The Roses Underneath (40 page)

“But Mama?” Amalia turned her head toward Anna and put her lips close to Anna’s ear. “He already has a family person. I am not supposed to tell you.” She pulled her head back to wait for Anna’s reaction.

Anna acted as if the news was not important, knowing that a big reaction would make Amalia rethink sharing her secret.

“Oh, really?” she said. “Well, that’s good news. Who is it?”

Amalia considered her answer. “His uncle,” she said. “His uncle came to visit him.”

“How do you know this?”

“He told me his uncle came to the camp a long time ago. To talk to him. And he said his uncle would take him away.”

Anna pushed her hands on the floor to straighten
herself. “Oh?” she said, smiling. “But that’s a good thing isn’t it? For Oskar to have a family?”

Amalia shook her head. “Oskar said he’s not very nice. He said he would run away rather than live with his uncle. But I am not supposed to tell you. He made me promise.” She closed her lips and shook her head.

“I know Maus, I won’t tell, I promise. Can you tell me his uncle’s name?”

Amalia shook her head harder. “He didn’t tell me.”

The two of them sat on the floor, their limbs interlocked. The tile was cold and Anna felt ready to finally crawl into bed. She tried to think of how to extract more information from her daughter but sensed that Amalia had decided she had spilled too many beans already. She gave it one more try. “Did his uncle hurt him?”

“I don’t know, Mama. I told you, he didn’t say.” She set her jaw. “Tell me again about Papa. Does he still love us?”

Anna pulled her close and wrapped her arms around her daughter. “Of course Papa loves us. And he will come, you’ll see. Now, let’s go to bed.” She got to her feet, Amalia still cradled in her arms. The two of them crawled into bed next to Madeleine who was breathing steadily into her pillow. Anna laid back and inhaled, holding back a wave of emotion that attacked from out of nowhere. She stifled a sob.

Amalia wrapped a small hand around her mother’s neck and pushed her head into Anna’s shoulder. The girl’s breathing slowed again and Anna sensed her daughter was working on a thought. After a long silence Amalia whispered, “Mama, do you know what is my favorite part in the
Snow Queen
?”

Anna shook her head. “Tell me.”

“When the rose bushes talk to the little girl.”

“Yes? What do they say to her?”

Amalia rubbed her eyes. “The roses grow when her tears make the dirt wet. The girl is crying because she can’t find her friend and she thinks he is dead, you remember? And then the roses bloom and tell her that they have come from underneath the ground where all the dead people are. But he’s not there. So he is still alive and she must never give up on finding him.”

“I see,” Anna said. “And does she find him?”

“Of course she does. You know the story, Mama.”

“I know. I just wanted to make sure the story ends the same way every time. You never know.”

“Yes, you do. Stories always end the same.” Amalia pushed the full weight of her body against her mother’s. “Just in life, it’s different. Right?”

“Yes. In life it’s different.” Anna stroked her daughter’s hair. She felt their fate nipping at her heels, as if she was keeping only one step ahead. That was yet to be settled and her sacrifice had not yet come. She wondered how their story would end.

Anna did not sleep. As the night deepened she replayed the events of the day in her mind and wondered what had happened after she had run from the Schilling house. Then her thoughts turned to Frieda. A familiar fear gripped her, the same one she had gotten used to carrying with her daily. She thought she left it behind in Kappellendorf and that when the Americans took over she could relinquish it, like an old passport. She wondered how many more like Frieda there were, still clinging to their twisted
Weltanschauung
, their world view that was growing even more hideous in the bright light of its own demise. Finally, just before sunrise, Anna got up and began to write a report of sorts, using Madeleine’s old stationery and the stub of a pencil. It took more than five pages to retell everything she had found out. She wanted to clear her thoughts before the hearing in Darmstadt and provide her own account of the events. She would give the report directly to Captain Farmer.

After the sun rose, she rinsed Madeleine’s teacup in the sink and then sat for a long time, staring out the kitchen windows as the day came to life. After she cobbled together a breakfast for Amalia and Madeleine, she felt the need to get away from the tiny apartment. Maybe if her legs got moving, her thoughts would settle and steady her nerves for what was coming. The hearing in Darmstadt would put her in the spotlight—her and her communist husband. She had heard that people committed suicide during their interrogations and that some
Ami
officers had beaten women or threatened them with dogs—and worse. She pulled on her boots and stomped her foot on the ground to gather her strength. No sense in worrying about it now.

She left Amalia and Madeleine chewing on their breakfast bread crusts and looking through Amalia’s box of treasures. She had put Frieda’s pin away in the kitchen drawer, unsure what to do with it. She wanted to hurl it out the window, but, of course, that was ridiculous. She would figure something out later. For now, she walked the streets, half hoping to find Oskar on this quiet morning. The sun was still low in the
east, casting the streets in cool, damp shade that smelled of clean night air. She walked up and down, back and forth, for more than an hour. People emerged from their homes and began sweeping the sidewalks as if it mattered. Children climbed the piles of rubble. Old men took up seats on chairs by doorways to wait for something better to come along. Anna picked up the pace and turned back into the Rheinstrasse where she bumped straight into Frau Hermann, dressed in her Sunday finery: black dress with little pleats and mother of pearl buttons on the bodice. It was the same dress nearly every woman in Germany owned. The funeral dress.

“Oh, excuse me,” Anna sputtered. “I didn’t see you coming.”

“Good morning, Frau Klein. I am glad to see you.”

“Are you?” Anna heard herself say. She shifted her weight to keep walking but then stopped. “I want to thank you for the eggs and the jam you brought for Auntie. I know she is very grateful. And she is feeling much better.”

