The Night Portrait, page 21
“There!” Hancock spurted the word so suddenly that Dominic’s finger jumped onto the trigger, but their commander’s expression was one of glee. The Jimmy crunched to a halt. Hancock pulled a flashlight from his pocket and shone it into the gloom. Its thin beam illuminated a dark opening in the hillside, an ugly gap cut roughly into the smooth soil; it was covered by the remains of a great metal gate. The gate hung from one hinge, the sharp indentations of bullet holes shining on its surface.
“Open it up!” cried Hancock. Dominic jumped out of the truck. While the other men stood warily, scanning the woods for danger, Dominic seized the cold iron and pulled. Dominic’s muscles screamed in protest as he strained against the weight of the gate, but it began to budge, and to a sound of squealing metal, he and two other men managed to move it aside.
Hancock disembarked from the Jimmy and stared into the darkness, playing his torch through the opening, as Dominic and the others stretched their aching backs and picked up their rifles again. “Bonelli, grab four others and come with me,” he said. “The rest of you, stay here and watch the convoy.”
There was a chorus of “Yes, sir,” and Hancock stepped forward, Dominic close on his heels.
“Wait!” The voice from the truck made Hancock’s shoulders slump in dismay. “I come!”
Dominic saw Hancock steel himself before turning around, the rest of the men following suit. Stephany had hooked one knee over the back of the Jimmy in his attempts to get out; the vicar’s robe he insisted on wearing made matters difficult as he struggled to climb out. Panting, he hoisted himself to the ground with a creak of old bones before hurrying over to them, straightening his robes.
“Stephany . . .” Hancock began.
“No, no, no.” Stephany waved a hand at him, eyes shining. “I know what you will say. It is too dangerous, I must stay with the trucks. You know you will lose this fight, Walker.” He reached up and gave Hancock an affectionate pat on the cheek. “Come, we find my relics, yes?” Beaming, he strutted off toward the entrance to the mine.
Hancock uttered a strangled expletive. “Fine. Do what you want, Stephany. I can hardly stop you.”
Lieutenant Commander Stout was waiting for them at the entrance to the mine. He’d been waiting for reinforcements before going in; of the unit he’d left Aachen with, only five men remained, huddled around him as if for warmth. But Stout’s determined posture had not changed. His mustache curved up in a smile. “Hancock!”
“Sir!” Hancock saluted.
“I heard you had some trouble outside of Bonn. Come on, let’s see what we’ve got.” Stout led the way into the copper mine, his flashlight held high, its puny beam struggling against the thick darkness and utter cold.
A long, arched tunnel had been cut roughly into the gloom. The low ceiling was oppressive, and the air would have been stifling if it hadn’t been so bitterly cold. Dominic felt his hands grow numb on the barrel of his rifle. The tunnel twisted and widened with pockets and dark chambers opening off to the sides.
As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he began to spot them. First, just the whites of their eyes; then their round faces, glowing in the weak beam of light.
Civilians.
Stragglers, survivors, who’d somehow managed to escape Siegen during the fighting. Huddling together in little clusters in the small pockets, they watched with hunted eyes as the Americans trooped past. Stout and Hancock, seeing that they were unarmed, paid them little attention. But the fear in their eyes chilled Dominic to the bone.
He assumed there would only be that handful hiding near the entrance of the mine, but the deeper the men advanced into the darkness, the more humid the air grew. Warmth started to fill the air around them, making Dominic’s frozen fingers cramp. With it came the smell. It was familiar from the badly sanitized refugee camps they’d visited outside Aachen, only amplified a thousand times in the mine’s closed air: the smell of humanity at its worst. Sweat. Urine. Excrement. One of the other young soldiers gagged quietly beside Dominic, and he found his own stomach turning as he checked the floor periodically to see where he was putting his boots. It was so cold lately that he’d been sleeping with them on, and he didn’t want to tread in anything that he didn’t want smeared inside his blankets. More pressing was the thought that for this smell to be so pervasive, there had to be many people in here. Dominic’s stomach tightened.
