The Ragged Edge of Night(43)
And now it’s Emil who takes Anton by the shoulder and bolsters his spirit with a firm grip. “Of course there is, my friend. You are my friend, in truth. Of course we resist. Christ’s love can’t be blotted from the world so easily, not by the hand of any man. It will take a power far greater than the NSDAP to put out our light.”
“It seems there is no greater power. I’ve almost come to believe that.” The tears are falling freely now, but he is not ashamed. The Spirit doesn’t allow for shame, in His healing and holy presence.
“You have almost come to believe, but not entirely.”
Anton shakes his head, slowly. For the moment, he is bereft of words, hollowed by awe and relief.
“There is a greater force, Anton—I promise you. There is a power in this world that no evil can overcome.”
Day after day, it rises. Like a tide, it swells. Every outrage, every death, each new act of inhumanity wrings from us another drop of resolve, even when we think our spirits dust dry and deadened. We flow together; we merge; the burning-salt wash of our tears and the breath of our sobbing voices, the tension of our tightened jaws, our current of despair. We are a river eroding its banks. We will no longer be contained. There is a greater force. Its name is Widerstand, resist. We call it White Rose, and Grauer Orden; we call it Non-Compliance. In the streets of Munich and Berlin, the boys, unbroken, take fists to the faces of the Hitler Youth, and we call them Edelweiss Pirates. We call the force Unbowed, Unbent, and Father Emil, and Anton.
“Will you do it? Will you carry my words? The pay is very good, I can tell you.”
He nods. What else can he do but accept? “I won’t do it for the pay, though—not only for that.”
Again, Emil smiles. “No, of course you won’t. You of all people—you listen to the voice of the Lord.”
Truly we are full of power by the spirit of the Lord, and of judgment, and of might. Hear this, we pray you, ye heads of the house of Power, and princes of the house of Oppression, that abhor judgment and pervert all equality. You build up our nation with blood, and stain the world with iniquity.
Certainty, a conflagration in his spirit—his ears ring with the sound of God’s call. He says, “When do I start?”
16
His first assignment takes him to Wernau several weeks later. The town lies only a few kilometers away—near enough to walk—but it feels like another country, another world. The town is much like Unterboihingen, with its old stucco buildings and medieval air—though even at first glance, Anton can tell the population of Wernau is at least twice that of his home village. It’s not the buildings or the people that leave Anton feeling like a foreigner but rather the eerie sense of being watched. On the long walk from Unterboihingen, he never imagined he would feel the prickle of eyes upon his back. And now, with that sinister itch burning between his shoulders, he can’t decide whether the danger is real or conjured up by his own feverish thoughts.
Father Emil coached him on the work, made Anton rehearse the casual stroll, the friendly nod and smile that would allow him to pass unnoticed in Wernau. They practiced, too, a smooth handshake, the passing of a small slip of folded paper from one palm to another. Emil had pronounced Anton ready, but now that he has arrived in Wernau, uncertainty wracks him, makes him twitch at every sound—the blow of a hammer from a carpenter’s shop, the barking of a terrier from an upstairs window.
Easy, he reminds himself. You’re natural as can be. There’s nothing unusual about paying a visit to Wernau. He has only come to pick up a copy of sheet music from Wernau’s priest—they, too, have an organ. That’s the excuse Father Emil has arranged for this foray. Sheet music, and one other small, insignificant mission…
The bell tower of Wernau’s Catholic church rises above the town’s dark rooftops. Anton makes his way steadily toward it, weaving through a group of schoolchildren who are enjoying an outdoor lesson. He dodges a flock of geese being driven from the front of an old Oma’s cottage to her vegetable patch out back; he nods in greeting to the midwife on her bicycle, though she pedals with obvious haste, eyes squinting toward her urgent destination, and takes no notice of Anton at all. No one in Wernau, in fact, looks twice at Herr Starzmann. But still, he can’t rid himself of the queasy sensation that everyone is watching, everyone knows.
He passes a fruit seller with a few apples and pears on his cart, a woman unraveling an old sweater on a stool beside her front door, an old, stooped man carrying a string of dead pigeons over his shoulder. There are two fellows near his own age, talking earnestly over a single-page newspaper as they walk—and right behind them, a boy no older than fifteen in the brown uniform of Hitler Youth, the red blaze of a loyalist’s armband drawing Anton’s eye like a stain of blood. Three little girls in an alley, stringing wet stockings on a line. They are old enough to be in school; it’s a shame duties keep them at home. Has the war made them orphans, he wonders, or has it merely widowed their poor mother?
He looks at every person he passes, but never for long. He must locate his contact, but he mustn’t draw attention to his presence. There is no sign of the man Father Emil described, and he has almost reached the church, almost passed through the whole of Wernau itself. He has just begun to ask himself what excuse he’ll find to remain in the town for another hour when he sees his goal: a man of middling height but broad build, ambling from the nearest corner toward a small public garden. He’s wearing a bowler hat of the same iron-gray as his suit—just as Emil had said. With a tingle of dismay, Anton realizes his contact had been walking the long street nearly its whole length, some dozen paces ahead of Anton himself. He must develop a sharper eye and quicker wit if he’s to have any hope of succeeding in this new role.