Those Who Save Us (32 page)

Anna and Jack, Weimar, 1945

48

ALTHOUGH NULL HOUR HAS DESCENDED UPON THE GERmans, shifting the tectonic plates of their lives into new and unrecognizable shapes, Nature proceeds with her spring pageantry just the same. In fact, Anna has to admit that she has never seen a more glorious May. The kitchen window of the bakery affords a view of cherry and lilac trees so heavily laden with blossoms that their boughs graze the ground; the sky above them is so blue it looks enameled; a crisp and steady breeze tosses the new leaves with a sound like the boiling hiss of surf. A fanciful observer might suggest that the world has been washed clean overnight, that even the weather is showing its approval of the events of the past few weeks: the
Führer
’s suicide, the German surrender, the end of the war.

But Anna has lost all trace of whimsy, if ever she had any, and to her this beautiful afternoon is a personal insult, a dirty trick sent to lull her into thinking that everything will be fine now. She knows better. She has seen so many atrocious things happen on radiant days. Is she supposed to forget the first evening she went to the quarry, the mild air, that sky with its glowing stained-glass striations? Or a more recent incident, a prisoner being marched past the storefront window en route to the train station. Clubbed in the mouth for not moving fast enough, he squatted to furtively collect his teeth from among a growth of new tulips. That occurred on a lovely afternoon much like this one.

Anna is not alone in being plagued by such images, these insistent apparitions elbowing reality aside in their constant bid for attention. She has glimpsed others, Weimarians and American soldiers alike, standing in the middle of the road like stopped clocks, staring not at what is in front of them but at visions presented by the mind’s eye. However, the knowledge that her misery has company is little comfort, and this jubilant springtime display is not to be trusted. Life is a frosted cake made of worms.

She turns to wash her hands of the clinging remnants of doughy sponge. At least the Americans, disproving rumors of rape and disemboweled children, have proven to be decent, even generous captors. They are also ravenous. After years of living on food from tins, they have an unappeasable appetite for anything fresh. Hence the sacks of flour piled against the south wall of the kitchen like trench fortifications, U.S. ARMY NINTH INFANTRY stamped on their bulging burlap. And what flour it is! Fine as dust on the fingertips, no need to sieve it for insects or rocks. Anna has been baking for days, ever since the first private arrived at the bakery, ducking beneath the white sheet Anna had hung from Mathilde’s bedroom window.
Hey, we’ve got bread!
Anna heard from where she and the child were crouched in the cellar.
We’re dying for bread,
Fräulein;
make us some fresh bread!
Even forgoing sleep, Anna has been unable to keep up with the demand.

Now Anna levers a batch of loaves from the oven with the wooden paddle and slides them onto the worktable. Her nose wrinkles at their smell of yeast, that hot rich fermentation so reminiscent of the whiffs rising from her flesh in the WC after the
Obersturmführer
’s visits. But her stomach’s commands are stronger than her repugnance, and her mouth is suddenly full of bitter juice. Unable to wait for the bread to cool, Anna rips open a loaf and begins devouring steaming dough by the handful.

She doesn’t immediately notice the soldier standing in the doorway to the storefront, watching her. Then, catching movement in her side vision, she sputters, Oh! and chokes down the bread with effort.

She wipes her face with her apron, smiling apologetically. You startled me, she says in her own language. She pats her breastbone to denote the rapid beating of a heart.

Can I help you?
she then asks in English, a phrase she has perfected since the Americans’ arrival.

The Ami advances into the kitchen, head swiveling like a gun turret. Anna tries to place him. Has she seen him before? Yes: although all the Amis are enchanted by Trudie, the girl’s looped braids and storybook clothes, Anna recalls this fellow as being particularly smitten. He has brought Trudie chocolate, which Anna hides from her for fear that it is too rich for the child’s shrunken stomach. Once he gave Trudie a stick of the chewing gum to which all Americans seem addicted. This Trudie promptly grabbed and swallowed, causing Anna to worry that the girl’s innards would be permanently glued together.

Can I help you?
Anna repeats, wondering if he has come to play with the girl.
I have fresh bread . . .

