Rhineland Inheritance (7 page)

“I guess I hadn't thought it out, sir.”

“Don't get me wrong, Captain. Your idea has merit. Anything that might help some of these kids needs to be taken seriously. But we've got to present it in a way people can accept. Do you understand?”

Jake nodded. “Just another hand across the waters.”

“Now you're thinking. All we're doing is helping to feed a
few of the older kids. Nothing more, nothing less. Everything else stays between us.”

“And Captain Servais,” Jake added.

“And the chaplain and Sally. Those two wouldn't give Connors and his goons the time of day. But around everyone else except them, lips are to stay permanently zipped tight.”

“Mum's the word, sir.”

“You just make sure those kids understand they're not to take any risks.”

“From the looks of things, just being alive out there is risky,” Jake replied.

“No additional risk, then.” The gaze showed grudging approval, but all Beecham said was, “Still bucking for another medal, aren't you?”

“Nossir, that's not it at all,” Jake answered, rising to his feet. “As you said, Colonel, I'm just trying to feed some hungry kids.”

Captain Servais was still out on patrol. Jake stopped by the supplies division, known far and wide simply as Stores, then drove back into town alone.

When he walked through the créche door, the first person he saw was Sally. “What are you doing here?”

“That's what I like about you, soldier,” she replied, hands on hips. “You really know how to make a girl feel welcome.”

“Is the chaplain around?”

“Why, hello, Captain.” Chaplain Fox stepped out from behind a curtained alcove. “What can I do for you?”

“Cookie asked me to drop off some supplies,” he said, hesitant to discuss the real reason behind his visit.

“Why, thank you, Captain, but we're not scheduled for another shipment until Thursday.”

“We'd better get outside while there's still something to unload,” Sally reminded them.

As they left the créche, Jake said softly to the chaplain, “I need to talk with you. Privately.”

“Just take that satchel on back to the storeroom, dear,” Chaplain Fox said. He waited until she walked back down the stairs, then asked Jake, “What's on your mind, Captain?”

As swiftly as he could, Jake outlined his plan. The chaplain inspected Jake with a new appreciation.

There was a scraping sound. Jake turned around and discovered that Sally had remained standing on the bottom step. “I thought you were taking the things inside.”

“Don't get hot, soldier,” Sally said mildly. “I think it's a good idea.”

“You do?”

“So do I,” the chaplain told him. “There should be no difficulty increasing our meals to the children from two to five times a week. We pay our cooks with food, you know. I'm sure they would be happy to take on the extra work.”

“You shouldn't call them children,” Sally said, her eyes still on Jake.

“No,” Chaplain Fox agreed. “I suppose I'm looking at the size of their underfed bodies, not the depth of their experience. They've packed a lifetime into a few short years. Some of them, several lifetimes.”

“I don't know how long the support can last,” Jake warned, thinking of his own impending departure.

“Anything that will help these young people stay alive and out of harm's way through the winter must be taken seriously, Captain.”

“Call me Jake.”

“Thank you, Jake. Yes, in times like these, seeing to the needs of today are as far as anyone can afford to look.”

“So you think it will work?”

“It's not what I think, but whether they will accept it that is important.” The chaplain hefted two bulky sacks. “Let's get these stores inside and go find out.”

****

Jake picked his way across a stretch of shattered pavement
as treacherous as river ice cracked by spring thaws. Over one million tons of bombs had been dropped on German cities by Allied planes during the last few months of the war. Few buildings were left intact, and inner city roads were treacherous in the extreme, especially now with their covering of frozen snow and slush.

Civilians walked and slid and stumbled wearily across the uneven sea of snow and ice and dirt. Those with bicycles pushed them along, not letting go for an instant—with the scarcity of transport, bicyclists lived under the constant burden of envy and the threat of theft. Nobody met Jake's eyes. Wherever he looked, eyes dropped immediately to the ground. But he felt their gaze on him always, everywhere.

