Page 25 of Hell to Pay
He answered, “No, of course not,” but I thought I saw something in his face.“What you don’t know,”he’d said,“you can’t say.”Was this what he’d meant?
“Listen to me,” he said next. “Very bad things have been happening in the East. To the Jews, the Poles, and others. The war is lost—it’s been lost for a year now—but a cornered beast is the most dangerous, and the Gestapo and SS will only step up their efforts as they see the trap closing. You must be very careful. And if they take you and your mother—” He paused a moment, because I must have looked shocked, then seemed to steel himself to go on. “Then you must be very strong and very brave. Remember that it cannot last long. Do what you’re told, wherever you are, keep your head down, and it will soon be over. It will be over, and we’ll all be together again.”
“They’re going to—” I had to swallow, for my mouth was dry. “They’re going to take Mother? And me?”
“Almost surely not,” he said. “Just as I will surely be home again soon, too. If they do, though, it will be to Theresienstadt. That’s not the worst place. Not the worst place at all. And you’ll be with your mother. You’ll look after your mother.”
It was so hard not to cry, but I dug my nails into my palms and nodded.
“Good girl.” His hand rested on my head, and I wanted to move into him, to have him hold me and tell me it wasn’t happening, it wasn’t true. But I can’t think that anymore. Itishappening, and itistrue.
I said, “Surely it matters, though, that you’re a war hero. Surely that will help.”
He sighed. “Many others flew with me. Some of them earned the Iron Cross First Class, too. Three of them, good friends and fellow aviators, were Jews. One had even converted to Christianity, both he and his wife, and they were all good, patriotic Germans. They’re all gone now. Gone east. What they’ve done for Germany doesn’t matter, because they’re Jews. And Hitler hates the aristocracy almost as much as he hates the Jews. No, that isn’t true, but hedoesfear us. We can’t even serve in the Wehrmacht anymore, only the SS, because if you’re fanatical enough to join the SS, nobody can doubt your conviction. And he trusts the Catholic nobility even less than the Prussians. Graf von Stauffenberg, who brought the bomb into the bunker, was both a count anda Catholic, so you see …” He smiled with the good half of his face. “But as I’m clearly quite harmless, I’m sure I can convince them.”
I can hardly write for crying. I haven’t even been able to change into my nightdress. Father can’t be
The diary entry stopped there, and I remembered why. I remembered quite clearly. Because that was when the air-raid sirens began to sound.
I can see it all as if it had just happened. Me standing there, frozen, my diary in one hand, as the sirens wailed, and Mother coming into the room and saying, her voice controlled and her face deathly white but composed, “Get your things, then,Liebling,for the cellar.”
“Surely not,” I said. “Why should we go down now, when we didn’t last time?”
She said, “We were foolish. We must go downstairs now.”
I hung back still. “Mother,” I said, “it’s perfect! While everybody is in the cellars, we can take the auto and escape! We can go to—to?—”
Mother didn’t tell me I was foolish, even though I was. She said gently, “Don’t you think your father will be recognized?”
“Oh.” I swallowed. “But there are so many wounded men now. We could put a—a bandage around his head. We can go to—to Frau Heffinger’s sister, in her village outside Bayreuth! We can hide there.”
She shook her head. The sirens were howling like banshees, up the scale and down it again, but I heard her clearly when she said, “One needs a permit to travel. There’s a Gauleiterin every state and a Little Gauleiter as mayor in every village, reporting on everything he sees, everyone who doesn’t belong. Harboring fugitives means death. Surely you don’t want to put Frau Heffinger and her sister, and her sister’s family and village, too, in danger? No. There’s no hiding from this. Your father said that you must be very strong and very brave. We all are called, sometime or other, to do more than we think we can. That’s what you and I must do now.”
Another sound, now. The hum of aircraft, much louder than we’d heard before, filling every bit of the night. My mother said urgently, “Get your rucksack and come. No time to lose.”
Down the corridor to the main staircase, and quickly down its red-carpeted marble steps as the humming thrum grew louder. My notebook and pen still in one hand, because I hadn’t had time to put them away, and my mind a whirl of anxiety. Then down the rough cellar steps, and Father waiting there for us, ushering us through the cellar door and bolting it. Protecting us as he always had.
A line from Robert Louis Stevenson dropped into my mind as if Miss Franklin, who’d taught it to me, had placed it there.
Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.
I was barely sixteen, and I knew so much less than I’d thought I did. But I was a princess, after all, and taught to do my duty. I’d do my best.
12
KARMA BITES
When Alix came to my room at seven to collect me for dinner, I said, “Oh, you do look very nice,Liebling.I’ve liked that red dress since you first showed it to me. What a treat to see you in it.”
“It does happen occasionally,” she said. “Sebastian made a booking at this restaurant where the prices burned my eyeballs, because he said we reached an important milestone today and should celebrate it. I figured a dress might be warranted, and this was the one I was wearing when I met him, so—here I am. Also, notice the makeup? Ben’s wearing one of Sebastian’s sport coats and isn’t happy about it, so compliment him, would you? He’s a little in awe of you, I think.
“Well,” I said, as Alix pushed the button for the elevator, “one should be at least a little in awe of one’s elders, if only at how they’ve managed to live so long.”
“I was surprised when Sebastian said you wanted to invite Ashleigh, though,” Alix said as the elevator began its genteel and somewhat ponderous way downward.
“Discreetly put,” I said, “since I expect you really want toask, ‘Why on earth did you invite her? You haven’t seemed like you wanted to appear on her … whatever it is.’ Why not, though, after all? People forget too easily now, and the lessons of history shouldn’t be forgotten. We’re always asking, ‘What was the right thing to do?’ and coming to completely opposite conclusions, because so often, the right and wrong of past events are hard to determine even now. We should take every chance, I believe, to flex our ethical muscles by considering these events in their totality.”
“So you’re not just going to say, ‘Nazis are bad,’ and be done with it?” Alix asked. “That one seems pretty cut and dried.”
