Hidden Away (9 page)

My skin would rise in gooseflesh. I would barely be able to breathe. My heart would pound against my chest. I would gasp as his hand moved lower, curving over the rounded flesh of my backside. His mouth would attach itself to my neck, and he would press his body tightly against mine.

I had never been in a position like that, but I knew I wanted to be.

 

Chapter 5

 

Berkeley, California
1951

T
HE
dreams have not stopped. In fact, they’re growing worse. The German is featured every night. Sometimes he’s a German soldier. Sometimes he’s an SS guard. Sometimes he’s a prisoner. Sometimes he’s an American.

But he’s
always
there.

Tonight is no different. I am entering the camp. My mood is deflating, like I’ve just lost something big. Yet, there’s a sense of relief and peace as well. My uniform scratches my skin. It feels odd. Not my own.

There is death all around me. There is death everywhere in the camp. Even though I am hardened by battle, I cannot believe what I am seeing. The feeling is different from all other times before this. It is devastating, as always, but there is something more. There is a deep shame. It feels as though I have just realized something bigger than ever before—as if I am part of the oppression that was forced upon the striped men.

There are other men from my company here. They are
my
men.
My
brothers. They’re shouting, rounding German soldiers up. David pushes me.

I yell.

He punches me square in the jaw. It sears like he’s ripped it from my face. I reel backward and find I am against a low wall. I feel trapped. I’m vulnerable. I need to get away from it. I try to speak to him, but he’s shouting in my face. I cannot understand his words. David is from Colorado, but I cannot understand the language he’s using.

His big hand reaches out and grabs my rifle. When I see it, I realize it’s not mine. It’s a German Karabiner 98k. I look down at my scratchy uniform and realize it’s a German Wehrmacht uniform.

My stomach drops.
This isn’t right.
I look up. Rifles, held by my friends, my

countrymen, my company brothers, pointing at me. I yell, throw up my hands, plead for them to stop. I shout that I surrender. Shout that I am unarmed. That I’m not responsible for
any
of this. The panic within me makes it hard to control my body. It knows what will happen.

I catch David’s eyes and hope he’ll recognize me.

But those brown eyes are not David’s. They’re mine.

Then they’re the German’s. Icy blue. Cold. Unyielding.

 

With my eyes trained on his, I can only hear it when rounds are fired.

My chest explodes.
I sit straight up in my bed, hands pressed against my chest. I run out of the room, but only dry-heave into the toilet. Sweat drips from my

chilled flesh. When I can stand, I move out to my living room, grab the bottle of whiskey and my pack of cigarettes.

The heat of the alcohol pushes away the chill in my body and the cold of the night as I sit, bundled up, on my porch.

My hands tremble. I cannot keep going like this.

It’s been six years and eight months since that cold April day in Germany, yet I can’t shake it. I thought time would make it better, but it hasn’t. It is more present in my life now than when I’d first been discharged.

I don’t know what to do, but I believe the recent discovery of the German has brought all of this up. Whether a Nazi or not, he
is
the key to my sanity.

All pretense of working on academics while on campus stops. I ignore Charles’s attempts at socialization. I ignore everything that does not have to do with the German janitor. I have to wheedle out the truth of it. I need to know who he is and why he’s in my life. I am only interested in following him and learning more. In my heart, I know my dreams and guilt and shame will somehow lessen because of him. I’m not sure how, but I just know.

I trail after him every day until the end of term. It is on the last day that I finally step out from the shadows and speak to him again. He is in the basement of a building, dumping garbage down an incinerator chute. It is loud in this room, but quiet on campus. Most everyone has gone, so it is just me and him.

He jumps and turns when he catches sight of me. The metal container clangs to the floor, but we both ignore the sound as we stare at each other. He looks as though he could cry. I feel as though I could as well. I need decent sleep soon. Without it, I am a mess, and the whole world is a jumble in my mind.

“My name is John Oakes,” I start, giving him the same information I gave him last time in a measured tone. “What’s your name?”

He hesitates. Craning his neck, he glances at the open chute behind him. He flicks his eyes around the dingy room, possibly looking for a means of escape. With a stiff body, he quickly turns and slams the metal door closed. There is visible relief when he faces me again.

For a moment, my eyes are drawn to the incinerator. It is like an oven. It looks different than the one that haunts me, but if someone had the mind to, it could be used for the same purpose. I remember how the bodies were stacked next to it, a backlog of work for the prisoners forced to complete that task. I remember how meaningless the spirits who had occupied those bodies must have been to those who facilitated their deaths.

The queasiness rises. I have visions of the skeletons. Eyes open and staring at me as they wait to be burned. What we offer them isn’t much better. Forcing the citizens of the town around it to dig, we Americans could only give them an unmarked mass grave.

How can one be delicate and respectful when there are so many of them? We simply cannot
place
them in the ground. The bodies are tossed. The thud of one body hitting another is not sickening if you’re not watching it. It sounds like other sounds, but when you’re watching stiff limbs go akimbo, a pointy hipbone striking the stubbly haired skull of another, it makes your stomach churn. Maybe the ovens are better than mass graves.

Maybe there is no
better
.
I shake out of my distracted thoughts and force my mind back to the present. The German

looks scared. If he is a Nazi, then he’d be scared of being found out. If he isn’t, then he’s scared of something else. Perhaps I’m intimidating. I keep my body in top physical condition, and I’m blocking the only exit of the room.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” I say as softly as I can. “I just-I just need to know your name.”
He lowers his eyes. I think he’s not going to answer, but then he says, “Kurt.”
Kurt. His name is Kurt. A small amount of pressure is removed from my chest and my head. “Kurt what?”
“Fournier,” he responds, still hesitantly.

