Saving Amelie (22 page)

But what could they do with Rachel? How could they help her leave Germany with border patrols searching for her?

“You’ll stay here with us, of course!” Oma proclaimed. “Lea’s here while her Friederich is away.”

“They’ll come back looking for her. We’ve no place to hide her!”

“Then we’ll make a place.” Oma reached for her granddaughters’ hands.

“There’s more,” Rachel confessed.

“More?” Lea wasn’t certain they could take more.

“A child,” Rachel began.

“You’ve a child?” Oma gasped. “My great-grandchild!”

Lea’s heart tripped.

“Not mine; she’s the child of a friend. But I’m . . . responsible for her. I’ll take her to the United States, just as soon as we can find a way out of Germany.” She told them about Gerhardt Schlick and the T4 program, about the ruse to make him believe his child had been killed and about Kristine’s murder. It was evil beyond Lea’s imagination or Oma’s ability to speak.

“So now this madman is looking not only for you but for his child! Here, in Oberammergau!” Lea nearly cried.

“He doesn’t know that Amelie is alive! He’s certain she’s dead, and he doesn’t know I’ve come.”

“We can’t hide you—and can’t hide a child.” Lea couldn’t believe she was saying it. “The neighbors see everything—know everything!”

“She’s here?” Oma’s eyes clouded.

“No, but a friend will bring her here—if you’ll allow it. I’m to send a note through the mail in a kind of code. She’s very small—only four years old.” Rachel’s eyes pleaded.

“Bring her!”

But Lea squeezed Oma’s hand, urging her to slow down, to think.

Inspiration sprang to Oma’s eyes. “Lea teaches children from the orphanage, from town, and from the refugees trickling into the village. We can say we’ve taken in refugees. She can blend right into the village.” She half smiled in wonder. “But you must remain in disguise. If anyone saw the two of you as you are—even separately—they would know immediately that you were sisters.”

“Amelie’s deaf—she can’t blend in.” Rachel looked the most uncomfortable Lea had seen her. “She wouldn’t be able to sing, and she can’t be seen. She truly can’t be seen by anyone.”

23

A
MELIE
HADN
’
T
sucked her thumb in a long time. But in the dark of night, tucked into a makeshift pallet beneath the eaves of the farmhouse attic, she slipped it into her mouth. It comforted her a little, though it was no substitute for her mother.

She couldn’t understand what had happened, what she’d done to deserve being pulled from her mother’s fragrant arms weeks and weeks ago, or shoved into the smoky, smelly woolen blanket, or jostled over bumping roads and finally thrust into the arms of a woman she’d never met—a woman who immediately cut the curls from Amelie’s head and shaped her hair like a boy’s.

Amelie didn’t like the scratchy shirt or the lederhosen or the dirty woolen cap she’d been dressed in. She missed her pretty dresses and her mother fussing over her hair. She missed the soft ringlets that her mother sometimes twitched to tickle her cheeks, and she even missed bath time.

She dreamed of her mother, but when she woke the image of her smile faded as quickly as the morning dew outside the kitchen window. Amelie feared that if she forgot her mother, her mother would forget her.

The woman with the greasy apron fed her, smiled sometimes, and moved her mouth in kind ways—much as her mother had done. But she couldn’t speak in signs at all, no matter how desperately or often Amelie signed her questions. “Where is Mutti? Where is Mutti?” brought no response. Amelie placed her hand on the woman’s chest,
her throat, her face, and felt the same sort of soft rumbles that she’d felt when leaning against her mother.

But the woman didn’t smell the same, and her skin was not soft and silky as her mother’s had been. The woman carried the lingering fragrance of the animals in the barn and farmyard just outside the kitchen door—the big-eyed cow, the strutting goose, the wallowing pig, even a tinge of the humble brown donkey with the rough and scruffy coat. All of that was enveloped with the yeasty smell of baking bread.

Never had Amelie tasted such delicious freshly baked bread or such creamy yellow butter, spread thinly though it was. The woman even spread her buttered bread with sweet black-currant jam—a rare thing. Her mother had tended to withhold the dark-purple sweet, smiling but shaking a gentle finger when Amelie reached for the crockery pot.

Still, Amelie cried herself to sleep at night. Sometimes the lady would climb the attic stairs and scoop her up and rock her gently. Amelie never knew when or if this would happen, or why she chose to do it. In those tender moments Amelie tried signing again, but it seemed to frustrate the lady, and she pushed Amelie’s hands away.

People came and went all times of the day and night, and sometimes Amelie was quickly shown to sit beneath the kitchen sink, behind a curtain that draped to the floor. The woman motioned for Amelie to keep very still, and Amelie tried her best to obey. She usually fell asleep obeying.

That first night, Lea’s pen dripped a blot of ink on the kitchen table as she hesitated over her letter to Friederich.
Another secret—a litany of secrets. Another “something” I will not tell my husband . . . for fear he’d worry about things he can’t help or prevent? For fear he would have me turn Rachel out for the danger in which she and this hunted deaf child will place us? No. For fear he would have me embrace them beyond my ability. For fear she is so like me—but more of everything than I can ever be—and comes with a child in need of love! How she would appeal to Friederich—to his manliness and protective nature.
Lea bit her lip.
She’s said nothing of whether the Institute—
She choked back a sob.

Lea did not finish the letter, but folded and placed it in its envelope. She’d work on it again tomorrow. She turned out the light, checked on Oma, who breathed softly and rhythmically in her sleep, and walked to the little room she’d grown up in. She slipped her shoes beneath the bed, turned down the coverlet, and slid in next to her sister.

