Warsaw Requiem Page 10

  Danzig also held promise of the conclusion of a personal matter that had plagued Hess. Wolfgang von Fritschauer had been assigned to the area, and Hess was quite certain that in some way the man was still connected to Lucy Strasburg. If they were both involved in a smuggling ring on behalf of Jews and political dissidents, then Hess was resolved that he would bring both of them to justice as well.

  Hess could never let anyone know the truth that it was Lucy’s young companion who had held him at gunpoint and forced him from the train. To have admitted that would have destroyed his career. It was enough for Hess to greet Wolfgang von Fritschauer at the officer’s briefing last month and tell him that Lucy had been on board the Corridor Express on the same night he was attacked.

  Wolf had paled. Was it anger, or guilt? Perhaps Lucy Strasburg had betrayed Wolf as well as Hess for the sake of those two Jewish children. If that was the case, Wolf did not speak of it. He spoke of his weariness of her; his relief that she was gone. Why, then, was the man so pale at the mention of her name?

  Hess felt a kind of disdain for von Fritschauer, whatever the truth might be. He had been involved with a woman more vile and dangerous than the Jews she protected. There was, indeed, room for more heads in the diplomatic pouch. Hess had decided long ago that he must question Lucy and then kill her, rather than attempt to take her back to trial. That was the safest way to keep himself from disgrace. She must not be allowed to give her account of the true circumstances of his leap from the train. With the first twist of Gestapo thumb-screws, the woman would be screaming that she had traveled with an officer named Hess who was knocked out and held with his own gun by a Jewish refugee boy.

  A junior agent had been assigned to Hess in Danzig. Between them, Hess was certain that the Ibsen matter and the issue of Lucy Strasburg and Wolfgang von Fritschauer could be settled permanently.

  He let the shade fall back and opened the basket of food that had been prepared and packed by the Führer’s own chef.

  A thermos of tea. Sandwiches. Fruit and cheeses. Hess had brought along his own bottle of schnapps, which he nursed discreetly. Everyone knew that the Führer did not approve of the vice of alcohol—and drinking was, indeed, one of the many vices of Major Alexander Hess. He shrugged the thought away as the whistle shrieked the approach to Danzig. He was, after all, conducting his own private celebration in compartment 17.

  ***

  It was a miracle, thought Karl Ibsen joyfully when the tiny sparrow returned to the window ledge of his cell. Just a small miracle, but a miracle nonetheless.

  Karl dared not move from where he stood in the center of the cell. The bird cocked its head in puzzlement at the sight of this human canary in a cage. A grizzled creature, this human. Did no one ever clean this cage or give water for the human to wash his bony, featherless wings? A pitiful slight, this prisoner. No real bird trapped in a cage was ever treated so badly as this.

  Karl knew that he was only imagining the pity he saw in the tiny, unblinking eyes of the sparrow, and yet, even imagined pity made him feel . . . Feel what? What was this emotion that pushed inside his hollow chest? Had loneliness so deep and profound caused him to forget the feeling that now gripped him?

  He looked toward the edge of his straw mattress. His ration of bread was wrapped carefully in the remaining rags of his shirt. “Stay,” he whispered to the sparrow. “Stay and I will give you the best crumbs of my bread.”

  Karl decided the bird was a female. Drab brown color. Plain, unpretentious feathers. The tender, sympathetic look. Yes. A female. Had the bird been a male, it would have looked at Karl with terrible scorn. It would have hopped a slalom course around the bars to taunt Karl in a display of its freedom. “See?” it would have chirped. “Nothing to it. One hop and I am in the cell. One hop and I’m out. Spread my wings and I’m back in the forest. Not like you, old man!”

  The lady sparrow lifted her head and looked beyond her beak at Karl as if to ask, “Whatever is to become of you?”

  Karl replied aloud, “I don’t know. Not in this life anyway. If I could fly . . . if I could fly away like you, than I would. Through the bars . . . Away. I would not mind leaving this life, and that’s the truth. Only Jamie and Lori . . . my children . . .”

