All God's Children (30 page)

J
osef found Beth exactly where he had thought she might be. She was sound asleep, her face covered with lank tendrils of her blond hair. He could smell the decayed leaves and garden refuse along with the dank wool of her sweater.

“Beth,” he whispered. “Beth, it’s me—Josef.” He touched her shoulder, and she startled awake and shrank from him. “I’m here.” He knelt so that she could hear him more clearly and perhaps make out his features in light from the half moon reflecting off the snow. “It’s all right.”

Clumsily she crawled toward him and fell into his arms. “Josef,” she said, her voice a painful rasp. She touched his face, his hair, his shoulders as if trying to reassure herself that he was not some dream. “Oh, Josef, what are we to do?” She buried her face in the crook of his neck, muffling her sobs.

“Come,” he urged, half lifting her with him as he got to his feet. “Let’s get you some dry clothes.”

“No. The Gestapo…” she hissed when she realized where he was leading her.

“They won’t come back—at least not tonight.”

He understood that she did not have the strength to resist. She could barely walk, so cramped were her muscles from staying in one position for however many hours. He wrapped his coat around her shivering shoulders and helped her to the front of the building, then up to the door of her uncle’s apartment. Inside the moonlight came through the windows, for there had been no one to close the blackout curtains until now. “Sit,” he instructed as he shut the door and moved from room to room, closing the curtains.

When he returned to the front room where he’d left Beth half reclining on the sofa, she was not there. His heart racing, he headed for the front door and then saw her standing in her uncle’s study holding the professor’s pipe in her hand. “Why wouldn’t he have taken this with him?” she asked. “He loved this pipe.”

“He was in a hurry. We can take it to him.” He eased the pipe from her ice-cold fingers. “Come, I’ll make a fire. We’ll have some tea.”

After he had built a fire in the wood stove and prepared tea and filled a plate with a stale pretzel, some mustard, and hard cheese and set it before her, Josef went to her room. He had abandoned the suitcase in the courtyard so he could help Beth. Now he sorted through the remaining clothing on her bed and found a pair of wool slacks, a long sleeved blouse, a sweater, and a pair of heavy socks. “Here are dry clothes,” he said, laying the clothing on the bench next to the kitchen table. “I’m going up to the attic to get an extra jacket.”

She remained sitting, staring at the floor. She had not touched the food or the tea. “Beth, we have to get out of here as soon as possible— now change and then eat something.”

She stared up at him unseeing. “Don’t leave me,” she whispered.

He knelt next to her. “I won’t leave you, but you must get out of those wet clothes and into something warm and dry, and your aunt would have my head if she thought I had been in the room while you changed.”

His ploy worked. The mention of her aunt brought the hint of a smile to her lips, and she took a sip of the tea before setting the cup on the table. She peeled off the sodden sweater. “Well go on,” she said. “We wouldn’t want to upset Tante Ilse.”

Josef ran up the attic stairs. He rummaged through his trunk until he found a sweater vest, which he pulled on over his shirt. Then he put on a wool military jacket over that. They would leave the suitcase—it would only slow them down and draw attention. They were fugitives and needed to spend the night on the run. They might spend the next several days and nights on the street—but better that than in a prison cell.

When he came downstairs, Beth was dressed and seemed somewhat recovered. She was packing whatever food she could find into a knapsack that the family had carried on picnics in happier times. She wore her coat and hat and the leather gloves he had given her.

“Where are your mittens?”

“I prefer these.”

He took her hands. “These will not keep you warm enough.”

“Then I will wear my mittens over them,” she informed him and continued searching for food to add to their supply. If he hadn’t been so filled with panic, he might have smiled. This was the Beth he knew— and loved.

It was clear to Beth that Josef had no better idea than she did of where they should go next. By the time they sneaked away from the apartment the next morning, it was stunning how quickly options they had once taken for granted were no longer available to them. They could not risk traveling by streetcar or buying a train ticket. The train station was teeming with men in uniform—police, storm troopers, Gestapo. Just walking down the street they might be stopped at any moment and asked to show their papers.

“Perhaps they are not looking for you,” she suggested as they walked as quickly as they dared so as to not attract attention. Josef turned down a street where he had heard of a man willing to create forged documents.

“We can’t take that risk.”

The man was not home. “He left,” a neighbor across the hall informed them. “I have pen and paper if you want to leave a note.”

Josef grinned broadly at the woman and slapped his forehead. “Dumkopf, I got the day wrong,” he told her and then took hold of Beth’s elbow and steered her back down the stairs.

“Now what?”

“Lilo,” he said, already walking away.

Lilo Ramdohr was a friend of the White Rose—especially close to Alex Schmorell—but she had stopped short of becoming fully involved in the group’s activities. If anyone could help them, it would be Lilo. Beth hurried to catch up to Josef. Lilo’s apartment was on the other side of the city. It would be late by the time they got there.

Lilo opened the door to her apartment as if she had been expecting them. She served them a thin potato-and-red-cabbage soup as she told them what she knew of the events of the last twenty-four hours.

“We passed by Willi’s place but…”

“Willi left yesterday to have dinner with his cousins in Pasling. He got home around midnight and was immediately arrested along with his sister.”

