Olga played her fingernails into the grooves left by knives and hatchets as I took a pot from the rack hanging above and filled it with water. I didn’t want to wait for the kettle to cool down.
“Mama wants her tea,” I said as I set a half-full pot atop the stove.
I sat down across from her, grabbing at her fidgeting hands and wrapping them inside of mine. She’d bitten her fingernails to the quick, something she had never done before.
She lifted her gaze to mine. It was no longer hollow.
“I don’t care,” she said without blinking.
I think a moment passed. I’m not sure. It must have been the shock of hearing her say that, of the time it took me to realize that she’d said it.
Olga pulled out of my grip, pushed the chair back, and stood. “I don’t care.” Louder, more forceful.
“Shh,” I said rising. “Someone will hear.”
“I don’t care!” Olga pushed the chair over. Her hands were fists now, no longer uncertain, no longer seeking refuge in fidgeting.
Before I could stop her, she moved forward, swept the bowls off the table, sending them to the floor. The impact sent the shattered pieces across the floor.
The chair was next, thrust on its side and sliding to block the door. Her eyes were frantic, seeking. She knocked the pot with its water off the stove. It rolled away, trailing wetness in its wake.
“Olga! Stop! They’ll hear.”
The barrel in the corner got a kick. It was too heavy to move. She eyed the rolling pin perched on the bottom shelf of the wall behind me and moved toward it.
For a moment—a very brief one—I wanted to join her, help her smash every bowl and plate, every jar, every bottle. Instead, I grabbed her shoulders as she went past me, spun her around and pulled her to me.
At first, she resisted. Her whole body was tight with tension, but I was determined. Determined not to let her go. Determined to hold on to her. Determined to make sure that she didn’t do something that could not be hidden.
I squeezed harder, anchoring my fingers in her clothing until my fingers hurt.
I don’t know why she didn’t cry out or shout. Her mouth was open like she was going to, but no sound came from it.
Her face was an ugly shade of purple, the kind that comes from not breathing.
For a terrifying instant I didn’t know what to do. If she screamed, it would be over. It would bring someone and Papa would hear. He would want to know what happened. Why it had happened.
He would see. He would know. He would suspect.
So I squeezed harder. She spasmed in my grasp, gulping for air, swallowing it down. She must’ve been breathing because her lips weren’t turning blue. She just seemed unable to speak.
And then, between one blink of an eye and the next, the stiffness in her body melted away and she collapsed in my arms, like a rag doll that had been torn open, the buckwheat inside it spilling out in a torrent.
It was like that with Olga.
We sank to the floor, her chin resting on my shoulder, the wetness from her tears hot and sudden. I could feel her jaw working beside my check.
“Breathe,” I said, massaging her back. “Breathe.”
Her chest swelled against mine. She was shaking. It was her fingers digging into my back, my shoulder now.
The words, “Help me,” were the barest whisper, more felt than heard against my skin.
But I couldn’t. Not really.
Oh, I did take her back to our room, made our excuses to Mama and Papa, made up a story that someone had spilled water on the floor and she had slipped, knocking over the chair and the bowls.
I did all those things. I lied. Over and over again.
There was a part of me that watched Papa’s eyes with the vain hope that he would, just once, be more aware. He watched with eyes that did not see, heard with ears that did not hear.
I wanted to think of him as a good and great man, a strong man.
But he wasn’t. He wasn’t any of those things. A seed of doubt was planted that day, the doubt that he had ever been any of those things.
Yes, he loved us. Loved Mama to the point where he could not see her for what she had become. Loved us children as well.
But his daughter had been raped right under his nose. He hadn’t been able to protect her. He could not protect any of us. Not himself.
He was a good man but he was an ineffective man.
For a long time I don’t know who I was angrier with—him or myself. I had contributed to that blindness, even prayed for it to hold because I didn’t want him to know, because I cared more for him than for Olga.
God rarely intervenes to save us from our own folly… or our parents’ folly.
Chapter Fourteen
Waffenbau Bergmann, Suhl, Germany
As it turned out—and it cost Brinkmann three days and a lot of difficult walking, aided by his cane, to find this out and fix it—the place to go was not Gaggenau, in Baden, but Suhl, in Thuringia. That was where Hugo Schmeisser worked, and that was where initial production of the MP18, the Machinenpistole of 1918, was being made.
In a side office, slightly insulated from the intense sounds of steel pounding or grinding steel, a tired and harried-looking, to say nothing of balding, Hugo Schmeisser faced an equally harried-looking and nearly exhausted Major Brinkmann. Between the two lay a table on which sat a shiny new submachinegun, with a brace of odd-looking magazines to either side, an inexplicable tool, plus one magazine that made a good deal more sense across the stock.
“Yes,” said Schmeisser, “we’ve received an order for fifty thousand of the things from the army. It shouldn’t be hard to divert sixty or even one hundred to General Hoffmann’s request. But it’s important you understand what you’re getting, Major.
“There is, in the first place, no option for single fire; it is fully automatic and fully automatic only.
“Secondly, at almost four point two kilograms, it is by no means light. Note that that is heavier than our standard infantry rifle, the Gewehr 98. Empty. Loaded, it is worse.
“There is no option to attach a bayonet.
“On the plus side, though, at that weight, firing a nine-millimeter round, even on fully automatic, the recoil is negligible to a fighting man. It might be negligible to a not very large woman, for that matter. Indeed, I would say that the amount of recoil is perfect for getting a spray of bullets just broad enough to increase the probability of a hit, or multiple hits, at likely ranges. Moreover, the sheer bulk of metal, which is what’s driven the weight, serves as a heat sink to help keep them from overheating.
“But then there’s the magazine.” Schmeisser reached out and picked up the box magazine, holding it out for Brinkmann to examine. His voice quivered with rage. “We gave the army this as a design, cheap, simple, reliable, compact.” He dropped the box magazine with disgust, then picked up a drum magazine, normally found with the Artillery Luger. “This is what the army insists we use; complex, not especially reliable, quite expensive, overly large, and a true taste of hell to load in the dark in a muddy enemy trench. Never mind how much it unbalances the gun!”
“Why?” Brinkmann asked.
“Because we were already making these drum magazines, a fact not known to me back in 1915 when I undertook to design this piece. It would save time, they said. Never mind the time I spent redesigning the gun to take the drum magazine. Idiots!”