Daisies Are Forever (8 page)

Mitch took a two-second survey of their surroundings. Nowhere at all for the little one to use the loo. There was only one choice.

He lifted Renate from Audra’s arms. “Take off her pants.”

Gisela leaned back and stared at him. “You want me to do what?”

“Take them off. You don’t want her going potty with them on.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Help her go.”

“Right here?”

“Not exactly.” He lifted Renate over the tailgate and held her out.

Gisela grabbed his arm and screeched. “Stop it! Stop it. Don’t throw her.”

A bubble of laughter rose in his chest. It was the kind of prank Xavier would have pulled. He’d be disappointed if Mitch didn’t play along. “How far do you want me to pitch her? I toss a mean game of cricket.”

Gisela tugged on him and he had to tighten his grip.

“I won’t drop her. I promise. Renate, go potty.”

And the child did so, while hurtling through the East Prussian countryside.

When she finished, Mitch pulled her inside and held her while Gisela dressed her. Renate laid her head on his shoulder.

He gave a short chortle. “Now wasn’t that fun, Renate? When you grow up, you will tell your children all about this.”

“My turn, my turn.” Annelies wriggled out of her own clothing and he repeated the process.

He lifted Annelies inside the truck and she pulled up her pants. Then he faced Gisela. “Is it your turn now?”

She sniffed. “I don’t think you could lift me like that.”

“I could try.”

Bettina began unbuttoning her knee-length wool coat. “I want to try. That looks like fun.”

“Nein, nein.” Gisela grabbed her hand. “That is a game only for the children. You will have to wait until we stop.”

“I want to soar. One day Sebastian took me in his plane, so high above the clouds I never wanted to come down. That is the one and only time in my life I have ever been in an aeroplane. He can lift me out of the truck so I can fly.”

“You are crazy, Sister.” Katya played with a gray curl that had escaped her hood. “You can’t fly in a truck. Wherever did you get that idea?”

Mitch remembered wheeling over the English countryside in his uncle’s biplane. Uncle Roger taught him how to operate the controls. Mitch loved every minute of it. He also recalled his father’s stern look, the hard set of his mouth and the jut of his chin, not understanding. After all, a solicitor didn’t need to know how to fly.

Mitch shook his head. “Bettina, I don’t believe I’m up for that challenge. But perhaps someday we can arrange for you to fly again.”

“A plane would get us there faster. It would take us farther away from this awful place.” Gisela bounced against him.

The German army’s truck engine ground to a halt, emitting a terrible squealing sound. Not one a vehicle should make.

Mitch peered around the edge of the canvas. Nothing but snow-swept farmland.

This couldn’t be their destination.

EIGHT

T
he soldier’s footsteps crunched in the snow as he approached the back of his truck. Mitch inhaled and held it in.

“Where are we?” Gisela’s breath tickled the back of his neck.

“I’ve no idea. I got a D in geography.” Much to his father’s consternation. A solicitor would need to do better than that in school. Perhaps if Mitch had paid better attention in class, he wouldn’t have never ended up in a POW camp to begin with. “Don’t look to me for directions.”
Please, don’t look at me.
The muscles across his shoulders tightened. “If you don’t know, we’re in trouble.”

One thing he did know was that he wanted to stay out of the soldier’s sight. He didn’t want to have to speak to him in German. He didn’t want to have to come up with another excuse. So Mitch leaned back and behind the German with one arm. Kurt.

The driver lowered the tailgate and banged his hand on it twice. “I don’t know what is wrong with the truck. I can’t get it going again. The others have gone ahead. There was no room for you.”

So they were to sit out here, target practice for Soviet planes? Would he ever rejoin his mates?

“We may not even be able to fix the truck. Danzig is just a few
kilometers that way.” He pointed in the direction the truck had been headed.

“Danzig?” Mitch whispered to Gisela.

“Where the Frische Nehrung meets the mainland. You should have paid better attention in class.” She sighed. “Danzig has a train station. That’s why we have to get there. If the trains are still running, we can make our way to Berlin.”

“Can you walk into town? What about the girls and the old women?”

Dark half circles rimmed the bottom of Gisela’s eyes. “We’re not invalids.”

