Motherland (32 page)

“How do you know?”

“I just do. I see it in my head. Like a dream, only I know it’s true.” He waited for his brother to protest, but Ani nodded. “He’s walking. That’s why it’s taking so long. He’s trying to stay in the trees.”

Ani watched him silently from his bed. There were still red marks on his neck.

“He has to be good at hiding and sleeping in the cold,” said Hans. “And sometimes he has to take eggs from people’s henhouses so he can eat something.”

Hans traced a different route, following the roads. “He has a gun, but he doesn’t use it. He promised his father that he would never kill anything, unless it was a mercy.”

“Is that true?” Ani said.

Hans looked up. His father had told him that once, but he couldn’t remember when or where. He nodded. “Grossvati made him promise. Anyway, he’s coming, and I don’t want you to be scared. He’s coming home.”

“Why didn’t you get my sunflower seeds?” said Ani.

Hans’s cheeks burned. “He didn’t have them,” he said. “One of the other kids is going out to a farm again soon.”

Ani began to blink rapidly. “But it’s winter now.”

“They cut off the sunflowers’ heads in summer and dry them,” said Hans.

“Is it a mercy to kill sunflowers?” asked Ani. Blink, blink. Blink, blink.

“Ach
, Ani. Grossvati wasn’t talking about flowers,” Hans said. His brother still looked upset. He tried to change the subject. “Remember when we went to Onkel Bernd’s?” he said. It had been just last spring, but it seemed like ages ago now. Their mother had been big with Jürgen and she’d taken them for a week at their father’s friend’s dairy farm. “We made a castle in the hayloft and hid from Mother, and she got so mad at us. Remember?”

He choked on the last words. Mother hadn’t been able to climb the ladder and find them, so she’d called and called, while they’d hid, giggling. Ani had seemed closer in age to him then, shoulder-to-shoulder beside Hans in the scratchy pile of bales.

Ani shrugged.

Hans cleared his throat. “If you sniff a sunflower seed, you can still smell the July sun inside it. Mother told us that.”

“I don’t want to smell it,” said Ani.

The baby pulled himself up and swayed, beaming between Liesl’s and Uta’s knees. In the afternoon light, he looked as jolly as a cherub painted on a cathedral ceiling. Liesl and Uta were supposed to be letting out the seams of Uta’s dresses, but Jürgen’s elation at learning to walk was infectious, and the two of them had been sitting there, needles and thread cast aside, for the better part of an hour, watching him stand and tumble. The two older boys were outside shoveling the front walk.

It was the second Friday since Uta’s lover’s visit. Liesl had two days left with Uta, and two dresses to restitch at the waist. She could not believe it was true. Her needle kept pricking her finger when she sewed.
Don’t go
. Yet the closer it got to Sunday, the more Uta whisked about with a giddy air, as if she were listening to some upbeat polka the rest of them couldn’t hear. No sign of fear, no concern for herself or the child inside her. “Don’t worry about me,” she’d said whenever Liesl asked. “I’ll go back with him and I’ll be fine. I’m always fine.”

Always fine
. Even though Uta was too pregnant now for an abortion. Even though the Red Army had crossed the Oder and would soon advance on Berlin.

Liesl slipped her fingers into Jürgen’s fists and directed him slowly toward Uta. “Walk to Tante Uta now,” she encouraged. The baby took a step and buckled, landing on his rump. He looked up at them, astonished.

“It’s like he forgets he can fall,” Uta marveled. “Until whump! He falls again.”

“Try again, fall again,” Liesl said, and then spoke what had been on her mind all day. “I did write to my aunt, to see if we all could go to Franconia. Us and the boys.” The words had flown from her pen, explaining Ani’s predicament, her wish to see her cousins again. “You could go first and we’d meet you.”

Uta didn’t reply for a moment. “That’s kind of you.” She looked at Liesl. “But you know the black sheep never goes back to her flock.”

Liesl flushed. She knew it wouldn’t be the same for Uta. Everyone in the village still remembered the broken elopement between the tavern keeper’s daughter and the burgher’s son. The Josts still owned half the town, although Hans-Paul was elsewhere, overseeing his father’s eight canning factories, married to an heiress with thick lips and no children as yet.

“You’ll be safer there,” she said uncertainly.

“Don’t worry about me. What about Frank?”

Liesl felt the child’s weight tugging on her hand. She propped him with her knee. “He can come for us or send for us,” she said.

“Really,” said Uta. “He’s just going to waltz into the nearest station and buy a train ticket?”

“That’s not the point,” Liesl said, wishing she could articulate the series of bargains she’d made with herself. If she waited for Frank, the worst would happen: A telegram announcing his death or arrest would come in his place. But if she didn’t wait, the telegram could never reach them. The inevitable would be lost somewhere. She stared into his photograph every night and tried to remember the way he said her name. She relived their conversations and recalled the weight of his arms around her shoulders. But as each day passed, it was getting harder to feel his presence. Where was Frank? What would Frank want? When she closed her eyes and tried to picture him, all she saw was Ani, his boyish face uplifted, waiting. Ani needed to go.

“I’m doing it for his sons,” she said. “When Dr. Becker comes back—”

“Do you think Dr. Becker is really worrying his head about one sick child?” Uta said.

