Winter Passing
Authors: Cindy Martinusen Coloma
Tags: #World War II, #1941, #Mauthausen Concentration Camp, #Nazi-occupied Austria, #Tatianna, #death-bed promise, #healing, #new love, #winter of the soul, #lost inheritance, #Christian Fiction, #Christian Historical Fiction
Wint
er Passing
CINDY MARTINUSEN COLOMA
Published by eChristian, Inc.
Escondido, California
To Grandma Ruby,
Your spirit, strength and joy inspires my life
For, lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of the singing of birds is come.
Song of Solomon 2:11-12
Austria
August 11, 1941
Her eyes weighed heavy, but Tatianna could not sleep. Time ran too quickly against her life for one moment to be wasted in rest.
A movement disrupted the silence. She waited, but nothing. Someone in another cell must be stirring. But soon the footsteps would come. Then Tatianna would hear soldiers’ boots beyond her door, the clang of a cell opening, and the scrape of shackles against the floor. A frantic plea for mercy would descend into the prison, or more often, an eerie stillness. Tatianna would sit unmoving, knowing unseen strangers in their cells listened with her. She imagined they held their breath as she did, until the sound of bullets erupted.
They would come again. Yet today would be different. It wouldn’t be the cell down the hall or the cell beside her that would open. Today Tatianna’s door had been chosen. No lamb’s blood covered her doorpost. The death angel in SS uniform would find his way inside. Today her shackles would scrape the tile floor. Today the bullets would burst into her chest.
God, will you not send me a savior even now as I go to my death? I chose your way, but I’m afraid to die.
Tatianna folded her hands and winced in pain. That was good—to feel pain in her stiff and broken fingers. The throbbing up her arm reassured her that life survived within her. The gaunt and tattered body, though foreign to her eyes, continued to breathe and move. They’d tried everything to make her speak, but, thank God, she didn’t have the information. Through their torture, Tatianna knew she would have cracked. But she didn’t possess the answers they sought. And the one piece of the puzzle she did know, they’d never asked.
Tatianna sat on the floor and drew her legs to her chest. Fleas scampered away as she leaned back against the thin mattress. She smiled, feeling her lips crack. For Tatianna had one victory over them—one they would never know. They saw her as useless now, so she could take her secrets with her. But could there still be a way in her final hour? Miracles always happened in the books she read. At the last instant, the heroine was rescued. But there was no one to save her. No one near enough to help.
A stream of light shot through the high bars of the cell. The beacon of morning would have meant warmth and security if shining through the glass panes at her home, but today it signified her approaching death. Her time drew to the end as rapidly as light gathered and crept along the top of the cement wall.
Tatianna closed her eyes. Her mother would say, “Keep your jaw set and your way clear. Everything will work out.”
Will it, Mother? Will everything work out today?
Her mother and thoughts of home brought doubts that clouded out hope once again. Hope, then fear; hope, then fear. Tatianna had made the right choice, hadn’t she? Hope, fear.
A creaking noise rang down the hall. Tatianna jumped. The first gate opened and footsteps approached, then stopped at her cell. Keys jingled in the lock and the door opened.
Tatianna didn’t look into the faces of the two soldiers as she walked between them. The thud of their boots and clang of her shackles echoed through the stone corridor. She knew the other prisoners sat and listened. Did they hold their breath?
A guard bent and removed her shackles. As they entered the open courtyard, a chill of morning cold grasped her body. Next it was down stone steps and out of the execution area. She looked at the wall where she had expected to die. Should she feel hope? Were they releasing her instead?
They crossed the roll call area but did not turn toward the main gate. And then she heard the music: a Mozart tune, one she’d played on her own violin a hundred times. Tatianna knew what that music meant. And she knew where she was being taken. Today she would die, but not alone.
Bits of gravel cut her bare feet as they moved down the roadway between blocks D and E. What would it feel like? How much would it hurt?
