The Things We Cherished (34 page)

The older woman cocked her head, not understanding. “Why?”

“We need all the help we can get with Roger’s defense,” Jack replied. “You see, the prosecutor is trying to elevate the case to a higher court, which likely means a longer sentence if he’s convicted. They want to make an example of him, and we only have a few more days to convince the court that the charges are unfounded.”

“But surely now if he testifies and explains—”

“He won’t,” Jack said quietly, interrupting her. Anastasia tilted her head, brow wrinkling.

Charlotte jumped in to explain. “Your—” she said, catching herself. “Roger only recently learned of your mother’s death and it devastated him. He’s given up on defending himself.”

“I don’t understand.”

Charlotte hesitated, realizing she needed to back up. “Roger cared a great deal for your mother. That’s why he gave the information about Hans’s plans to the Nazis, trying to bargain for information to save your mother and you. So when he learned she had died after all, he was very upset.”

“But how would my coming to Munich possibly help?”

Charlotte swallowed. She could hide the truth from the older woman no longer. There had been enough secrets and lies these past sixty-plus years. Like Roger, Anastasia had the right to know the truth. “I know this may come as a terrible shock,” she began.

“Charlotte—” Brian said behind her, his voice rising in warning.

But she had gone too far to turn back now. “Roger is your father.”

Anastasia stared at her blankly. “How could that possibly—?” The older woman sat down on one of the benches, shaking. “Some water, please.” Charlotte rushed to her side, pouring a glass from the clay pitcher that sat on the table and worrying that she had gone too far.

Jack sat down beside her. “Roger and your mother had strong feelings for each other. Feelings they could not resist. He’s your father, Anastasia.”

The woman opened her mouth as though to deny what she was being told. Then a flash of recognition crossed her face and Charlotte wondered if she had recalled a memory from earliest childhood, some image that confirmed the truth. “Did my father, I mean, did Hans know?”

Jack shook his head. “We don’t think so. And I’m sure he loved you and your mother very much.”

Anastasia raised a trembling hand to her cheek. “And Roger’s alive?” She did not, Charlotte noticed, refer to him as her father.

“Yes, and seeing you, we think, might give him the will to fight for his freedom.”

Anastasia did not answer but looked slowly around the room, then out the window. She was contemplating the sanctuary that this place had given her for so long, the terror she must feel at the prospect of leaving. Much like Charlotte’s own difficult decision to come out of the safety of her life back home and take on this case. “I don’t know,” Anastasia managed finally. “I haven’t left here often.”

Charlotte nodded, understanding. Anastasia had come to feel safe within these walls and she didn’t want to leave the comfort of her surroundings. But at the same time, there was something that had made her go searching for the truth about her family, that
had made her reach out with the information about Roger. To try to help. It was a conflict she recognized within herself. She placed a hand on the older woman’s shoulder. “There are many kinds of callings,” she said softly.

“All right,” Anastasia said finally, swallowing. “I’ll go with you. When?”

“Right away,” Brian interjected, his voice shattering the tranquil atmosphere.

Jack stepped forward and Charlotte winced, waiting for him to rebuke Brian. But for once, the brothers were in complete agreement. “We need to leave now. If we have any hope of saving your father, there isn’t a moment to lose.”

FRANKFURT
,
1911

Johann looked out the front window of the mercantile shop. The street was choked thick, as it seemed to be at every hour of the day or night, with horse-drawn wagons and men on foot and the occasional auto trying without success to navigate through the crowds. The noisy, chaotic city dwarfed the village near which he had spent almost his entire life, a sharp contrast to the bucolic countryside he had left behind. He felt a tug of longing as always when he thought of his home. It was midsummer now and the crops would be growing nearly waist high, waving in perfect unison in the wind.

Assuming, that is, there were crops anymore. More than eight years had passed since the morning when he came home and found Rebecca by the barn. After he had fallen to the ground beside her, Johann sat motionless, holding his wife and stroking her hair. A seemingly endless waterfall of tears coursed downward, mixing with the dirt and blood.

When his eyes had at long last run dry, he straightened. Whether minutes or hours had passed he did not know. Finally, with legs that seemed unable to hold him, he stood and lifted Rebecca. He carried her to the house and set her on the bed. Then he put on
the kettle and filled the large basin tub they used each week, and bathed her like a child.

When he had dried her and placed her on the bed once more, he opened the wardrobe. The dresses, a tapestry of their days together, unleashed a torrent of images, and he grabbed one without looking, then closed the door quickly as if to silence the unbearable cacophony of memories. The dress dropped to the ground and he hastened to pick it up again with shaking hands. It was the pale yellow frock she had worn on their wedding day. He pulled the dress over her head, tugging the material taut across her belly, caressing the child that he would never know, now still within her womb.

An hour later, he stood by the cluster of trees behind the barn, looking down at the pile of stones marking Rebecca’s burial spot. He should have called the rabbi to say a proper blessing, he thought, or at least notified her parents. They deserved the chance to say farewell to their only child. It was not only that he felt too cowardly and broken to face their wrath, the blame they would cast at him for somehow causing her demise. He did not want to dilute his grief, to share those last few minutes they had together with anyone.

He lifted his head, taking in the fields. Part of him wanted to stay, to linger in this place where Rebecca had drawn her last breath. The notion of severing his only remaining tie to her seemed unbearable. But he could not imagine living in the cold, empty house without her laughter and warmth. No, there was nothing left here for him now.

