II

Luka’s father had been home for many months, compliments of the artillery shell that ripped his left arm off. The Kradschützen, elite motorcycle troops who’d been a key part of attacking the Russian front, had no use for limbless drivers, so Kurt Löwe and his remaining arm were shipped back to Germany with a Silver Wound Badge and a second-class Iron Cross. Scars and medals: the marks of a war hero. Luka was awed by both.

There were no hugs or smiles involved in the greeting, just a stern nod on his father’s part. Luka’s mother told him later it was because his father was tired. (After all, he’d been at war for six years.) He just needed time to rest.

Luka’s father rested. He sat in a chair for hours and days at a time, staring blankly at the portrait of the Führer that hung over the mantel. When he spoke, it was never to ask Luka how his classes were going or to praise his wife’s cooking, but about the war. He told them about the endless, snowy kilometers he drove on his motorcycle. The firefights he and his fellow soldiers endured. How many Soviets he shot and killed. All for the sake of mein Führer.

Kurt Löwe rested for months, but the smiles and hugs Luka’s mother had promised never appeared. Not even for Christmas Eve.

The Löwe family sat around the small table, eating roasted carp in silence. It wasn’t the contented, holy-night type of silence that filled the holiday’s church services, but a strained one—full of chewing and scraping forks. It made Luka squirm in his chair.

“Stop fidgeting,” his father growled from the other side of the table.

Luka’s mother shot her son a meaningful look. He stopped moving. He felt as if he were sitting on eggshells. As if something was about to break…

His father was dividing the carp into neat little pieces with his fork. “When I went on night patrols on the front, we had to be quiet as ghosts. We moved without a sound. Had to, or else we would’ve been shot.”

His mother cleared her throat. “Kurt, I’m not sure this is very good table talk—”

“Good table talk?” Luka’s father set his fist on the table. He was still holding his fork, tines up, tattered fish meat hanging from the metal. “Losing my verdammt arm for the Fatherland earns me the right to talk about whatever I want at the table.”

His wife didn’t reply. Instead she set down her own fork and looked at Luka. “Would you like to open your gift now?”

Luka straightened in his chair, nodding. He’d been waiting for this moment for weeks. A bicycle (shiny and red) was the only thing Luka wanted. Sometimes Franz Gross let him play with his. Both boys took turns pretending to be Kradschützen motorcycle troops, revving imaginary engines as they stormed lines of invisible communists.

“Your gift is by the Advent calendar,” his mother said. “Go and fetch it!”

There was no tree this year, but Luka’s mother had set up the family’s Advent calendar on the mantelpiece. Most of its twenty-four paper doors hung open, revealing a hand-painted Nativity: Mary and Joseph and the Christ Child all gathered in a barn, surrounded by curious animals and poking hay. Blue-eyed angels hovered over the Holy Family. Above them hung a single brilliant star. And above the star…

The Führer’s immortalized face loomed, its painted eyes following Luka as he ran to the package by the hearth. The box was much too small for a bicycle and wrapped in old newsprint. Dated headlines told of the advance of the Wehrmacht through Russia, the Reich’s impending, undeniable victory. Inked across the package was a picture of the Führer giving a speech about the future of the New Order. Luka ripped through it all to find a set of new shoes and a toy pistol. He stared at them, disappointment bitter in his throat.

“What do you say, Luka?” His father had followed him into the sitting room, watching the whole affair in silence.

“I know you wanted a bicycle”—his mother’s voice was soft in the doorway—“but the ones at Herr Kahler’s shop were too expensive. Maybe next year, when the war is over.”

No bicycle. After weeks, months, years of waiting, still no bicycle. A crying feeling crept up Luka’s throat.

“What do you need a bicycle for?” his father asked. His hand strayed up to the second-class Iron Cross that hung from the button on his tunic. “You walk to school.”

“I—I want to play Kradschützen with Franz.” As soon as the words left Luka’s mouth, he wanted to swallow them back. But they were out, along with his tears, swimming through the sitting room.

“Play?” His father’s face went hard. Something in his eyes reminded Luka of the painting above the fire. Blue and lifeless. “You want to play Kradschützen?”

“I want to be like you.”

In a single blitzkrieg movement, Luka’s father dropped his Iron Cross and grabbed the boy by his collar. Nina shrank against the doorway as her husband dragged their child past, into the kitchen, out of the house.

It was a snowy evening. Luka’s father plowed through the spinning flakes, into the street. His knuckles stayed tight around Luka’s collar as he stopped in the middle of a growing snowdrift. “You want to be like me? I spent more nights than you could count in weather far colder than this. Curled up in a verdammt foxhole while the commies tried to put a bullet through my skull. You think I spent that time sniveling?”

Luka shook his head. There were more tears now, blurring against his eyelashes.

“Don’t show emotion.” Kurt Löwe gave his son a rough shake. “Don’t you ever show emotion. Tears are weakness. And I won’t have any son of mine being weak. You’re going to stand here until you stop crying.”

Luka tried, but the squeeze in his throat only grew worse. The tears that had already fallen were starting to hurt his cheeks: burning cold.

His mother shivered barefoot in the doorway, on the verge of tears herself. “Kurt! He’ll freeze!”

“You’ve let our son grow soft and ungrateful, Nina. Filling his head with art and fanciful Scheisse! If I could endure an entire winter in this snow, the least he can do is stand ten minutes in a drift.”

“You had a uniform to keep you warm! Luka doesn’t even have a coat.”

Kurt Löwe took another look at his son: hunched over, teeth chattering, shin-deep in the snowdrift. He stepped back into the house and returned moments later with his prewar brown leather riding jacket and his dog tag. Both items were shoved into Luka’s arms. “Put them on.”

The jacket was far too big; its sleeves dragged far past Luka’s fingers, into the piling snow. The dog tag hung all the way down to his belly button.

“A German youth must be strong. Tough as leather, hard as steel.” His father pointed at the jacket and the dog tag in turn. “Stand your ground. Don’t bother knocking on that door until the tears are off your face.”

Kurt Löwe’s arm cut like a scythe through the falling snow as he marched back to the house, hooking around his wife’s waist to usher her inside. When the door shut, Luka tried to wipe his cheeks with the oversized sleeve. His father was right. The leather was hard, too tough to blot the tears.

So Luka stood staring at the glowing kitchen window—minute after frigid minute, while his legs grew numb and his heart grew hard—waiting for his sadness to dry on its own.