Danzig Passage

  Again and again he repeated those words. When the new SS officer strode into his cell, Karl was not afraid of what he might do to him. He would welcome an end to this. The torture had not ended since the hour Nels Ritter had left him.

  Officer Alexander Hess played the role of one sympathetic to Karl’s situation. He had a chair brought in, and he sat across from Karl and talked gently to him at first. “All right, you have made your point. But you cannot win, Pastor Ibsen.” The round, shop-clerk face seemed sad. “Look at you! I was just looking at your picture. You and your wife, Helen.” He paused while the knife found its mark. “And your children. Lori and Jamie. Beautiful children. They haven’t changed. Only taller.”

  Haven’t changed? How did this man know? Did he see them? Talk to them? The knife twisted. Karl dared not answer.

  Hess continued. “They miss you, of course. They cannot understand why their own father has abandoned them.”

  Silence. An ache filled Karl’s heart, a pain much greater than the broken bones.

  Hess extended the photograph of the family. Helen, sitting in the sunlight, her arm linked with his! And Lori and Jamie hugging each other. Karl’s hand lay on Jamie’s shoulder—this same hand with the broken fingers. Karl could remember what it was like to touch the faces of his children.

  He caressed them with his eyes instead. His throat tightened with emotion and longing for that moment, and he prayed that God would help him not show his longing to this new man. A miracle. Karl’s eyes remained dry and his breath even.

  Fear not those who kill the body . . . Oh, God! They use love to try to kill my soul!

  “Why don’t you just admit your errors? Then all will be well again. You can see your children. Embrace them.”

  “I cannot embrace anyone,” Karl said. “My arm is broken.”

  “Bones heal. Broken hearts do not. You are leaving your children as orphans. By your choice.”

  “The Lord . . . says . . . ‘I will be father to the fatherless.’”

  A flicker of anger flashed through the officer’s eyes. “You have suffered here.” He maintained his patience. “I am certain they have made it very hard for you.”

  Fear not those who can kill the body.

  The officer continued. “But are you willing for Lori and Jamie to suffer—maybe to die—for the stubbornness of their father?”

  Could words so cruel be spoken in such a gentle voice? Such a question should have been asked with a chorus of shrieking demons. If Karl listened, he could hear the wailing of hell behind that question.

  An answer, Lord! An answer! Fear not! Fear not those who kill the body, only those who kill the soul!

  Karl closed his eyes and listened to the answer in his heart. He looked up at Hess, who sat smiling. “My children are both saved.”

  “But they are not safe.”

  “They are safe.”

  “They are in the hands of men who may use them as weapons against your stubbornness. Are you willing—”

  Karl jerked his head up. He had heard the Voice tell him what he must ask. “You say my children have grown?” He smiled.

  “Life in the Hitler Youth is very good. Good food, exercise, and . . . they are well. For now.”

  “May I see photographs of them?” Karl asked. He saw surprise cross the officer’s face.

  “Photographs?” The officer pointed at the picture of the family. “There you have—”

  “I want to see how they have grown.”

  “Well, I . . . that is, we—”

  Karl smiled. “You cannot provide me with photographs because you do not have my children. No, Lori and Jamie are not in your web.”

  “You will see—”

  “My children are saved,” he said again. Then he closed his eyes and did not hear the rest. He listened to the sweet whispers and was unchanged. Unmoved. Unafraid.

  ***

  The din inside the vast railway terminal was deafening. Voices, hissing train engines, and loudspeakers emitted an echoing roar.

  The ticket lines were all long. From the bits of conversation gleaned from around her, Lucy guessed that nearly everyone here was trying to get home for the holidays.

  The queue inched slowly forward. It was thirty minutes before Lucy finally found herself face-to-face with a ticket clerk.

  She hesitated a moment too long with her question and the man burst out impatiently, “Yes? Well? Well?”

  She carefully gauged how she might ask the question without rousing the man’s curiosity. There was certainly something illegal in what she hoped to do. The trick was not getting caught.