Lea turned to her side, facing away from her roommate. Rachel might indeed be her twin, her decidedly more beautiful twin, but Lea was the one married to Friederich, and she was the one Oma had raised as her own daughter. She must make certain this interloper did not forget she was exactly that. And she’d remind her, at every opportunity, of the danger in which she’d placed them.

24

T
HE
CLOCK
in the newsroom ticked off the half hours: four, four thirty, five, five thirty, six in the morning. Jason stretched, pushing the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to rub some life into his spent brain. He’d met his deadline an hour before but couldn’t bring himself to dodge the overzealous early-morning patrols back to his hotel. He’d wait an hour longer, then try to find someplace that served breakfast on a Sunday morning.

There might be just enough time to get to his hotel, shave, and grab a fresh shirt before the underground church service. He stood, stretching again, reaching for the ceiling and plunging his hands toward the floor, arching the ache in his back like a cat.

He wasn’t a churchgoing man—no time or inclination, and nobody made him go growing up. But this was for the sake of a story about some rebel pacifist preacher who’d helped found that new church he’d covered before—the Confessing Church—and who’d dared to thumb his nose at Hitler’s policies. He’d declared, when Hitler had barely settled into office, that no one but Jesus Christ is the true leader, the true teacher. For that first tirade, his radio program had been cut midstream. More recently, Bonhoeffer’d been banned from preaching in Berlin.

The thing that puzzled Jason and interested his editor was why Dietrich Bonhoeffer had returned to Berlin at all. Granted, his family was here. But Bonhoeffer had been safely stowed away in America, according to Jason’s sources. He’d returned to Germany because he
said he couldn’t allow his church to go through these days alone, that he’d have no right to take part in the restoration of Christian life in Germany after the war unless he shared the trials of this time with his people. That sort of rebellion and heroism—misguided or not—was right up Jason’s alley, and fodder for a great story.

And he needed a story. The whole thing with Rachel Kramer had blown up in his face. When a rival American news reporter had scooped him on the detention of Dr. Rudolph Kramer and the mysterious disappearance of his daughter, Chief had raked him over the coals, threatening to ship him to China—especially since Jason had pegged Kramer’s daughter at the gala in August.

If the chief only knew! The real story was a dynamite tale—one worthy of a novel, if not a Pulitzer. But Jason dared not print it—not here, and not in America. He couldn’t be linked to any of the players.

Jason knew Rachel’s picture had been circulated to newspapers, Gestapo, checkpoints, and border patrols. She was as good as labeled an enemy of the Reich, was to be arrested on sight and brought to Berlin for questioning. Jason closed his eyes, sighed, and wished for the hundredth time that he knew she was safe. That’s all he wanted—all he asked. But he knew that safe now was not safe later. Rachel, her grandmother, and her sister were all targets for the SS.

If all had gone well, Sheila should have dropped Rachel’s passport aboard the ocean liner by now. Once the authorities found it, they’d presume she’d somehow slipped into the States without being documented. The fat should hit the fire when she didn’t turn up in Manhattan. There’d be accusations flying back and forth between the US and Germany—unless, like all the other stories Jason felt mattered, it was buried in the back pages and no one cared after all. No one but Gerhardt Schlick and the Institute’s pack of pseudoscience doctors.

If I want to stay in Germany, I’d better make good and dredge up something that shows just what rot the Reich is up to, without rubbing their noses so deeply in the stench they kick me out of the country.
He sat up.
Okay, so that’s my specialty—skate the thin edge, trip the light fantastic.

Jason wound his watch, setting it against the wall clock. He straightened his tie, slung his jacket over his shoulder, and stuffed a small notepad and pen in his shirt pocket. He hoped Bonhoeffer could keep him awake.

Two hours later, with a hot breakfast in his stomach and a fresh shirt on his back, Jason slipped through the side door of the address he’d been given. A woman welcomed him to her home. He scanned the faces of the balding and middle-aged men congregating near the front of the large parlor. Surely one of those was his man.

Jason had heard of the Bonhoeffer family plenty of times—everybody knew the preacher’s father, Dr. Bonhoeffer, eminent psychologist. But he hadn’t run into the preacher. The overflowing home church shifted to life and order. Two hymns were sung a cappella, infused with more feeling than Jason had expected. Midway through the second hymn, a man in a tweed suit walked from the back of the room, stepping up to the makeshift pulpit. He was a tall, blond fellow, not much older than Jason. Athletic, broad-shouldered, square-jawed. He looked more like a German soccer player than a preacher.

He sang with gusto—a far-reaching baritone. But when the room fell silent and he adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses, preparing to speak, the action lent him a studious, professorial bent.

Jason leaned forward, determined to catch every word, to find a story his editor would buy. But three minutes in, he knew he’d never get the fiery oratory of a rebel—certainly none of the pulpit-pounding passion he would’ve expected to hear from a man of such reputation in the US. Short on sleep, Jason pinched his arm to concentrate, translating the German in his head.

The man spoke quietly, earnestly, peering into their eyes, as if they’d just sat down for a cup of coffee but he had something urgent
to share. His sentences tended to be lengthy, his thoughts complex, as though through reason alone he could implant his message, ensure stability.

The preacher’s physical presence dominated and his sermon challenged, though it was not overtly political. What Jason knew at the end of the hour was that Dietrich Bonhoeffer had foreseen the stripping of Christ from the altars of Germany. He’d seen the Nazification of the German church as they’d accepted their Führer as its head and sovereign, replacing Christ. He’d read the truth in Hitler’s
Mein Kampf
about the intended murder of innocents—long before anyone on either side of the Atlantic had believed the madman could be serious about eliminating Jews or Poles or handicapped children or infirm elderly. Hadn’t it all been there in black and white? Wasn’t Hitler doing just what he’d written?