  His voice became suddenly too unnerving for the little sparrow. There was too much passion here in this man-cage. Too much grief to be contained inside the brick walls. Like a terrible wind, the pent-up emotion of the prisoner broke loose and blew the lady sparrow from the window ledge. One flutter and she was gone. It was just too difficult—even for the tiny heart of a sparrow.

  ***

  “Her name is Lucy.” Wolf extended the photograph showing Lucy on the steps of St. Stephan’s in Vienna. “Lucy Strasburg.”

  The stoop-shouldered doctor of the Marienbad Women’s Hospital studied the slim and beautiful image, then shook his head slowly. “I would remember such a patient. Your sister is very beautiful, Herr von Fritschauer. But—”

  “Of course she won’t look like this now, Herr Doktor. She is . . . her time must be very near.”

  “I would remember such a face.” The doctor gazed awhile longer. “Such innocence in her eyes. It is always the ones like your sister who end up being hurt by some fellow, yes? Pregnant, you say?”

  Wolf bit his lip and stared at the picture of Lucy. He had never noticed the childlike expression on her face until now. Innocent? He had always imagined it was stupidity and country naiveté. The doctor’s words sent a fresh surge of anger through him. Lucy Strasburg was neither innocent nor stupid. She was clever and devious. She had made a fool out of Wolf, had she not?

  Wolf was pale with emotion. The doctor touched his arm. “Are you unwell, Herr von Fritschauer?”

  “This is an ordeal,” Wolf mumbled, still staring into those wide eyes. “I have looked at every clinic. Every private doctor. No one has seen her. And you are right; she is not a woman one forgets easily.”

  “You were certain she was expecting when she disappeared?”

  “Yes. Nearly four months.”

  “The father?’

  “A lieutenant in the Army.”

  “He would not marry her?”

  “He is married . . . an affair, you see. He has offered to care for the child, support my sister. She was ashamed. We know she came to Danzig. I have checked steamship lines, offered rewards. This picture . . . you may keep it. I have more. My name and telephone are on the back. If you see her . . . please . . . just call me. Do not attempt to detain her; she will only run again. Our mother is grief-stricken, of course. We only wish to help Lucy.”

  The doctor nodded slowly as he listened, as though he were making a thoughtful diagnosis. “Yes, I will alert my nurses to the situation as well. If she is nearly full term, she will show up. It is certain. No woman would remain alone at such a time.”

  “That is what we have been praying for.” Wolf returned the photograph to the doctor.

  The doctor glanced at it. “Where was this . . . taken?”

  “St. Stephan’s Cathedral in Vienna.”

  “She is maybe religious, your sister?”

  It took a moment for the significance of the question to penetrate Wolf’s consciousness. “Yes. Yes! Extremely. One of her little quirks.”

  The doctor gave a short, knowing laugh. “Take it from a man who works with women. When a lover deserts a female, you will find her grieving one of two places—either to her physician or to her priest. If she has not been to one, then . . .”

  Wolf stared at the anatomy chart on the wall of the office. The doctor was right. Lucy, the dreamer! Lucy, the one who crosses herself before a meal or when passing a shrine on the street, or whenever she heard good news and bad alike! Why had Wolf not gone to the churches of Danzig before this? He had been a fool! He had been looking in places where she might find physical comfort, when he knew she was always looking wistfully at the spires and bell towers of churches they passed! He had teased her once that he was thankful she had not ch
osen the life of a nun because it would have ruined his pleasure. That remark had made her weep and admit that she had dreamed of such a life when she was a little girl.

  He had laughed at her then. And he was laughing as he left the medical clinic and stared out over the spires of Danzig’s great churches!

  He was close now. Very close indeed! His city map had a directory of the port’s many churches, listed by denomination. He ran his finger down the list as he whispered her name. “Lucy, Lucy, Lucy . . .”

  Catholic churches. French. German. Polish.

  The choices narrowed down to six German parishes scattered throughout Danzig. It was so simple! It was so certain! Wolf could not imagine that he had thought of it himself. It had taken a healer of the body to remind him of Lucy’s overworked concern for her soul! And now the scent was strong.

