For Such a Time (2 page)

Stella’s throat tightened with anger. Her experience at the hands of the Gestapo had hardly been a mere joke. She swallowed her ire and said, “And now . . . what will you do with me, Herr Kommandant?”

“Fatten you up like a Christmas
Gänsebraten
, for a start.” He glanced at her spare limbs. “Soon you’ll return to the pretty dove I imagine you once were.”

Stella looked away. Was he toying with her? Morty once told her that her beauty would save her—a “changeling,” he’d called his young niece, Stella’s blond hair and blue eyes a rarity among their people.

Her uncle had been wrong. Beauty was dangerous, a liability for someone desperate to remain obscure in a crowd, inconspicuous to the eyes of soldiers.

She turned to him, this time her bitterness unchecked. “Christmas goose or fatted calf, both meet the same end, do they not, Herr Kommandant?”

The muscle at his jaw clenched. Too late, Stella realized her foolish outburst. Horrified and amazed at her own audacity, she braced against the expected Consequence. Surely he would beat her, or worse—

“Frau Gertz!”

The force of his bellow nearly knocked Stella back. He continued to hold her in his grip until his cousin appeared cautiously from the kitchen.

“Get her a coat. We’re leaving.”

Frau Gertz bobbed her head like some peasant to a feudal lord before she rushed toward the closet. Stella could only watch, frozen in place. The colonel promised she would be safe . . .
here
. And now they were leaving.

The Hausfrau returned with a coat disguised as a frayed white shawl.

“Have you any shoes, Fräulein?”

He sounded impatient. Stella gaped at her bloodied feet, her mind seized by more forgotten memories. Someone at Dachau had taken her shoes, her clothes . . .

She
knelt naked in the snow, her soul seared with humiliation
, her body numbed by cold. Faces streaked with dirt and
pity surrounded her as though she were some freak in
a carnival. Soon guards dragged her away. Her flesh burned
with pain, then fear. Fear for the little hands shoving
a bundle in her direction. A blouse . . . little hands in
danger . . . crying hands . . . struggle with the guards . . . the crack of
a rifle . . .

Images ripped through Stella like shards of glass. She hunched forward, dizzy with pain, her eyes shut against the brutal past.

“I will not ask you again!”

The colonel’s frighteningly cold voice sounded a thousand kilometers away. She clawed her way up through the terrifying haze and struggled to recall his question.
Shoes . . .

“Gone,” Stella managed to say before her knees buckled. She collapsed toward the floor just as he caught her and hauled her against him. She made a puny attempt to push away, but his strength clearly outmatched hers. Exhausted, she slumped against him, only vaguely aware of the shawl being placed across her shoulders.

She cried out in protest as he lifted her into his arms. That seemed to fuel his anger. “You fed her while I was away, didn’t you?”

“Oh, she ate.” Frau Gertz’s blunt fingers bunched in the folds of her white apron. “She ate food enough for three people! Then she threw it up on my floor. Now she refuses anything but broth.”

The Hausfrau shot an accusing look at Stella, as if demanding corroboration. Stella’s face heated. She’d been so hungry. Afterward, she’d sworn that no one, especially this nasty woman, would ever again witness her humiliation. So far, the broth seemed safe enough.

“What about clothing, cousin?” The colonel’s tone held an edge. “I had assumed that for the week I left her in your care, my money would more than compensate you for your trouble.”

“But you said to use discretion,” the Hausfrau whined. “How could I go to town and buy new clothes without the tradesmen asking questions? She is so much smaller than me—”

“I’m done with excuses! Now give her
your
coat, and shoes for her feet.
Schnell!
”

His bark sent her running back to the closet. She returned with a voluminous black wool coat and a pair of dirty pink house slippers. “My other shoes are still at the cobbler’s. . . .”

Her voice trailed off. The colonel was staring at the boots on her feet. The Hausfrau looked alarmed. Stella felt a spurt of vindication. “Please, cousin.”

Before she could utter another plea, he swore and snatched up the clothing. He wheeled around and departed with Stella, leaving a startled Frau Gertz in his wake.

Outside, his driver held the car door open. Once the colonel deposited Stella against the seat, he offered her the coat and slippers. She took them before scooting to the far end of the car. His hulk-like frame followed her inside.

