All God's Children (12 page)

Anja’s head bobbed once, and she glanced at her husband and nodded again. Josef hoped that was her sign that she had heard him and wasn’t about to do something foolish. He wouldn’t be able to stop the guards along the platform from shooting the entire family if they tried to run. “Do not try to escape,” he added loudly for the benefit of the guard and also as a special warning to the husband, who refused to look at him.

Anja placed her free hand in her husband’s and held onto him. The train moved past them, the cries of its cargo echoing down the track as it gathered speed.

Then there was silence. The soldiers hurried back to their trucks and left, taking their dogs with them. Momentarily the platform was deserted.

They walked past two soldiers armed with rifles who apparently were assigned to patrol the area. Farther on, two burly men waiting at the entrance to the station were watching them. The men wore the garb common to the Gestapo, their hands jammed into the pockets of their trench coats. Their felt fedoras pulled low over their foreheads. Their shoulders hunched against the bitter wind.

“Mama, you have blood,” the boy said, pointing up at Anja.

Sure enough, as they neared the station entrance Josef saw that Anja was bleeding around her mouth where the guard had struck her. “Cough,” he hissed. “Cough into this like you are sick.” He thrust a handkerchief into her hand.

Anja followed his orders to the letter, going so far as to double over and gasp for air between hacking coughs.

“Doktor?” One of the secret agents stepped forward and looked at the insignia on Josef’s uniform.

“I have orders to take this woman and the rest of the family. I need to examine them, and unless there is a need to quarantine them owing to the woman’s coughing up blood, they are to be questioned—a matter involving her husband.” He jerked his head in the man’s direction.

The mention of quarantine had the desired effect of making the agent step back, opening the way for Josef to hustle the family into the station. “Keep your mouth covered, I told you,” he ordered harshly as Anja started to cough again. The blood stains on the white cloth were obvious, but the agents had followed them inside and were now conferring. It was clear that one of them had his doubts.

“Stay back,” Josef barked at the stationmaster and waiting passengers. They were attracting far too much attention, but he didn’t know how else to get away from the agents. He shoved Anja and her husband, who still carried their daughter, through the door that led to the street, then roughly pushed the boy after them and closed the door behind him.

To his relief a streetcar headed in the direction that led to the hospital was just pulling to a stop across the street. “Hurry,” he urged the family. “If they come after us, we will get off at the hospital. You’ll be safe there.”

It was a lie intended to get them moving when upon seeing the agents following them from the station, the husband froze.

Anja herded her son onto the car, soothing him as he finally gave into the stress of the last several minutes and began to shake with fear. Josef shoved the father, and the man handed Anja the baby as he found a seat and wrapped his arms around his son. Josef stood in the aisle, blocking them from the view of other passengers and hoping the agents would take his position as one of authority over them. His mind raced as he tried to come up with his next move. This was insanity. Why was he risking everything for these strangers?

Anja continued to cough, and Josef knew that she was no longer faking to fool those around her. A few of the passengers sitting nearby began to edge away from them and kept their eyes averted. One man cast a furtive and worried look toward Anja and murmured to Josef, “She sounds sick.”

Josef ignored him. They were nearing the next stop, so Josef leaned over and touched Anja’s arm. “We’ll get off here,” he said. They were just across the street from the hospital.

Once the streetcar had continued on its way, Josef checked to be sure no one was paying any attention to them. As usual people were going in and out of the hospital, but no one seemed especially interested in them.

“I have rounds,” Josef explained. “Can you find your way back to the apartment?”

Anja nodded.

“I will get you some medicine for the cough, but—”

“We understand,” Anja’s husband said. “Thank you for your kindness to my family.”

Josef shook hands with the man, then turned his attention back to Anja. “Beth is waiting for you. Walk three blocks in that direction, and you’ll come to the alley that leads to the rear courtyard. Wait there until you see that it’s safe to go inside.”

Josef could only hope that Beth would be watching for any sign of him, knowing that he would come back through the building’s rear entrance. If the family could make it to the professor’s apartment, they would be safe—at least for now.

Beth looked up from the silent prayer she’d engaged in from the moment Josef left to find Anja and the children. Oh, how she wished there was someone else praying with her. Even one person would help. This was not the way she had been raised. Quakers placed enormous importance on taking the time necessary to come to a consensus. But no one had ever prepared her for something like this—when there was simply no time for gathering and contemplating and waiting.

A sound from the corridor startled her. Was that a knock or simply her imagination? She edged toward the door.

There it was again.
Tap. Tap. Tap
.

“Who’s there?”

Her answer was a baby’s full-throated cry, and she flung the door open and stepped back as Anja stumbled into the foyer with Daniel, the baby, and a man dressed in tattered clothing. Blood covered Anja’s face around her mouth and chin. “This is my husband, Benjamin,” she managed.

“The doctor?” Beth asked, peering out the half-open door.

Anja shook her head, and Beth’s heart actually skipped a beat. “Arrested?” she asked, even as she could not bring herself to ask the question uppermost in her mind—the question of whether or not Josef was dead.

“No. No,” Anja assured her. “He is well. He is—” A harsh cough drowned out the rest.