They crossed a plaza whose once majestic central cafe was now a three-sided empty hulk. They were surrounded by windowless buildings whose empty eyes stared in dark and silent sorrow. From time to time Jake caught sight of families huddled within. Their only protection from the bitter weather was an occasional rag or blanket tacked over a hole. Wood was too precious as fuel to be used for boarding over the buildings' wounds.

“Whatever you see,” the chaplain told Jake as they walked, “don't let the children sense your reaction.”

“Why not?” Jake watched a group of elderly people being directed by a loud-mouthed overseer. They sifted through the ruins of a collapsed building, collecting bricks. These were piled into wheelbarrows and rolled to a corner of the square where the oldest women squatted and hammered off the clinging cement. The bricks were then loaded onto a single waiting truck. Everyone moved in the slow motion of the almost starving.

“I'm not sure,” Chaplain Fox replied. “They just hate being looked at. Maybe they expect you to be disgusted as others have been. Maybe they want a reason to dislike you. Maybe it's shame. Maybe it's despair. I have simply found it best not to notice how they are forced to live.”

He led Jake through a building entrance that had been tripled in size by a direct hit. The bomb had taken out the floor, revealing a deep basement far below. A beam too heavy to steal had been laid across the pit. Jake could see how at night the beam was dragged back and secured with wire cable, offering a wartime sense of security. Jake followed the chaplain across, his hands out and wavering.

The building's single intact chamber was redolent of cocoa. Chaplain Fox halloed through the makeshift entrance cover, then said to Jake, “This used to be one of the city's finest chocolate factories. It specialized in handmade pralines. That is why these children are able to claim it for their own. Two other families used to live here, but in their hunger the odor almost drove them mad. It has not been any better for the children. Since they moved in, I have had to take three of them to the hospital after they ate dirt which had collected the scent. Still, I suppose it is better than sleeping out-of-doors.”

The tattered burlap curtain was thrown back, revealing a sunken-cheeked youngster of perhaps fifteen. He peered at the chaplain with undisguised hostility, then turned and shouted back into the chamber,
“Es ist der Pfarrer und ein Fremder.”
It's the priest and a stranger.

“Lass denn rein,”
came back the reply.

Jake stepped gingerly into the gloomy depths. The only light came from a smoldering cooking fire and from around the burlap hanging over the single window. Better dark than freezing, he supposed. The room was marginally warmer than the outside.

Fox's German was surprisingly good. “Where is Karl? I have someone he needs to meet.”

“The only person I'll ever need to meet is the devil, Pfarrer,” a voice sounded from the gloom. “Isn't that where you say I'm headed?”

“I pray not,” the pastor replied, untouched by the unseen man-child's anger. “This friend has an offer for you.”

“Your friend, not mine,” Karl scoffed. “Tell him we take whatever we want, with or without his offers.”

“This one you'll like,” Jake said for himself, pleased that he had managed to speak in a flat, unconcerned tone. He ignored Fox's startled glance at the sound of his German. “It'll give you something besides dirt to fill your bellies with.”

“So, so. An invader who knows the mother tongue.” A tall lanky youth, skinny to the point of emaciation, stepped from the shadows. “What do you have that could interest me,
Fremder?
Chocolates? Cigarettes? Where is it? In your pockets? Yes? You like me to search them for you?”

Jake stood his ground. He met the young man's hostility with a flat gaze. “You've got spunk, I'll give you that much.”

“You'll give me nothing,” he spat. “You'll give me death. That's what you'd like, yes? To see us all just curl up and die.”

“Food,” Jake replied. “Three times a week. Hot. Fresh. Add that to the two meals the chaplain is already giving you and there's a chance you might survive this winter after all.”

The anger faltered momentarily. “You lie,
Fremder
.”

“That is something I will try never to do,” Jake said solemnly. “I will even start with truth. There is a chance this will only last for five weeks. But five weeks is better than nothing.”

Other boys and girls emerged from the dimness, coalescing into wasted rag-draped shapes that appeared to be little more than hollows and eyes. Their eyes were huge. Great, dissipated eyes, large as saucers, that stared unblinking at Jake. Food.

