Nein. That’s foolish. You have to go.” Gisela scraped back her kitchen chair and stood, unable to believe that Mutti said she wouldn’t come to the air-raid shelter.
“Now that you are married, you think you can tell your mutti what to do? We have time until the bombers get here. You go now and when I finish the dishes, I’ll come.”
Gisela picked up the frayed dish towel. “Josep, take the girls and everyone else. I’ll help Mutti.”
A stern glint lit his dark eyes. He didn’t have to say a word—she sensed his disapproval. “I promise to come.”
He huffed.
Annelies tugged on her arm. “Tante Gisela, you have to come with us. I don’t want to go down there. I might see a spider.”
“Josep will be there. He can kill the spiders for you. My mutti and I will come very soon.”
Her gray eyes filled with tears. Mitch bent down beside her. “You can ride the horse downstairs.”
Gisela questioned his sanity, carrying a child down three flights, but Annelies didn’t hesitate.
“Hold my neck,” Mitch said as she adjusted her grip. “What do you say to make the horse go?”
“Giddyup,” she shouted and Mitch galloped out of the apartment, Renate holding on to Audra’s hand.
Katya clapped. “Off to the Louvre, Sister. The sights we will see. Isn’t this exciting?” Her blue eyes shone. Then the door shut behind them. For a moment, Annelies’s giggles hung in the air.
Gisela returned to the kitchen. Mutti had a few plates washed already. She picked up the gold-rimmed china and wiped the first dish.
“Why won’t you go to the shelter?”
“I never said I wouldn’t go to the shelter.” Mutti scrubbed the dish harder than necessary.
“You are being stubborn.”
“Don’t upset this day. You are home, safe and sound, and a married woman. Can we celebrate that?”
“You are concerned about Vater.”
Mutti scrubbed so hard Gisela worried she would break the plate. “Shouldn’t I be?”
“Of course. I am too.”
“You call me stubborn, but I am no match for your vater. Off he goes to fight as soon as they say they need him. Like he has no care in the world. And me, alone.” She stopped her scrubbing. “I am so happy you are here. One of my own has returned. At least I have you.”
How many times had Gisela heard those words?
“Vater is at work. At least I have you.”
“I miss my sister in the States. At least I have you.”
“Margot is gone. At least I have you.”
They worked in silence for a little while. The sirens fell silent. The first warning had sounded. They would wait until the fighters were a certain distance away until the hurry-up-you-must-take-shelter-now alarm blasted.
Gisela set a tin cup in the cabinet. She remembered drinking milk fresh from the farm in that cup when they lived in America. “Do you miss home?”
“This is my home. Why would I miss it?”
“California, I mean. Do you miss it?”
Mutti stood and stared straight ahead for a moment. “Ja. We breathed free air and lived without constant fear.” She paused, swallowing. “And we had Margot.”
“Why did we leave the States, then?”
“Your vater wanted to come back to Germany. The Great Depression was hard on him, and he heard from your onkle that things were good here. Hitler had turned the economy around. Germany again would be the power God intended for it to be. The Allies had hamstrung the country after the Great War, but Germany would rise to be a glorious state once more.”
“But you didn’t want to come?” Vater took her away from the place where she had been happy. If only he hadn’t . . .
“Nein. But I love my husband. God would have me obey him, so I followed him here.” She handed Gisela a glass. “That is what you do when you are married. My first lesson to you as a married woman.”
Should she tell Mutti the truth? She wouldn’t turn in Mitch. There was no one in the apartment to overhear.
Mutti wiped the counters. “God wants you to honor your husband even when you may not agree with him. But never did I think things would get this bad. The shelling doesn’t stop, day or night. You are lucky if you wake up in the morning in one piece.”
Gisela wrung the dish towel in her hand. She shouldn’t lie to her mutti.
“You are home. I am happy about that. I didn’t know where you were or what had become of you.”
“I am safe.” She didn’t want to think about the Russian planes or the cruel woman or the overzealous German soldier. She didn’t share with Mutti how they slept on filthy straw or how the girls hung out of the back of the truck to use the bathroom. Those all were experiences she would rather forget.
“And you are fine? No one hurt you?”
“Nein, no one did.”
“Tell me about Josep, your husband.”
She couldn’t keep up the charade. Not with her mutti. “He isn’t my husband.”
Mutti stopped mid-wipe. “Not your husband?”
“Nein. I met him on the trip here. Mutti, he’s English. An escaped POW without papers. A woman was badgering him about who he was, so I stepped in and told her he was my husband. Too many people heard and we’ve had to keep up the cover.”
Mutti wrung the dish towel in her hand. “That is dangerous. Why would you do such a thing?”
