Erich stopped at the door to the apartment. It had once been very nice, with fine wood trim and fancy stained-glass windows. The apartment even shared a bathroom down the hall with four or five other tenants. Imagine that, indoor plumbing! Now the gray and the dust had taken over, just as it had back in Berlin. Someone had tried to sweep the stairs, but even so the plaster ceiling still rained war dust on everything.
“You are not married?” Katarina asked when they’d climbed the stairs to the sergeant’s apartment. One look could have given her the answer. Not messy, exactly, just a little like . . . a bachelor’s apartment.
“Nein.” He folded his hat carefully and set it down on the front table. “No.”
At least he was neat. But his apartment held only a typewriter on a rickety card table, several piles of papers, an empty kitchen, a small bedroom filled by a single bed, and a lumpy faded couch in the front room. The only decoration he seemed to own was a small framed photo of two stern-looking older people, hanging crooked just above the couch. Erich guessed it might be the Bavarian grandparents. Oh, and on the couch lay a German Bible, dog-eared and obviously well read. Erich figured this was another trick to make them think the American could be trusted.
“So here’s the deal,” DeWitt told them, opening a tiny coat closet and pulling down clean towels for them. “The fräulein will sleep in the bedroom. I have a clean sheet for you. The men will sleep out here. Breakfast is at oh-seven-thirty tomorrow on the base, so make sure you’re ready to go by seven fifteen. We’ll take a few more PR photos there after breakfast, maybe of you guys standing next to the airplanes, and then catch a flight into Berlin by oh-nine-hundred. That means we land at Tempelhof by eleven thirty. A few more pictures that afternoon around the city, and we’ll have you back home safe and sound in plenty of time for dinner. Any questions?”
They both shook their heads no as he grabbed a toothbrush from a glass on a shelf and started for the door. The bathroom, Erich remembered, was shared by the entire floor.
“Sorry I don’t have any extra toothbrushes for you. Wasn’t expecting this kind of company.” He paused and pointed at the couch. “You’re welcome to read my Bible while you’re waiting, though.”
With that he popped into the hallway, leaving them in the strange room in a strange city, wondering how this had happened to them.
“This is all my fault.” Erich paced the floor just in front of the closed door. “I shouldn’t have let you come.”
“It wasn’t your decision.” Katarina ran her hand across the German Bible. “And besides, I couldn’t leave you to fly here by yourself, could I?”
“No, but it was kind of — ” He didn’t dare use the word fun. “Well, I mean, did you ever think you were going to get to ride in one of those planes, ever in your life?”
“Never. But I wonder what our moms are thinking right now.”
Erich had been wondering the same thing. “I hope they get the message soon.”
“That’s not going to keep us from being in huge trouble.”
“You’re right about that,” said their host as he reappeared at the door. “But we’d all better get to bed now. Tomorrow’s going to be interesting.”
Or crazy, perhaps, like this entire adventure was crazy. Wahnsinn, insane, like the chase dream Erich had later that night, after everyone had fallen asleep. The men chasing him had no faces, only guns and parachutes, and it was just like the dreams he’d had ever since the war that never seemed to end had started, only in this dream the soldier who finally landed on his head was an American, like —
“Wake up!”
Someone grabbed his shoulder and shook him awake. Erich could only cry out and punch at his attacker. He connected with something hard: a cheekbone, maybe. But the enemy only grabbed him by the wrists and held him. So this is how the torture would begin, but not without a fight.
“Erich!” the man’s voice hissed at him in the dark. “Settle down, kid. Ruhig!”
Erich couldn’t think of too many reasons to settle down, but finally he realized where he was. It was still pitch dark, and a door creaked open behind him.
“Erich?” Katarina asked in a small, sleepy voice. “What’s going on out there?”
The neighbors must have heard everything too.
“Herr DeWitt?” An older woman’s voice came through the hallway door. “Mr. DeWitt? Is everything all right in there? I heard screaming.”
“Everything’s fine, Frau von Kostka. I apologize for my guest. He’s just having a bad dream.”
“Ah, ja. It sounded like a battle, and your guest, he was losing.”
“I’ll bring you a couple of extra potatoes tomorrow, Frau von Kostka. Gute nacht. Good night.”
“Knowing that will help me sleep better — as long as there are no more battles.”