Panic seized Tatianna with a frantic desire to escape. Could she somehow jump or fly beyond prison grayness into the colors of life: green trees, yellow flowers, purple mountain peaks? Today couldn’t be her day to die. Not today. The sun shone too brightly. She knew people strolled the streets beyond the cinder-block walls. In the village below, they shopped, laughed, and picked flowers in their gardens. Surely a family packed for an afternoon picnic. A mother held her child in her arms. A girl read a book on a park bench, perhaps nearing the end when the heroine against all odds and challenges would finally get away.
They made their way between barracks. Tatianna saw eyes stare from behind warped glass. She’d escaped what the other prisoners were granted with intense work and starvation: a slower pace toward death. Instead, she’d been the honored guest of the camp’s prison where torture, a quick bullet to the neck, and a mass execution were the gifts of hospitality.
Tatianna looked again toward the faces behind barrack windows. She recognized fear in their open stares.
Please, let that girl’s death not be mine
, they thought.
She turned away, and with each step toward the open gate, the “I’ll nevers” came flooding back.
I’ll never wear a bridal veil. I’ll never experience a man’s love. I’ll never hold my child in my arms. I’ll never hug my kindred friend again.
She must stop. These thoughts had tormented her for days. Tatianna must fold the remnants of “I’ll nevers” and banish them to some darkened crevice in her heart.
Remember you promised to be strong.
Go to your death with dignity. Keep your jaw set and your way clear.
She saw her place in line. The open gate revealed a row of several dozen breathing skeletons. There had to be many thousands more in the barracks and jailhouse behind them. A few skeletons dared to peer her way as a soldier pushed her against the wall. Hollow and haunted, their eyes reflected fear—an old man in tears, another with prideful defiance, a father and son clinging as one being.
Her fingers trailed a crack in the wall, touching the granite, feeling its coldness in the shadows. She filled her lungs with the cool freshness, savoring its flavor in her mind. She glanced again at the strangers who were now her family as they stepped into eternity together.
Tatianna turned her eyes to the stiff column of marchers lined up before her. Here were the witnesses, and the executioners. She searched the eyes of every face. Ten soldiers, twenty frozen eyes. Wait—she knew that face. The last soldier in the line. His blank expression mirrored the others. She had known that boy at one time, but she did not know him now.
She forced herself not to look below the men’s shoulders to the guns they held. She waited, jaw set. Something caught her eye. Above the wall, a bird glided on the morning breeze. It rose and danced above the prison wall, above the distant treetops. The sunlight caught the sheen of black wings before it dropped from view.
A soldier shouted. Guns raised. Tatianna’s eyes jerked toward ten barrels.
Someone cried out; a child screamed. Where was her savior? Today the heroine would not get away.
Her body jumped as ten rifles cocked. The sound resonated through the courtyard, echoing within her body. Suddenly the winged creature rose again to soar high above the walls. Tatianna’s eyes lifted to the bird as her body exploded in shaking. Her Savior had come, and he brought freedom on his wings.
Tatianna had chosen well.
Sebastopol, California
Autumn, 2000
“Tatianna! Tatianna!”
“It’s okay, Grandma. Calm down.”
“Tatianna!” Grandma Celia’s frail cry rose to a shriek.
“Grandma, wake up!” Darby Evans tried to hold thrashing arms and shoulders. Her grandmother was slow to calm and return to her pillow. The woman’s eyes did not open, but her mumbling quieted.
“
Hilfe
,” she whispered, and Darby remembered it was German for “help.” But her grandmother never spoke her native tongue. Why now?
Darby put her hand on Grandma Celia’s warm forehead. “
Machen Sie schnell
!” The older woman’s expression turned fearful again. “Tatianna!”
Darby held her grandmother’s shoulders. “It’s okay, Grandma.” Her grandmother’s hands grasped and fought unseen devils; her features contorted with inward struggles.
