White Rose Black Forest(7)

The man was soiled and grimy. The first thing he’d need was a bath, and that would be easier while he was still unconscious. She reached down and ran her fingers along the rough splints she’d made to keep his bones in place. They would need to be replaced. Getting him to a hospital, or even a doctor, didn’t seem worth the risk. She couldn’t trust anyone.

Could he be trusted? She had heard the radio reports about the Allies, and knew better than to trust the Nazis’ view of the Americans as uneducated mongrels, and the British as treacherous wretches. Still, she had never met an Allied soldier before. The countless newsreels and stories over the years had reinforced in her mind the Nazis’ view of the Allies. It was impossible to dismiss all she’d seen and heard, even with her mistrust of the government and the media it controlled. She had seen what the Allies had done to Germany. They’d bombed cities full of citizens without mercy. It was difficult to see them as saviors, no matter how much she wanted to.

His lips twitched, his eyes rolling like slugs under his closed eyelids. She stood back in fright, expecting them to open. She hadn’t even considered what she was going to say or do when he awoke. Fortunately, his face settled back into its previous catatonic state, and the dilemma was postponed.

Franka walked into the kitchen. The house was frigid. Herr Graf, or whoever he was, could wait until she set a fire. She cleared out some of the ashes from the burner, pushing charred logs out of the way with a poker that had been in this house longer than she’d been alive. She struck a match, and the light from the fire enveloped the kitchen. She always took so much pleasure in setting a fire and stood back, watching the logs take to the kindling she’d placed underneath them. Satisfied, she went to the cupboard. There wasn’t much food, just some old cans of soup. The provisions she’d brought were almost gone. The roads to town would be cut off for days—her car would be useless. She went to the medicine cabinet and found an old bottle of aspirin with nine pills left—enough to last him about twelve hours. He was going to need more, and stronger medicine than that, especially if she had to set the bones in his legs again. The bottle rattled like a baby’s toy as she put it in her pocket.

She took one of the wooden chairs from the old table in the middle of the room. It would do. She raised the chair above her head and brought it crashing down to the floor below. Nothing happened—the chair remained intact. She shook her head, laughing to herself. She went to the sink and got a hammer and several screwdrivers of various sizes. A few minutes later she had the sturdy wood she would need to set his legs until she could do a more permanent job of it.

She went to the bedroom. The man hadn’t moved. She had dealt with worse breaks before, but that had been in a hospital. How would his bones heal without casts? The question of getting the plaster and setting it herself didn’t worry her so much as the suspicion that purchasing it might bring. If she was careful, she might just be able to get away with buying it, and the food, and the morphine she was going to need. The question of how she was going to get into town remained, but she pushed it away for now.

She untied each of the ropes holding the twig splints in place and set the splints aside as firewood. The next part was going to be difficult for the man, unconscious or not. Those filthy pants and boots had to come off. She began working on the laces, intermittently glancing up at his face, aware of every grimace she was causing him. She opened the laces and applied gentle pressure to the boot as she tried to pull it off. The bone in his leg moved, and he cried out. It was bizarre to see him react. It was like a marionette wailing after being dropped on the floor. She stopped, expecting him to waken, but he didn’t. The boot came off, and she moved her hands back up to feel the bone. It had moved, but not much, and she set it back in place, lining it up. The man’s right boot dropped onto the thinly carpeted floor with a thud. She took a deep breath and steeled herself for the next leg. She didn’t want to cut the laces. Boots were a valuable asset these days. It took another five minutes to get it off. The experience she’d garnered on his other leg lent to a smoother process this time. The socks came off one inch at a time, revealing bruised and swollen feet. Scissors from the living room made short work of the man’s pants, and soon he was lying in his underwear, still on the sled.

The pieces of the chair made for adequate splints, and his legs held taut. The Luftwaffe blazer came off next, and she tossed it into the corner of the room. The shirt came off with similar ease, and he was ready to be put on the bed. She made her way around behind him and eased him off the sled. The bed was mercifully low, and she leaned his torso against it. She dragged him up onto the clean covers, aware that he was still covered in dirt. But he was on the bed. She stood back in momentary triumph, marveling at the sight of this unknown man lying on her old bed in her father’s summer cabin in the mountains.

It was good that he was going to be unconscious for his bath. It would not be the first one she’d given, but it would be the first she’d given to a sleeping stranger, and not in a hospital. Time was of the essence. The last thing she wanted was for him to wake up while she was rubbing him down. Nothing could have been more improper.

“Bath time, darling,” she smiled. “How was your day? You won’t believe what happened to me on the way home from the hospital.” She made sure not to speak loudly enough that he might wake. No joke would have been worth that. She put a tub of water she’d warmed down beside the bed and took the washcloth in her hand. Dried dirt turned to mud as she sprinkled water from the cloth on his face. She wiped him off with strong hands. “I found a man—yes, a man—lying in the snow. In a Luftwaffe uniform, no less.” She hadn’t talked to another soul in days. It felt good to be speaking out loud, even if it was to an unconscious stranger. “No, darling, I’m being quite serious. You know it’s not the place of a good German wife to make fun of her husband, not with our brave soldiers risking their lives for the future of the glorious Reich on the Russian front as we speak.” She placed her hand on his now-clean face. “What’s that? You want to hear the radio? Well, it’s my duty as a good wife to obey your every whim.” She went to the living room and flicked on the battery-powered radio. The usual mess of news and propaganda was soiling the airwaves of the German stations. Radios were issued by the government and were only capable of picking up the government-sanctioned stations. Most people knew how to doctor them to get the foreign channels, however, and she was able to tune in to a Swiss broadcast of a new hit from Tommy Dorsey and his band. The big-band swing drifted through the cabin. The music gave her pause, washcloth still in hand. Somewhere people were still creating music like this, still listening and dancing and living. Suddenly she felt connected once more with a world she’d given up on.