The engine of the Mercedes roared to life while heat blasted from vents in the car’s dashboard. Stella bit back a blissful sigh as she hugged the borrowed coat to her chest. Casting a surreptitious glance at the colonel, she found herself caught in his steady, impenetrable gaze.

A brief moment passed before the line at his mouth thinned and his features hardened, as though he’d reached some distasteful conclusion. Alarms began going off in Stella’s head as he reached a gloved hand deep inside his coat . . .

A gun! He was going to shoot her! She grabbed the door’s handle and pulled. Locked! A scream lodged in her throat as she shut her eyes, pressing her body hard into the leather seat—

“Put this on.”

Her eyes flew open. She swallowed her cry when she saw he held not a pistol but a woman’s red hairpiece. He offered it to her. “As you’ve discovered, papers mean little at this stage of the war. We don’t want you looking too conspicuous.”

With unsteady hands, she fitted the wig so that the strands fell about her shoulders.

“You’ll get across the Czech border safely enough,” he said when she finished. “But the color doesn’t suit you, Fräulein.”

Ignoring the petty insult, Stella turned toward the window and struggled to regain her composure.

Outside, emerald fir and barren poplars rushed past the car as it sped along the winding ribbon of road into Germany’s lower wine country. The war hadn’t yet touched this pristine countryside; instead of burned-out buildings and cratered fields, she saw only arbors, barren of fruit, cast against a backdrop of snowy white. In summer their latticed bowers would again be laden with plump grapes, peacefully unaware of the suffering only a few kilometers away.

Freiheit
. Freedom. Stella gazed out at the forested hills and felt a stab of yearning like physical pain. She embraced it, ridding herself of fear as fury from the past several months replaced it. Fury at the old God for abandoning her. Fury at this new one, the uniformed monster beside her who now controlled her life.

Silence stretched with the miles, and though she burned with questions, Stella was grateful for the respite. She had no use for small talk with this Nazi, and having to answer more of his questions could only become a dangerous undertaking.

At Regensburg, a town near the western bank of the Danube River, the colonel ordered a halt at a local
Gasthaus
. He dispatched his driver, Sergeant Grossman, to go inside and procure three lunches. He then turned his attention to her.

“Your papers state you are from Innsbruck. I too am Austrian, from the little town of Thaur, not far from there.” His penetrating eyes looked at odds with his smile. “I once knew a man by the name of Muller: Tag Muller. He and his family lived in the town of Innsbruck, where I ventured often as a boy. Are you any relation? I’m sure I would not have forgotten you.”

Stella shook her head, glancing at the bruised hands in her lap. Mentally she cursed her false papers. In all of Europe to conjure a birthplace, Morty happened to choose this man’s backyard and the name of a family friend!

“Well?”

She moistened her dry lips. “Muller is a common name.”

“True. Is your family still there?”

Again she shook her head, refusing to look at him. Stella desperately hoped he would mistake her silence for grief and stop asking questions. Her ploy failed.

“Speak!” He grabbed her chin and turned her face until their eyes locked. “I trust, since you have the ability to make rash remarks, that you can also make intelligent conversation.”

Trembling beneath his touch, Stella did not look away. “My parents died when I was five.” That much was true, anyway. “I had no other family, so I was taken in and raised by their closest friends.” A spurt of defiance made her add, “They were Jews.”

Expecting a violent reaction, Stella was surprised when his grip on her eased. In fact, he looked only mildly curious. “Your papers also state you have performed clerical work. Did you attend school at Innsbruck?”

“Yes.” It was another lie, though Stella
had
received instruction, but not in any school—not past the age of thirteen when Nuremberg law forbade Jews to receive an education. Instead, Mrs. Bernstein, a retired schoolteacher living upstairs from their old apartment in Mannheim, had tutored her in the basics of bookkeeping and clerical skills.

“How well can you type?”

Stella straightened in her seat. Did he have need of her abilities? “Very well, Herr Kommandant,” she said. “I also know shorthand and general accounting.” She tried to repress her optimism, painfully aware of the Nazis’ verbal traps.