“I’m here, Grandma. It’s Darby. There’s nothing to worry about.” The old woman calmed once again. Darby opened the fingers clutching her arm and held them within her own. She brought the bony hands to her lips. They felt like tissue paper drawn over bone and blue veins.
Darby moved a chair close and rested her arms around the old woman. She hummed a Mozart tune, one her grandmother had hummed to her in the late-night hours of her childhood, and watched Grandma Celia slowly slip into a peaceful sleep. After a while, Darby tenderly pulled the covers up and smoothed strands of gray hair from her grandmother’s face.
The dim lamp cast shadows along the top of the bedroom walls, creating dark eyes that followed every movement, listened to every word. This house of her youth had never held the presence of shadows, at least none Darby had known. But tonight it seemed that a secret had slipped from the lips of her dying grandmother. It was the name of a stranger. Tatianna. The callings in German had quickly turned to frantic cries that sent a shiver down Darby’s spine. It frightened her to think that, although flowery body powder—a familiar childhood aroma—scented the room, and her grandmother’s personal items appeared in proper order, there were secrets in this house. And now the shadows, like a pack of jackals, circled their prey. She could almost hear their high-pitched laughter and leering words: “There are secrets here. We know them, but we won’t tell.”
Her grandmother stirred, and Darby could see the name on her lips before breath brought it to life. “Tatianna.”
She waited for another rise of panic, but Grandma Celia slid more deeply into sleep. Darby stood and walked toward the window. The moonlight brought an ethereal glow to the backyard. Even the rosebushes around the gazebo looked ghostly, with silhouetted fingers pointing skyward. The dim light exposed stray weeds twisted along the stone pathway. She shook her head to cast away the fears. This was home. Even though she now lived a few hundred miles north in Redding, California, Grandma’s home in Sebastopol always welcomed her back. How could her grandmother’s cries for a stranger bring such darkness here?
Darby could see herself from the age of five until she left for college, growing, changing, all here in this house. Had hidden secrets stalked and crept while she, in childhood oblivion, laughed and played unaware?
Perhaps she was making too much of this, and there was a simple explanation. Maybe her grandmother was reliving wartime memories. Or could the elderly woman be hallucinating from the myriad of painkillers and medicines? Yet Grandma Celia’s anguish appeared real, not imagined.
Darby extracted a letter from her jeans pocket and smoothed the envelope. Another secret, but this one Darby would keep. She probably should have followed her first reaction to burn the letter. How dare this man, Brant Collins, write such words to her grandmother? The stamp and return address were evidence of its European origin. Her grandmother would have eagerly checked the mail each day in hopes of receiving this letter if her illness hadn’t progressed so rapidly.
Darby reached to touch the top of her grandmother’s head. She held her hand an inch above her skin, not wanting to disturb her, but wishing to hold the woman against all pain.
I don’t care about some inheritance. I only want you,
Darby thought, tracing her grandmother’s face without touching her cheek. Her grandmother had begun searching for the family inheritance, hoping the recovered treasure could be a gift for her grandchildren. “I want to pass on what belongs to our family,” she’d stated firmly. Grandma Celia had written Holocaust organizations and even learned to use e-mail and the Internet.
“Can you believe your old grandmother is surfing the Web?” she’d asked Darby on the phone. It hadn’t really surprised Darby. Grandma Celia was always involved in something—country and western dancing at the senior center, volunteering in the local kindergarten class, sending letters to congressmen. The notion that Nazis had confiscated her family inheritance wasn’t new—only Grandma’s sudden search. Why now? Perhaps terminal illness and the reluctant opening of Swiss banks? Darby usually tried to encourage or help her grandmother, but this time she was involved in the remodeling of her photography studio and she thought the pursuit of fortune a bit far-fetched.
