The German Wife(121)

Jürgen was already starting up the stair toward the bathroom. I cleared my throat, and he looked back at me expectantly.

“Georg was sent to Kassel with his Hitler Youth unit,” I blurted. Shock echoed across his features, then an unmistakable terror. “I tried. I promise I tried to convince him to stay. There was no talking sense into him.”

That night, as terrified as I was, as uncertain as the future was—I had an unexpected blessing to be grateful for. For all that was wrong in our past and in our world, at least Jürgen and I were together in our anxiety and our despair.

I was folding laundry the next day when the knock at the door came. I dropped Gisela’s undershirt back into the basket and started walking briskly to answer it, but Jürgen beat me to it.

“...so I decided to come home,” I heard him say, his tone gentle. “But come on inside. We’ll make some tea and I’ll tell you—”

“Just tell me where he is,” Lydia said flatly. After a fraught pause, she asked unevenly, “Is he dead, Jürgen? I’d rather know.”

“He surrendered to the Soviets,” Jürgen said heavily. I had reached the foyer now, and I held my breath as I stared at the doorway. What was she doing there? Did she have news about the boys?

“He wouldn’t,” Lydia breathed, shaking her head. Her gaze seemed unfocused. “No.”

“I’m sure he tried to call you first. The phone lines—”

“The Soviets must have captured him. That would make more sense.”

“No,” Jürgen said, his voice again gentle, but firm. “He was among the first to go and he went north. He wanted to meet the Soviets as they advanced.”

“But...but he said we’d... We were supposed to defend the Reich to the last,” she whispered, brows knitting. Her whole expression twisted, becoming ugly and fierce. “No. Karl would face death before the dishonor of abandoning this country—of abandoning his family. You’re lying.”

Sunlight glinted off a windshield behind Lydia, and I stepped forward, trying to peer around her. Her car was parked behind the Army truck Jürgen stole from Mittelwerk, and Hans was sitting in the back seat.

“Hans is here?” I blurted, running to the doorway. “Where is Georg?”

But closer now, I could see Hans properly, and a sense of dread ran through me when I realized he was rocking gently back and forward. He looked up and met my eyes, and even from a dozen or more feet, I could see that his were red rimmed, his face splotchy. He looked so much younger than his sixteen years. He was a traumatized, terrified child.

I didn’t need him to say it and I didn’t need to hear the details. The minute I saw Hans’s face, I knew that my son was gone.

Lydia suddenly started to cry, her gaze wild and panicked as she looked from Jürgen and me, back to her son in the car. Jürgen ran from the house, down the cobblestone path. He threw open the car door and grabbed Hans by the shoulders, pulling the boy out onto the sidewalk.

“Where is Georg, Hans? Where is my son?”

“He’s gone...” Hans wept.

Jürgen was shouting at Hans. Hans was crying. Lydia was wailing. And across the road, Dietger was holding a paintbrush by his side, white paint dripping down onto the footpath. He’d been painting propaganda slogans onto the wall of his house.

Protect your homes! Every citizen must defend the city from the Red scourge—

I turned to see that, beside us, in the building Adele called home for her whole life, her tenants were hanging out the windows, watching too, and in doorways up and down the street, people were coming out to see what the fuss was. Our dawning grief was a spectacle for the neighborhood.

“He’s lying,” Lydia said behind me. I turned to her, trying to make sense of the words.

“Hans is lying?” I asked hopefully.

“Jürgen is lying!” she shouted desperately, as she tugged at her scalp. “Karl wouldn’t abandon me!”

“Karl thought he had a chance to save his own neck and he took it. I know it’s not what you want to hear but it’s the truth,” I said numbly. I couldn’t deal with her breakdown—I had my own to attend to. I walked slowly down the path toward the curb, closer to Hans and Jürgen.

“We didn’t have enough guns. The SS gave us grenades and told us to climb under the tanks and to hold on to them while they detonated. But me and Georg didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to die, Mr. Rhodes...” Hans was babbling now, weeping and talking at a million miles an hour, drawing shuddering breaths only when he had to. Jürgen still held him by the shoulders, but now I could see that if he released him, Hans would collapse to the ground. He looked behind us, toward Lydia, and between heaving sobs he choked out, “Mama, I can’t do it. Help me, Mama. Please.”

Hans said the words, but it was Georg’s voice I heard. I imagined that as he took his last breaths, scared and alone, he had called for me just like that. My knees went weak, and I reached for Jürgen’s shoulder to hold myself up. Hans fumbled for the car door and threw himself into the back seat.

“He was shot defending his country,” Lydia said numbly. She walked past us, leaned into the car to murmur something to Hans, then turned to face me one last time. “Georg died for the Reich, in service of the Führer. He is a hero and you should be proud.”