He seemed genuinely pleased. “I’d hoped as much, Stella.”

The sound of her name on his lips disturbed her, as though linking them together in some intimate way. Stella wanted nothing personal between them. She’d much rather hate him.

Sergeant Grossman returned with their packages of food. As he began passing them through the open car window, Stella noticed his left wrist bore no hand; the steel hook in its place
both frightened and moved her as she watched him struggle with his burden.

The colonel offered her a boxed lunch. Stella vehemently shook her head.

“You will eat,” he growled. “Not only did your bones cut into me while I carried you, but you weigh less than a pair of my boots. And if you starve yourself, well . . .” He shot her a calculated look. “We won’t be able to plan out your future, will we?”

An artful strategist
. She took the box, hating that he’d correctly guessed that her curiosity at his statement would outweigh any risk of nausea. She concentrated on taking small bites of the cheese sandwich and apple slices packed inside while her attention strayed back toward the miles they had crossed.

“Relax.” The colonel read her thoughts. “Dachau is only a speck in the distance.”

She paused with a dried apple slice halfway to her lips.
What of those who still suffered?
There was no hope for them. Unlike her, they wouldn’t be rescued.

But was she safe? Stella stared at the man beside her, this Jew Killer who had taken possession of her. With or without false papers, her life might only stretch as far as the next hour. What did he really want with her? Why had he taken her from Dachau?

Would he ever let her go free?

Her throat ached at the unbearable uncertainty.
Lord, please let me know
my fate.

Silence. Had she expected otherwise? “What is my future, Herr Kommandant?” she managed to whisper.

“That depends on you, Fräulein.” His smile was enigmatic. “Can you act as well as you type?”

 2 

Esther had not revealed her nationality and family background, because Mordecai had forbidden her to do so.

Esther 2:10

H
alt!”

The Mercedes rolled to a stop in front of a manned gate at the border blockade into Czechoslovakia. A soldier in the brown uniform of the
Sturmabteilung
marched to their car.

Stella cast a nervous glance at the colonel.

“Stop looking guilty,” he whispered, but his smile held a perceptible tightness.

Stella’s anxiety intensified. Her safety depended on the colonel. He was the enemy, true, but whatever his motives, he’d so far shown her considerable concern.

The border guard standing outside her car window was a different matter. If their ruse failed, not even the colonel could save her. The Brownshirts would shoot her dead.

The soldier pinned her with a glare as he barked an order at Sergeant Grossman to produce their identification papers. Stella’s nostrils flared with the sharp tang of fear. She began fidgeting with the red strands of her hair until the colonel caught
her hand in his and gave it a gentle squeeze. Whether a silent reprimand or a token of encouragement, the small gesture helped her regain a measure of control.

“Herr Colonel!”

The car door on Stella’s side flew open.

“Where are the woman’s papers?” The Brownshirt waved their documents in his hand.

“The Fräulein needs no papers. She’s with me.”

The young guard’s face reddened. “But this is highly irregular, Herr Colonel. She must have papers!”

“I’m running late, Corporal.” Now the colonel sounded bored. “Do you purposely delay my urgent business for
der Führer
?”

“
Nein
, of course not.” The Brownshirt glanced behind the car. Relief swept across his features. “Please, you will wait here a moment, Herr Colonel.”

Sergeant Grossman stared into the rearview mirror. “Gestapo.”

Stella followed the colonel’s backward glance to a black unmarked car pulling up directly behind them.

The colonel muttered an expletive, then said, “That’s all I need—those sniffing dogs.” He gripped Stella’s shoulder. “It was necessary to bend a few rules in order to get you out of Dachau. No matter what happens, say nothing to them.
Verstehen?
”

Hair prickled at her nape. She nodded, ignoring the pain as his fingers dug into her skin.

A fleshy-faced, stocky man in black leather appeared at the open door. Stella had the fleeting thought that this Gestapo pig actually looked like one. His snout nose was wedged between a pair of rounded spectacles, while his eyes shone like black, wet beads behind the frames. They scrutinized the colonel and then stared at her. “Get out of the car, Fräulein.”

Pig-nose uttered the toneless command from lips too red and thick to be considered masculine. Stella couldn’t rouse herself. She froze, unable to look away.