“Be ready,” Stout obviously shared Dominic’s concerns. He had one hand on the pistol on his hip. Hancock pulled out his own pistol. The ugly weapon looked wrong in his lean, elegant fingers.
A thin, piercing sound rose into the air. The noise was plaintive and reminded Dominic so much of home that it made his heart pang: the cry of a baby.
Only this was not the regular scream of a fussy baby. This child was cold and hungry and afraid, and it gave voice to its unhappiness in the only way it knew how. Dominic swallowed hard as they advanced and the terrible truth came to the front. The tunnel branched and, as they followed, they saw many small cavities cut into the cave, all of them filled with people. None of them stood; they were all slumped in various attitudes of defeat on benches, stones, the odd cot. Women. Children. Men. Babies. The flashlight beams flitting through the impenetrable darkness revealed hundreds of pale and dirt-stained faces staring out at them with deep mistrust.
It seemed that the entire population of Siegen was hiding in the mines, waiting for the war to be over. Dominic wanted to tell them not to be afraid, that they wouldn’t be hurt, but he spoke no German. And he realized with a shock that they were not afraid, either. These people were the Germans; not the minority bent on exterminating the Allied armies, but the real German people who lived and slept and ate and wanted nothing other than to get their lives back, to do what they did before the war had torn their country to pieces.
“Amerikaner.”
Whispered by every mouth as soon as they spotted their uniforms, the word bounced from wall to wall in a susurrus of mistrust. Dominic looked into the eyes of a little girl and smiled instinctively; she smiled back, but her mother grasped her tightly and pulled her closer, her eyes filled with terror.
The tunnel opened out into another cave so big that the men’s flashlights could not pick out the end. The adults who had been lying around the cave jumped up as one and shuffled back against the walls, clutching their rags more tightly around their shoulders as they stared in mute horror. Stephany tried speaking a few words of reassuring German, but even his enthusiasm waned in the face of such collective fear. They all stared silently, Germans and Americans alike.
All but one. A small boy stepped into the circle of light. His dark hair was a dirty tousle on his forehead, but when he looked up at them, his eyes were as blue as chips of jewels in the dirt. He walked up to Lieutenant Commander Stout, who froze, uncomprehending.
The little boy reached up to touch a patch on Stout’s field coat. His giggle suddenly filled the mine, a golden bubble of happiness in the dark. Then he grabbed Stout’s forefinger in his chubby little hand and tugged him forward. Enchanted, the soldiers followed as if in a dream as the little boy led them to a large metal door. He reached up with a tiny fist and rapped a complicated tune on the metal.
“Amerikaner,” he chirped.
The door creaked open. Seeing only uniforms, Dominic and his men leapt to attention, yanking the barrels of their guns up to take aim. But the eyes they looked into were not German. They were British, French, American, according to the patches on their soot-covered uniforms. And at the sight of armed Allied troops making their way into the mine, the men fell to their knees and some burst into tears.
The nearest man grasped Stout by the sleeves in shaking hands in spite of the fact that the astonished lieutenant general still aimed a pistol at him.
“Please,” he begged. “Take us home.”
50
Edith
Outside Puławy, Poland
March 1941
ONE NIGHT, WHILE THE GERMAN OFFICERS LOUNGED AT the dining table, happily stuffed with potato dumplings and Polish vodka, Edith saw her opportunity.
Empty plate in hand, Edith slipped from the table and made her way to the kitchen. Behind her, the men swirled their glasses and laughed at one another’s crude jokes. She would do her best to appear as if she were simply retiring for the evening, she thought. After all, her cell-like bedroom was located just down the hallway from the scullery.
In the kitchen, the three Polish women bustled around one another, stacking dirty plates, wiping dough and flour from the counters, sweeping debris from the floor. Edith wasn’t sure which one to approach first. She didn’t know their names; it had seemed better that way, she thought. She only knew what Jakub had told her: if Edith dutifully copied each day’s inventory, making note of the trucks and trains headed to the German and Austrian borders, the women would know what to do with the information. They could put them in the right hands. At least Edith hoped that they could.
