Bluebird, page 12
The hallway behind the door looks almost normal, except for dust and the smell of smoke. She passes rooms with offices, filing cabinets. One with bunk beds and cots. And at the very end of the hall, she finds what she was hoping for. A kitchen. Big. Industrial, with metal counters that had been clean before the bombs, a table with a printed cloth in the center where the supervisors could sit and eat.
There must be food somewhere in the kitchen, because it is rotting.
Inge roots through the drawers and cabinets, taking a cooking pot, a kitchen knife, forks and spoons, and a can opener. And in a windowless storage room, standing on a chair, running her hands over the empty shelves, she discovers a prize.
A can of beans.
How long can two people live on one can of beans?
Longer than they can live without them.
The can goes into the pot with her other treasures, and Inge gets on her hands and knees, checking the shadows. The corners.
And then she stops. Freezes. And scrambles back.
There’s a foot underneath the table, nearly hidden by the tablecloth. A bare foot inside a sheer stocking.
The toenails are blue.
Inge covers her mouth. Now she understands the smell. And then she crawls forward, because she can’t help it, and lifts the edge of the tablecloth.
A young woman is lying on her face. With an orange print dress and light brown hair nicely curled. Inge can’t see how she died. She doesn’t want to. But she does look at her dress. Her stockings. She looks at the bent end of a hairpin. She’d never thought about things like hairpins and shoes and cans of beans before. In the old world, food and clothes were easy. Endless. They just appeared.
This is the new world.
But she doesn’t think she can bear to turn the girl over.
Gingerly, guiltily, Inge reaches for the purse lying near the splayed hand and slides it closer through the dust. She finds lipstick, a powder compact, a pen. A half-empty pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Coins and used tissues. And in the inner pocket, a folded card. Inge pulls it out, but she already knows what it is.
Identity papers. Stamped with the red ink of Hitler’s eagle. She looks at the girl’s picture, her birth date, her Dresden address. She’d been pretty, not much older than Inge. She’d probably thrown flowers at parades and gone home to a mother who loved her. She probably never imagined that she would die so young. Rotting under a table in a factory. Why was she here? No one will ever know. And then Inge thinks about that.
No one has to know.
She finds the lighter in the purse again. And after three sparks, up shoots a little flame. Inge memorizes the dead girl’s smile, and then she lets the fire lick the corner of the paper. It smokes, catches, and burns. Hot. Bright.
She turns the paper this way and that, letting the flame eat a path, and then quickly blows it out, flicking away the bits of ash. The girl’s face is almost gone, just a hint of a cheek and a chin, along with a good bit of Hitler’s red stamp. But the name is still there. In stark, black ink.
Gundrun Eva Gerst.
The burned papers go back in the purse and the purse goes into her cooking pot with the beans. But then she pauses, turns back, and pulls the dusty, debris-strewn cloth off the table and carefully covers the girl with it. Until there’s nothing there but a bump beneath printed lilies. So the girl doesn’t have to be stared at.
“Well,” says a voice from the door. “That was very nice of you, Vögelchen.”
Inge spins around.
“MISS GERST?” ASKS the man called Dr. Holtz. “Fühlen sie sich wohl?”
Eva presses her purse to her middle, one hand inside it, fingers tight around the handle of the knife. Dr. Holtz is short, round, with wispy gray hair, a full beard. His shoes are slip-on, sweater a little tatty, and there’s a long, deep wrinkle in his forehead, where his eyebrows push together. He closes the door to Dr. Greenbaum’s office.
“Miss Gerst, are you all right?”
Eva breathes. Sweat dots her forehead, a trickle running down between her shoulder blades.
It’s not him. It’s not her father.
Justice is not happening now.
Dr. Holtz comes forward. “Here, please …” he says.
Eva drops into a chair, willing her fingers to unwind from the knife. She slides her hand out of her purse and quickly clicks it shut.
“Some water?” asks Dr. Holtz. His English is clear, but the w is still German.