The soldier continues walking toward her. His hip thuds against the worktable, and Anna understands that he is reeling drunk. The rotten-sweet smell of whiskey, half meat and half fruit, hangs around him in a vapor. Anna looks about for something she might use as a weapon—a pot, the rolling pin. Then she sees that the Ami is crying, a muscle beneath one eye jumping in a tic that makes him look as though he is winking at her. He is only a boy, poor thing, too young to have coped with the carnage of Europe’s battlefields. He is merely seeking comfort, a female touch, soothing words spoken in a woman’s voice.

So thinking, Anna is caught off guard when the soldier lurches into her, driving her against the worktable. He fumbles at her blouse, the worn material purring as it rips. Buttons pop off and bounce to the floor.

Anna tries to scream, but the Ami, even intoxicated, is too swift for her. Wrenching her arm behind her back, he forces her flat on her stomach on the table, one hand clamped around her throat. Anna’s head knocks against the wood. Through a drift of flickering confetti she sees a loaf not an inch away, still letting off its warm yeasty smell.

The Ami is pushing up her skirt now.
Kraut bitch,
he is saying,
Kraut bitch, you want this, huh? You want this? Huh? Huh?

The bright spots in Anna’s vision spread and grow dark. Her hands, pinned beneath her, are numb and tingling. Even if they weren’t, however, she would not move them. Why bother to fight? Whether this boy or the
Obersturmführer,
it all comes down to the same thing in the end. She hears the liquid trill of a bird in the tree beyond the window, growing ever fainter. She too is waning, starting to lose consciousness. She is grateful. It will be better this way—Then the Ami’s weight is hauled off Anna and air rushes into her burning throat. She chokes on it, taking great rasping lung-fuls. There is shouting behind her, swelling and retreating like the oscillation of waves. Anna grips the table, waiting for the dizziness to either claim her or pass.

It passes. Anna straightens and turns to find her attacker being restrained by another, older soldier. He, too, Anna has seen before. Unlike the others, who throng around her to flirt and tease, this Ami is made of more timid stuff, standing to one side until it is his turn to accept bread. A quiet man, a man apart. Now, though, he is quite voluble, shaking Anna’s assailant by the shoulders and yelling into his face. The younger Ami is drooling a little, and Anna realizes that throughout the entire encounter he has been chewing gum.

He is also determined to have his say; when the older soldier releases him, he wipes his mouth and mutters. Anna, straining for comprehension, hears him say...Buchenwald. He points at her with hatred.

They asked for it,
he says.

The older Ami, unmoved by this argument, shoves the younger toward the door. Anna’s attacker gives her a last poisonous look but slinks from the kitchen. Obviously he is of subordinate rank and must follow orders.

The remaining soldier turns to Anna. To her surprise, he speaks in her own language, albeit with a strangely mushy accent that makes him sound as though he has a cleft palate, and as loudly as if she were deaf.

Are you all right? he shouts.

He puts his face quite close to Anna’s. It is kind, but it is not handsome. His skin is terrible, oddly lumpy as if there were porridge lodged beneath it, and his eyes are small and dark and blink like a turtle’s. Anna looks away.

Do you need a doctor? he yells.

This Ami reminds her of somebody, but who? After a moment it comes to Anna: of course,
Hauptsturmführer
von Schoener. The American has the same wistful air about him as Gerhard’s old friend, the kicked-dog hopelessness of a man whose looks have condemned him to watching pretty women from afar. Still, Anna can feel the Ami’s interest pulsing from him as surely as she can see the corresponding beat of blood in the hollow of his throat. Another one! She would like to claw at her face with her cracked nails, all the better never to elicit this kind of attention in a man’s eyes ever again.

Yet he has saved her, so Anna supposes she must act grateful. Painfully, she swallows and shakes her head.

No doctor, she croaks.

Are you sure?

The Ami raises a hand as if to touch the bruises ringing Anna’s neck. Anna shies away.

I will not hurt you, he shouts. He thumps himself on the chest.

I’m Jack, he continues; Lieutenant Jack Schlemmer. Don’t worry about that kid, Fräulein. I took care of him. He won’t get fresh with you again. Do you understand?