  ***

  The train station of the Free City of Danzig was built to match the medieval architecture of the entire town. It resembled some ancient printer’s woodcutting—a fifteenth-century engraving come to life.

  Lucy Strasburg held Peter Wallich’s hand as they walked in the shadows of the tall narrow houses of the old town. Sea birds played on the Baltic winds above the steep gables of the tightly packed buildings. A lone cloud scudded across the sky and threatened to impale itself on the spires of the enormous brick church known as Marienkirche.

  There were flowers everywhere. Geraniums tumbled from window boxes. In a small park opposite the train station, hundreds of tulips were planted to create the coat of arms of the last of the city-states—two yellow eagles flanking a red tulip shield.

  This was not really the last of the city-states, Lucy thought as she saw the flowers nodding in the breeze. Danzig and the Vatican City were the only two remaining historical oddities. Peter had told her all about the history of the place where they had fled four months earlier for refuge. Danzig flew its own flag over a tiny territory consisting of slightly more than four hundred thousand residents. The multitude of refugees who camped in shanty towns to the south were not counted in the population. The Baltic seaport issued its own currency, had an elected parliament, and was under the protection of the League of Nations. Danzig had a customs union with Poland and provided that great nation with its only access to the Baltic. The times when Danzig was not an independent state, it had been batted back and forth between Germany and Poland like a tennis ball. The treaty of Versailles after the Great War in 1919 had wrenched Danzig from defeated Germany and brought it to its present precarious condition—claimed by Poland, coveted by Germany.

  Lucy looked up to where a dozen Nazi flags spilled out from windows where flower boxes should have been. Even though the mailboxes were Polish and the uniforms of the customs officers were Polish, there was a nasty stirring among the German youth of Danzig. The “Horst Wessel” song was becoming quite popular. Even Sprinter’s ice cream parlor, with its glass-topped tables and immaculate wrought-iron chairs, was becoming a gathering place for imitators of the Hitler Youth. On Thursday there were Nazi rallies in the main square, and there was talk among the German population of returning to the Fatherland.

  Peter warned Lucy that it was more than talk. Last week he had placed his baby brother, Willie, in the arms of a stranger on a children’s refugee ship. Then tearfully he had turned to Lucy and said, “There, I have sent my heart away to England. Willie will be safe now. But there is no reason for me to stay here in this place. My mother and sister are never coming. I do not know what happened to them, but there is no use waiting here in Danzig for them to show up. They might have gone to Warsaw. We have old friends in Warsaw. Come with me, Lucy. Soon it will be as bad here in Danzig as it was in Vienna. Come with me to Warsaw to look for my mother and Marlene.”

  Lucy had smiled and shrugged. How serious and concerned this boy sounded! Ah well, he was not really a boy any longer, was he? Peter Wallich had grown up since they had crossed the border of the Reich through the Polish corridor and gone on to Danzig. He was taller, still lean, but his face was fuller and tanned from his work on the wharf. He had done his part. He had taken care of his baby brother. When Lucy was too far along in her pregnancy to continue work as a shop clerk, peter had managed to provide food for them both. But she could not go with him to Warsaw.

  “I want you to come with me, Lucy,” he said again. The sun glinted on his copper-colored hair. He looked toward the train station, then back to search her eyes.

  “If you were ten years older, I would say yes, Peter.” She tried to keep her voice light.

  “It is not safe here for you—or for me. And your baby is due. Come with me. We will find help in Warsaw, even if I do not find Mother and Marlene.”

  “You will find them. I am certain of it.” Again the half smile of regret. “But, dear Peter, do you know what the Polish name for Danzig is? Gdansk. I can barely say it. I could never find work in Poland. The language is so—”

  “You are German to the end.”

  “Ja. And so I’ll take my chances here. We run from the same darkness, but for different reasons. My world cannot fit into your world. I have no friends in Poland.”

  He pressed a slip of paper into her hand. “You do now, Lucy. You have me.” He blushed a little at his own boldness.

  Lucy knew this tall, sensitive, teenaged Jewish boy was in love with her. It was flattering and touching, considering that she was unmarried and nearly nine months pregnant with the child of a Nazi SS officer. She opened the paper, half expecting some written declaration of his love. But Peter was more sensible than that. He had neatly printed the name and address of his Warsaw destination.