If he could, he would have raised his hands. “Don’t go crackers. They are young and old. That’s all I meant.”

The driver busied himself under the bonnet. Most of the truck’s occupants filed out and wandered away over the frozen landscape.

When he helped Gisela and the children down from the truck, Mitch was surprised to see Kurt and Audra waiting for them. Bettina and Katya stood between them.

“Sister.” Bettina grasped Katya’s age-spotted hand. “It’s Barcelona. I would recognize it anywhere. I can smell the paella. What a cosmopolitan city it is.”

Katya shook her head. “I don’t smell anything. You are addle brained to think this is Barcelona. More likely, it’s Madrid.”

They continued arguing about which Spanish city they were in, appearing not to understand their brother was no longer with them. Was that a good thing or not?

He found himself often turning to speak to Xavier, only to catch himself at the last minute. Xavier wasn’t with them.

Gisela asked the driver for directions to the train station and relayed them to Mitch. “He says we only have to follow this road and we will find it. We can’t miss it.”

He closed his eyes for a moment.

She didn’t know his history.

Kurt watched as Gisela limped behind her husband. Her foot was bothering her, but she said nothing. And Josep was so busy playing the hero, he didn’t notice.

She should remember he pulled her into the truck. He saved her from the Russians.

And what was an SS officer doing marching westward with this crazy band of misfits?

Kurt slogged on, his eye always on the beautiful woman in front of him. Her long amber hair had escaped its pins and flowed free and loose around her shoulders.

Beautiful. A Mozart concerto began to play in his head. His missing fingers ached. He longed to run them up and down a piano keyboard.

He hadn’t heard the music or desired to play his instrument in months. She made it happen.

Ja, he was smitten with Gisela for sure. And God—if there was one—had dropped her into his lap. Literally.

Too bad she was married. Gisela caught up to Josep and spoke into his ear. He smiled at her but . . .

But what? While the man gazed at his wife with longing, it was the look of longing unfulfilled. Of holding back. Of guarding his heart.

Kurt rubbed his forehead.

“Have you been to Danzig before?” Audra’s voice at his side startled him. The music ended.

She had linked arms with each of the old sisters and the three walked together. Her pale cheeks had pinked in the wind.

“Never. I never had the intention to visit the city either. London, New York, Paris. Those were the places I wanted to see.”

Her green eyes grew large. “Ja, those are grand places. I want to go to Hollywood, like Marlene Dietrich. Be a famous actress. Imagine, your name on a theater poster.”

“Or on the top of a concert program.” The war began and there went his dreams. Shattered. Like his arm.

“Perhaps you will see those cities someday. If you get to America, you can visit me in Hollywood. I will be a movie star by then. I could drive you around the city in my car. Or better yet, my chauffeur can drive us.”

Kurt leaned back. “How will you get to Hollywood?”

“I don’t know yet. But I will. You can count on that.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Gisela pull one of the girls’ hats farther over her ears. Such tenderness in her touch. For a moment, he forgot the woman beside him. Again she startled him when she spoke. “I’m from Schirwindt. On the border with Lithuania. I doubt you ever heard of it.”

“Nein, I never did.”

Gisela stroked the golden curls of the oldest child.

“Is something wrong?”

He forced his attention back to Audra. She did have a beautiful puckered mouth. “Why would you say that?”

“Because you get this faraway look in your eyes. Like you are having a pleasant dream.”

He cleared his throat and attempted to make his expression as blank as possible. It would do no good to let people see how struck he was by a married woman. A woman he could never have. “Pleasant dreams are difficult to come by these days.”

“Ja. I don’t know anything about my family—if they are alive or dead. Nine brothers and sisters.”

“I’m sorry. Those Russians are brutal. Heartless. They all deserve to be dropped in the cold, hard ground forever.”

Josep spoke to Gisela again and she stopped and turned to face
them. Fine lines radiated from her brown eyes. This war took too much from them too soon.

“Do either of you know Danzig?”

Both Audra and Kurt shook their heads at Gisela.

She shifted a sleeping Renate on her hip. “We will have to find accommodations for all of us. Tonight I would like to sleep in a house. No cart. No barns.”