The Ami nods vigorously, trying to elicit a positive response via encouragement. His small muddy eyes are as anxious as a boy’s.

You’re sure you’re all right?

Anna attempts to say
Yes
and
Thank you,
but her outraged throat, swelling now, will not permit it, so she nods as well. They bob their heads in tandem for a moment. The Ami seems to want to say something more, but at last he settles for patting the air near Anna’s shoulder and turns to leave.

When the bell over the storefront has signified his departure, Anna drops to her knees to rescue the loaves that have fallen to the floor during the scuffle. She brushes them off with her apron and lines them up on the worktable like a regiment. Then she rises and staggers through the back door into the grass. Reaction is setting in; her legs shake, threatening collapse. Her neck throbs. She puts a hand to it and leans on the bakery wall for support, gazing across the yard. The bird has fallen silent. The afternoon sun is tangled like a gold net in the trees.

Fresh, this Ami has said; he won’t get fresh with you. What an extraordinary expression! Bread can be fresh, as can vegetables and fruit, flowers and meat. Also fresh is the fragrance of laundry dried in the wind, or newly cut hay. But the interactions between the sexes? The Ami is indeed naive to describe them this way. Anna imagines that, were she able to visit the caves in which people first dwelled, she would find scrawled drawings that have been omitted from museums and history books. There would be scenes of ritual aggression and submission, painted in blood, caked with dried seminal fluid. They are the very antithesis of fresh, the rites between men and women; age-old and rotten to the core.

49

THEY ARE WALKING, ANNA AND TRUDIE, ANNA WITH THE girl’s hand clutched in her own. They walk through the streets of Weimar with the other townsfolk, all those who have not fled the city in a panic during the final deranged days before Null Hour. They walk as quickly as they can, which is to say not very quickly, since they are a malnourished, haggard lot, many of them with ill-fitting shoes or in stocking feet. But the Amis jogging among them with their guns drawn act as incentive, as do their stone-faced brothers on the truck that bounces over the street alongside. There has been an early morning roundup: cellars and attics searched; the Weimarians routed from their breakfast tables, beds, and bathrooms; dragged out by the hair or persuaded with blows from a rifle butt if they protest. And so they walk, Anna and Trudie amid the other women and children and old men who have not been killed or sent away.

It is a bigger group than Anna would have expected, numbering in the hundreds. She recalls hearing that all citizens not working for the military have been evacuated to provinces farther south. Anna is not surprised that she was allowed to remain. In servicing the
Obersturmführer,
has she not been fulfilling military duty? But she is not sure how the others have escaped the net. Perhaps the mighty machine of the Reich, grinding to a halt in its final days, had greater concerns than the tiny parts that splintered off, personified now in those who surround her.

They walk in obedient lines with their heads down. They pass once-grand houses and familiar storefronts decimated by shells. Though it is drizzling, and though the Amis have allowed the Germans to begin clearing the rubble, wisps of smoke still curl from piles of bricks and stone. A lady’s hat lies among the ruins. A piano’s backbone has been crushed by a fallen timber, its keys scattered on the pavement. Yet nobody dares gape at this grim scenery or elbow a neighbor to share a whispered comment on the destruction. Each stumbles along, eyes down, encapsulated in his own silence. The Americans might not be the SS, who would be using their rifles much more energetically by this time, but nor are they the friendly captors the Weimarians have come to know over the past two weeks. For no apparent reason, they have suddenly become hostile, and to fraternize might be to invite God-knows-what type of punishment.

Yet when Anna spies Frau Buchholtz trudging nearby with her brood, she angles through the ranks toward the woman.

What’s happening? she murmurs to the butcher’s widow from one side of her mouth. Where are they taking us, do you know? Why are they doing this?

Frau Buchholtz shoots Anna a narrow lateral glance, sucks her lips inward, and gives her head a tiny shake. Her eyes slide toward the soldiers in the truck, their weapons leveled at the Germans. Then, guiding her children, she drifts away from the reckless Anna.

I’m hungry, Mama, Trudie whispers. Is it much farther?

