Springtime of the Spirit (15 page)

She lifted one brow. “Headache or not?”

“Headache or not.”

They both stood and she watched them put on their coats, much the same as Christophe had a while ago. Somehow, though, she wasn’t sorry to see them leave. At least not as sorry as she was when Christophe left for the service without her.

She went to her room planning to do what she said—spend the evening at her desk, then go to sleep. Far different from the way she’d spent last Christmas Eve. As tense and worried as her family had been over the scarcity of food and the changing opinions of the war, Giselle had been with them. And underneath all the worries, they’d been happy enough.

Annaliese ought to find something to be happy about again. Perhaps Jurgen should talk about starting other holidays. Surely they would celebrate if the workers of the world everywhere were united, allowed to live a life of dignity rather than scrimping for the food they ate and the clothes they wore. Freedom from tyranny would be a day to commemorate.

But not Christmas; this was one holiday bound for extinction if the party found its majority.

* * *

Christophe might simply have gone up to Annaliese’s flat, tapped on the door, and asked to speak to her.

But if he did, Bertita would surely hear. So Christophe stepped below Annaliese’s window and withdrew a few pebbles.

It took only a moment for her window to open. She leaned down with arms crossed against the cold.

“You’ll break the window if you’re not careful!”

He ignored her angry tone. “Come down and talk to me.”

“No. It’s late.”

“Then I’m coming to your room, and Bertita will hear it all.”

“No!”

She slammed the window and he thought Bertita might hear them after all.

He saw no movement from the upper story, no light in the other window. Waiting, he tossed other little stones into the air, catching them one by one. He would toss more at her window if need be.

But there she was. Fully dressed, including her coat, hat, and gloves. “What is so important that we have to freeze ourselves at this hour instead of talking during the day in the party office?”

“I wanted to speak to you alone. Here, come this way.”

To his relief, she followed.

“I want to know something, Annaliese. I want to know if you believe everything the party stands for.”

She stopped, facing him with wide eyes. “You dragged me out on this freezing night to ask me that? Isn’t that something you should talk to Leo or Jurgen about?”

He shook his head. “I know they believe in the party. I want to know if
you
do.”

“Of course I do.”

“Why?”

“Because what they want is best for everyone, on the whole. To take care of the poor, to give those of lesser means a voice. Fairness for everyone.”

“Even the rich?”

“Wealth is a trap. It makes people treat others poorly.”

She shivered and he took her arm to lead them forward again; he had an idea where to take her, but it was a good distance away.

“Why do you dislike me, Annaliese?” The question was there between them almost before he knew it. And yet, once said, he wasn’t sorry, not even if he was about to make a fool of himself. “You didn’t used to, you know. I remember. When you used to follow Giselle and me around, you were never short a smile for either one of us. What happened?”

She pulled away and stiffened so visibly he thought if he touched her, she would topple back to the pavement, balance lost in her brittleness.

“Don’t talk to me about Giselle.” She started walking again.

“I’m sorry if it’s painful for you. I don’t even know how she died, except that they said it was an accident.”

He stopped talking when he saw the growing horror on her face. She stared at him with tears pooling in her eyes. Eyes so like Giselle’s and yet so different. Wider, more green than blue. A color he’d never seen before.

“How can you speak of her so casually? When
you
are responsible for what she did? for her death?”

The words made no sense, but even so, they sliced him like a knife, hot where he was cold, igniting pain where he’d felt nothing only a moment ago. So deep inside his heart, he feared he’d never dislodge it, never be free of it.

“What are you talking about? I haven’t been in contact with Giselle for three years.”

“No.” Annaliese shook her head. “That’s not true. I know it isn’t.”

He started walking again, faster now, away from her. “I had nothing to do with her death.” He threw the words over his shoulder at her because she didn’t keep up with his pace. Other deaths, yes. Twenty-three to count with certainty, enough for their faces to haunt him each time he closed his eyes.

“But she died trying to please you.”

Annaliese had sprinted to catch up, and her face was close to his, the eyes that had seemed so lovely only a moment ago now accusing and ugly.

“Don’t put another death on my head!”

He kept up his pace, not caring if she followed or not. He’d been a fool to want to talk to her alone, a fool to chase after her because of her parents. A fool to start caring.

But she did follow; he heard the patter of her footsteps. When she caught up to him, she grabbed his arm as if she were itching for the fight he was only too eager to give. “Didn’t you wonder what became of her? And yet it took you weeks to return after the last bullet at the front was finally shot.”

He grabbed her arms then, not caring that she winced from the grip or that she leaned away when he pressed his face close or that for the barest moment she was afraid of him. “I had nothing to do with her death! Not hers.”

And then, because she still looked afraid, Christophe was as disgusted with himself as he was with her unfounded accusation. He thrust her away and she stumbled back but did not fall. He wondered if he would even have helped her if she had. He didn’t stop long enough to contemplate it; he walked away.

“Tell me the truth, then,” she called after him. “Prove it to me.”

That made him stop. He faced her, seeing her shiver. Whether it was from the cold or leftover fear of him, he didn’t know.

“Come with me.”

He led her down the final two blocks he’d meant to take her all the time, to a quiet café where he could eat as he looked at the faces of others who understood. He’d come here during the middle of more than one sleepless night, because the door was never closed to soldiers. Even those like him, no longer wearing a uniform. A man didn’t have to wear a uniform to be recognized as a soldier these days; almost everyone his age had served one way or another.

The dining room was three stairs down from the street, rarely busy because so few people had money to spend on café fare, and their menu was limited anyway because of the shortages. Though it was late, the café was well lit and a few people sat in various spots around the room.