Audra patted Bettina’s hand. “A roof and a floor. No hay.”

Gisela’s smile broke like a crescendo. “Ja, no hay. No horses or cows or pigs.”

Josep nodded. “Perhaps smaller groups. It will be easier to find a place.”

“Nein.” Gisela spat out the word. “We will stay together. If need be, we can sleep on the floor of the same room. Just to be warm and dry, I would do anything. And together we can work on catching a train west.”

Kurt was glad she voiced her opinion about splitting up the group. He didn’t want to be separated from her. With these crowds, he might never see her again. “I agree. And you will be safer with a soldier with you.”

Josep pointed to his chest. “She will have a soldier.”

Kurt watched his sleeve flop in the breeze.

Empty. Like his soul without the music.

Gisela trailed Mitch into the city, the blister on her heel burning with each step. It had started even before the truck picked them up. When they had been able to get a ride, she hoped she wouldn’t have to walk much anymore. With each step, the pain increased. Her stocking was sticky with blood.

Renate had fallen asleep on Mitch’s shoulder and Annelies’s feet dragged more the farther they walked. Bettina clung to Audra
and Katya grasped Kurt. Gisela didn’t think she had ever been so tired in her life.

She had failed Herr Holtzmann, like so many others. He should have rested more. She pushed him too hard.

They passed a shop with a few boxes of powdered milk in the window. A sign hung on the glass.

Soldaten meldet euch bei der nächsten heeresdienststelle. Wer mit ziviltrecks zieht oder sich in privatquartieren herumdrückt, gilt als fahnenflüchtig.

Mitch stood beside her. “What does it say?”

“Soldiers, get in contact with the nearest army base. Anyone who attaches themselves to civilian convoys or hangs around in private homes is considered a deserter.” She shivered. Mitch grasped her hand and squeezed it.

The others caught up to them. Mitch turned down a side street in a residential area. Where it was dangerous for him. Though it was dangerous for him everywhere. Kurt would not have to report to the army base. Not as a wounded hero.

She turned her attention to the neighborhood. Neat houses lined the road. They slumbered, all quiet, unaware of who waited on the doorstep to their city.

Mitch went no farther than the second or third home before he climbed the steps and knocked on the door.

A stooped, elderly woman answered. Her hands and head and even lips shook. Mitch waved Gisela forward. “We are looking for a place to stay. Do you have room or know of someone who might take us in?”

The woman shook her head, her long gray braid bouncing. “Nein. We aren’t well enough to have boarders, especially ones with little children.”

“Bitte, I’m begging you. The old women and small girls are exhausted. We need a warm place to rest for the night.”

“There is no way I can take you.” She began to close the door.

Gisela stuck her foot on the threshold and prevented the woman from shutting them out. “We will be quiet, I promise. We are so tired, we will sleep. No fuss.”

The home owner grasped the brass knob. “Nein. They are taking people at the school. That is where you can stay.”

“Bitte, how do we get there?” While Gisela desperately wanted a little peace and quiet, time away from the crowds, the school had to be better than the outdoors.

Gisela bobbed her head when the old woman finished giving them directions. “Danke, danke.”

They stepped back into the deserted street. Mitch adjusted the sleeping child on his shoulder. “Were you paying attention to those directions?”

“I was.”

“Good. I had trouble following her German.”

Gisela led them up and down a few blocks before they came to the unassuming red brick building.

The gymnasium was packed with people. Wall to wall. Where would they even go? She looked at her crew. The old women had ceased their chatter some kilometers before Danzig. They had hardly been able to put one foot in front of the other between the house and the school.

She turned her attention to Mitch. He shrugged.

Then Kurt stepped forward. She had felt his gaze on her back the entire way from the truck to this spot. She wanted to squirm under his scrutiny. “They will make room for a hero of the Reich.”

He proceeded to pick his way through the throng, which parted for him like the Red Sea parted for Moses. He chose a spot
close to the door. With one sweeping motion of his hand, those huddled there made room for their party.

Kurt flashed her a crooked grin, a triumphant light in his cold blue eyes.

She shivered. Together with the rest of their bunch, she made her way to the place Kurt had cleared.