Saving Amelie (47 page)

54

P
ARIS
WAS
DECLARED
an open city, and within days the Nazis marched in unchallenged. Less than an hour later, Hitler’s ebony spider fluttered from the Eiffel Tower. French prime minister Reynaud, refusing to agree to an armistice with Germany, had barely resigned when General Pétain stepped into the gap. Pétain, desperate to avoid the division of France between Axis powers, humbly requested the armistice. The Vichy Government, puppet to Hitler, was born.

Part of the victorious entourage to Paris, Sturmbannführer Gerhardt Schlick raised plundered champagne flutes to repeated renditions of “Deutschland über Alles” and the “Horst Wessel Song” while the masses in Germany rejoiced, heiling their Führer. Gerhardt applauded Hitler’s order that the armistice be signed in the very railcar in the very forest in which Germany had been made to surrender in 1918.

Delighted to assist in the ripping of the railcar from a French museum, Gerhardt saw it placed once more in the Forest of Compiègne. Returning to the scene of Germany’s defeat increased Hitler’s sweet revenge and the total humiliation of France—a life philosophy Sturmbannführer Gerhardt Schlick embraced with an eye to the future.

Despite the war, Lea was content. Friederich was home and getting stronger each day. He returned to his woodcarving more and more
often, as his strength allowed, and she her painting of his carvings. The children’s choir made them both happy, and Amelie completed their joy. If only the war would end, if only the SS would forget them, and it would be safe to bring her into the light of day.

Lea knew these were fantasies, yet she lived them in her heart. Friederich cautioned her against setting her hopes on things unattainable, but Lea only smiled, grateful for the strange fortunes of war.

Even Oma’s nosy neighbors loomed as less of a threat. Despite the Nazis’ determination to create racial purity, numerous prisoners of war from occupied Europe were spread among local homes and camps to live and labor on public works projects. Frau Hillman was preoccupied with Oberammergau’s sudden influx of French visitors—their lilting tongue and rhythmic ways. She could no longer be bothered with the peculiarities of her neighbor, though she frequently commented on Lea’s extraordinary energy.

“You teach children’s choir and acting classes, you help your grandmother, you paint your husband’s carvings, and you work yourself to death in that garden—it’s like you were born with the energy of three women! Though some days you seem all thumbs. Why is that?”

It was
two
women, to be precise, and two very different sets of thumbs, but Lea simply smiled whenever Gerda Hillman leaned over the fence to gawk. Rachel or Lea—whoever was gardening that day—frequently offered the busybody a bunch of greens or pulled a luscious plum or fig from Oma’s orchard trees to appease her.

Oma was not so easily appeased and still worried over her neighbor, still feared that Sturmbannführer Schlick would see Rachel and Amelie’s photograph, still spent much time on her knees at night.

But Lea sang more than she ever had, and between Friederich’s love and Amelie’s adoration, she glowed. It was impossible not to notice.

55

S
UMMER
CAME
.

Maximillion had grown much taller over the past year. His hair was bleached and his body bronzed from the Alpine sun. His arms had grown thick and his waist trim from climbing ropes and mountains, rowing back and forth across the mountain lake, and chopping wood with his troop of Hitler Youth.

He decided he would wait no longer to pursue his dreams. He combed his hair and buttoned the shirt of his uniform across his broad chest. He fitted his cap to his head, tipping it to a jaunty angle. He’d not take Frau Hartman flowers this time, just himself. He would wait until she was alone, then surprise her, but quickly assure her of his intentions.

Perhaps they would begin with a walk in the woods and a picnic, perhaps a blanket.

Maximillion wasn’t certain what lay ahead. There was the husband to contend with, of course, but Maximillion was not especially worried. The woodcarver was no match for him, and he’d not given his wife children. Frau Hartman was good with the village children—doted on them. She deserved her own.

He’d even talked the question over with a couple of his friends, drinking around a campfire late one night. They’d agreed that the crippled woodcarver was an inconvenience, not one Germany would miss. Survival of the fittest, after all. An accident could be arranged—not so very difficult. They might even be willing to help him. Now
that they were all experienced in dealing with “situations” for the Gestapo, they had become creative problem solvers in their own right.

Maximillion waited until the last child left choir practice, until he was certain the Hitler Youth on duty had gone for the day. He grinned in anticipation, straightened his tie, and walked into the darkening school.

Lea had just turned off the overhead light after collecting her students’ worn song sheets. Little fingers, despite their best intentions, had a way of dog-earing corners and smudging print. Or was it dirt ground across the bars and treble clefs? She smiled. It didn’t matter. The children were still precious. She thumped the worn sheets into a straight stack. The last afternoon rays through the small window gave just enough light to find the cupboard.

She heard a slight shuffle at the door but didn’t turn. “So you’re back! Your lunch pail is on the piano, Heinrich. You’ll need that for tomorrow.”

She’d just finished shelving the song sheets in the cupboard when she sensed that someone stood close behind her, someone bigger than Heinrich. Before she could turn he’d covered her eyes from behind and pressed his body against hers. He didn’t speak, but nibbled her neck, just in the curve between its nape and her shoulder—Friederich’s favorite kissing spot, one he hadn’t made good use of since coming back from the war.