Darby examined the soft lines in her grandmother’s face. Her cheeks revealed sharp bones beneath; her eyes had sunk deeper into their sockets. It had only been a few months since Darby’s summer visit. The cancer had progressed more rapidly in the last months than anyone had expected—except, perhaps, Grandma Celia. Darby had found a paper from the local hospice care on the table when she’d arrived that evening. The information gave signs for patients who had one to two weeks left of life: “Agitation, talking with the unseen, confusion, pale and bluish, sleeping but not responding.” Many were the signs she’d seen in Grandma Celia. The list moved down to the signs for patients with only days and hours left: “Surge of energy, irregular breathing, glassy eyes . . .” The list went on and on, but the last sign, “fish-out-of-water breathing,” terrified Darby.
Darby’s anger rose as she thought again of Brant Collins and his letter. The most endearing, honest woman rested before her, and that man had actually accused her of illegal activities. He wrote that he knew the truth about the Lange family, and if Celia continued her pursuit, impersonators would be prosecuted. Darby would keep that secret from her mother and grandmother—she’d deal with it herself.
“Where are you, Grandma?” Darby whispered. “I want my fireball grandmother who’d call this Collins character and give him a piece of her mind.”
She could picture it now. Grandma got stirred up when she believed in something. It had only been a month ago that Grandma had declared to Darby over the phone, “Those Nazi pirates aren’t keeping what belongs to my family!”
Darby had laughed. She’d enjoyed the story about one of her grandparents being an archaeologist and finding two rare Celtic coins. Her favorite part of the inheritance story was the relative who had helped an Austrian empress, receiving the empress’s personal brooch as a gift. Yes, she’d enjoyed the story, especially as a child, but that was as far as Darby had taken it. It was simply another story. The family inheritance, if it had ever existed at all, was certainly long lost or forgotten in some museum or personal collection. Darby had been surprised by Grandma’s fierce determination. The dear woman certainly would have been upset by Mr. Collins’s words.
Darby blinked as she sat in the recliner beside her grandmother’s hospital-style bed. Her eyes wouldn’t stay closed. Sleep wouldn’t come. Were there many things she didn’t know?
Footsteps sounded down the hall. Darby’s mother peered in from the darkened doorway. “How is she?” she called softly.
“She’s fine—now,” Darby answered as she tiptoed into the hall. “You’re supposed to be sleeping. Tonight’s my watch.”
“I know. But I heard her call out and couldn’t go back to sleep,” Carole Evans said. “I’m so glad you came.”
Darby rested her head against the doorjamb, the collection of family photos catching her eye on the opposite wall. Though the dim light hid the faces, she knew each picture by heart. The top three portraits displayed her all-female family: Mother, Grandma Celia, her younger sister, Maureen, and herself. Uncle Marc and Aunt Helen’s photos were below. Beside those was Darby’s favorite. The framed photograph captured her mother sitting beside a window with Grandma Celia brushing her hair. The lighting had been perfect, and the expressions on their faces depicted an older version of mother and child. Darby had won an award in college for that photograph.
As Carole peered into Grandma Celia’s room, Darby noticed how the late-night shadows heightened the circles under her mother’s eyes.
“You should have called me sooner. I would have come, you know.”
“I know, but you have a life too, and I didn’t want you to cancel that photo trip.”
“Grandma’s more important. Have the doctors said anything more?”
“Well,” her mother admitted, “they say she’s at the two-week stage. I try to prepare, but even though I see her decline, I’m not ready. There are so many things I still want to do with her. Things I want to know about her. I’m not ready to lose my mother.”
Darby looked over her mother’s shoulder toward her grandmother.
I’m not ready to lose her either.
She wanted to pull her mother into her arms. Instead she placed a hand on her shoulder. Even that slight touch seemed to break something within the older woman as a quiet sob erupted. Darby patted her awkwardly, as if her hand was out of rhythm to the beat of a song. This was not her mother’s way. While love had always been given freely in this house, sorrow and tears were kept to the privacy of their hearts. Darby fought her own grief and fear, remembering the only other time, outside of a romantic movie or a memorable event, that she’d seen her mother in tears. While playing hide-and-seek with her younger sister, seven-year-old Darby was under her mother’s bed when she heard sobbing. Her father had left that morning, but Darby expected him to return. He always had before.