Edith’s palm went instinctively to the pocket of her field jacket. Folded into a tiny packet was the day’s manifest of items that Edith had cataloged, including the original owners and locations, if they were known, all notated in her small, neat handwriting. But she hesitated. Did these unassuming-looking women really have the power to stop their allies in the Resistance from blowing up trains and trucks, as Jakub had told her? It seemed incredible to fathom. But Edith trusted Jakub, and he assured her that it was the best chance to protect these works, to perhaps someday return them to their rightful owners. What else could she do? She was only one woman stuck in a basement near the Russian border, her only contact with the outside world a regiment of Nazi soldiers, an unassuming Polish translator, and a kitchen full of resistors masquerading as kitchen staff.
Edith hesitated. Which one should she approach? The youngest of the three women stood at the sink, up to her elbows in soapy water. Edith settled on the woman wiping the counters. She stepped alongside her and placed her dirty plate on the counter. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out the day’s inventory.
The woman did not meet Edith’s eyes and hardly stopped what she was doing. She simply moved her hand toward Edith’s and swiped the small paper packet into her own pocket. A small, nearly imperceptible movement under the edge of the kitchen counter. Edith turned away, then heard a whisper behind her back.
“Danke schon.”
Edith felt the hairs on the back of her neck bristle. They understood German after all.
Through a narrow opening in the dining room doorway, Edith glanced at the officers still seated at the table. A hefty soldier, one of the unit’s commanding officers, tilted back in his chair and worked a toothpick into the cracks between his teeth.
Edith felt herself huff a sigh of wonder. The men had no idea that the kitchen women were listening to every word they said.
51
Dominic
Siegen, Germany
April 1945
POWS. HOW HAD THEY ESCAPED THEIR NAZI CAPTORS? Dominic’s jaw fell open. How long had they been hiding in this mine alongside the residents of Siegen?
Stephany was doling out more of their powdered coffee rations to warm their frozen bones when Hancock came running. All the men in the room flinched as one, and Dominic clutched his rifle more tightly. But the expression on Hancock’s face was perfect joy.
“Sir!” For once, even the dapper Hancock was disheveled with excitement. He pushed his helmet straight, face shining. “You’ve got to see this.”
Dominic, Stephany, and Stout followed Hancock down a series of winding tunnels until they came to a door that, judging by the splintered frame, had just been broken down. Behind the door, Dominic only saw a cloud of fine dust. But as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, a beautiful portrait of a curly-haired lady with pink cheeks looked back at him. Then he saw what Hancock had seen. Row upon row of works of art. Paintings. Sculptures. Stacks and stacks of packed cases. The priceless works were placed haphazardly on slapdash shelves made of raw lumber, their splendor incongruous amid the dirt, the cold, and the smell.
But the truth was undeniable: Siegen’s mines hid everything that old Herr Weyres had promised.
Dominic felt his weary heart beating faster as he stepped into the room. He could immediately see that this dirty mine might hold masterpieces he’d only ever read about. He wanted to reach out and touch it all, but instead, he gripped the barrel of his rifle and walked among them, gazing at the gilded frames and shining surfaces of oil paint. Some of the paintings were labeled with tags scrawled in black ink. Manet. Vermeer. It rang like a hall of fame of artists whose work Dominic had only dreamed of seeing in the flesh. Suddenly, Dominic’s fingers itched to draw.
Keep drawing.
In a flash, Dominic was back in Aachen, kneeling over Paul in front of the ruined cathedral, watching as his friend gasped out his last breaths. The agony that swamped his body was replaced with disgust. He turned away, suddenly nauseated. It was splendid, but he would give every last piece of art in this room to have Paul back.
As he turned, dull with pain, he saw it. A huge crate, the word AACHEN scrawled across it.