  “Yes. For Christmas, I want my brother to come to Vienna to visit me,” she began.

  “Yes? Well?” He wanted only details necessary to sell her the ticket so he could get on to the next customer.

  “He will not come unless it is a round-trip ticket back to Bavaria.”

  “Round trip, Bavaria . . . that would be Munich. The fare is—”

  Lucy interrupted him. “What I need to know is this: If I convince him to stay on with me in Vienna, might I obtain a refund on the unused portion of his ticket?”

  There was nothing to think about. “Certainly. Return the unused portion, and you will be refunded. Yes.” He paused as he figured the fare. When he looked up through the wire of his cage, the beautiful blond woman had vanished.

  ***

  Seven hundred Marks. Lucy laid the bills out on the bed in neat piles of twenty Mark notes. It was not the full one thousand that she had hoped to have, but it was enough, and much more than the limit she could legally take out of the country.

  She patted the money with the joy of a child who had been saving a long time for something special. “Danzig!” she said aloud as she slipped the notes into a long brown envelope and then into her purse. A shudder of excitement and relief coursed through her.

  On the radio in the front room, martial music blared as a prelude to some official Reich announcement. The people of the Reich and the people of France had just signed a mutual non-aggression treaty. Lucy paid no attention to the details. Soon she would be out of Germany, and she had found a better place to hide than France. “Danzig,” she said again as she hurried out the door and made her way back to the bustling railway terminal.

  The lines were longer, the clatter more resounding; the movement of people through the building seemed constant.

  Lucy took care not to stand in the same line she had when she asked her question an hour before. She had too much at stake to risk the first man recognizing her.

  The ticket clerk, an Austrian civil servant with a drooping mustache and a cap so old that the visor was cracked, smiled at her through the cage. The smile seemed to say that he had been around a long time and was not threatened by the German workers who had been brought in to replace so many.

  “A long wait, eh? And how can I help you, Fräulein?”

  “Danzig.” Lucy pulled her envelope out and laid it on the counter.

  The ticket seller looked down his nose at the envelope. “Danzig, ja. You are traveling alone?”

  The blessed question filled Lucy with happiness as she answered it. “No—I mean, what is the fare?”

  “How many tickets to Danzig, bitte?”

  Lucy had forgotten the most important bit of information. “Well, they must be round-trip tickets. From here to Danzig and then back again to Vienna, if you please.”

  “And how many are traveling?” The man was not impatient. Travelers were often a bit confused about travel plans. But he could not tell her how much until she told him how many.

  “How much for each passage, bitte?” she insisted. “I need to know if I have enough for all of us, you see.”

  That was a different matter—counting her pennies. Of course, there must be cash enough for each traveler, or someone would have to stay behind. “Round trip. Vienna to Berlin to Danzig. Back the same route.” He checked a printed sheet. “If you get a Polish travel visa, the cost is only sixty-fi
ve Marks, Fräulein.”

  A Polish visa. Lucy had forgotten all about that. “Polish visa.” She said the words carefully, as though she did not understand.

  He answered patiently. “Ja. You must, if you enter Danzig overland through Poland, go to the Polish consulate and obtain a travel visa. That is the least expensive manner of travel.”

  Lucy did not care about least expensive. This was, after all, merely a banking transaction for her. She would put all her extra money into round-trip tickets. At the first stop, she would cash in the unused portion and convert it to ready cash.

  “What is the other way?” she stammered too eagerly.

  He seemed amused. He cocked a bushy eyebrow and leaned forward with advice. “Many people do not wish to be troubled with the Polish visa. Yes. I understand.” He smiled, revealing tobacco-stained teeth that gave him the appearance of an old horse. “If you purchase a ticket directly to Danzig only, you may go in a sealed car across the Polish frontier and never have to go through Polish customs. And then, Fräulein, you do not need a visa.”

  “That sounds like a very good idea. How much?”