Eva shakes her head and his wrinkle line deepens. She tries to smile. Like everything is normal. Like she is normal.
“I am sorry. I thought you were … someone else. For a …”
“Moment?” asks Dr. Holtz. “Is that the English you want?”
She nods, and Dr. Holtz sits down with a little huff, where Jake had been.
“My wife tells me I have one of those faces. Very unremarkable.” He chuckles before he shakes his head. “And we have all been living in such uncertain times and in uncertain places, yes?”
He settles back, fingertips propped beneath his chin.
“Paul tells me you are here about your friend. Is it so, Miss Gerst? Tell me about her, when you are ready. In German, if you’d like.”
Eva tells him, in German, hesitating at first, but with her pace picking up toward the end. The wrinkle line on Dr. Holtz’s forehead gets longer and shorter as he listens.
“There are too many young girls with this kind of trauma. Thousands, I am sorry to say. But in this case, the reaction seems unusually severe. She has no family?”
Eva shakes her head.
“These types of regressions, they are not my specialty … but I may know someone, a doctor, who has done well with such cases. I would like to write and ask his advice, if you are agreeable …”
Eva sits back. “You think Brigit could be … helped?”
“I do not know. But without more information, it would be wrong to say she could not be.”
“But the doctors in Berlin said there was nothing to do for her.”
Dr. Holtz waves a dismissive hand. “And I am sure they are very good doctors. But a hospital in a war zone is overwhelmed, and patients sometimes cannot be given the attention they deserve. But before I write, I would like to have Miss … what is her name?”
“Heidelmann.”
Dr. Holtz brings out a little notebook, bent and crushed to the shape of his shirt pocket, flips to a clean page, and jots down Brigit’s name with a stub of pencil.
“Yes,” he murmurs. “But before I write, Miss Gerst, I would like for Miss Heidelmann to see a doctor of neurology, to make sure any physical injuries have been addressed.”
“What is a …”
“A doctor for the nerves and the nervous system.”
“But Brigit is not hurt in that way.”
“Ah. But the brain is part of that system, and in medicine, I believe it is best not to leave the path unwalked, yes? It’s a request I make for many of my patients …”
Eva gazes at Dr. Holtz and feels poison creeping up from her middle. It’s a familiar feeling. The guilt of knowing something Brigit needs and not being able to give it to her. Like food. Safety. Aspirin on a ship.
“I do not want to … take your time,” she whispers. “But I do not have money for this doctor.”
The line in Dr. Holtz’s forehead deepens. “You are staying at Powell House. Is that so?”
She nods, and he leans back in the chair.
“Then let me explain like this. When I came to this country, I had nothing. A medical degree and the clothes on my back. I came as a German Jew, a survivor of the camps, a difference not everyone can understand when their sons have been buried on a battlefield or torpedoed by a U-boat. And the ladies of Powell House, they found me a bed and then an apartment. They sewed me a decent suit. Made the introductions that got me this position. I went for help, but I kept going back for friendship. I became a person again. And now I have a wife, an apartment, and pots to grow tomatoes. And never, Miss Gerst, in all this time, have they asked me to pay. So today, by finding your friend a doctor, I am paying a little of what I owe. Do you see?”
She does. And it is strangely unfair. But Dr. Holtz survived the camps. He deserves it. She does not.
Dr. Holtz pats her arm and stands up. “I will make a telephone call or two, and I will send word, yes?”
“Thank you,” she whispers. There’s a sharp rap on the door and Dr. Greenbaum sticks his head inside.
“Are you done? Mind if I use my office?”
His tone is gruff, face smiling. A paradox. Like Powell House.
“A word, if you don’t mind, Paul?” says Dr. Holtz. Then he smiles at Eva and gives her a little bow. “Thank you, Miss Gerst.”
Eva nods again and slips out into the white hallway. She leans against the wall, purse against her legs, and closes her eyes. Breathes. She’d thought she was going to see her father standing in that office. She’d thought it was time for justice and then it hadn’t been.