“Stephany,” he said, his voice flat.
The vicar hurried over, hope in his eyes. They widened when he spotted the crate. He rushed to it, his fingers scrabbling fruitlessly on the wood; Hancock seized a crowbar and the servicemen helped him to pry the thing open. The contents were wrapped in burlap. Hands shaking, Stephany drew it aside as gently as if it wrapped a sleeping baby. Gold and jewels glittered among the rough cloth, and Stephany fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face, as if his own family members had just been found alive. Fluent German poured from him, too fast for Dominic to keep up. Dominic’s heart surged. He knelt by Stephany, putting a hand on the old man’s shoulder. “What is it?”
When Stephany looked up at him, the joy in his eyes seized Dominic by the throat. He grabbed Dominic’s shoulders with shaking hands.
“Thanks be to God. Thanks be to you, my friends,” he said. “We have found them.”
52
Edith
Outside Puławy, Poland
April 1941
ONE EVENING, AFTER HANDING THE DAY’S INVENTORY over to the kitchen women, Edith felt an overwhelming need for a breath of fresh air. Behind her, she heard the officers’ laughter, their companionable banter at the table. Would they—and would she—ever make peace with what they were doing? And did they suspect her at all? Edith pulled her wool coat over her drab, wrinkled uniform and stepped outside.
In the moonlight, Edith could make out the silhouettes of the estate garden’s formal patterns and flower beds. A crisp layer of frost had settled over the surfaces. A Nazi flag so large it hardly seemed real stood quiet in the still air, its swastika hung from the eaves of the home and draped down two stories to the bench where Edith sat, watching her breath turn into a puff of vapor. She pulled her collar closer to her neck.
For nearly three months, Edith and Jakub had diligently copied the day’s inventories and transportation manifests, entrusting them to the hands of the kitchen women. Such a small act, Edith thought. Would it make a difference? If even one train car, one armored truck full of precious possessions and works of art was saved, Edith thought, then yes, it would be worth it. Edith thought of her father now, and his own small acts of resistance in the last war. With all her heart, Edith wished that she could talk to him, could tell him what she was doing, could ask for his counsel.
It had been so long without a word from her father or his nurse. Edith lowered her head to her knees, folding her arms around her head. She pressed her eyes into the sleeve of her coat and held her breath for a moment, squeezing her eyes shut against the emotion.
“Edith.”
Edith pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes, as if she could push away the sting.
“Edith,” she heard again, a gentle voice.
She turned to see Franz, standing in his uniform, stark against the edge of the flag hanging from the villa’s façade. Even in the darkness, she could see that his cheeks were flushed in the icy air. He sat next to Edith on the bench and they both stared out into the black. Suddenly, she felt his broad hand on her shoulder. What was he doing? He knew she was engaged to be married. Was he so starved for female affection that he might try to kiss her anyway, to take advantage of the lonely isolation of this strange place, so far from home and everything they loved?
But when she turned to meet his gaze, she saw that his face was grim instead, his eyes bloodshot.
“There is news of your Heinrich.”
53
Dominic
Siegen, Germany
April 1945
THERE WAS SOMETHING SOOTHING AND FAMILIAR ABOUT the mines, Dominic thought, dank and pungent as they were. Fires built in the rooms brought warmth and light to the black tunnels. With the assurance that the fighting was over in their hometown, the refugees had started to venture into the early spring sunlight. A hint of joy seemed to come back with them, in the cleaner smell of their clothes, in the new color in their skin, and the glittering in their eyes. Or perhaps that was just hope: hope they were not all going to die down there in the mines.
But it was not the refugees that made Dominic feel at home in the mines. He stood guard over one of the many storerooms full of art they’d found, leaning comfortably against the wall as he cradled his rifle, knowing that it was unlikely he’d actually have to use it right now; he was protecting the treasures more from the refugees than from anything else. They were civilians, but they were humans, after all, and faced with the loss of everything they owned. Who could blame them for having sticky fingers, under the circumstances?