“And Hans and Sophie?”

“The Gestapo found the typewriter and some of the envelopes and stationery in Hans’s apartment. They are both still being held at Wittelsbacher as far as I’ve been able to learn.”

Beth did not have to be told that Wittelsbacher Palace was headquarters for the Gestapo. She shuddered. “And Alex?”

“Everyone is in danger. We have no idea what they have done to our friends or what names they’ve been forced to reveal. They are also looking for Christoph. They found his leaflet in Hans’s pocket. He tried to get rid of it but failed. No one can say for sure what will happen now.”

“Won’t there be a trial? I mean, they’ve been arrested and presumably charged,” Beth pointed out.

Lilo gave her a smile that spoke volumes about her opinion of that wishful thinking. “This is not America, Beth. A trial is at best a formality.”

“But if the students rise up—”

“As they did when Hans and Sophie were taken into custody? I understand some actually cheered.”

It was true. Beth had seen that for herself.

Lilo turned to Josef. “I cannot help you. You might have some chance if you ask for mercy from your father—perhaps he…”

Josef stood and laid his napkin next to his plate. “Thank you, Lilo. We will find a way,” he said as he held out his hand to Beth. “Take care.”

Beth understood that Lilo had no choice but to let them go. She could only pray that this dear brave woman would be safe and that someday perhaps when this horrible war was finally over they could all…

It was better not to think beyond this moment. She and Josef were fugitives and needed to find a place to hide. As they stood outside Lilo’s building buttoning their coats and fumbling in the pockets for gloves and mittens, Josef pulled two envelopes from his pocket.

“I forgot I had these,” he said. “The professor left you this note.” He handed her the envelope. “He left a message for me as well.”

“What did yours say?” Beth asked, frustrated at the awkwardness of her mittens as she tried to open the tightly sealed envelope.

“They got your call. They were sure they could make the train to Lenggries in time. We should join them as soon as possible.” He turned the paper over as if expecting more. “Why there? Why not to Marta’s in Eglofs?”

“Perhaps they had to change plans,” Beth said as she finally pulled off one mitten and ripped open her envelope. Her message was even more brief than Josef’s had been, and the words written in her uncle’s familiar flowery scrawl struck fresh fear into her heart:
Josef has betrayed us
.

Beth’s face had gone pale as she read her uncle’s message, but when Josef reached for the note, she crumpled it and shoved it into her pocket. “He says—that is, it says the same as yours.”

A military transport truck rumbled by.

“We should go,” Josef said and reached for her hand as he glanced around for the safest route. “This way,” he said and realized that she had not taken his hand. Indeed when he turned to her, she was backing away from him, her hands stuffed into her coat pockets, her shoulders hunched.

“I think perhaps we would be safer if we split up. After all, people know we are often together, and Lilo said that Willi had been arrested. If he gives them our names…”

“Willi would never….” He could see that she was terrified but thought her fear was understandable given everything she’d had to face over the last two days. He took a step toward her. It was only when she turned from him that he realized that what she feared most at this moment was him.

“Beth,” he said, stretching out his hand to her.

She ran to board a streetcar just pulling away from the curb. As she reached up to grab onto the door post, the crumpled paper fell from her pocket. Josef ran alongside the car as she made her way toward a window seat, but although he continued to run until he could no longer match the streetcar’s speed, not once did she look at him.

He stood in the middle of the street, paralyzed by confusion as he watched her disappear. Then he walked back to where he’d seen the note fall and picked it up.

Josef has betrayed us
.

How could the professor believe such a thing? How could Beth believe such a thing? He loved her. He would gladly sacrifice his life for hers. Suddenly nothing mattered—not his rage at what Hitler was doing to his beloved homeland, not the work of the White Rose, not even the arrest of his friends and the likelihood that he would be among them soon if he didn’t find a way out of the country.

The only thing that mattered was that Beth believed that he had deceived her. If it was the last thing he did, he had to find her and convince her that he had not.

Beth rode the streetcar to the end of its route and found herself in Harlaching, where Josef’s parents lived. Because she had only been in this part of the city that one time, it was definitely unfamiliar territory. As she exited the streetcar, other passengers crowded on—men and women headed home from work or shopping, wanting to be back in the safety of their houses or apartments before dark. Not one of them smiled. Ever since the defeat at Stalingrad, it was as if everyone had suddenly realized that Germany was vulnerable and that history might repeat itself. Those who had lived through the first war were all too aware of what could happen if once again Germany went down in defeat.

On the other hand, everyone’s preoccupation with the future meant that they paid little attention to her. Dressed as she was, Beth might pass for someone on her way home after a day in the country. She walked quickly along the busy street, barely glancing left or right as if on a mission to reach her destination. Anyone passing her would never guess that she had no idea what that destination might be.

As she left the shopping district behind and walked down the streets lined with homes very like the one where Josef’s parents lived, twilight settled over the city. Beth’s panic became real. A wind from the north promised a cold night despite the sunny day just passed. Without once breaking stride, she considered every park and garden gate she passed as a possible place she might hide until it got dark and she could move about the city more freely.