His beady eyes narrowed while his nostrils shot twin streams of billowing steam into the cold afternoon. He unholstered his pistol, drew back the slide, and took aim. “Get out, now.”

Instinct pushed Stella back against the solid wall of the colonel. She turned to him, knowing her bloodless face conveyed panic.

The muscle at his jaw compressed with fury as he gave her a flicker of a nod.

Pig-nose stepped back while Stella clambered out of the car.

Air froze in her lungs as icy slush pooled inside the slippers; she felt her joints ache all the way up to her teeth. Drawing in several shallow breaths, Stella raised her gaze to him.

Pig-nose stared at her ridiculously shod feet. “Give me your papers, Fräulein.”

Two uniformed men approached to stand on either side of him. Pig-nose glared at her. Stella struggled against gravity, tilting her chin to meet his scowl. Cold moisture trickled down her back as the silence ticked off in seconds, palpable sounds like the pulse pounding in her ears.

She didn’t hear the car door open. Nor was she more than vaguely aware when the colonel moved to stand beside her.

“Here’s what you’re looking for, Captain.” He thrust her identification papers into the outstretched palm.

Pig-nose scanned the documents. “These have been marked
JUDE
, Herr Colonel.”

His gloved hand whipped out and tore away the red wig. Cold pierced Stella’s exposed scalp, stinging her ears. “So, it seems, has she.”

The murky eyes behind the glasses barely registered surprise. “Take off the coat.”

With jerking motions, Stella removed the warm garment. Pig-nose then grabbed her left wrist, exposing the numbered tattoo near her elbow. “She has all the attributes.”

He cast another mocking smile at her dirty, water-soaked slippers before he crumpled her papers and tossed them to the
ground. Stella watched the remnants of her life grow damp and soiled in the dirty snow like so much refuse.

He signaled the guard on his right toward the colonel’s car. “We will need more details on this matter, Herr Colonel. You and your party will accompany us back to the Gestapo office in Regensburg. My man will escort you.”

More courteous words; their ominous weight buried Stella like an avalanche. She struggled to breathe, tasting the danger in them, the promise of death.

“That won’t be necessary, Captain.”

The colonel’s congenial tone was welcome relief. Stella’s exhausted limbs, numbed with cold, wavered beneath her.

“I requested Fräulein Muller months ago from Austria,” the colonel continued smoothly. She glanced at him as he gave her arm a warning squeeze. “She was my brother’s secretary in Linz—he generously allowed me the use of her services at Theresienstadt, where I’ve been assigned as Kommandant by the
Reichsführer
. Unfortunately she was arrested on her way to Munich, where we were to meet. If you’ll check her papers closely, you’ll see the mistake.”

He smiled a cold smile. “Himmler himself admitted it was great luck that I happened to find her at Dachau, though he was perturbed that the Gestapo’s error delayed me in reaching my new post.”

The colonel was a better liar than she was! Stella watched as his implied intimacy with the same powerful man who also controlled the Gestapo had its desired effect. Pig-nose’s red smirk faded. He straightened and holstered his pistol.

His speculative expression darted between Stella and the colonel. Then he snapped his fingers at the man beside him and pointed to the crumpled, water-stained wad on the ground. The orderly retrieved Stella’s papers, and Pig-nose made a great show of rereading them before he thrust them back at the colonel, along with Stella’s red wig.

“I trust you will inform Herr Reichsführer that Captain Otto Meinz, of Gestapo Regensburg, gave you no cause for further delay, Herr Colonel?”

“I will, of course, report your expediency in the matter, Captain.”

Pig-nose thrust out his arm. “
Heil
Hitler!”

The colonel returned the salute as he lifted Stella by the waist and stuffed her back inside the car. Tossing the wig in after her, he slammed the door and got in on the other side.

Pig-nose signaled the guard to open the gate. Glancing back in at Stella, he offered her a curt nod. She could hear his bootheels snap together. “My apologies, Fräulein.”

Inclining her head slightly, she shrugged back into the coat and stifled her giddy relief as the Mercedes rolled forward.