Is she relieved or sorry about that?
Eva tightens her grip on the purse against her legs. She’d thought she was ready, but she hadn’t been. She’d been frightened in that room. Weak.
She isn’t sure which emotion makes her more angry.
“So, what did you find out?”
Eva’s eyes snap open. Jake is leaning against the opposite wall, fingers tapping another rhythm against his thigh. “You came out of there ready to put your dukes up.”
Eva stands up straight, tucking a curl uncertainly behind her ear.
“I just meant you look like you’re ready to fight the whole world,” Jake says. Then he grins. “Not that it doesn’t suit you.”
Eva looks at Jake’s easy smile. The clever fingers and the lovely eyes.
He is such a good liar.
Dangerous.
Jake pulls himself off the wall and they start back down the hall to the elevators.
“So what did Holtz say?”
“That he will write to a doctor. He …” Eva pauses. There’s a man coming toward them down the hall, in a pale blue jumpsuit, pushing a wide broom. “First he wants to …”
The man glances up, adjusting the trajectory of his broom. And she knows him. She’d know him anywhere.
Eva stops.
She’d thought he was dead.
The man with the broom has his head down, eyes on the gathering pile of dust and debris he’s pushing down the hallway. But he’s picked up his pace.
Eva’s body shifts into gear. She turns in place and walks away. Like someone floored the gas pedal. Down the hall, as if she knows exactly where she’s going, heels clipping smartly on the floor tiles, purse swinging. She turns the corner of the hall.
And the corridor stops. A dead end of doors with no elevator. Not even a potted plant.
She can hear the man coming, his broom brushing, a little tune whistling between his teeth. He’s going to come around the corner. He’s going to see her. And then what?
Eva doesn’t know. Only that it can’t happen.
She looks left, then right. She chooses right, opens a door, steps inside, and closes it again.
The room is windowless. Pitch-dark. Small. She can feel the smallness. She finds a shelf beside her and puts her back against it, her hand inside her purse, where she can feel the bread knife.
She breathes. Breathes. The space is too tight. And he’s coming.
There is so much pressure inside darkness.
And then the door wrenches open, blinding before it shuts again. She fumbles for the knife. Someone else is scrambling near the door. A switch clicks, a light comes on, and Eva only just controls the urge to scream.
It’s Jake.
“What the hell are you doing?” he whispers.
They’re in a narrow closet, with shelves of cleaning supplies, a sink, and a dirty mop bucket. Jake takes a step forward. He’s not smiling. He’s not moving to some music in his head. He grabs a shelf on either side of him, arms spanning the width of the closet. Blocking her way out.
“Who are you?” he says.
She steps back along the shelf.
“You going to answer the question? Or would you rather stab me with that knife you’ve got stashed in your purse? Who are you?”
“My name,” she whispers, “is Eva Gerst.”
“You sure about that? Because I thought some people called you Bluebird.”
Eva takes a deep breath, and then she straightens. Relaxes. It’s always so much better when you know. She narrows her eyes. “That,” she says, “is not my name.”
“Fine. It’s not your name. Then who’s outside?”
Eva glances at the mop and bucket. She’s walked through the one door a man cleaning a hallway just might decide to open.
“Come on!” Jake yells. “Who is the man outside?”
She levels her gaze at his pretty, lying eyes.
“A Nazi.”
INGE SCRAMBLES AWAY from the voice at the door and she screams. An eruption of fear she has no control over. Back and back, away from the dead body, banging hard into a set of cupboards. A shadow is in the doorway. In a uniform. An SS uniform. He steps into the kitchen.
“Rolf,” Inge whispers.
“Yes, hello.” As if he just happened to stop by and stick his head inside her father’s study. He’s thinner now, with an untended cut running along his cheekbone. “I’m sorry to have frightened you. But I always did frighten you, didn’t I?”