They heard Frau von Kostka shuffling back down the hall as she returned to her apartment. Katarina closed her door again too. And Erich sank his head back into the arm of the couch as DeWitt returned to his pile of blankets on the floor.
“Do we have a truce, kid?”
No truce. Erich pressed his lips together. But —
“I’m sorry I hit you,” he finally managed. “You’re not going to write about this in your newspaper, are you?”
“That depends on how much you pay me.”
Erich wasn’t quite sure if the guy was kidding, not at this hour. Midnight? Three a.m.? Outside he heard a plane take off in the distance. They weren’t very far from the air base.
“Sorry, kid. Just trying to make a joke.”
Erich didn’t answer as he stared up at the dark ceiling. And it sounded like Fred DeWitt wasn’t done asking questions yet.
“I know there haven’t been a lot of things to joke about in Berlin lately. Did you have to leave the city during the war?”
Erich thought about not answering, about pretending he’d gone back to sleep. But he had to tell the American something.
“Thanks to you, we did. We were almost killed too.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. What about your father? Was he — ”
Erich spit out his answer to the dark, which was somehow easier than face-to-face.
“My father was drafted into the army when I was seven. My older sister was nine.”
“He was in the Wehrmacht, the army?”
Erich paused before deciding to answer.
“A chaplain. He never shot a gun in his life. But just before he had to leave, he went back to the church where he was a pastor, I think to bring home a few things. Then your bombs started dropping. He never made it back.” No one said anything for another long minute. DeWitt finally cleared his throat, though, and his voice sounded far away.
“I’m very sorry to hear that.”
That’s what they all said. But Erich wasn’t through yet.
“They told us we had to leave, my mother and sister and I. The bombs were coming day and night, all the time. The city wasn’t safe. But you know that part of the story.”
Fred DeWitt didn’t answer.
“My oma was supposed to leave too, but she was too stubborn. Always stubborn. My mom nearly went crazy about it. We have no idea how Oma survived all the bombs, except that none fell on her building. She always talks about angels.”
Still no answer from DeWitt.
“But they took us to a little village a hundred miles north, to get away from American bombs.”
Erich made sure he reminded DeWitt the bombs were American.
“Is that where you stayed the rest of the war?”
“Nein. A few months before it all ended, the government took us away once more, except this time we had to travel in cattle cars, which was horrible because we all got lice from the old straw we had to sleep in.”
“I’ve never had lice.”
“It’s like torture; they bite you all over. And you get these big welts. But that wasn’t all. We stayed in a farmer’s barn for a couple of months, and then we nearly froze to death, until my mother decided we should go back to Berlin.”
Erich took a deep breath, and it truly seemed like someone else was telling the story, not him. He only felt numb now, nothing else, and he didn’t care who was listening. The tears had all been cried, the feelings all felt, and the only thing left was the dull anger. But still he went on.
“So we walked all night and all day, and the roads were full of people who had the same idea we did. Everybody just wanted to get home, no matter what. We could die out there, or we could die back home. Except we didn’t know we were walking straight into the Russian battle zone. During the day the Russian planes came flying over, shooting their machine guns at us. We had to dive into the ditches, only some of us didn’t — ” His words caught, and he took a deep breath. His voice fell to a whisper, even softer than before.
“— some of us didn’t make it. A man that we knew, a milkman from back home in Berlin, he helped my mother and me bury my sister.”
There. Was that the kind of story the American had expected? But now Erich had to keep going.
“So we stayed in an abandoned castle for a couple of days, stayed there with only the servants. But there was nothing to eat so we had to keep walking, ten or fifteen miles a day. I had to carry our suitcase, until we found a baby carriage we could use. The baby had died. Don’t know why we didn’t too.”
“And the Russians?” DeWitt found his voice again.
“The Russians came almost every day, just stopped us and pointed their guns at us, took whatever they wanted. What did we have left? Some of those guys had watches all the way up their arms.”
“Pirates. But you finally made it home.”
“What was left of it, after the Russians — well, we had to hide for a month until the Americans and the British and the French came. But my mom says we were lucky to find another place to stay in. Our old house was a pile of bricks.”
“Look, I know I keep saying this, but I’m really sorry.”
But Erich didn’t say anything else. Couldn’t. He just lay with his eyes open in the dark, listening to the planes taking off and landing, fighting back the sleep and the dreams of the men and the parachutes, chasing him, chasing him —