“I don’t know. Because I didn’t want her to turn him in to the authorities. I didn’t want to see him hurt.”
“And so now, what will you do?”
The floor behind them creaked. She froze, but heard nothing more. Most likely the old building creaking with the cold.
Gisela lowered her voice. “With Kurt and Audra along, we have to continue acting like we are married. At least until Mitch is out of danger.”
“That is his name?”
“Ja. Mitch Edwards. But call him Josep. That is the name we told the others.”
Mutti shook her head. “I don’t like it. Not one bit. How long were you going to wait to tell me?”
“I didn’t wait long. We needed to be alone so none of the others would overhear.”
“You have changed since you’ve been gone.” Mutti patted her cheek. “You aren’t the shy little thing I sent away.”
“Things have happened that have changed me.”
“What kind of things? Don’t tell me those Russians in Goldap hurt you after all.”
“Nein. But I’ve had to be on my own. Had to struggle to survive and to get all of these people here in one piece.”
“What happened along the way?”
She couldn’t speak of these things yet.
Mutti put her arm around Gisela. “I know. I lived through war too. It does change you.”
They slid the chairs back into place and Mutti began sweeping the floor. “But you like him?”
Gisela set the pot in the cupboard with a little more force than necessary. “Why would you say that?”
“Your eyes soften when you look at him. Your voice changes. It’s almost wistful.”
“We don’t even get along.” Gisela laughed. “Wait long enough and you will see.”
“Be careful. You are all I have left.”
“We have been. We will be.”
Mutti dried her hands on her apron. “There, you see. Now I can leave knowing I have a clean kitchen. If the soldiers search the place during the air raid, they will not find a messy house.”
Gisela wrapped her mother in a hug. “I missed you.”
“Ach, I missed you too, child. You are a gift from God.”
“How long until you’ll be ready to leave?”
“Now. I told you I would go down and I will.”
“Nein, not leave for the shelter. Leave Berlin. Head toward Munich. Toward the Allies and safety. That is where Josep wants to go, to return to the Allies.”
Mutti untied her apron and laid it across the back of the kitchen chair. “Until your vater comes home, I will not leave. I am staying in Berlin.”
Mitch put his hand to his heart when Gisela entered the basement. He had worried her mum would refuse to come, and she would insist on staying upstairs. He shouldn’t care what happened to her, but he did.
The musty basement had an arched concrete ceiling, as if that might stop an Allied bomb from penetrating the area. An oxygen tank stood tall in one corner. They could breathe if they were buried in rubble. What a thoughtful touch.
Benches and chairs occupied much of the space. There were three beds down here, as well as shelves lined with food and water. Cobwebs decorated the corners. A mother and her five children huddled on kitchen chairs in one corner. Annelies and Renate wanted to play with them, but the mother shook her head. The girls came back to him, asking him why they wouldn’t play. Having no other explanation, he told them they were tired. Two older couples mingled with them and now sat chatting with Bettina and Katya about Paris. Audra and Kurt sat silent to his right.
Gisela slipped in on his left. He squeezed her hand. It was warm. “You got your mum to come down.”
“She doesn’t want to leave Berlin.” Pain and fright drew lines across her brow.
“Why not? If this ghastly bombing happens all the time”—the racket of antiaircraft fire interspersed his words—“you would think her eager to leave.”
“She won’t go because of Vater. She wants to wait for him to come home.” The unspoken words if he ever does echoed in the room. He didn’t blame her for not wanting to say them.
“How old is he?”
“Why didn’t you tell me about your sister?”
Her eyes clouded. “We don’t talk about her much. It’s too hard, even after eight years.”
“What happened?”
She stared at the ceiling for a long moment. “Scarlet fever. I lived. She died.”
For a moment, Mitch didn’t know what to say. He stroked her fingers. “I’m sorry.” This was why she was so eager to get to her mum.
“So am I. And now Vater is gone.”
“Is Hitler out of his mind, recruiting old men to fight this battle he will surely lose?”
“Hush. Don’t speak against the Führer. The POW camp will look like a summer holiday compared to a Berlin prison.”
“It will be hard for you to leave your mum.”
“I won’t go. I refuse to travel on without her.” She set her mouth in a firm, straight line.
Had she gone crackers? “You won’t leave?”
“Nein. I’m all she has left. She lost one child already. Now with Vater gone, I’ll stay. Try to understand. I’ll work on persuading her to come, but I understand why she won’t. What if he comes back and we aren’t here? He would have no idea where to look for us.”
“Leave him a note. Write him a letter.”