Plowing eastward, they gradually ascended along the base of the Sumava Mountains into the Bohemian Forest. Steel sky vanished, replaced by a thick canopy of pine and fir merging along either side of the road. Shadows inside the car danced with occasional breaks in the trees as the Mercedes sped along a road largely cleared of snow. No doubt German
Panzers
and the tank troops had been through recently.

“Give me your feet.”

Stella shot him a startled look.

“Now, before they become completely useless.” The colonel reached for her legs, swiveling her around in the seat to settle them against his lap. Tearing away the water-soaked slippers, he removed the muffler from around his neck and wrapped her bare feet, briskly massaging her heels, soles, and toes. Stella winced at the pain of blood flowing back into the nerves.

“You did well back there.” His grim expression belied the compliment. “I trust I’ve now sufficiently answered your question?”

Rattled by her confrontation with the Gestapo and distracted by the needles pricking her sore feet, Stella nodded in reflexive obedience. “What question, Herr Kommandant?” she asked.

Heat bullied its way up her cheeks at his amusement. Disgusted at her own bottomless well of humiliation, she added the obvious. “I’m to be your secretary then.”

The car’s shadows disappeared along with the deepest part of the forest. Stella caught the colonel’s silent assent and relief flowed like honey through her limbs. It seemed she would live . . . at least for a time.

“Actually, one of my reasons for traveling to Munich was to obtain an assistant. But then I found you at the camp and saw that your papers listed clerical skills.” In the dimness she glimpsed the slight shrug of his broad shoulders.

“I am taking a chance on you, Fräulein Muller.” His brusqueness stifled her newfound assurance. “That does not mean I tolerate marginal work. I’m a demanding employer, so your best had better be good enough.

“Nor will I permit deceit. There’s enough political intrigue stalking my back within the
Reich
without adding your name to the list. Your loyalty belongs to me”—he leaned close so that his warm breath grazed her cheek—“and no one else.”

His nearness, as well as her vulnerable position, with her legs pinioned across his lap, amplified the tremor along Stella’s spine. She’d already lied to him; her whole life had become one big falsehood. “I won’t deceive you,” she said, unable to look him in the eye.

“Excellent. Because as easily as I netted you from that cesspool Dachau, I can toss you back.”

“I understand perfectly, Herr Kommandant.”

“I believe you do.” He rested back against the seat and continued massaging her feet. Humor touched his voice. “I suspect your intelligence is only matched by your beauty.”

Stella set her chin as she glanced at her battered hands and bony wrists. She turned to stare out the back window, refusing to let him see how his insults affected her.

He paused in his ministrations. “You doubt my sincerity?”

She pretended not to hear him, but the pressure of his hand on her cheek brought her around to face him. “Beneath hollowed cheeks and bruises, beauty sleeps.”

He spoke aloud as though to himself; his somber green eyes darkened to the depths of the forest they had just passed. Stella refused to fathom the reason it disturbed her.

“Wounds to the flesh eventually heal, Fräulein,” he said, releasing her. “Your beauty will return soon enough.”

“What about wounds to the soul, Herr Kommandant?”

She instantly regretted the question. Yet he didn’t seem angry; his features registered only mild surprise, then resettled into their matrix of hard angles and planes. “A much more complex injury,” he said. “One for which I have yet to find a cure.”

His dispirited tone made her wonder at its cause. From the moment she’d first spied him through the window of the chalet, he’d worn a furrowed brow and a hard line at his mouth, as though another, more intimate battle raged.

Stella shunned any further consideration. He wasn’t worth it—he’d already made it clear he would send her back to Dachau without a second thought. She’d learned enough of the SS ways to know he meant every word. This reprieve she’d been granted could all change in an instant.

Disquieted, she removed her legs from his lap. “Thank you, Herr Kommandant. I’m much better now.” She unwrapped her feet and offered the scarf back to him.

“Keep it.”

Of course he wouldn’t want it back—it was stained with her blood, her filth. Stella blushed as she wadded the cloth into her lap.

She darted another glance at him. The colonel’s sizable frame took up most of the seat. His head rested back against the leather, a briefcase near his feet. The same brass-topped cane she’d noticed earlier lay propped against the door. She wondered at the nature of his injury. He had managed to carry her with such ease.