I don’t know, little one, Anna says.

She stands on tiptoe to search for the Ami she knows best, Herr Lieutenant Jack Schlemmer. She finally spies him sitting amid the group on the truck. It was he who came to the bakery this morning, just as Anna was setting a bowl of farina in front of Trudie; Anna barely had time to register that he was wearing his helmet with its funny netting of mesh before the others came to take them away. Anna had thought that he was coming to reassure her following the previous day’s attack. She had prepared a speech in English to thank him. Now she catches him staring at her, but when Anna meets his gaze, he severs contact by turning his head.

They reach the train station. Speculation ripples through the throng. Will they be loaded into the boxcars waiting on the tracks? But the Americans, shouting and waving their guns, indicate otherwise. Everyone turns left, onto a paved avenue that leads away from the city. Several streets spoke from this point, but Anna, with a little shock of fear, recognizes that the Americans are driving them up toward the forests of the Ettersberg. She is not alone in this realization. A moan rises from the crowd.

They’re taking us into the woods, a woman wails, they’re going to kill us all!

At this, there are screams and prayers. Some of the Germans break and run. They are swiftly caught and corralled back into place by the Americans.

They’re going to shoot us, another treble voice insists, they’re going to line us up and shoot us—Shut up! somebody says. You’re not making it any easier.

But they’re going to—Shut up!

One of the Americans on the truck stands and unslings his weapon. There are further screams at the staccato stutter of machine-gun fire, and some of the children begin to cry. But when it is realized that the bullets have been aimed at the low-hanging clouds rather than human targets, the multitude settles. Eventually all is quiet but for the shuffle of feet along the slippery pavement and the prehistoric moan of a tank in the distance. An elderly man near Anna recites the Lord’s Prayer under his breath.

Trudie drags on Anna’s arm. She is silently weeping, as is her new habit.

Mama, my feet hurt, she whispers.

The girl is far too heavy to be carried. Nevertheless, Anna takes Trudie on her hip. She will continue this way as long as she is able. It may not be that much farther now, depending on where the Americans are taking them. Anna has her suspicions. They are trudging up a steep incline, dark walls of pine looming on either side. A clammy fog warps the passage of sound; the grind of the truck’s gears might be a meter or five meters away. It begins to rain. Anna registers her discomfort as if from a distance; she is thinking how strange it is to be traveling on this road rather than picking her way through the brambles alongside it, her usual path to the quarry. Surely this is where the Americans will take them if there is to be a mass execution. But when they pass the site of Mathilde’s death and, a little beyond it, the dirt turnoff to the quarry, Anna feels nothing, no joy, no relief. She has the sensation of hovering outside herself, observing.

The command to halt comes so abruptly that, in obeying, people bump into one another. The man who has been praying prods Anna’s foot with his crutch and apologizes. One of his legs is missing beneath the knee, his patched trousers pinned neatly over the stump. He is not as old as Anna first thought; he is probably in his thirties. The Weimarians mutter and jostle as the Americans herd them closer together. The soldiers leap from the truck, dark shapes coalescing in the gloom. Trudie shivers; it is cold here on the mountain. The girl’s braids have come undone and strands of wet hair curve like commas on her cheeks.

It is raining harder now, with an accompanying wind. The fog has lifted enough to show Anna that they have reached the camp entrance. She pulls hastily away from the wall she has been leaning on. Inscribed on its stucco is the legend
RECHT ODER UNRECHT MEIN VATERLAND.
My Country, Right or Wrong. The archway over the iron gates bears a different, more ominous motto:
JEDEM DAS SEINE!
To Each His Due! And what, Anna wonders, watching the Americans organize people into columns, is their due to be?

Two soldiers push the heavy gates open, then take up positions on either side. Another American, a barrel-shaped man with a checkerboard of bars pinned to his uniform, strides to the iron archway. Glaring at the fearful crowd, he makes a short speech. He gestures toward the crematorium, the chimney of which is just visible through the trees. Anna, trying to translate, has the feeling she has been here before. In a way, she has. She has often enough imagined the camp from the
Obersturmführer
’s descriptions, pictured him patrolling its streets with his adjutant and dogs, envisioned the prisoners sprinting toward the flaming forest. Snaking through the fog is a most familiar odor, sickeningly fatty: that of a smoking campfire on which bacon is being cooked.