He then thought of the other clock, wrapped in muslin and buried beneath the floorboards in the cellar. He had made them at the same time, side by side, and the two looked nearly identical. Only a trained eye, examining closely, could see that the one he’d kept
was a bit nicer, the details finer, the metal more lustrous. That one had been meant for Rebecca. It was a magnificent gift, worth more than most of their belongings combined. She would have scolded him, he knew, for wasting the materials and not selling the second clock as well. She was practical like that, always had been, long before the hardships of her life with him had required it. But he had wanted her to have this precious clock, the finest he had ever made or seen. She deserved it.

But now she would never know. If only he had given the clock to her sooner, shown it to her while he had the chance.

This realization seemed to compound his grief and he knew that if he did not keep moving now, he would never go. Johann walked to the workshop at the back of the barn and drew back the floorboards once more. There, buried so deeply that one might not have noticed it if not looking, was the second clock. He pulled it out with trembling hands, remembering how he planned to give it to Rebecca on the eve of their departure. But that would not happen now.

Johann wondered if the traveler was still at Hoffel’s, whether he would be as enthusiastic about a second clock, pay the same sum over again. But even as he thought this, he knew he could never part with it. The clock was his last, best symbol of his love for his wife, even though she had not seen or touched it. No, he would keep the clock with him for as long as he was able, not sell it unless his life depended on it. He wrapped it in the cloth on which it had nestled and carried it from the barn.

“I’m sorry,” he said to the pile of stones. With great effort, he turned away and walked through the barn a final time before leaving his home forever.

More than eight years had passed since that day. Johann had left the farm intending to carry out their plan of moving to America.
But the trip had proven disastrous—he’d gotten a ride with some unscrupulous men who had charged him a small fortune to transport him to the border and then robbed and abandoned him in Frankfurt.

As he stood helplessly on a city street bigger and busier than any he had ever known, Johann’s grief had turned to despair. Not a fraction of the way into his journey and he could go no farther. He was almost glad that Rebecca was not here to see what a failure she had married. Then he looked desperately down at the clock, tucked into the bag. It would surely fetch enough of a sum to help him continue onward.

Farther down the street, he found a shop with all manner of items for sale in the front window. A bell tinkled as he walked inside. “Yes?” the ginger-haired proprietor behind the counter said, looking at Johann over his glasses.

Johann hesitated. “I was wondering …” But he could not bring himself to propose selling the clock. He looked around the shop. A sign in the window caught his eye:
HELP WANTED
. “I would like to inquire about the job.”

The man looked Johann over from head to toe, though not unkindly. “Have you experience in a shop?”

“Yes,” Johann lied. “I’m good at fixing things too, clocks and other small mechanical devices.”

And so he had stayed. The shopkeeper, Franz, let him sleep in the back storeroom. The first night, as he made himself a bed of burlap sacks on the floor, listening to the noise from the alehouse next door, his heart sank. This was the farthest thing from the life he had envisioned for himself and Rebecca and their child. It’s only temporary, he told himself that night and each thereafter as he lay on the storeroom floor.
I will still go to America
. But the mantra grew fainter and by the time he had earned enough to pay
for the one-room flat above the shop, he had stopped repeating it altogether.

Once or twice he fleetingly considered returning to the farm. But he could not bear to face the life he had left. And he knew instinctively the land was gone, taken over by some lucky person who happened upon the deserted homestead and petitioned the provincial government for ownership. Or perhaps Rebecca’s parents had sold it.

It was almost eleven now, he thought, judging by the flow of traffic on the street. Hannah would be coming by soon to bring him lunch, as she did every day at this hour. He sighed. He had married Franz’s plain, freckle-faced sister more than two years after arriving here. When he first met her, the notion of being with a woman other than Rebecca was unfathomable. But Hannah came by the shop patiently each day and he found that he enjoyed his conversations with her and later the warmth of her body.

A few minutes later, as if on cue, Hannah appeared around the corner, moving more slowly now with her growing girth. Hannah looked nothing like Rebecca had when she was carrying Johann’s child, a fact that made the situation easier to bear. Whereas Rebecca had retained her figure but for the round swell of her belly, Hannah had grown big all around like a barrel and the pregnancy seemed to weigh on her rather than give her a glow. But perhaps all of that heft would serve her well—she had a sturdiness about her that suggested she would weather childbirth without issue.

Hannah entered the shop, dropping the bag that Johann knew would contain a sandwich of thick bread and cheese down on the counter as if it were heavier than it actually was. “Busy this morning?” she asked.

“About the usual.” The colloquy was always the same.

“I’d best be on my way. Bring some milk home if you can.”

He managed a smile, which she returned. “I shall.”

As Johann watched her retreat, a sense of sadness overcame him. The marriage was not an unhappy one. He and Hannah were amicable partners and had he not known the passion of his time with Rebecca, he might have never guessed that more was possible. But Hannah deserved better, he thought guiltily. If she suspected that there was something more to be had, though, she did not show it. Rather, she accepted the companionship he offered, never expressing dissatisfaction. And now that the child she had long wanted (fathering a child had once again proven difficult for Johann) was on the way, she seemed to notice or care even less if there was some part of himself that he could not give her.