  “Thank you.” She kissed him lightly on the cheek. “You are a good friend to me, and I will not forget.”

  He looked away as the train whistle shrilled. “It seems to me they are playing our song again, eh?” He smiled to hide his emotion. “We said hello to that. And now good-bye.” He took her hand and shook it, as though she were a soccer teammate. “Well . . .”

  “Auf Wiedersehen. And . . . Grussgott,” she said in her best Viennese accent. Then she held up the note. “I will write you. When the baby comes, ja?”

  Again the whistle. If he didn’t hurry, he would miss the train. Maybe he wanted to miss the train. His hand raised. His eyes lingered on her face as he stumbled up the steps. And then he was gone. Peter Wallich was gone to Warsaw.

  And Lucy Strasburg was alone—alone with the unborn child of Wolfgang von Fritschauer.

  She almost wept, but then she squared her shoulders and turned away. “There are some things much worse than being alone,” she whispered to herself.

  ***

  The posters were everywhere it seemed—pasted on the news kiosks of London, on the walls of Victoria Station, in the subways, on the markets and stores of Oxford Street.

  GAS ATTACK

  Big white block letters splashed across a green background—there it was, right here in London:

  HOW TO PUT ON YOUR GAS MASK

  Always keep your gas mask with you, day and night. Learn to put it on quickly. Practice wearing it.

  It had become a regular drill in the house on Red Lion Square. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings Murphy would unexpectedly call out, “Gas Attack!” This sent Charles, Louis, Elisa, and whoever happened to be around scrambling like mad to pull their masks out of the canvas pouches and put them on securely before Murphy shouted, “Alka-Seltzer!”

  “If the mask in not in place by the time I call ‘Alka-Seltzer,” Murphy explained, “you lose.”

  To lose meant that everyone else got a piece of hard candy, while the loser had to practice putting on his or her gas mask five times in front of everyone else. Charles and Louis and Elisa never lost anymore. But sometimes company did. Charles enjoyed having company. Tonight Dr. Patrick Grogan, speech therapist and English teacher to Charles and Louis, stayed for dinner, as he often did. He had never stayed for dinner on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, however, and so he was not prepared, even though
Elisa warned him that there was likely to be a gas attack after dessert.

  The alarm was given, and the mad rush for masks began . . .

  Everyone else sat happily around the table like a family of locusts while Dr. Grogan fumbled and blushed, his face matching his red hair.

  “Sorry, Doc,” Murphy said from behind the mask. His voice was muffled, as if he were talking into a tin can. “The word is Alka-Seltzer! You lose!”

  Charles and Louis clapped their hands with delight. They ripped off their nasty-bug masks and pointed at Dr. Grogan. Now they could get even for all the times he had made them do it again! Practice! Practice! Practice! Come now, Charles, once again!

  Grogran was embarrassed. His round face flushed as he accused Murphy, “You planned this! You and these two little heathens! To get even with me. Come on now, admit it!”

  Both boys nodded eagerly. Yes, they had planned it. That is why Charles had asked Elisa if Doc might eat with them tonight.

  “Yes.” Louis laughed.

  “Yesssss,” Charles agreed, giving the speech therapist a few extra s’s, since they were a difficult sound for him to make. “Show us . . . how . . . to put it on, Doc!”

  Dr. Grogan laughed. His big head rocked on his narrow shoulders, and he laughed until his chubby belly ached. Wispy red hair, thinning on top, stood straight up from his first attempt in the Alka-Seltzer drill. He looked like a pudgy little leprechaun in from a windstorm.

  Charles liked him, even if the Doc did make him drill hour after hour. Elisa liked him because he was good with the boys. Murphy liked him for a lot of reasons, once of which was that he was American like Murphy.

  Murphy passed out the cherry candy while Doc struggled to put on the mask.

  “Say it, Doc Grogan!” Louis demanded. “Say the steps!”

  “Okay! Okay! Little heathen! Mary and Martha!” This was Doc’s way of saying “good grief,” Charles knew.