  “One hundred marks,” the old fellow said. “And will all want to travel together?”

  The line behind Lucy was restless with the slow Austrian way of doing things. There were impatient murmurs as she counted out the bills. “Five round-trip tickets,” she said, figuring that she could easily carry out the extra cash and never be questioned by the German authorities.

  “You will be traveling when?”

  Her smile faded. “When?”

  “It is important to know when you will come to catch the train.” His smile widened. “Otherwise you will miss it.”

  She exhaled nervously. “I . . . might I make the decision later? We have not all settled on the date yet.” She looked toward the platforms as a train chugged slowly out from the train shed. For an instant she thought how easy it would be to buy her tickets and get on the train right now. But she had not packed. She had brought no clothes. No baggage.

  The ticket seller stuck out his lower lip and gestured toward the number of his cage. “I will write out the tickets, Fräulein. And when you decide, make certain you come to my counter the day before. We will fill in the date, ja?”

  She nodded gratefully and slipped the money to him as he filled out all the details on the tickets. Everything but the actual date and time. As he finished, the amusement in his eyes faded to a serious concern. “Good luck, Fräulein,” he whispered. “This counter, remember. Grüss Gott.” The voice was so low that only Lucy could hear it above the noise of the terminal. Until this moment she had not guessed that others fleeing the Reich currency regulations might have tried the same method of concealing the funds.

  Slipping the tickets into her handbag, she raised her hand in a halfhearted Heil. A question ran through her mind: Is it safe?

  “This counter only, Fräulein,” he said. “Remember.” With that warning, he looked past her and called loudly, “Next!”

  ***

  There was so much to do. Ten thousand homeless children were coming to England soon. Stacks of letters and applications piled up on every table at the Red Lion House, and even higher stacks cluttered the house of Anna and Theo.

  “You would think we could have no time for grief,” Elisa said to Anna.

  Charles heard them talking in low, sad tones as he walked through the front room toward the stairs with Louis. The two boys sat on the landing just out of sight and listened. Things had been gloomy indeed since the broadcast of D’ Fat Lady in Vienna. Charles and Louis had been ecstatic about their names being mentioned over the radio. They had run up to hug everyone when the adults came home. But Anna had only hugged them tightly, the way mothers hug when they do not want to cry but might do it anyway. And then she had really cried.

  Louis put a finger to his lips to warn Charles not to make a sound. They might get to the bottom of this somber mood that had undermined all the excitement.

  “We can’t give up on Lori and Jamie, Mother,” Elisa consoled.

  “No. But the message said they were in hiding, being hunted as well. I was hoping they made it to the charity in Prague. But there has been no sign. And who knows what will become of Karl now that Helen is dead? We must pray that he does not give in to them, Elisa. He is . . . a man like your father. You know how deep the goodness goes. The kind of man that evil men envy and destroy.” She paused. “I was just thinking about that family. All of your children playing in the backyard. You were more like a big sister to Lori than a cousin.”

  “I played with her like a little doll—and she was.”

  “Helen and I used to watch you both and imagine what it would be like to be grandmothers together, in Berlin, to take our babies for long strolls in the Tiergarten, to the zoo.” Anna’s voice broke. “I wanted to tell her you were expecting . . . she was the last of my family. Somehow having her gone makes me miss my mother and father as well.”

  “Not the last, Mother. We must think of Jamie and Lori, and not give up hope. There was that message from Timmons in Berlin.”

  “Yes.” Anna sounded stronger. Louis exhaled loudly with relief as she lightened her voice.

  Elisa abruptly held a hand up to silence her mother. “Charles? Louis?” she called. “What are you up to?”

  “Listening,” Louis said honestly. And that was the end of the conversation.

  Elisa and Anna returned to the forms and endless applications, all from mothers hoping to send their children far away to safety.

  ***

  The evening gown was too tight. Lucy strained to hold in her stomach as Wolf tugged at the gaping zipper.