But Frau Hermann surprised her. “Don’t mention it, my dear. We do have to look out for each other don’t we? And I am so glad to see you safe and well, especially after what happened yesterday. How is Amalia holding up?”

Anna was shocked. Did the woman really know everything? “I’m sorry?” she said by way of stalling.

Frau Hermann was prepared. “The Schilling house yesterday. I heard about the attack.”

“I wouldn’t say it was an attack, really it was more of, well, I don’t know, really. It was very unfortunate.”

“Well, I would certainly call it an attack if one of you ends up in the hospital and the other one in jail.” Frau Hermann was clearly pleased to be able to break the news.

“What do you mean?”

“The woman, the sister, whatever her name is. She’s in the hospital, near death. Her brother attacked her.”

“I don’t understand.”

Frau Hermann stepped in closer out of habit, as if there was anyone on the street who might overhear. “Yes, my sister-in-law’s neighbor told me at church this morning. I go to the early service. She knows the woman who lives next door to the Schillings. Apparently they had an argument and you know the boy—he came to see you the other day—he’s not quite right in the head anymore. Anyway, the neighbor heard some shouting but didn’t think much of it. There was always a lot of that, what with all the children they keep. The
Amis
came and took the boy away last night. He must have turned himself in because the police just came from nowhere. The sister, she’s in bad shape up at the hospital. They don’t think she will survive.” She sucked on her teeth. “
Furchtbar
. Just terrible.”

Anna deflected. “Did he have a weapon?”

“She said she heard it was a letter opener, one of those silver kind. Stabbed her in the throat with it. Can you imagine? It’s a wonder she wasn’t killed instantly. Poor girl.”

Anna regarded Frau Hermann’s flushed face. She was breathing hard and the heat was creating little beads of sweat that lined her upper lip between the wispy dark hairs of her mustache. “You know she was SS don’t you?” Anna said, as if she had just declared Frieda to have brown eyes instead of blue ones. “Lebensborn,” she added. Perhaps Frau Hermann would be willing to spill a few more of her beans.

“
Ach, ja,
Lebensborn, but that was hardly regular SS was it? Taking care of little babies? Doing such womanly work? You can’t accuse her of being one of them just for that. You know she was alone and had to fend for herself. She needed a job. What was she going to do?” Frau Hermann dismissed the notion with a roll of the eyes.

Anna was unmoved. “I don’t think she just took care of babies. I think she was in the business of having babies. And there were other jobs she could have done,” she said, her voice flat. “SS is SS, no matter how pretty you try to make it look.”

Frau Hermann waved her away. “Sure it’s easy now to point fingers. Anyway, the
Amis
must have already cleared her. She’s really just a child herself. If you ask me, it was the brother who was always trouble. And when he came back from the front it was even worse.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, just different little things. They add up, you know. He was always running around with this woman. Some friend of the family. Tall and blonde, a real beauty. He bought her things and they went places. We all saw them around, and people talked about them. She was much too old for him, and married anyway. I don’t know what their relationship was, but it wasn’t right. He was just a boy and she should have known better. Then he got shipped off and when he came back from Russia he wasn’t the same, always lurking on the black market, looking secretive.”

“What happened to the woman?” Anna asked.

“Who knows? Dead, probably. Or moved away, or what do they call it,
verschleppt
? Displaced.”

Having lightened her gossip load, Frau Hermann was finished talking and ready to move on. “Anyway, I thought you would want to know. And, I am sure your American will know more. You can always ask him.”

“And what about the Schilling boy, where is he?”

“Probably in the jail in the Albrechtstrasse. Just back there.” She pointed in the direction Anna had come from. “That’s where they take everybody first.”

The courts and jail complex in the Albrechtstrasse was only one street over and around the corner from Madeleine’s apartment, and Anna looped around on the way back from her walk. She debated the whole way whether or not to go there, but in the end she knew it was the only thing to do. The sprawling building took up the entire block between the Moritzstrasse and the Oranienstrasse and threatened to swallow the people who disappeared inside, swimming like minnows into the shark’s mouth. When its heavy door slammed closed behind her, Anna felt claustrophobic immediately. Its black marble floors and white vaulted ceilings were grand, but the air was stale and heavy. A flight of stairs split at the landing, leading off to the left and right. She took the stairs up and approached an old man sitting at the desk and asked for directions to the visitation rooms. He gruffly pointed her back downstairs and instructed her to follow the signs along the corridor.

Anna followed the narrow hallway, turning first one way and then back again. When she felt she had been completely swallowed into the building’s bowels of cramped passages, she arrived at the visitation room. She completed the paperwork, produced her own papers for the American guard and sat down to wait. The room was large, but the ceiling was low and the air thick with cigarette smoke. There were no windows and three long tables with attached benches stood in the faint glow of the room’s exposed bulbs. The walls closed in on Anna even more.

After a long wait, the door opened and Emil appeared with another guard. Emil looked slight and fragile, as if he had withered overnight. Anna stood, but he motioned for her to stay seated as he sidled onto the bench across the table from her. The guard, who was almost as tall as the door and thin as a broomstick, closed the door and took up his position, close enough to eavesdrop on their conversation.

“Anna. How are you? How is Amalia?” Emil smiled.

“Emil.” Anna was so relieved to see him that she had to fight to keep control of her rising emotions.

He rested his shackled hands on the table. “Tell me how Amalia is doing. I hope she was not too scared.”

“She is doing well.” Anna leaned forward. “How is Frieda?

Emil looked at his hands. “I don’t know. They took her to the hospital.”

Anna looked at the guard before whispering, “Why did you do this? What on earth–”

“I was so hoping you would come. I need to tell you things. I am glad you are here,” he said. “Please, just let me speak, will you?”

Anna closed her mouth and offered him a Lucky Strike from the packet he had given her.