Liesl kept her face neutral and forced herself to shrug. Uta didn’t know about the note that had come last week from Dr. Becker, requesting another visit with Ani. Liesl had torn it to shreds and tossed them in the stove.

“But I want to get Ani somewhere quiet. I want you somewhere safe. I wrote to Frank’s friend Bernd. He has a farm. But he never wrote back.”

Uta’s reply was interrupted by the apartment door opening, and Hans and Ani marching in, Ani bearing a bundle of small sticks, Hans holding a basket and an envelope.

“It’s from Frau Hefter,” he said.

Liesl took the card and read it with growing surprise. “She says she’s very sorry to hear that Frank has gone missing, and she hopes the children like blood sausage. She says she wants us to come to a Frauenschaft meeting tomorrow.” The next words made her stumble: “She says there are neighbors upon neighbors lined up to help us with meals. We just have to say the word.”

Frau Hefter. Liesl couldn’t get over it. She hadn’t seen the woman since the day of Ani’s bad news, except for brief greetings in the market.

“I like blood sausage,” said Hans.

“Is there any cake?” said Ani.

“There, see?” said Uta. Her expression was hard to read.

“See what?” Hans’s head snapped up.

“But this is too much,” said Liesl. “Why are they being so kind to us?”

“Maybe they’ve wanted to be kind all along,” said Uta. “Maybe you don’t have to go.”

“Go where?” said Hans.

“Let’s see what she packed.” Liesl set the basket on the floor and the boys swarmed it, even baby Jürgen, twining his soft fingers over the wicker side and shaking the paper. The exploration of the basket gave all three boys glorious expressions—they hadn’t had something good to open in so long. They were gentle with one another: Hans handed Ani the parcel to open, and Ani gave Jürgen the string to dangle in his fist. Ani yelped when he saw the marzipan tube, somehow saved since Christmas. He looked so pleased it was painful. Hans turned a tin of sardines over and over in his hands. There was even a small sachet of black tea for Uta and Liesl.

“No cigarettes,” commented Uta, but she sounded impressed.

When the basket was empty, Hans lifted up his baby brother and balanced the wicker bowl on Jürgen’s head like a helmet.
“Sieg Heil!”
he said, saluting.

The baby dimpled and swatted at his brother.

Ani laughed with delight. “Jürgen is our general,” he said, patting his younger brother’s back.

“Careful with him,” said Liesl, but she grinned at the boys and they grinned back.

The baby punched skyward. The basket tumbled and spun across the floor. They all cheered.

“Hurry up in there,” Liesl said, pounding on the bathroom door. “I’m going to be late for the meeting.”

“Why is it so important to be on time?” came Uta’s muffled voice.

“So I can make an appearance and come straight home,” said Liesl. It was Uta’s last day in Hannesburg. Liesl didn’t want to leave her side for an instant, but she had to go to the meeting or she would look ungrateful for Frau Hefter’s kindness. Uta volunteered to stay with Ani and Jürgen while Hans went off to help a neighbor chop firewood. Ani wasn’t fit for company yet. He’d taken to flapping from room to room, pretending he was a bird.

“Please hurry,” Liesl said to Uta.

Uta opened the door. She’d spent all morning plucking her eyebrows, and her penciled hairs darted up her forehead.

“If there’s cake, I want some,” she said. “I’ve been dying for some cake.” Then she walked over to the couch, pulled a blanket up, and closed her eyes.

“You don’t have to go back with him,” Liesl said.

“Present me with another option,” Uta said in a muffled voice.

“All right, I will.” Liesl bent down and patted Jürgen, dozing in his cradle like a loaf that has outrisen its pan. He would have to move to a real crib soon. Frank had promised to build him one when he returned. She blinked hard.

She clomped down the hall. In the past few days, Hans and Ani had made another fort of their closet room, blankets drooping from the hooks that had once hung coats, casting cavernous shadows over both their beds.

“Ani!” she said, and the boy hatched out, his fair hair feathery with static. Overall, he looked better—not well, but better. He hadn’t gone outside since the day the children had hurt him, and the bruises were gone. He wasn’t complaining of stomach pain anymore. If she could get him to the country, away from the rough kids and constant air raid alarms, he could continue to improve. Last night, she’d written a polite note to Dr. Becker explaining that she had found a new doctor and declining any more of his services. She’d post it on the way to Frau Hefter’s.

“Fräulein Müller is going to stay with you and Jürgen while I go to the meeting.”

“Why can’t I go?” said Ani, holding his green blanket aloft.

“I need you to help Fräulein Müller with the baby,” she said.

The boy made a face, but he didn’t protest.

“Can birds be born in bars?” he said, then corrected himself when he saw her puzzled expression. “In a cage?”

“You and your questions,” said Liesl. “I suppose so. Why?”

“Parrots live really old,” said Ani. “I could live really old if I were a parrot.”

“I like you as a boy.” She kissed him and hurried from the room.

Uta was sitting up again, next to the cradle, puffing on a cigarette. “You can’t show up in those boots.”

“They’re all I have,” said Liesl, plucking Jürgen from the cradle and hugging him to her.

“You take my word for it: The others will be wearing their finest at
her
house,” said Uta. She stared into the clouded air in front of her.