“Go back and eat where it’s safe,” she instructed.
Tobias nodded and tiptoed to the wall, shimmied through the plank, and pulled the plate inside.
This had been their routine since Christmas. Initially, Elsie panicked each time her parents came to take her temperature; her heart beat fast, and she broke out in a sweat from head to toe, making her symptoms appear worse than they were. When Doktor Joachim arrived, she nearly fainted with fear. But Tobias seemed divinely cloaked. Even Elsie forgot he was there until a cough gripped her chest and her breath came shallow. Then he’d appear, bringing water to her lips and a hum to ease the pain. She tried to forget he was a Jew. It was easier that way. She had yet to think past concealing him.
In a fever pitch, she’d dreamed she called the Gestapo and said she’d discovered a boy hiding in the woodpile—saving herself and her family and being championed by the authorities. She awoke to Tobias’s gentle hum at her side and winced at the macabre thoughts. She couldn’t cast him off. Not anymore. Things had changed. He was someone to her now.
At every meal, she broke half her bread with him, and she’d shown him the secret items she’d collected in the hollow wall. His favorite was the advertisement for Texas baked beans, which featured an illustration of an American cowboy riding through a field of sunflowers. Tobias would run his fingers over the man’s smiling face, drawing up and down the sharp letters U-S-A. She also had an Edelweiss pin; movie stills of Jean Harlow, Myrna Loy, and William Powell; a copy of A Boy’s Will with the covers torn off; a jar of pebbles from the coast of Yugoslavia; a small vial of rose shampoo; and a bar of Ritter Sport Schokolade still in the wrapper. For fear Tobias might be greedy, she warned that if he ate the chocolate, they’d surely find him, the smell too distinct and familiar to a baker’s senses. But after a week of scraps, she learned he hadn’t the gluttonous nature.
Minutes after he’d moved back into the hiding place, the plate slid out. Elsie pulled back the covers and took up the plate. Under the lamplight, Josef’s engagement ring shimmered red droplets against the wall. She still wasn’t used to its ruby glare. The decision to accept his proposal had come suddenly.
The day after Christmas, the Gestapo had returned. With Tobias still missing, the units were ordered to do a final community search in daylight. Their boots woke Elsie from her delirium.
“She’s ill!” Papa had yelled.
They entered her bedroom with guns slung round their chests. The room seemed too bright to Elsie’s burning eyes, every corner and secret exposed. She’d pulled the covers over her thin nightgown and whimpered with fear and delirium.
A soldier stomped the corner boards and knocked the wall with the butt of his gun. Another looked under her bed and then through her cedar wardrobe, pulling dirndls and sweaters to the floor.
“Please, stop,” Mutti had begged.
“We must check everywhere,” replied the trooper. He went to the back wall.
“No!” Elsie’s chest had tightened to cough, but she pushed out the words. “I am the fiancée of Lieutenant Colonel Josef Hub. If you don’t leave this minute, he will make sure you are adequately disciplined for disrespecting our family.” Her breath wheezed and sputtered into a hacking fit.
The men looked to their standartenführer leader, who gave the signal and they filed out. Mutti and Papa stared speechless. Papa said, “Fiancée?” And thus, a decision was made.
The gems glittering round the gold impressed her parents. They owned nothing that could compare. Mutti guessed Josef bought it from a Parisian jeweler, but Elsie knew better.
Now, she knelt by the wall. “Tobias?”
The board opened a crack.
“Can you read Hebrew?” She pulled the ring from her finger. “What does this say?”
A hand came through. He took the gold band and held it so the dusty light shone on the inner etching, then he gave it back.
“Well?” she asked.
Silence.
“Is it too worn?”
“I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.” His voice was clear and songlike. “It is from the Torah.”
Chapter Fifteen
GARMISCH BAHNHOF,
GERMANY
JANUARY 6, 1940
Captain Josef Hub obtained a Saturday pass and took the early train to Garmisch Bahnhof. He’d befriended a chatty secretary at the Nazi archive with a terrible sweet tooth and rosacea to show for it. After months of flirtation over sugar-dusted kreppels and carefully chosen innuendos, he convinced her to pull Peter’s file from the Hitler Youth archive. In it was the Abends’ street number.
The city map stretched across the train platform wall, and he searched the colored lines. He’d stood in the exact spot four years earlier at the 1936 Winter Olympic games. Then, the station had been filled with people waving vibrant country flags, extolling the virtues of Hitler’s new stadium and rushing to catch glimpses of their favorite athletes. Now, except for a handful of passengers, it was empty.
The train gears moaned and popped like arthritic joints. He was glad to be off and fingered the paper address: Herr and Frau Abend. They rented a handful of rooms above their home to visiting skiers and couples on holiday. Small-scale innkeepers, Peter’s file stated. Simple, hardworking countrymen. They had two children, Peter and Trudi. Peter was the elder.
“Any bags, Officer?” asked the porter.
“Nein.” Josef slipped the address into his pocket. “What time does the last train return to Munich?”
“Nine o’clock.”
That gave him nearly twelve hours, though he didn’t plan to stay as long. “Which way to Schnitzschulstrasse?”
“Down the road.” The man pointed. “Do you need me to call a ride?”
Josef adjusted his cap. “A walk will do me good.”
The porter shrugged and gave directions.
What Josef truly wanted was a little more time. Preparation. He’d longed and feared this day for over a year; but now that it was here, it didn’t have the proportion he’d imagined. The morning was too tepid and sunny for January. He’d expected bitter cold and lonesome streets to match his mood. Instead, the town bustled with Saturday commerce, smells of baked bread and stoked fires. Children chased each other across the cobblestones; shop bells chimed as lady patrons in heels and feather-trimmed hats exited and entered. Two young women smiled at him and giggled as they passed. A butcher dumped a bucket of pink water into the gutter. “Guten morgen, Hauptsturmführer.”
“Guten morgen.” Josef paused and checked the street signs.
“Can I be of service?” asked the butcher.
“I’m looking for Schnitzschulstrasse—the Abend innkeeper.”
“Around that corner. Frau Abend makes a wonderful lamb soup for her guests. The meat comes from my shop. It is always the best. I promise you will not be dissatisfied.”
Josef nodded, knowing full well he wouldn’t be dining.
It had been an act of impulsive rage that November night. He was embarrassed at his lack of forethought and restraint. Peter was correct. They were just Jews. But despite all he read and heard and preached, despite the party’s belief that they were an execrated race, the Hochschilds had been his friends and his teachers and gracious beyond measure. He couldn’t deny that experience any more than he could deny the murder of Peter Abend. They were equally true, but he’d never profess as much. He was now a captain in the army of the Third Reich and up for early promotion. Peter had disobeyed authority. Discipline and faith, those were the central tenets by which they stood.