Lea giggled, surprised by her husband’s boldness in the school. Her suppleness spurred him on and he nestled deeper, into her hair, his hands seeming to forget her eyes, but traveling down her cheeks, her neck, her arms, encircling her waist.

“Not here!” Laughing, breathless, she tried to turn, only to find herself held tight, smothered with kisses, the hungry kind of kisses Friederich had given her before her last visit to the Institute had
crippled her and the war crippled him. She squirmed, turning just a little, not wanting to discourage her husband but wanting him to take her home and finish what he’d begun.

She grasped his arms, but they were not Friederich’s still-too-thin arms. Even in the dim light she could see and feel that the sleeves were not Friederich’s flannel shirtsleeves. Her heart raced; fear gripped her brain. She pushed away, turned, and found herself staring into the hungry eyes of Maximillion Grieser.

He pulled her to him, but she beat against his chest with her fists and screamed. “Get away! Take your hands from me!”

He laughed. “What are you doing? You invite me in, then push me away? You know you want me, Lea—as much as I want you.”

“No!”

“Stop pretending. There’s no need. We’re alone.” And he pulled her to his mouth with such force that she could not push him off.

She squirmed and pummeled, but he laughed and kissed her harder, aroused by the hunt and her resistance. His hands groped above her waist. She bit him, and when he grabbed his lip she pushed against his chest and slapped him, hard, across the face.

The lights of the classroom snapped on. Curate Bauer stood in the doorway. The sudden blinding light, the absolute stillness that followed, stole Lea’s breath until she thought she would faint. “He attacked me. He attacked me!”

The horror, the sorrow and misery of understanding, dawned in Curate Bauer’s face. “Get out. Get out, and don’t come back.”

Maximillion checked the blood on his hand, the blood from Lea’s bite, and swiped it away. He looked from the priest to a frightened Lea. “We love each other.”

“We do not!”

“But you teased me—everyone saw. You teased me, and then you get what you ask for but pretend you don’t want it? What is this?”

“You’re crazy, Maximillion! I have a husband—I love my husband!
I will tell your mother!” It was the worst thing Lea could think to threaten, the only thing she could imagine that would humiliate Maximillion or make him afraid.

“Tell my mother?” Maximillion looked incredulous, as if scales had been ripped from his eyes, as if he saw Lea for the first time. “You think I am a schoolboy that you will run and tell my mother?”

“You
are
a schoolboy!”

But Maximillion did not look at her as a child would look. He swore and his eyes ran over Lea’s body, as though he owned her, as though he’d finish what he’d dreamed of doing, no matter what she said. He stepped forward, threat in his eyes. “So, you’re like your mother. I’ve heard the stories.”

“I said get out,” the curate repeated, pushing between them and shoving Maximillion into a small desk so he fell backward. “Get out, or I’ll throw you out.”

Maximillion scrambled up from the floor. Before he could regain his footing, he stumbled again.

Flashes of anger and humiliation sprang to the boy’s eyes. He brushed back the greased hank of hair that had fallen across his forehead, looking like an overgrown pouting and dismayed child who’d been deprived of his toy and his will. He pushed himself up from the floor. “You’ll pay.” Spitting blood from his mouth, he glared at the priest and at Lea. “Do you hear me? You’ll both pay!” Then he tore from the room.

Curate Bauer exhaled mightily and looked at Lea, who’d collapsed against a desk, her hand to her heart. “Are you all right?”

She nodded, breathless and shaking. “Yes, he didn’t hurt me. He just . . .” She began to cry, despite her desperate wish not to. “I never led him on. I never did what he said!”

“I saw what he tried to do. I’m so sorry, Frau Hartman, so very sorry. Thank the good God I was here.”

“Yes,” she quavered. “Thank you!”

The curate helped her to her feet. “You must be very careful, Frau Hartman. We have made an enemy. You must tell Friederich, and you must warn your sister.”

Lea shuddered, frantically whispering in Rachel’s ear so Rivka could not hear the sordid tale of Maximillion.

“Okay, I believe you, but don’t you think you’re overreacting? Really, what can he do? He knows nothing. He’s just a hormonal teenage boy. He has no power over us.”

But Lea, terrified, argued, “You didn’t see his face. He vowed that we’d pay.”

“I just smiled at him and waved.” Rachel shrugged. “It was nothing—really nothing.”

“It was something to him. Rachel, I’m frightened! What if—?”

But Rachel shook her head, cavalier, as though such flirtations and infatuations with teachers were everyday affairs. She almost convinced Lea that she was too provincial in her thinking, that despite the ugliness of Maximillion’s tantrum, there was truly nothing to fear.

56

B
Y
THE
TIME
Gerhardt returned to his Berlin office, he was in high spirits. Weeks of life in Paris had proven invigorating. He’d not lacked for female companionship and had come to the conclusion that regardless of the disappointed expectations of youth, life goes on. Perhaps Rachel Kramer truly had perished aboard the ship on which her passport was found. Perhaps it was time to end that frustrating and ignominious chapter in his life.