He walks to the body under the table, gives the cloth a prod with a toe. “Poor Eva. She was so stupid.”
Inge sidles along the edge of the counter, toward the door, but Rolf blocks her way. Holds out a hand. “No, no. Don’t go, Inge. You shouldn’t go outside. The Communists are here, you know. And the Americans, the British, they will all be here soon. There isn’t much time.”
He smiles, and starts opening drawers, like she had been doing. She stands a little in front of her cooking pot. It’s going to be hard to run away in Annemarie’s enormous shoes, and she doesn’t want Rolf to notice her beans.
“What are you doing here?” she whispers.
Rolf looks up. “I was a guard here, before the bombs fell. Didn’t you know that, Vögelchen?”
“I thought you were a pilot.”
“Oh, no. I never passed the tests. Your father didn’t tell you? Ah, well. He got me into the SS instead, and I was assigned here, to watch the filth from the camp make boots. So we can all have boots. I’m told this was useful. Noble, in fact.” He pulls a drawer out from its slot and upends it. “And now I am disappointed. I felt flattered that you came to see me. But life is a disappointment, isn’t it, Vögelchen?”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Oh.” He looks up. “I am sorry. That was special for your papa, wasn’t it?” He rummages through the drawer. “Why didn’t we have our own special name? I should have thought of it before. How about Zuckermaus? No? Or Prinzessin? I am surprised your father did not call you that. Or …”
Rolf stops and smiles, showing the little gap between his teeth. It must hurt, the way it stretches the cut on his cheek.
“Or I could be your Kuschelbär, and you can be my Honigbienechen. Because you are a sweet little bee that likes to sting your cuddle bear so much.”
He waves away a fly and goes back to his search, pleased. There’s blood on his uniform. It might be his. It might not. Inge reaches inside her pocket, feeling for her lump of concrete.
“So why you have come then, my Honigbienechen, if it wasn’t for your Kuschelbär?”
“I was looking for my father.”
“Oh? And where is the rest of the family?”
Inge pauses. “Dead.”
“Of course. Yes,” he mutters. “I suppose Ilse did it herself? Otto always said she would do the right thing, if the time came …”
Inge watches him sigh and pocket a box of matches.
Do the right thing.
Her anger is a pure white flame. She bites her lip until she tastes blood.
“Ilse was right,” Rolf says. “There is no hope. Not without the Führer. Berlin is gone and the war is lost. And we are the criminals now …”
And then Rolf has a knife, much like the one in her pot. He holds it up in the air, examining the sharpness of the blade.
“Your father said it would happen. Otto said if the Third Reich was victorious, then we would be heroes. Gods among men. Architects of the new civilization. But if we lost … Then we would be the worst criminals this world has ever seen. I wrote it down, you see. What he said …”
Maybe she is a criminal. The man at the camp would have thought so. And Ruth would, too.
Rolf is looking at Inge. His eyes are glistening. “And now it is true. And you and I are here. Together … at the end. It was supposed to be the three of us. And now, they will hang him, just like he said …”
Inge shakes her head. “The man at the camp said he wasn’t there.”
Rolf goes still. “You went inside the camp?”
“They arrested the commandant and the officers, but … von Emmerich … wasn’t there when the Communists …”
Rolf moves, faster than she was ready for, down the length of counter, knife in hand.
“He escaped? Are you certain?”
He has her by the shoulder. He doesn’t seem to remember he has a knife. She struggles loose, away from the blade, but Rolf doesn’t notice.
“I did not know. I thought …” He looks up. “Then Otto will be hiding. Going by a new name. He will leave Germany. It’s what he told me to do if …”
Rolf paces back and forth in front of the dead girl’s feet, the knife swinging dangerously close to his leg. And all at once, the way to the door is clear. She might have to come back for her pot.
“Pretend to be a refugee. A civilian, he said. And there was a place, a ship …” Sweat is breaking out on his forehead. “And if Otto is on the run, he will need me. And you need me …”
