The Diaries - 01 (8 page)

“I just want to treat
you to a nice meal, that’s all.”

The mutual
excitement about their date was palpable, brightening Gage’s day considerably.

After hanging up, he
ordered one of the Internet café’s unbelievably strong coffees—he liked robust
coffee, but this was a cousin to the tarry chicory he’d once had in New
Orleans.
 
Gage added some powdered
creamer to lessen the blow and began to navigate the web.
 
He didn’t log in to any email accounts
because a savvy operator could pinpoint an Internet protocol address within
seconds of a sign-in.
 
Email was not why
Gage Hartline was here.

From his pack he
removed the diary.
 
Careful not to damage
its brittle pages, Gage had marked sections with single pieces of bathroom
tissue.
 
The first, at the front of the
diary in the upper corner, was the name Greta
Dreisbach
.
 
He punched the name into Google, scanning the
results.
 
There was nothing conclusive
other than Facebook addresses of women by that same name.
 
Somehow he didn’t think they were alive in
1938.

Gage began to use
combinations, such as the name combined with 1938, or Frankfurt, or
Morgenstern, which was the Jewish family’s name on the stumble-stone in front
of the house.

He opened the
diary to the second piece of tissue.
 
Greta had written a gut-wrenching passage about being pregnant, afraid
to tell her lover, a man named Aldo:

…Aldo returned this morning.
 
Without any kind word of greeting, he locked
the door and took me roughly on the sofa.
 
It was cold, distant, animalistic.
 
Afterward, he was indirect, speaking only about his trip.
 
His phrases were clipped and he seemed
irritable.
 
I felt so very compelled to
tell him about my pregnancy, but it’s as if my mouth was paralyzed.
 
I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move.
 
He was at first concerned by my silence but
soon became quite callous.
 
He sent me to
quarters, telling me to straighten up or find another job.
 

I don’t know what to do.
 
I miss Papa so much.
 
He would be so sad, so disappointed in me,
but he would know…he would know what to do.

Gage massaged the
bridge of his nose as he turned to the next marked entry.
 
This was the one which had disturbed him so
the night before:

Aldo held his hand over a candle, scorching the
skin in the center of his palm.
 
He stared
at me, his eyes watering as his hand trembled.
 
Horrible black smoke came from his hand, the most acrid smell to ever touch
my nostrils.
 
I could hear his skin
bubbling!
 
He made me do the same
afterward, while pressed to my backside, whispering his penitence into my ear,
touching me as the flame seared my hand down to the bloody center.
 
He squeezed my neck very hard when I began to
cry, then, as always, sent me to quarters and told me to cover the atonement
mark.

And I still didn’t tell him.
 
I was catatonic each time I tried.
 
Why!?

Gage rested his
forehead in his left hand, staring down at the diary.
 
Surely worse atrocities had occurred, but
there was something soul-wrenching about the way this Greta had poured out her
worries into her diary.
 
He’d begun to
make notes, writing her name, Aldo’s name, Austria, pregnant.
 
More searches.
 
Nothing.
 
Greta
Dreisbach
and Aldo were common names in
Germany.
 
There were thousands of
matches, none of which seemed relevant.

Why was she so scared of this sicko?

Last night, he’d
read through the copious March entries.
 
He flipped the page to April.
 
After days and days of entries of Greta languishing over the fact she
couldn’t tell Aldo of her pregnancy, he ran across a new name: Elsa.
 
He searched the combinations again, finding
nothing.
 
Apparently, as Gage connected
the dots, Elsa was Aldo’s “official” significant other.
 
They didn’t live together, so he assumed her
to be a girlfriend or fiancé.
 
She was
good to Greta, and Greta remarked numerous times how she felt for “poor, sweet Elsa.”
 
And then on Tuesday, April 12
^th
,
on a day Aldo was high as a kite over some sort of business victory, a man
named Albert visited Greta’s place of work with his wife
Margarete
.
 
At first Gage thought her name might be a
misspelling, but Greta continued to spell it that way.
 
Before he searched the names, Gage read the
passage:

It’s as though, every time he visits, Albert can
see right through me.
 
At first I thought
he, like some of the other men before him, might try to have his way with me,
but that isn’t it.
 
I noticed him looking
at the burn marks on my hands when I served tea.
 
I caught his eye, he was looking at me with a sort
of empathy.

I feel strongly he knows, or at the very least
suspects, I’m Jewish.
 
I do not know how,
but I can see it in his eyes.
 
As he
spoke over the plans for the new grand building, he turned to me several times,
nodding his head slightly as I stood there nervously waiting in the corner.
 
It was as if he was comforting me!
 
He’s the smartest man I’ve ever been around
and, even from a distance, to glean from him, is almost intoxicating.
 
He speaks to Aldo frankly, challenging him
often, unlike so many of the others.
 
It
truly feels as if he’s privy to all that’s gone on between Aldo and me, without
ever having heard about any of it.

Albert’s manner and bearing have bolstered
me.
 
Tomorrow I will tell him…tomorrow I
will tell Aldo.

There was no entry
for the next day, or any of the following days.
 
The next one was marked April 19
^th
.

I haven’t been able to write for a full week.
 
I’m so scared, yet so thankful to be
alive.
 
I never told Aldo.
 
(I knew I wouldn’t!)
 
Instead, I told Elsa, pouring out my guilt and
sorrow before seeking her advice.
 