“Hot meals,” Jake repeated. “And something else you need to make life worthwhile. Something else you need almost as much as a home.”

“What is that,
Fremder?
” But without the resentment this time.

Jake looked straight at the young German, and replied, “Hope.”

****

“You want us to do your searching for you, is that right?”

Jake sat on a stone across from Karl, surrounded by silently listening wraiths. It was hard to tell the girls from boys, and not simply because of the dim light. Emaciation had stripped their bodies of muscle and feminine contours, and turned all faces into almost identical sets of hard lines and deep hollows. “There will be two groups,” Jake said, explaining the plan he had outlined to the chaplain. “While your gang looks for smugglers, the others will search for some place large enough for a hidden hoard of treasure.”

“Who is in this other group?” Karl demanded, turning to the chaplain. “The Crypts?”

Fox nodded in the affirmative, explaining to Jake in English, “The other gang I work with lives in an abandoned cemetery. Well, abandoned is not the right word. Stuffed to the gills and then left alone is more like it. They found an old mausoleum, broke in and stripped it bare, and are living there now.”

“In my chambers the only language spoken will be my language,” Karl insisted.

“Of course,” Fox said. “It was a slip. Forgive me.”

The unexpected courtesy stopped the youngster. Jake recalled Sally's comment that the only source of kindness for these children was the chaplain. Jake said, “What I need from you is your help in finding the people shipping the treasure across the border. I suppose it would be possible for your gang to search out information for me?”

Karl puffed out his gaunt chest. “We go where we like, when we please. We hear and see and know everything.”

Jake rose to his feet. “Then it sounds like I've come to the right place.”

“One moment,
Fremder.
” Karl remained seated on his little rock throne, the room's single chair covered with several layers of sacking for comfort. “Why should we tell you anything? Why not just keep it all for ourselves?”

“Where would you go with treasure?” Jake countered.
“Who could you trust to pay you anything, give you anything except a knife across your neck?”

There was a murmur of agreement through the room. It was the only time anyone else had spoken since their arrival. “And we can trust you?” Karl asked suspiciously.

“I bring you food,” Jake pointed out. “And you know the chaplain's an honest man.”

“I trust him to do as he says,” the chaplain affirmed. “I think you should as well.”

“We will discuss your offer,
Fremder,
” Karl declared.

“Then come for a meal tonight,” Fox replied. “Thinking is easier with a full belly.”

On their way to the cemetery, Jake confessed, “I don't see how you can deal with this on a daily basis.”

Fox made his way around an ice-encrusted bomb pit. “I just put my trust in the Lord and go where I feel called.”

“But doesn't it get to you?”

“Of course it does. But I can't let it crush me. I wouldn't be able to do my job.”

“I don't understand how you do it.”

“There is sorrow everywhere, Jake. Everywhere and always. A man has three choices—any man, chaplain or otherwise. He can let it overwhelm him, and if he does, it will drive him around the bend. We've both seen cases of that, haven't we?”

“Too many,” Jake confessed.

“Yes, that is the tragic nature of war. The product of war is ruin, of cities and of lives. Peace is only a by-product. A wish. A goal. That is why war must always remain an instrument of last resort for any civilized nation. But where was I?”

“Choice number two.”

“Yes. The second alternative when faced with the agony of war is to lock yourself away. This the majority choose to do. Nowadays we are seeing thousands of men who simply refuse to leave the base except when on duty. Others do leave, but all they allow themselves to see is their hunger—for sex,
for drink, for some gratification or another. Still others see nothing but their own hate. They remain blinded at will, and view their own pain and anger as justification for a nation's suffering.”

“Are they wrong?”

“I try not to judge anyone, Jake. But I think their lives are misery. They remain imprisoned within themselves. God holds the key, of course. With forgiveness. With love. With compassion. And with healing. But only if they ask for it. And to ask they have to recognize their internal prison for what it is. That I see as my job, to be a mirror for anyone struggling to look with honesty. To help them see the lies they tell themselves for what they are.”