  “You cannot go the concert in this,” he said impatiently.

  “I will wear the other one,” she said. “The red one you like so well.”

  “You look like a prostitute in that!” he snapped. “The general is visiting from Berlin. The entire commission will be attending tonight. How would it look if I show up with a fat-bellied whore at my side?” He glared at her stomach, which did not show her pregnancy at all in everyday clothes. Only in the skin-tight evening dresses was her condition noticeable.

  “Well then, I will keep my coat on.” Lucy fought to keep the emotion from her voice. She had been looking forward to the concert of Christmas music at the Musikverein. It was the only occasion Wolf had invited her to for the holidays.

  “You will not keep your coat on,” he sneered, “because you are not going. You are too fat. Fat pregnant women belong at the Lebensborn. Generals expect their junior officers to be discreet about such matters. That is why the Lebensborn has been provided. I have not been discreet.”

  Lucy did not push the argument further. Better to let the matter drop before Wolf arrived at the conclusion that she should be confined at the Lebensborn immediately. Lately he had become more and more impatient and irritable with her.

  “Then I am not going.” She shrugged as though it did not matter. Slipping out of her dress, she pretended to look at herself in the mirror. She was, in fact, watching Wolf look at her. Out of the restrictive dress, Lucy looked no different than always. She hoped that Wolf noticed; that thoughts of sending her behind the walls of the Lebensborn would vanish as he appraised her. She turned to face him. “You know I do not dress to please your generals, Wolf,” she chided. “And if you prefer me this way, then I simply will not dress at all.”

  The seductiveness of her tone melted his impatience with her. He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her close. “No one else must be able to look at you.” He kissed her.

  She pushed him away and raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Who would look at a mother of the Reich?” she teased.

  “Everyone looks at you. Don’t pretend you don’t know that.” He held her wrist too tightly, and she did not struggle.

  “Then maybe you should keep me pregnant from now on.” She smiled.

  “I intend to try.”

  “But tonight you have already
succeeded and so you do not need to stay. You will be late,” she warned.

  He kissed her hard, angrily.

  “Your general will not approve if you are late to the concert.”

  He pushed her away and stepped back, examining the soft, subtle roundness of her belly. “Too many Sachertortes,” he remarked. “Put your dress on. You may go with me.” He glanced at his watch. “Hurry. We have a stop to make.” He smiled again, as though he had some secret triumph he would not share with her.

  “What should I wear? What would please you?”

  “The red dress.” He changed his mind just that quickly. “It is near Christmas. Red is a suitable color.”

  ***

  Wolf cradled a bottle of champagne in his arm. The bottle was wrapped in red cellophane and tied at the neck with a red bow. He placed it on the seat on his car between him and Lucy.

  She supposed that the champagne was for some general or other, but she was wrong.

  As they drove through the snowy streets of Vienna, Wolf explained. “You remember the task I have been given? To find the leak among the Gestapo staff? To find the one tipping off the Jews?”

  Of course she remembered. Within the context of that conversation Wolf had spoken of ruthlessness and duty as one quality. She had heard a threat to herself on that night. “Have you found him?”

  He jerked his head in reply. Lucy studied his profile as the lights of decorations on the city hall gleamed through the windshield of the car. The brilliant Christmas decorations of Vienna seemed an unreal contrast to the subject they spoke of. Lucy looked away as a streetcar loaded with Christmas shoppers rumbled past. The smoke of burning fires rose up from the open-air bazaar in the park in front of the Rathaus. Everywhere were uniforms. Nazi uniforms. All those in civilian clothes wore swastika armbands plainly visible on the arms of their coats. Every building was draped with enormous swastika flags illuminated by blinking lights. This was Austria’s first Christmas under those flags. Somewhere in all this, Lucy imagined the man whom Wolf now pursued. Did the fellow browse through the stalls of the Christmas bazaars? Or was he off somewhere saving a Jew and sealing his own fate in the bargain?