His response does not take away any more anxiety. In fact, it seems to double the stress I feel. “I don’t believe you.”

The German takes a small step to the side, his fingers threaded together in front of him. He cracks his knuckles as his teeth bite down on his bottom lip before he whispers something. I can’t hear him.

“What?”

“Klein,” he says a bit louder. My confused expression must not change because when he looks up at me, he says even louder, “Kurt Klein.”

For a moment, we are both silent, both standing stock-still. Then, he says, “I must go now.” His voice is shaking.

“And you’re German?” I ask, ignoring his statement.

“No,” he responds, voice almost nonexistent. “Yes, you are.” I make the assertion with a strong tone. It reminds me of the multiple times I was given the task to interrogate German citizens.

They tended to lie to me. Even though I originally meant no harm to them, I would have to use a loud, threatening voice to get any information. Once or twice, I used physical force. Once I held an Italian by his neck against the wall. Roger had his son, arm twisted behind his back.

The things I said to that man were despicable. They were things I would
never
do, and yet had to threaten just to get the tiniest bit of intelligence. It made me wonder at the time if I was willing to scare men by using the lives of their children, what were my brothers in arms willing to do?

I still wonder if anyone in my company was guilty of their own war crimes. That is, apart from the taking of the concentration camp at Dachau.

“I must go,” he says again, bringing my thoughts back to the here and now.

His shoulders are stooped over as he raises his eyes to me, only to drop them back to the floor. His fingers pick at each other. I take a step toward him. He stands up even straighter, and his fingers still. His body trembles. Suddenly, his hands move to his head, his fingers grabbing at the air above as if pulling a hat from his head. Then his arms are down, but not for long. His hands move back up, fingers sliding carefully against his crown.

The actions confuse me, putting me even more on edge. I feel like it’s the eve of battle and the unknown awaits me in the morning. I have an urge to kiss the stock of my rifle, but my hands are empty. “Why are you here?”

“I’m a good citizen of America,” he says. The fear in his voice stops me. Everything about him is telling me how frightened he is, but it is his tone that drives it into me like a field knife splitting my skin and flesh.

It makes the long-healed wound on my shoulder ache. The throb is nothing more than my mind playing tricks on me.

“What are you….” I trail off as images from years ago flood before me. I can’t make sense of them. I need to leave this room, but I can’t force my body to move. This man is the man in my dreams—the one that has the secret to unlocking the broken and painful past trapped within me.

“I contribute to—” he pauses for a moment, apparently to search for a word. When he speaks again, he adds, “Gesellschaft.”

It takes a second to understand that he just told me he contributes to society. I scratch at my goatee, tugging at my skin as I try to put everything right in my head. German. Good citizen. Contribution to society.

“What do you want with me?” he asks, his accent once again telling me I am not wrong about his origins.

Eyes burning and watery, I feel as though I may snap. It is not a wonder that I’m scaring this man. I am scaring myself. I force my body to move, taking a step back, then a step to my right. I’m no longer blocking the door entirely, and I hope this helps the man—Kurt Klein—feel a bit better.

“I just want to understand. My head is so full of—” I stop. “Obviously you work for the university.” He gives me a small nod and looks up at me, eyes squinted as he studies me. Again, he lowers his head. “And you live with the French professor?”

At this, his head snaps up. The frightened, meek expression is gone. Anger has replaced it. I take an unconscious step back.

“No!”
“But I’ve seen—”

His voice is loud and carries over the rumble of the incinerator. It is hard to believe it comes from the timid man I’ve been following for weeks. “You’ve seen
nothing
. I don’t
live
with the Frenchman. I rent the apartment above his garage. He has a wife and a child! You have no right to make these
anklagen
in such a way. You—”

I hold up my hands. “Whoa, I wasn’t accusing. I didn’t mean to rile you up like this.” Again, I make a small retreat with a step back. My emotions are everywhere. Now I am ashamed that I have brought this on, confronting him with no evidence. “I just—”

“Thought you
knew
?” He scratches at the scar on his left forearm, then pinches and twists it. “You didn’t
think
, you assumed. Do you have any idea where assumptions can lead a person?”

“I-I’m… I just—”

“Straight to die Gatter der Hölle!” he yells as he answers his own question.
I stay silent as I move back and away from the door, giving him all the room he needs to escape. He’s really working the hard flesh of his scar, and his eyes look like blue fire. I am reduced to a shaking jumble of nerves when his words—the Gates of Hell—sink into me.
I have been to the Gates of Hell myself. I fear it will haunt me forever.

As my mind slips back six and a half years, it barely registers when the German janitor runs out of the room. The walls close in on me, feeling so much like the enemy forces closing in around me. I sink down and wrap my arms around my legs, wishing I had my M1 Garand. I wish I had
any
weapon.

I am so debilitated that I allow the Nazis who occupy the island of Sicily to surround me. In reality, the taking of Sicily was relatively easy, but in this boiling room, it is not the same. I’m curled up in a waking nightmare. The Germans will capture me, I’m sure of it. They’ll send me to one of their camps in the north. I’ll be nothing more than skin and bones. I’ll be the striped walking dead. I’ll be the ghosts that haunt others.

I’m sweating. The air is stuffy. It takes me another fifteen minutes to sort myself out and leave the building. As I make my way to my truck, I’m sickened by my actions. I’ve gone about figuring out the German—
Kurt
—the wrong way.

I
T IS
a half past seven when a knock sounds on the wooden door of my porch. I rise, letting the wool blanket fall to the floor.