“What if he never receives it? Nein, we can’t leave. That is what Ella did for Opa.” A single tear trickled down her cheek. “It is what I will do for Mutti. I will keep the girls with me. You take the others to Munich.”
Munich would be in the direction of the Allies. If he stayed with her, by the time the British or Americans reached the city, the war would be over.
Planes droned above them. Soon the earth rocked beneath them.
Annelies and Renate continued playing with the little dolls Gisela’s mum had given them. Either they were innocent about what was happening in the skies, or they had become so used to the sound of planes and bombs that it no longer affected them. He studied their golden heads, bowed over their dolls.
He watched Gisela watching them. She had a lovely profile, a little upturned nose, a strand of amber-colored hair sweeping her shoulder.
Yes, her Reich was on the verge of collapse. She shouldn’t stay.
He couldn’t.
She must come with him.
Mitch tossed and turned the entire night. At least the part of the night they didn’t spend in the bomb shelter. To be honest, he didn’t know why the decision he faced was so difficult, why it kept him from sleeping. True, Gisela saved his life—twice—and he was grateful. But the time had come to walk away. He had to rejoin his regiment, wherever they might be. While the war was winding down, perhaps he could still fight. Still defend the honor of his country. So Xavier’s death wouldn’t be in vain.
Sitting in Berlin would accomplish nothing.
Yet the thought of not seeing Gisela or the girls tore at him.
He didn’t know her well, so it was madness for him to be thinking this way.
Mitch slipped from under his blanket on the couch. The bed in the guest room wouldn’t accommodate Frau Cramer, Audra, and the two old ladies, so Mitch insisted on sleeping on the couch so Frau Cramer could share her bed with her daughter and the Reinhardt girls.
He found Gisela sitting at the small kitchen table sipping her ersatz coffee. “How did you sleep?”
“I didn’t. I hope you did.”
“Not really.” He pulled out a wobbly kitchen chair and sat. “We have to talk.”
“I know.” She traced the rim of her cup with the tip of her finger. “I know what you’re going to say.”
“After all those years in captivity, I’m free. Free to fight for my country.”
She got up to pour him a cup of hot coffee. “I understand.”
“I need to rejoin my regiment.”
“You don’t need to tell me these things. I know. How will you get back?”
Funny, in all of those hours of wakefulness during the night, he hadn’t developed a plan for that. “It should be easy enough. If I get stopped by the Germans on the way, I’ll say I’m returning to my post after an extended illness.”
“You have no papers.”
“Do you think they care about that now?”
She nodded. Her hair hung loose about her shoulders, tangles knotting the curls. “They always care about things like that.”
“Then I’ll pretend I’ve just lost them.”
“And you’ll say all of this in your flawless German?”
“Ja.” He smiled but couldn’t get her to crack a grin. “Perhaps I won’t get stopped.”
“And when you reach the line, you will be shot on the spot by your countrymen because of the uniform you wear.”
“I don’t have that anymore, remember?” Gisela’s mum had spent a long, long time combing the nits out of his hair. His uniform, they burned, and she gave him a couple of her father’s pants and shirts.
“You are out of your mind. Crackers, as you say. Your plan will never work.”
He downed the contents of his mug in one gulp and stood to put it in the sink. “Thank you for the vote of confidence.” The view from the third-floor window was dismal. Much of the grand city lay in smoldering ruins. Why would anyone want to stay here?
“Mutti knows that you’re British and that we’re not married.”
“Will she keep the secret until I leave?”
“Ja. I had to tell her. I wasn’t going to keep lying to her.”
He hoped she was right. At this moment, he had no other choice but to trust her. In a little while, he would be gone. He turned to face her. “And what about you? What are you going to do?”
She stared at him, her light brown eyes searching. “About what?”
“Your mum.”
“There is nothing to do. She won’t leave.”
“Are you sure?”
“I know my mutti. Once she makes up her mind, she will not change it. Ever.”
“Your Führer won’t save you.”
“My Führer?”
“Yes. Your Führer.”
“What makes you think he’s my Führer?”
He sat up straight. “You were in the Hitler Youth.”
“So was everyone else in my class. It was a club. We got to go to the mountains.”
“What about your father?”
“I don’t know. He is a difficult man to figure out. I believe he came here hoping for better than what America had brought him. He’s fighting not for the Germany of today, but for the Germany of his youth.”
He clasped her hands. “Then come with me.”
A small cry came from the back of the apartment.
“I think the girls are waking.” She rose and left her coffee on the table. He followed. Just when the time had come to leave, he discovered her to be different than he thought.
Gisela’s mum sat in bed, cradling Renate in her arms.
Gisela stepped forward. “Is she frightened?”
“Nein. She has a fever.”