Voices of the dead

The woman released him and opened a drawer, took out a towel, wet it under the faucet and touched his face. It was cool and felt good on his swollen cheek. She washed his face, rinsed the towel and washed it again. She took him to the table and sat him in a chair. Served him chicken and dumplings, bread and milk. The husband telling her in hushed tones that helping a Jew could get them killed. The woman, whose name was Margot Schmidt, telling him to go to bed, she was going to look after the boy. She sat with him while he ate. Told him to slow down, there was no hurry, he could have as much as he wanted.

“Of course we knew what was happening at the camp. We heard the trains arriving. Saw the work details, prisoners in striped uniforms like the one you are wearing. Heard the rumors of medical experiments and firing squads killing political prisoners and Jews. We are farmers. We have nothing against you.”

When he finished eating she took him to the bathroom, filled the tub and closed the door behind her. Harry dipped his toe in, getting used to the heat, and then lay down in water up to his chin, the water turning brown.

When he was finished she gave him clothes and shoes that she told him had been her son’s. The son had enlisted and was killed in action during the French invasion. She was angry, bitter, didn’t understand why Germany had gone to war in the first place.

She took his blood-stained camp uniform downstairs, burned it in the fireplace. Harry slept in a bed for the first time in six months, nervous, getting up every few minutes, looking out the window, expecting to see Nazis.

He was dreaming of food‚ seeing a plate of bratwurst and sauerkraut and potatoes, when he felt someone shaking him and thought he was back in the barracks, block 21. He opened his eyes and saw the woman. She put her hand over his mouth. Told him there were Nazis outside, looking for prisoners that had escaped. They were searching the barn. He could hear the dogs barking.

The farmer stood in the doorway and said, “If they find him they will kill us too.”

Harry got out of bed, ducked down and went to the window. He looked out and saw two open military vehicles parked in the yard. Four SS soldiers were walking toward the barn and four more coming toward the house. He recognized the young SS officer from the massacre in the woods.

“Get away from there. If they see you-” Her words trailed off.

She took him down to the kitchen, opened a trap door that led to the cellar. He climbed down a ladder into the musty darkness and waited.

Soon he heard the heavy sound of footsteps above him and voices. Then the trap door was pulled open. Light from the kitchen shone down illuminating the ladder and a section of cellar floor. Harry moved back and bumped sausages hanging on ropes from the ceiling, sent them swinging. Moved back farther and felt glass containers of fruits and vegetables stored on shelves. Harry worried the husband had told them where he was.

He saw black boots coming down the ladder, and the gray jodhpurs of an SS soldier. Harry moved to the far corner of the cellar, going to his knees behind bins of apples and squash, he touched them, onions and garlic, he smelled them. Harry going down on his chest as the SS soldier’s feet landed on the dirt floor. The soldier moved to the right, training the flashlight over the contents of the cellar, the light lingering and holding on objects and then sweeping across the back wall, coming toward him, light reflecting off the glass containers on the shelves, then tracing a line where the walls met, going from dirt floor to beamed ceiling. Then moving across the sidewall, and over the bins, Harry holding his breath, curling up, making himself smaller.

He heard a click and the beam disappeared and the soldier was on the ladder climbing back up.

“Nothing,” the soldier said.

The trap door was put back into position and it was dark again. He heard the soldiers leave the house. Heard the vehicles start up and drive out of the yard and let out a breath.

Margot Schmidt, against her better judgment and the protests of her husband, drove Harry to the outskirts of Munich in a rickety old truck that backfired and burned oil. She told him he was crazy. He should stay with them at the farmhouse. They would hide him until the insanity was over, until it was safe. Harry knew the husband didn’t want him. That was obvious, and sooner or later someone would find out he was there and tell the SS.

She pulled off the road and gave him bread and sausage wrapped in butcher paper tied with string. He put it in the pocket of the coat that had been her son’s. She leaned across the bench seat and hugged him. Harry thanked her and got out of the truck. He pulled the brim of the cap down over his eyes and headed for the towers of Altstadt.