“He is at hospital,” Benjamin explained.

“Come,” Beth said as she ushered the family into the kitchen. She helped Daniel out of his coat and lifted him onto a bench so that she could remove his shoes and socks. “A glass of warm milk would be good, no?” she asked, and he nodded. “And then you can all spend the day here, all right?”

The boy glanced at his parents, both of whom seemed to have lost the energy to protest anything that Beth might propose.

“There’s water in the kettle,” Beth told Benjamin as she lifted Anja’s daughter from her mother’s arms and carried her up the stairs. Daniel followed her.

“Mama?” He paused on the stairway.

“Coming,” she replied, her voice as weak as her smile. Benjamin turned on the gas under the kettle and then sat on the edge of the kitchen chair that Beth had been sitting in, his large hands dangling between his knees. “Go on,” he murmured to his wife.

When they reached the attic and the children collapsed onto Josef’s narrow bed, Beth realized that dried blood wasn’t the only thing marring Anja’s beautiful face. Tears ran down her cheeks, and when she looked at Beth it was a portrait of failure such as Beth had never seen before.

“We can do this,” Beth assured her as she wet a cloth in the basin of water she’d brought to them the night before. “For today we can do this, and then tomorrow…” She had no idea how to finish that sentence.

Anja drew in a deep shuddering breath as she wiped away her tears with the backs of her hands and bent to help Daniel get undressed. “Tomorrow,” she said firmly, “we will begin again.”

At the end of his shift, Josef practically ran all the way back to the apartment from the hospital. There was no sound coming from inside, but still he knocked at the front door. After several long minutes and a second knock, he heard someone coming.

No light went on, but he saw the shadow of a woman.

“Beth?” He heard the latch turn, and she opened the door a crack. “Are they here?”

“Ja.”

“We can get them out now that it is dark.”

“They are sleeping. They are exhausted, Josef.”

It was the first time she had used his given name without her uncle—or him—reminding her to do so. He permitted himself only a moment to savor the breakthrough, and then he pressed closer to the door. “Beth, they cannot stay here.”

“I know, but tomorrow will be soon enough. They will be safe until then.”

“And what will you do tomorrow?”

“I will think of something. Good night.” She closed the door and clicked the latch.

Josef stood in the dim corridor, staring at the closed door. He recalled how during his years in Boston he had been constantly taken aback at the certainty with which Americans approached life. They simply assumed that somehow they would find answers to whatever challenge they faced. Beth’s comment that she would come up with a plan showed that she had no idea of the lengths the authorities would go to in hunting for Anja and her family once they realized they were not on that train. He had no doubt that the guards knew precisely how many prisoners had boarded the train, and at the end of their journey, each one of them would be counted. Of more immediate concern was that he had no way of knowing if the guard or the agents in the station had reported Josef’s actions to their superiors.

He raised his hand, prepared to knock again and try and reason with Beth. But knowing she was unlikely to change her mind and too tired to argue, Josef trudged down the stairs to the street and waited for the last streetcar to come. He had taken a terrible risk in rescuing Anja and her family. What if someone had recognized him? What if his father had been at the station? He could have been. These days it was not unusual for high-ranking Gestapo agents to take a personal interest in the kind of round-up that had occurred earlier that day. Eduard Geith, one of his father’s more vicious colleagues, actually enjoyed bragging about his brutality during raids.

Unable to sleep once he reached the small apartment near the hospital where another medical student had offered him a spare bed, Josef didn’t wait for the first rays of dawn to streak the sky. He dressed and headed for his lab at the university. He might as well get some work done. He had taken far too much time away from his studies and research these last days while he tried to come up with some way to get Beth’s visa replaced. Now there was this new and far more dangerous situation that needed a solution.

He strode across the square, barely hearing the chiming of the Rathaus-Glockenspiel—the clock with its little figures putting on a show that as a boy he had so loved to watch. A trio of black sedans that had become synonymous with the government rumbled into the square, going so fast that if Josef had not stepped quickly into a doorway he would have been hit. As the cars roared away, Josef slumped against a pillar and looked at the buildings surrounding him. This was his home—the place where he had been born, gone to school, spent so many happy hours with his friends. But it all seemed so different to him now. Something sinister permeated the city these days—something that bordered on pure evil. Josef grieved for the country he loved.

Weighed down by despair, he walked the rest of the way to the university and unlocked the door to the laboratory that he shared with three other medical students. He had just switched on the lamp when he noticed the folded paper on the floor near the door. It brought back the memory of the first time he had found a copy of one of the leaflets calling for resistance and written by the group known as the White Rose. Now as then, notes left by unseen messengers were more often than not missives of bad news or words that could cause a person no end of trouble should such a document be found on his person. After the day and night he’d had, Josef decided the last thing he needed was to get caught up in something that could lead to more trouble for him or others. He ignored the paper and set to work.

But barely half an hour later he gave up any pretense of focusing on his work. He picked up the paper and spread it flat on his desk. The type was so faded that the words were almost unreadable. Josef held the paper closer to the desk lamp. He was barely past the opening sentence when he realized what he was reading.