She
wasn’t angered, even confiding in me that she tried to kill herself once, all
due to the fears he has wrought inside her.
 
It was an effort to make me feel comfortable,
and it worked. She didn’t have to be as understanding as she was, given the
circumstances.
 
I expected some degree of
jealousy but received compassion in return.
 
It makes me think I wasn’t Aldo’s only illicit lover.

On the day I told Elsa, Aldo was away…I never know
his schedule…but she did.
 
She implored
me to leave, to go right then and never turn back.
 
I was unable to carry my things because of my
diaries.
 
They are large and heavy, but I
couldn’t part with them.
 
They’re my
soul, my most prized possessions.
 
Elsa
told me to disappear forever and to never tell a single being who the real father
is.
 

I left Berlin wearing her tailor-made clothes,
looking the part of a debutante (a slightly pregnant one) carrying only a grip
with my diaries, walking all the way to Potsdam.
 
It was awful.
 
My morning sickness, of course, was at its very worst.
 
I would stop in alleyways, retching uncontrollably.
 
People on the sidewalk looked at me like I
was a leper.
 
One man, wearing the party
emblem, was walking with his two children when I was
heaving
on the street.
 
He openly cursed me for
bringing my sickness out into the Reich.
 
I ran, even while retching, for fear he would have me arrested.

Once I reached Potsdam, I used my knowledge of
housekeeping to convince a frazzled housewife to allow me to work for a meal.
 
Her husband was a kind man and, after three
days of cleaning and arranging their home, he gave me enough money to reach
Frankfurt.
 
But when I arrived, I learned
my parents and cousins were gone, no one knew exactly where.
 
They had fled to the north.
 
My aunts and uncles were still there, too old
to run, but telling me to follow suit.
 

Because of my sickness, I have to stay here and
convalesce.

And now some good news!
 
Last night I met Heinrich, from the same
neighborhood, a kind man, a grocer.
 
He
fed me, allowing me use of his cozy attic room where I sit now.
 
I like Heinrich, and I think tonight I shall
tell him I’m pregnant.
 
Because in what
remains of my life, I feel compelled to trust someone, anyone, lest I die all
alone.
 
And I would rather painfully
perish with but a friend, than to stagger through this life with only
emptiness.

Perhaps Heinrich will leave with me?
 
Hope, diary, hope!
 
It keeps me going.
 
I am not sick right now, so I will take
advantage of this moment to enjoy a bit of sleep.

Gage closed his
finger in the passage, closing his eyes, leaning his head back.
 
He knew he was living out a bit of his own
agony through the eyes of this poor Jewish girl.
 
She had crossed Germany, with child, without
the benefit of family or friend.
 
More
than half of the diary still remained; perhaps it would provide some sort of
positive denouement to what had thus far been a tragic, sometimes disturbing
tale.

His finger hovered
above the red button.
 
When touched, it
closed the connection to the Internet and notified the man at the front of the
amount of time used on the Internet.
 

Wait…Heinrich?

Gage concentrated,
thinking back to the stumble-stone in front of the
Keisler
Building.
 
Heinrich Morgenstern and family…

Heinrich was
listed as killed…

Wife was listed as
killed…

The date they had
been taken was in November, 1938, because Gage remembered it being right around
the time of the infamous
Kristallnacht
.
 
He flipped to the back of the diary, seeing
empty pages.
 
He backed up…the last entry
was November 10
^th
.

Sonofabitch…

He squeezed his
eyes shut, growling through clinched teeth.
 
Greta had surely married Heinrich because, presumably, according to her
writing, Heinrich had been single when she arrived.
 
He must have been Jewish, too.
 
She said he was a kind man.
 
He must have married her and they both died,
with prejudice, soon after.
 
Gage slumped
in the chair.
 
A person could hear of the
millions who died in the Holocaust—a shockingly large number, but the thought
would soon pass like so many tragic facts do.
 
The number was old news, too large to seem real, just like the deaths
from the U.S. Civil War or the World War II casualties from the eastern front.
 
It wasn’t too unlike the view from an
airliner, viewed from such great height to even seem threatening.
 
But stand on the ledge of a three-story
building and lean out over the concrete.
 
Death seems imminent from that height, available to a person in mere
seconds.
 
Gage had just viewed the
atrocities of the Holocaust from a three-story view, and it had left him
shaken.

He glanced at his
watch.
 
It was time to head back to
Frankfurt.
 
This diary might have some
value to a Jewish museum somewhere.
 
Gage
paused, thinking.
 
There were likely
thousands of other diaries just like this one, many probably even more tragic.
 
But he didn’t know that for certain and, in
the coming days, he would make some inquiries.
 
After putting everything into his pack, he went to the front, paying his
five euro, then stepping out and walking into the brisk wind.

Gage marched in
the direction of the train station, unable to shake the passages of the diary.
 
The only other person in his life was Monika
and, somehow, he couldn’t help but transpose her image on this poor Jewish girl
Greta
Dreisbach
, running from her sick molester, a
powerful man named Aldo.

Aldo…

A thought stopped
him so fast that a man, walking behind him, ran squarely into him.
 
The man muttered a German curse and brushed
past.
 
Earlier Gage would have thought
the man was tailing him; now, completely distracted, he didn’t give it a single
thought.
 
Gage did a full turn, his eyes
dancing all around as his mind raced.
 
He
shed the pack, digging into the contents to view the notes he had made.