Hidden Away (6 page)
“John, not everyone was a soldier in the war. Perhaps his family was killed in a bombing. Maybe he—”
I turn my attention to the door as it opens. The janitor’s head is down, eyes focused on the tiles in front of his feet. His hands are thrust inside his pockets. I stand quickly and make the whole table shake as my thighs hit the edge.
Charles grabs my hand, but I wrench free to follow the Nazi to the same place he went before. He sits quietly with the French professor of Political Science. Instead of lingering behind stacks of books as I did last time, I wait across the hall for one or both to leave. After a half hour, they both emerge from the room.
Outside, they walk together with a great space between them. The professor turns left toward the parking lot, and the janitor turns to the right. They part ways with only a nod between them. At a safe distance, I follow the German. He’s the one who interests me. The connection between the Frenchman and the German is intriguing, but it is the German who is haunting my dreams. I need to find out why he’s here, if he truly is a German soldier, or if I’m just driving myself insane.
He goes into a large auditorium. The back row gives me the shelter I need to watch him without alerting him to my presence. I stay hunkered down so even if he looks toward me, he can’t tell I’m here. The stage has been set for the musical recital that will take place in a few days, marking the end of the semester and the beginning of the Christmas holidays.
The custodian moves around the instruments as I study him, and I remark to myself that he does not seem like an evil person. I’d be able to tell. Although, I remind myself, even that day back in April six years ago, I hadn’t been the best judge. Those men in German uniforms were just regular army. They had nothing to do with the horrific visions of evil I’m still plagued with today.
The German runs his hand over the top of the grand piano. I think for a moment, he might play, but he moves over to a stool a few feet away and picks up a violin. I don’t know why he’s so hesitant to play.
He holds the violin up to his chin and draws the bow across the strings. The sound is less than pleasant, and he pulls the violin away. I wish I’d chosen a spot closer to the stage. His expression— or what I can see of it—is haunting. Almost reverently, he sets the violin back down, then moves back to the piano.
He doesn’t stay long. In fact, my heart starts beating faster as he comes striding down the aisle. I’m not sure what I should do, slink away from him, hoping not to be caught watching him, or confront him.
I’ve never been a man to avoid confrontation, especially when it can lead to gaining something. Confronting him now could ease my troubled mind and help the dreams subside. At least for a little while.
I stand up, but he keeps his eyes on his path and doesn’t notice me until he’s right upon me. Even then I have to clear my throat in order to get his attention. When I make the noise, he jumps, then stands as straight as he can. Eyes flick over my face before dropping to the floor again. Hands fisted at his sides.
He doesn’t apologize as he had before. Instead, he just silently stands there. It’s strange and awkward and forces me to speak first. “What’s your name?”
When he doesn’t answer, I recognize how hard my voice sounds. He might be a Nazi, but he might just be a regular guy. He could’ve lived here before the war and never shed his accent.
I try to make my tone something more charming, like Charles’s voice. “I’m John. I saw you playing a few weeks back. I—”
He clears his throat but doesn’t look up. “I won’t touch them again.”
Nazis don’t act like that.
“I don’t care if you touch them. They’re not mine.” It isn’t what I want to say or how I want to say it, but there is nothing I can do to return the words to my mouth. “I just want to know who you are.”
“No one,” he answers slowly. “Just a janitor.”
“You’re German.”
His lips purse together, and if it’s possible, he lowers his head even more. Finally, he shakes his head.
“I know a German accent when I hear one,” I say. “You’re—”
“Please don’t,” he whispers. I don’t know what he’s asking me not to do. Speak to him? Tell him I know he’s German? Tell the university he’s touching their instruments?
When he raises his head, I can see his face at last, but the look on it is so heartbreaking that I instantly feel my thoughts about him
have
to be wrong. A Nazi couldn’t look so distressed and sad. They were all arrogant pricks. But this man… this man is the opposite of it.
He looks like he could weep at any moment.
“Hey,” I begin, wanting nothing more than to make him a little more comfortable now. “I just wanted to know who you are. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
But the blond man with sad blue eyes does not make a move for the exit. He stands there, as if he’s waiting for me to dismiss him. Slowly his right arm moves across his body.
His bottom lip is just slightly sucked in and he’s worrying it with his teeth. When I drop my eyes and focus on his hands and arms, I see his right hand scratching at his left forearm. The inside of his arm is covered with a scar.
He’s scratching at it while staring at me. Probably doesn’t know he’s doing it. “That’s quite a scar,” I say, nodding toward him.
His eyes grow wide and in a jerky motion, his right hand flies away from his left arm, the sleeve of his coveralls hiding the healed wound once more.
Feeling confident this man is not the Nazi I mistook him for, I take a half-step forward and extend my hand. Being this close, I notice I am not much taller than he, but his slumped shoulders give him the look of a shorter man. Again, I give him my name. “I’m John Oakes.”
When he doesn’t take my offered hand, I release it back to my side. He is not going to give me his name. So the mystery lingers on. His unease is palpable, and I am suddenly struck with sympathy. I’ve misjudged him from nearly the first time I saw him.
It is all he needs to begin to move to the door, but not without remembering courtesy first. He lowers his head, bending his neck in a parting gesture. He is thanking me for giving him leave to go. He moves quickly to the exit. I follow at a leisurely pace. I don’t want him to be aware that I’m trailing him.
He makes his way into another building as the sun disappears. I stay outside behind a tree until he comes back out about a half hour later. He stands on the curb, still in his coveralls, but now with a hat on his head and a banged up metal lunchbox in his hands.
