Saving Amelie (21 page)

22

H
ILDE
B
REISNER
laid her heavy, braided carpets saddle-style over wooden benches set squarely in her garden and beat them with a vengeance. There was nothing she liked better than beating the swirling dust from her rugs when she had something on her mind. She found it satisfying in the extreme—no matter the doctor’s warning about overtaxing her heart.
Whack!

She’d tried for days to push the SS raid from her mind. But something they’d said—before Lea arrived—kept running through her brain.

Whack!

They’d demanded to know if her granddaughter had come. She couldn’t imagine why they wanted Lea, but she didn’t want to tell them where she was.

Whack!

And yet when Lea suddenly appeared, they didn’t seem to want her after all. They said they wanted “the other one.” It was so puzzling. Surely they had the wrong Breisners.

Whack!

“Frau Breisner?” A halting, middle-aged voice with a slightly strained accent spoke from the back garden gate.

“Ja?”
Hilde jumped. “I’m Frau Breisner.” She hated when visitors came to call in the midst of her housework. Everyone in the village knew you didn’t make calls until after midday meal and the washing up! It was an unwritten rule that only outsiders would not observe.

“May I speak with you, Frau Breisner?” The woman with gray-streaked hair stood patiently on the garden walk. “Alone?”

Hilde spread her hands wide, open to the great out-of-doors. “We’re quite alone here.” She wiped them on her apron, eyeing the woman’s carpetbag. “But if you’re peddling wares,
meine Frau
, you’d best go along. I’ve no money to buy.” She turned back to her rug beating.

“
Nein, meine Frau!
I’m not peddling anything at all, but—” the woman lowered her voice and spoke with some urgency—“I must speak with you—privately.”

The voice rang stronger than the woman’s appearance warranted, and that gave Hilde pause. There was also something familiar about her. Her face? Her eyes? Hilde shook her head. She’d never seen this woman before; she was sure of it. “What is it you want?”

The woman glanced from side to side—nervously, Hilde thought. “Please, Frau Breisner, allow me to come inside—to sit and talk with you. It’s . . . it’s important to us both . . . and very personal.”

Hilde frowned, discomfort rumbling in the lower regions of her stomach. She’d heard about foreigners slipping into Oberammergau, begging to be taken into homes as parts of Germany emptied of its Jews and Poles.

She felt sorry for them, of course. Hitler had created havoc and there were rumors of random cruelty. But those things were far from Oberammergau. The people of the Passion Play would not behave so—it violated everything the Passion stood for, at least ideally. Of course she knew the play, as it stood, was anti-Semitic. That didn’t mean the villagers were. At least she hoped not. At least not all of them.

But we’re not likely to bite the hand that pays our bills, are we? Still, she doesn’t look Jewish, or even Polish. But who can tell these days?
“How did you get here?”

“Excuse me?” The woman leaned closer, anxiety apparent in her eyes.

Hilde sighed. She was never good at refusing to help beggars,
no matter that she could not afford another mouth to feed. “You couldn’t have walked far with that bag,
meine Frau
. Where did you come from? Who’s with you?” Hilde wasn’t about to be reported for harboring fugitives—Jews or others—or at least she wouldn’t be tricked. If she harbored anyone, it would be with full information and because she chose to help.

“No one—I walked from the train station in the village.”

Hilde walked to the street and looked up and down. Not a soul in sight.

“Please,” the woman begged, “please don’t do that. Let me talk with you in private.”

“Whatever you want to say to me can be said out here—in the bright light of day.”

The woman’s eyes widened, looking even more agitated. Hilde thought again that there was something familiar in the woman’s expression, but she determined to hold her ground.

“Oma,” the woman whispered.

Hilde felt a catch in her heart. “What did you say?”

The woman, still stooped, stepped closer. But her voice lost its crackling as she whispered, “I’ve news of your daughter.”

Breath sucked from Hilde’s lungs. She recognized the eyes—her daughter’s eyes. Lea’s eyes. But she insisted, “My daughter is dead.”

“Yes, yes, she is. But I’m her daughter—your granddaughter, Rachel.”

The garden spun in all its lovely colors. As Hilde tottered, the woman dropped her carpetbag and caught her, but with the surprising strength of youth. Confused, desperate for her rocker in the kitchen, Hilde motioned toward the house.

Tenderly, Rachel settled her grandmother in the rocker just inside the kitchen door, then filled a stein from the spigotted barrel on the counter. While her grandmother drank, catching her breath, Rachel
retrieved her bag from the garden, careful to take up her slow gait while outdoors.

Once inside, she locked the door and drew the nearest curtain across its rod. She pulled a low stool near the rocker and waited. But she could not take her eyes from those that mirrored her own.

She searched the lines of Hilde Breisner’s face, the cheekbones, the length of her knotted fingers—more similarities than she could count. It was as if she gazed upon herself fifty years into the future.And it was all she could do not to laugh, to cry over the old woman before her.

When the woman seemed to calm, Rachel reached for her hand. “I’m Ibine’s daughter.”

Hilde pulled back, her eyes wide and brow furrowed. She shook her head. “You’re from the Institute. The SS sent you, didn’t they? Please, please leave us alone!”

Rachel’s heart sank. Jason was right. Gerhardt had already been here, had probably tormented her grandmother, perhaps Lea as well. She brushed the powder from her hair to show its mask.

Hilde gasped, sputtered, but no words came.