The American officer concludes his announcement, his mouth wincing in a tic of disgust. For a moment, Anna expects him to spit. He does not. Instead, he makes a chopping motion with one hand, and the soldiers begin forcing the Weimarians toward the gates.

Although it is not clear whether the Americans’ intent is to slaughter or incarcerate them, the Germans resist. Women balk, thrusting their children behind them; some try again to escape. The Americans are unimpressed, using their fists and rifle barrels to corral their captives. Anna, who is at the head of the crowd, struggles to maintain her balance. She shouts to Trudie to hold tight. The one-legged man is on the ground, reaching for the crutch kicked from beneath him. Somebody tramples on his hand and he shouts in pain.

A soldier drags the first woman toward the camp. She digs her heels into the mud; she clings to the bars of the gate, her head whipping from side to side. Then she spots Anna, who sees that it is Frau Hochmeier.

Wait, Frau Hochmeier screeches. She uses her free hand to claw at the soldier’s arm. Wait, look. Her, over there, look.

The startled soldier glances at her. The people nearest the gate, sensing a possible diversion, quiet somewhat, and Frau Hochmeier uses the pause to her advantage.

Why imprison us? she yells. We’ve done nothing wrong. We just did as we were told, like good citizens. It’s criminals like her you should lock up, that woman right there. She’s an SS whore!

Frau Hochmeier points at Anna.

While the rest of us suffered and starved to feed our children, she was sleeping with an SS officer. I saw it, we all saw it!

That’s true, that’s right, Frau Buchholtz calls. I saw it with my own eyes. Put her and her kind in the camp and leave the rest of us alone.

There are shouts of Whore! Whore! The soldier looks bewildered. Frau Hochmeier places a finger on her upper lip to mimic the
Führer
’s mustache and marches in place; then she points again to Anna and pumps her hips back and forth.

That child she’s holding, that’s an SS bastard, she yells.

Somebody in the crowd whinnies hysterical laughter. A clod of mud hits Anna’s arm. The crippled man, having regained his footing, quickly crutches himself away.

Anna stands pressing her daughter’s face to her chest. She could attack Frau Hochmeier, defend herself by responding in kind. She too has only acted to protect her child. But she is paralyzed by the certainty that it will do no good to protest. She has simply awakened from one nightmare into another.

Two of the Americans shove through the mob to bracket Anna on either side. Initially, she thinks this is for her own protection. Then, to immense approval, they propel her with Trudie toward the gates. Frau Hochmeier draws back as Anna and Trudie are thrust past her; she cringes as if Anna were violent as well as morally bankrupt, as if Anna is going to hit her.

Anna doesn’t look in her direction. Nor does she resist the hands that grip her. She concentrates on holding Trudie and keeping her balance. She wishes she had enough mastery of the soldiers’ language to tell them that there is no need to force her. She is light-footed and clearheaded; she could sing with relief. She has been praying, in some secret part of her, for this moment of expiation, this penance.

As she steps beneath the archway, somebody else shoulders through the crowd, the Ami who put a stop to the attack of the day before. His forehead is creased in furrows beneath his helmet.

Trust me, he says to Anna in his pulpy German. Then he lifts Trudie from Anna’s arms.

The girl lets out a shrill scream and reaches for Anna. Anna lunges toward her daughter, but the soldiers restrain her. One of them shouts at Herr Lieutenant Schlemmer, who tightens his grip on the thrashing, shrieking child.

Hey,
he says in his own language,
this is nothing for a kid to see.

He turns toward Anna. You will not be hurt in there, he yells in German. But it is no place for your daughter. I will watch over her.

Despite his clumsy accent, Anna understands. She has a single second to convey her gratitude with her eyes. Then, as Trudie wails behind her, Anna is pushed along with Frau Hochmeier and all the others through the gates to
Konzentra-tionslager
Buchenwald.