“
Ach!
Christophe! Merry Christmas!”

Hearing the familiar voice was the balm he needed just then, this woman who’d lost her only son in the war and was now “Mama” to all the soldiers who came through her restaurant door. She was small, softly rounded, with graying hair and a smile that never stopped at her lips but always reached her eyes, too.

Christophe let Mama hug him the way she always did. With his arm still around her, hoping the tension between him and Annaliese didn’t show, he introduced her.

“Come in, both of you; come away from the doorway,” Mama said. “I’m glad you’re here, Christophe!” She pulled something from her pocket—something that looked like a picture, but he saw that it was a postcard. “You speak English; can you help me to know what this says?”

He took the card from her, welcoming the diversion from the tension he’d carried in with Annaliese. It was a picture of a ship in a harbor—a passenger liner, not the sort of ship the German fleet had produced lately. Christophe flipped it over to look at the writing. “This is in German—”

“Just the name of the ship, please. On the front.”

“Great Northern Pacific Steamship Company, Great Northern, between San Francisco and Portland, Oregon . . .” He had no idea if his pronunciation was accurate, but the words were clear enough. “It says it’s entering a bridge—the Golden Gate Bridge at San Francisco.”

She accepted it back, laying it to her heart. “
Ach
, thank you, Christophe! From my nephew. He says he may join the Americans. Who knows! He may be with them now that they’re here, over along the river.” Then she tried pronouncing
San Francisco
, but Christophe didn’t know if her version was any closer to correct than his. She leaned toward Annaliese and winked. “It’s late to be out even on a holiday, but if Christophe is your friend, you’ve nothing to worry about,
Fräulein
. He’s the kind of friend we all need,
ja
? Did you know he speaks English so well?”

Annaliese had the decency to shake her head but stay quiet, for which Christophe was grateful.

He took Annaliese to his favorite table, in a darkened corner where he could see the door but could not easily be seen by anyone else. Then he ordered coffee for both of them.

The forced intermission to their argument had lent them both a renewed calm.

“Now tell me, Annaliese. How could I have had anything to do with Giselle’s death when I haven’t seen her for years?”

Instead of mirroring his confusion, her face went hard. “I saw the letters, Christophe. From you, telling her how you hated the war, hated that the soldiers were being pushed to fight even when they had nothing left in them. That you would do anything to stop it, and the Russians had a sound idea in shooting every last officer and simply going home.” Her eyes narrowed. “That if she had half the courage she possessed in her letters, she would sabotage every munitions plant in Germany to help end the war. Starting with our father’s.”

“I never wrote such things! Ask someone to destroy a munitions factory? How would that have made a difference, except to hurt the men I fought with?”

For a moment one of her brows dipped, but then she shook her head. “No. I saw the letters. They weren’t signed, but they were in an envelope with your name on it. I knew you loved her—you started loving her when we were all still children. I
remember
—”

“Why would I want men to shoot officers? I was a Major; they would have started with me.”

Her brows lifted in surprise, but before she could speak, Mama brought their coffee. Two steaming cups, delivered with a smile that might have erased the tension between them if either he or Annaliese had let it. But he didn’t, and he could tell she didn’t either.

When Mama left their table, Christophe leaned closer and kept his voice low. “I was interested in your sister for a time, years ago. Right up until a month before I left for training in the army, I held a special place for her. Until she told me she loved me only as a friend and didn’t want me to go away thinking the wrong way about her.”

“But—but I saw all those letters!”

“I wrote three letters, telling her how I was doing. She’d written to me first, and I was obligated to return the favor.”

“No, no, no! I saw dozens of them. Dozens!”

“Not from me.”

Now she slumped in her chair, rubbing away tears that spilled over her lids but thankfully were not replaced by more. She was shaking her head, mumbling something about the letters and envelopes clearly marked with his name. Then she stopped and looked squarely at him. “Did you really not have a romance with Giselle?”

He shook his head. “Why would I lie? She wasn’t interested in me. She said I was too much like a brother to her.”

Annaliese charged from her chair. Christophe started after her, but she was at the pay counter, then turning back before he was much more than a step away from their table. She had a pencil in her hand and a blank receipt paper.

“Write something here. Write anything.”

“Annaliese—”

“Just do it.”

And so he did. He wrote,
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

She snatched it from him before he’d dotted the last
i
.

* * *

Annaliese stared at the handwriting, at the tallness of the capital letters, the lack of flourish in the curve on each
g
. This writing was sizable and bold, letters slightly too close but legible all the same.

And entirely unlike the smaller, somewhat smoother and more pleasing script she remembered all too well from the letters she’d secretly snatched from her sister’s room.

The words couldn’t have been written by the same hand, unless he was practiced in disguising such details and had reason to suspect what she was trying to find out.

Yet the envelopes had said his name so clearly: Christophe Brecht. Of course, those had been neatly printed rather than written in script, and smudged, stamped, even a bit tattered. She’d assumed what handwriting she’d been able to see had been different only because he’d wanted to have the address written larger for ease of the delivery system.

Was it possible the envelopes had been written by Christophe . . . but the letters written by someone else? “I don’t understand. She received dozens of letters, and I thought they were all from you.”

“I wrote her about my training and about approval of my commission to Hauptmann and then one last time when I was reassigned from behind the front to the battle lines. She wrote to me, too, and told me how things were at home, how everyone was making do. Three times.”

Annaliese put her face in her hands, if only to hold back a scream of purest frustration. All this time, she’d been jealous of her sister over nothing. Over a romance that had never been.

She pulled her hands away from her eyes and stared at Christophe. She’d also hated him for something he’d never done.