Page 134 of Hell to Pay
“The euthanasia program,” he said. “And the so-called ‘experiments’ in the camps. Torture, more like.”
I said, “That’s too hard, surely. Too much for you. It’s hurt your soul to do this much. You must leave instead, as we discussed. Leave, and send for me.”
“Marguerite.” He took my hand. “I can’t. I’d go crazy, leaving you in this mess. I have to stay and make sure you’re all right.”
“We both agree,” I said with the last of my nobility, “that I can survive.”
“No,” he said, “and that’s an end to it. I’m staying.”
On the first day of October, the judges returned their verdict. Twelve of the twenty-two defendants were sentenced to hang; one, who hadn’t been found, in absentia. Most of the others received long sentences, and three were acquitted. The debates in the bakery were heated, but Joe barely spoke of it. And on the first of November, when the men went to the gallows as war criminals—all but Goering, who’d somehow got hold of a cyanide capsule, a coward to the last—Joe took me to the music shop, where we played for two hours straight. He poured himself into Pachelbel’sCanon in D—Pachelbel,who’d been born in Nuremberg and had created such beauty, and that was reality, too, wasn’t it? I played along with him, the music rolling through me as the tears rolled down my cheeks. I cried for Joe’s pain, I cried for the loss of too many people I’d loved, and I cried for my country.
A month later, the Army lifted the ban.
56
THE THIRD DEGREE
“Andthen,”Ashleigh said, “you went to the U.S. and lived happily ever after.” She looked at her watch, too.
“Not quite,” I said. “There were still more hoops to jump through.”
I was in my best dress, the yellow one Joe had bought me. Unfortunately, I was also wearing thick woolen stockings and a shapeless green cardigan that had belonged to Dr. Müller. And the BDM shoes, for those ugly black shoes simply refused to die. The cold was frosting the window glass, and Joe and I were sitting across a metal desk from a man in an olive-drab uniform replete with medals and ribbons. The man was frowning down at myKennkarte—the forged one.
“And this is the only documentation you have,” he said. “No birth certificate. No passport.”
“Yes,” I said. “I came from Dresden, you see, and my papers were destroyed in the fire, along with my family and my home.”
“And you haven’t written to get a copy of your birth certificate?” His eyebrows were gray and beetling, and now, they beetled at me.
“I tried,” I said, which was fortunately true. “Many of the records there were also destroyed in the fire.” I didn’t add,You should know. You caused it,but pushed a letter across the desk to him. It was addressed to my false name—I’d decided to check whether records still existed first, and then, if they did, to write for the actual documents. I wasn’t claiming to be a princess with nothing to prove my assertion. How quickly would he turn us down then?
“This letter’s in German,” the colonel said.
“Well, yes,” I said, “as this is Germany.” My unfortunate tongue!
The colonel stared at me, and I stared back. Joe said, “I can translate it, sir.” And did so. All it said was that many records had been destroyed, and the remainder weren’t yet put back in order. And that the records from 1926 to 1936 were among those missing.
“That thing could say anything,” the colonel said. “I don’t speak German, and you’re not exactly an objective party, are you, Stark?”
“No, sir,” Joe said, staying as calm as I wasn’t. “You could show it to somebody else, though, and have them confirm my translation.”
The colonel sighed and ran a pen through his fingers. “Your record is excellent, Staff Sergeant. You could have a real future in the Army. Are you sure you want to go down this road? A marriage to a German isn’t likely to help you advance.”
Joe said, “I want out, sir.” His voice was steady, so was his gaze, and he was holding my hand. “My tour’s up on the first of April, I’ve got more than enough points for discharge, and Iwant to take Daisy home with me and go back to college. There’s that GI Bill, and I plan to use it.”
“To study what?” the colonel asked.
“Law, sir,” Joe said. “My dad’s a lawyer.”
“And a Jew.”
“Yes, sir,” Joe said, but I felt him stiffen.
“And your folks are happy with you marrying a German girl?” the colonel asked. “A Catholic? One who looks like an ad for the perfect Aryan?”
“No, sir,” Joe said. “They’re not. But they haven’t met Daisy yet.” The other dark cloud over our happiness: he hadn’t told his parents of our plans to marry. That was because he’d written his father that he was seeing me again, as a sort of trial balloon. The reply had taken up four closely-spaced sheets, and he’d decided that afait accompliwas the only answer. I’m afraid I hadn’t even tried to talk him out of it. I wasn’t going to sacrifice my happiness for the sake of people I hadn’t met, even if theywereJoe’s parents. Wasn’t he, who’d given so much for his country, entitled to the life he’d chosen? I’d be a good wife to him, and then they’d see.
I hoped.