He stands there as if the wind is not blowing a seasonable chill right into him. I feel nearly frozen as I brace against the tree. It is a half hour wait before a car pulls up. I decide that I’ll never make it to my car in time to follow them, so instead I squint to make out the driver. It is Professor Fournier, the German custodian’s French “brother.”
I sulk for a moment about the missed opportunity to follow them, but it is too cold to linger for long.
dream changes again tonight. The bodies, the fear, the repulsion are all the same, but tonight I find the janitor as nothing more than skin and bones, lying in a heap of dead bodies inside the crematorium. I grab his hands and try to pull him out, but other corpses are lying on top. I pull and pull and pull some more until my hands slip and I tumble backward.
When I make my way back to the pile of humans, the janitor’s eyes are open, staring at me. I grab at him, under his arms, pulling with all my might. My rifle strap slips down my arm until it’s resting in the crook of it. The stock bangs against my knee.
I bring up one foot and brace it against a head with dark hair. I fight the nausea by trying to remind myself the corpse feels nothing. Slowly, I’m able to pull the German free, but I fall and he lands on top of me. He weighs nothing. His cold cheek presses against my chest. It is as if I’m not wearing my warm jacket. The freeze of his body seeps into me.
My heart races and I panic. I push at the dead body, struggling to get out from under the nothingness. It is not heavy and yet it pins me down.
When I am free, the body is next to me, and I look at it. “Please don’t,” I hear, echoing. The sound of the disembodied voice tears at me. I close my eyes, but I feel hands on me. Breath on my face. It is all I can do to push myself up off the cold floor and propel myself away from the death.
Outside is no better. Each rotting corpse has
his
eyes now. My rifle is in my hands as I run back to my brothers. They have men in German uniforms lined up, and someone shouts, “They’re getting away!”
After that, a blur of noise and motion makes me blind, deaf, and dumb. I follow the lead, my rifle raised. I shoot anything in the uniform I’ve grown to hate. It doesn’t matter if it is moving or standing stock-still.
The piercing blue eyes of the dead janitor are still burning at me, and I want to make someone pay for reducing him to nothing more than another body in the pile.
The next few nights I begin my new routine of following the janitor on campus, but I don’t interrupt him again. I hide behind the stacks of books as he sits with the professor in the restricted room. I peer around corners as he cleans room after room in the evening. On the fourth night, I wait in my truck. I’d parked it near the curb where he waits every night for the Frenchman to pick him up.
When he is in the blue Chevy Bel Air, I follow them at a safe distance. The drive takes me past my house. The winding road takes us closer to Tilden Park, but not quite there. The car turns off into a drive that leads up a hill. The house is partially hidden behind trees and shrubbery. I know this area. Behind the house is Selby Trail. What I can see of the house looks fairly modern. Modern and expensive.
They may not live far from me, but it’s obvious the professor had more money to spend when purchasing a home.
I keep driving as they turn off. So Charles isn’t wrong after all. They
d o
live together, and that
does
make it a bit scandalous.
I return home with more questions than ever. Now that my gut tells me he isn’t a Nazi soldier, or perhaps even a soldier at all, my mind works at all the little details. His manner of standing when he thinks he is alone verses the way he stands when acutely aware of my presence. The long, flat scar on the inside of his arm. His musical ability, and the fact that he didn’t play that night in the auditorium. The nervous way he avoids looking me in the eye. That he refused to give me his name or shake my hand.
They are all pieces of the puzzle, but no matter how hard I work at them, they don’t seem to add up to any understandable picture.
I am avoiding sleep. I don’t want any more dreams of death and living skeletons. I don’t want to wake up with an itchy trigger finger or the feeling of dread deep in my bones.
But sleep is unavoidable. I fall into unconsciousness with the vow that I will find out more about the man who has captured my thoughts as soon as I can. Somehow he holds the key to unlocking my anguish. Unlocking myself. I wish to be free. I wish for a pardon—something to absolve me.
I don’t know why I believe he can offer it to me, but there is no denying that I am pulled to him. There is a yearning within me to understand him, and a deep knowledge that beyond
wanting
to understand, there is a
need
to know.
Vienna, Austria1941
Peter Waldenheim’s invitations to go out with the group for the next four rehearsals. Each night was the same. He’d ask, I’d say no, then he’d ask me to reconsider. Each time he’d say, “I promise, we’ll take care of you.”
In my heart, I wanted to go, but in my head, I knew I shouldn’t. These were dangerous times, just as my uncle had constantly advised. Even at approved clubs, trouble was easily found. Besides, I’d taken to staying at the concert hall later, getting used to the piano and the acoustic space.
Tonight, however, the violinist was not taking my polite refusal for an answer. “Are you frightened, Kurt Klein?” he asked, using my full name. I didn’t understand why he did it, but I liked sound of it.
I swallowed hard against the lump in my throat. It always rose up when I had to speak to important people. “Frightened? Frightened of what, Herr Waldenheim?”
The only way to describe his spreading smile was to call it sinfully mischievous. “Of me, Herr Klein.”
Despite trying to remain calm, my eyes grew wide as my fingers laced together. I popped my knuckles. “No.”
was
a bit frightened. Not of him, exactly. More of my feelings
for
him.
I respected him as a musician. That much I’d already admitted, but there was more. I wanted to look at him all the time. He always stood at the end of the piano, eyes closed when playing music, so I always had a great view of him.