“I know this sounds fantastic—impossible.” Rachel leaned forward. “I have so much to tell you, to ask you, but I must warn you that there are people looking for me. If I’m found here, it will be dangerous for me and certainly for you and Lea.”

“Why are you doing this?” The old woman’s eyes filled with tears, fury and fear and wonder so clearly mingled. “What do you want?”

“Oh no—please—I don’t want to hurt anyone. I wanted only to meet you, to ask you—”

The door latch rattled, and a knock came at the door. “Oma?” a lilting voice, tinged with worry, called. “Are you in there? What’s going on? Why is your door locked?”

But the older woman didn’t answer, didn’t seem able to answer. She couldn’t catch her breath, and then a wheezing started. Panic
sprang to her eyes, and she motioned toward the far wall. Rachel dropped her hand, not knowing where to turn, what to do.

The knocking became a pounding. “Oma—open the door! Are you all right? Who is with you? Will you not open the door?”

The old woman grasped her throat, her chest. Rachel threw open the door to the young woman with the pounding fist—a young woman who looked for all the world like a provincial mirror image of herself. “She’s having a seizure—a heart attack—I don’t know! Help her! Oh, please help her!”

Rachel hadn’t finished her plea before the young woman pushed her aside and ran to the gasping Oma.

Oma threw her hand toward the far wall.

“Your tablets? In the cupboard?” Jerking open a cupboard door and rummaging through a host of small pottery and jars, the young woman grabbed a brown bottle and pulled the cork. “Hold on, Oma, I’m coming.”

But Oma seemed to be losing focus.

“Open your mouth.” She forced two tablets between Oma’s teeth, beneath her tongue, then sat back on her heels, gently rubbing her arm, her back. “Rest there. Just rest a bit.” She waited until Oma calmed, began breathing easier.

Never had Rachel witnessed such a tender and proficient bedside manner, not in all the doctors she’d encountered through her father’s work.

But when the young woman turned toward her, her back to Oma, her face clouded and her eyes threatened. She pulled Rachel into the next room. “What happened?”

Frightened as much by the younger woman’s anger as by Oma’s attack, Rachel sputtered, “I don’t know. She just . . . What’s wrong with her?”

“Her heart is weak. She can’t—” But the young woman hesitated, staring, as if she’d just seen Rachel.

“Lea. You’re Lea.” The wonder Rachel felt at seeing her twin nearly stopped her own heart.

“Who are you?” Lea looked as if she gazed upon a ghost.

“I’m Rachel. I’m your sister.”

“My—sis—?”

“Your twin,” Rachel pressed. “Ibine Breisner was my mother—and yours.”

But the woman named Lea paled, shaking her head. “That’s not possible. My mother died in childbirth. I was her only child.”

The old woman gasped again. Rachel and Lea both turned. “Oma!” they said, almost in unison.

Lea’s brows rose and she stepped between her grandmother and Rachel. “Did Dr. Mengele send you to torment us?”

“No!”

“Dr. Verschuer, then,” Lea accused. “We’ve had enough—
enough
. Get out!”

“I’m not from the Institute!” Now Rachel was very near tears. “I’m trying to escape them!”

“It was you they were after. The SS came looking for you. They terrified Oma and nearly destroyed her house—and mine. They said there is a woman who looks like me. They said if she came, not to believe anything she said. They vowed they’d be back, and if we took her in, we’d pay.”

“I’m sorry they hurt you, but that should say something for me—that I’m not part of them.” Rachel leaned forward. “Our mother birthed twins. We were separated when she died.” She lowered her voice. “I think they let her die, may have even helped her die. They sent me to America, to be raised there, but sent you to be raised by our grandmother.”

Lea shook her head. “You’re making this up.”

Rachel hardly knew how to respond. Her script had fallen apart.

Oma groaned again, trying to regain her breath.

Lea fetched and rolled a towel, tucking it beneath Oma’s head at the back of the wooden rocker. “Just rest, Oma,” she crooned.

Rachel knelt before her. “I’m sorry I upset you. I just wanted to meet you—to meet you both.”

Oma reached her hand out to Rachel. Rachel grasped it like a lifeline.

“Well, you’ve met us,” Lea said coldly.

“Lea, Lea,” Oma scolded gently. Her eyes turned again to Rachel, back and forth between the two young women. “Can it be—?”

“No, Oma. Don’t let her fool you.
Meine Mutter
had only one child.”

“That’s what I thought too,” Rachel asserted, the words thick in her throat. “That I was an only child. That’s what I was always told at the Institute and by my adoptive parents.”

“My Ibine—twins,” Oma said in wonder.

Rachel bit her lip. “I would not hurt you for the world, but I must talk with you. I must know about my mother, my father—so many things.” She hesitated. “And I must ask you to hide me.”

It was a full hour before Oma had sufficiently recovered, before Lea felt she could take her eyes from her grandmother. In that time, Rachel told them enough that Lea came to believe her—though Rachel’s story was fantastic, something she might read in a suspenseful thriller novel brought from England by one of Friederich’s customers.

It was the details of the link through the abominable Institute in Frankfurt that convinced Lea—that and the fact that when Rachel had washed her face and combed the powder from her hair, she looked like Lea’s own reflection, only more modern. She could only shake her head at the impossibility of it all and do her best to push the besetting weight from her heart.

Lea couldn’t think only of herself or her fear that the SS might
appear on their doorstep again in search of Rachel. She saw in Oma’s eyes the horrific realization that the Institute had allowed her precious Ibine, her only child, to die in order to conduct experiments on her identical twin daughters.
Help us, Holy Father; help us.