting out all their pent-up energy. She stood in the open door and watched for a few minutes until Maria saw her.

“Anna, how nice to see you.” She walked toward her and extended a hand.

“
Hallo,
Maria. I see you have your hands full.”

“Well, the weather is no good for them, but I have to say I like the rain. It’s a nice change from the heat.” She motioned for Anna to take a seat on one of the chairs that lined the walls. “I think Oskar enjoyed himself yesterday. It did him good to get away from this place for a few hours.”

“Yes, he and my daughter played well. She was worn out.”

“I asked him if he wanted to come to church with me this morning, but he refused. He just misses his mother so much. The poor boy, I wish I could help him. The Red Cross came on Friday to take his photo and it should be in the papers and the post office in the next week or so. But these things take so long.” Maria sighed. “I would take him myself if I could but…” She raised a hand toward the room to acknowledge her circumstances.

Anna nodded. “I know. He’s a good boy. Someone will remember him and come forward. I feel sure of it. They just need to know he’s here.” She felt no such thing, but she said it anyway. She waved at Oskar who had broken away from the group of boys and jogged over to her. He even smiled.

“
Hallo,
Frau Klein.” His cheeks were red and his hair stood every which way like overgrown grass. His big eyes blinked at her. “Where’s your American?”

Anna reddened. “I don’t know. I don’t see him every day, you know. Amalia sends her greetings.”

Oskar smirked. “I think he likes you.”

“Don’t be silly. He’s my boss that’s all.”

“You both sure talk a lot. Who goes for a picnic with their boss anyway?”

Anna held out her hand. “Come on, let’s go for a walk.”

“In the rain?”

“Sure why not? It’s only drizzling now. Come on.”

She took his hand and stepped outside. The rain had slowed to a fine mist that pushed a thousand little pinpricks into her skin. She hunched over and pulled Oskar closer as they walked to the playground. He sat down on the tire swing and Anna pushed it a little to make it go. Oskar lifted his feet.

“How are they treating you here? Everything going all right?”

The boy wrapped his hands around the rope and said nothing.

“I know it’s not a proper home, but it’s only temporary, I promise.”

The tree branch creaked under the weight of the swing. Anna tried another approach. “Will you tell me about your mother? I’d like to know more about her.” She gave the swing another push. A clap of thunder in the distance made them both jump, but Oskar stayed silent.

Finally, he said, “My Mama was beautiful. She was the most beautiful lady I ever saw.” He dragged his feet through the mud, splattering Anna’s pants and soaking his socks.

“What did she look like?” Anna asked.

Oskar stared at his feet and leaned his cheek against the rope. “She had long blond hair and she always wore pretty dresses. She never got mad at me, not even when I did something bad. She told me I was her gift from God.”

“She loved you very much.”

His blond head nodded. “She would take me swimming and for walks in the woods. We ate ice cream in the summer. And we read books. She always did things with me. She would stand outside my school and wait for me, and she was the prettiest mother there. Everyone thought so. She would have a treat for me every day.
An apple, or sometimes a cake. She liked to make me potato pancakes. With applesauce. That’s my favorite.” His voice cracked.

“What about your Papa?” Anna knew she was picking at the boy’s wounds.

Oskar shook his head. “Papa? He was gone a lot. It was mostly me and Mama. She said Papa was an important man so he was very busy. He had lots of medals on his uniform.”

“Really? Your papa was an important soldier, then.”

“No, he was not a solider. He was in the SS.” He glared at her to let her know she had made a stupid assumption. He was insulted.

“Oh, he sounds very important.”

Oskar puffed up. “He was very important, my Papa. We always had important people come to visit. I had a photograph of me and the Reichsführer, from when he came to one of our parties.”

Anna imagined what Oskar’s life had been like. Coddled and adored by a loving but willfully complicit mother, the Aryan pride of his murderous father, living a life of privilege on the suffering and persecution of millions. Tables covered with food, drawers full of soft clothes, presents for his birthday and warm baths before bedtime.
All at the price of other children’s lives. It was better for the world that his father was dead, but Anna felt a pang for the boy’s mother. She couldn’t help herself.

Oskar was on a roll. “Papa went all over, to Poland and to Czechoslovakia. He always brought me presents.
Toys and things. He told me that when I grow up the world will be a better place than it is now. That Germans will rule the world and I will be a important man.” He kicked at the dirt.

“What else did he tell you? Did he tell you things about when you were a baby? Where were you born?”

Oskar stopped swinging and stared at her. “I was born in Steinhöring. That’s why Mama always called me her little Bavarian.” He waited for the next question.

“And did you have any other family? Grandparents? Or maybe an aunt or uncle?”

“I keep telling everyone. I don’t have any family. No one is going to come for me. Everyone I know is dead.”

Anna sighed. He was probably right, or at least it was unlikely any close
relative of a known SS officer was going to come forward and declare themselves to the
Amis
willingly. But there was nothing else to do. She walked around and squatted in front of him to look at his face. “If you tell me more about you, maybe we can find people who are your family. Didn’t your parents have any friends?” She tried to stroke his arm but he pulled it away to wipe his nose.

“Sure, they had friends. Officers and people like that. They’re all dead too. “

“All right, how about you tell me again how you ended up at the children’s home? I mean, at the villa
,
where we found you.”

Oskar’s gaze shifted. “What do you mean, children’s home?”

“Just a guess. I knew there was a children’s home there. Or some kind of orphanage?”

“Not an orphanage,” he snapped.

“No? It was like a school or something?” Anna held her breath.

Oskar rolled his eyes. “No not like a school. It was a place for mothers and children, and it was only for us, for the families–” He stopped.

“I see. So maybe you had friends there? Maybe that’s how we can find someone who knows you?”

Oskar rocked the swing from side to side. “No, I was never there. I told you I just went there by myself after the bombing.”

“You mean the bombing of Darmstadt last year? Can you tell me more about what happened after the bombing?”

He looked down at his knees. “I don’t know. It was just really hot in the basement, like a fireplace. People were coughing and screaming, and it was like there was no air. My Mama, she held me close and told me to keep breathing, but then she fell over on top of me. The big metal door exploded and you could hear things blowing up all around us. It was so hot. People were trying to crawl out, but I was under my Mama. Her face was right next to mine. I just looked in her eyes until they dug me out.”

Oskar said nothing else for a long time. Anna held her breath. The rain created a delicate curtain between them, as if each was separated from the other just enough to feel protected.

When he continued, his voice was small. “The smell was really bad. Like that smell from burning tires, but even worse. And people were crying and screaming, and I just
laid there with my mama. I thought a beam had just hit her on the head and that she would wake up. But her eyes were looking right at me and they didn’t move. They were empty and cold looking. It scared me really bad.” He kicked the mud. “After a long time, someone called, ‘is anyone under there?’ And I said ‘yes, I am.’ And then my mama started to move. Like she was alive. But it was only them pulling her off me. The whole cellar had crashed in, the fire had come through on the other end, and people were burned dead, right where they sat. The lady from downstairs, Frau Winkel, she was sitting with her back on the wall, only her skin was gone, like a plucked chicken, and the bones of her hands, you could see them between the red and black. All her hair was gone and her lips too, so her teeth looked really big. I thought she was dead, but maybe she wasn’t because she looked right at me. She was like a monster.” He paused again. Anna waited.