“Mommy, why are you crying?” she asked as she slid from under the bed. “Is it ’cause of Daddy leaving?”
“Yes, honey.” Her mother had turned away.
“I’m sad too. But Daddy said he’d write lots and lots of letters while he’s working in Texas.”
Her mother wiped her eyes. “I just wanted you raised with a daddy. Not without one like I was. . . .” She’d wrapped her arms around Darby, and the tears broke out again.
Darby hadn’t known her father was more than just working in that place three states from their Californian home. He’d found a new woman to build a family with. Darby received a few letters, but eventually they stopped. Soon after, Darby, her mother, and sister had moved into her grandmother’s home in Sebastopol, a stone’s toss north of San Francisco.
Somewhere over the years and conversations with her mother, Darby surmised that much of her mother’s sorrow wasn’t from the loss of her husband, but from the loss of a father for her children. Her many comments about never knowing her own father emphasized that point.
Now Darby’s mother cried again. Darby’s father had disappeared almost as if he’d only existed in a dream. But this time it was Grandma, the solid rock of the family. The anchor that kept everyone grounded. Darby had never lost a loved one to death, especially someone so close to her heart.
“Oh, for pity’s sake,” her mother said as she cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, Darby.”
“This is Grandma we’re losing. That’s reason for tears.”
Her mother breathed a long sigh and smiled. “Grandma would say, ‘Look, you’ve gone and watered the carpet.’”
“She’s right. And tomorrow we may find a bean stalk here. I never did find those magic seeds of mine.”
Carole chuckled. “I’m so glad you’re here. You could always handle hardships better than your sister. Maureen tried to help, but she was so emotional and with the kids running around, well, I’m afraid she was more of a burden than a blessing.”
“I’m here for as long as it takes.” Darby nodded toward her grandmother. “Clarise can handle everything at the studio, and I’m caught up on my deadlines for a while. I’ll take night watch. After all, you never were a night owl. I don’t know how you’ve handled it these last months.”
“I’m simply thankful for some help now.” Her mother patted Darby’s hand, then took a step down the hall.
“Mom?” Darby hesitated. “Grandma keeps calling for someone. Who is Tatianna?”
The hallway had little light, but Darby could see the weariness in her mother’s expression. “Honey, I don’t know. Grandma has called that name during her bad spells for weeks. She also says words in German. I’ve started to ask a dozen times, but I haven’t. She has so few good moments.”
“Grandma’s never mentioned her before?”
“I’ve never heard the name
Tatianna
until last month. And Grandma has never mentioned her except in her sleep.”
“Okay. Now you need to sleep.”
“Good night, honey.”
When her mother disappeared into the darkness, Darby turned back to Grandma’s bedroom. She stared at the shadows that now hid her grandmother’s face. After a lifetime of family and love, why were Grandma Celia’s last thoughts possessed by a stranger?
Darby leaned over the edge of the bed and touched her grandmother’s skin-and-bone arm. She remembered how Grandma Celia would pat the mattress and gather Darby into her bed whenever Darby had a bad dream. It was Grandma who always soothed away her troubles with a story during a tea party or while brushing Darby’s long, brown hair.
“Princesses didn’t have dirt-colored hair and eyes,” Darby had whined at age five.
“No, but our princess has dark gold strands that look like sunshine on the mountain. Our princess has eyes like a tender doe in the meadow and a pretty heart-shaped face.”
Tonight it was Darby who lowered the bed rail and gathered her grandmother in her arms. “I love you, Grandma.” She closed her eyes to the shadows surrounding them while one question returned to her mind:
Who was Tatianna
?
His wooden cane slipped in the loose rocks and the flashlight’s beam made a wild dance as the man caught his balance and limped onward. The shuffle of his footsteps along the road harmonized with the mournful song of a cricket. One sang and another more distant joined the tune.