Far From Home

Chapter 8

Claudia was asleep when Marianna came home. She put ice on her head as she had promised the captain she would. Hedi didn’t come home at all that night. She spent the night in a cheap hotel with her English sergeant from Yorkshire. She said he had a great sense of humor, when she came home the next morning. Marianna told them both what had happened the night before with the Russian soldier, and about the American captain who had rescued her.

“That sounds very romantic to me. Not the rape. The American. Is he good-looking?” Claudia asked.

“Yes. He’s very polite. He reminds me of my parents’ friends.”

“That’s too bad. Cross him off the list.” Claudia and Hedi both had much looser morals than Marianna did, and were always looking for a good time and a free meal. Marianna hadn’t looked at another man since Jürgen, and wasn’t looking for one now. She just thought the captain was a nice person, and she was grateful he’d been there at the right time to save her from a horrible experience. She could still remember the Russian strangling her, banging her head into the wall, and pulling down her underwear, having released himself from his trousers so he could rape her. The thought of it was horrifying.

“We all need to be careful,” she reminded her roommates. “It was terrifying. It could happen to any of us, with all the soldiers around.” Claudia and Hedi both agreed, but she had a feeling they’d have defended themselves better than she had. She hadn’t even been able to scream. Her headache was better. The ice had helped, but there was a bruise on her neck where he’d choked her.

The Russian didn’t come back to the beer garden that night, but at eleven o’clock, Captain Tim McGrath walked in wearing his uniform, looked around, and ordered a drink at the bar. He asked for a gin and tonic and the bartender asked him if he was English.

“American,” he corrected him.

“Americans drink bourbon or whiskey,” the bartender said. “Or rum and Coke. Or tequila.” Tim McGrath laughed at the options.

“Not all Americans. Some drink gin.” He would have asked for a martini, if he thought the bartender could make one. Marianna hadn’t seen him yet, and he watched her with the customers. He had that same impression of good breeding and innocence he’d had the night before. She looked totally out of place in the seedy restaurant, with the rowdy, drunken customers. She was pleasant and polite to all of them, without flirting with them. Most of them looked as drunk as the Russian had been.

Tim McGrath was in Berlin for six months to help with the transition, and to help the army’s legal commission get started researching war criminals, collecting evidence, and interviewing witnesses. They were already holding several members of the High Command in prison cells for safekeeping. And they had a long list of names to look into. Tim was an attorney at an important New York law firm, when it wasn’t wartime. He had gone to Princeton undergraduate and Harvard Law School. The army’s legal commission was looking into the SS officers who had run the concentration camps that had been liberated in the past few weeks, Ravensbruck, Buchenwald, Dachau, and Bergen-Belsen, all of which were horrendous. The men who ran them were guilty of crimes beyond belief, and the commission already had a mountain of information on the men who’d run Auschwitz, which had been liberated in January. Tim wished he could be present for the war trials, but he needed to be back in New York by the end of the year, now that the war was over.

Marianna noticed him at the bar then, and came over to say good evening. She smiled broadly as soon as she saw him.

“Hello, Captain,” she greeted him. “What brings you here?” The other customers were all low-class Germans and low-ranking soldiers. They were a rough crowd, and he was dignified and sober.

“I came to check on you. How’s your head?” He had warm brown eyes and an easy smile.

“Much better. I did the ice last night, and it helped.”

“I’m glad. Do you have a bump?” He looked genuinely concerned. He had thought about her all day, and how differently the night before could have ended for her. The thought of it was deeply upsetting.

“Just a small bump. It’s not too bad. But it bled on my pillow.”

“I should have shot him.” He noticed her neck then and looked at it more closely. “He damn near strangled you. He could have broken your neck. In which case, I’d have broken his. I have never understood the appeal of beating a woman up to have sex with her. There are plenty of women in this town who are dying to give it away for free, without having to be strangled to convince them.”

Marianna laughed. “I live with two of them. They do it to get free dinners. But they’re both nice people. There were two more, but the parents of one of them took her home to Munich, they don’t want her in Berlin now, and the other was killed in the bombing.” She looked serious when she mentioned Brigitte. “We all miss her. And now the rent is more expensive without them.” He thought about what she said and lowered his voice when he spoke to her, so the bartender couldn’t hear him.

“Couldn’t you have gotten a better job than this? Somewhere safer?”

“I don’t know how to do anything,” she said modestly. “I’ve never had a job till now. And it’s a long story. I was married to a pilot in the Luftwaffe. He was killed and his parents threw me out of the apartment in two days, because they disagreed with something my father did.” He looked disturbed by what she told him.

“He can’t possibly have done something that serious, to justify throwing you out of your home. So, you’re a war widow?”

“Yes,” she said in a soft voice.

“And what did your father do that was so unforgiveable?” he asked her. She hesitated before she answered. She was an honest person, and there was something about him that made her want to be truthful with him. She lowered her voice to a whisper.

“He tried to kill Adolf Hitler.”

Tim stared at her when she said it matter-of-factly, and then he laughed.

“Well, yes, I suppose that could be awkward socially.” He thought she was kidding at first, but her eyes said she meant it. “Are you serious?”

“Yes. My father and his friends tried to assassinate Hitler. It was quite a famous attempt. Unfortunately, they failed. And they were all executed, including my father.” She looked sad then. “My father hated Hitler, and thought he was destroying Germany. He resigned from the army because of it. He was a colonel. And then he and his friends tried to kill Hitler, and they made a mess of it, and got killed instead. My husband was upset about it, but he forgave me, and my brother was very upset too. He grew up in the Hitlerjugend, with all their propaganda. And my parents-in-law hated me from then on. They didn’t even let me go to my husband’s funeral.” It was strange to be telling Tim all that at the beer garden, and he looked fascinated by it.

“Wait a minute…last July, a group of aristocrats backed by the military reserves carried out a plot to kill Hitler at his retreat in Poland. Someone called Ludwig Beck, von Stauffenberg…was that it?…and von Auspeck! I read about it. I thought it was incredibly brave, and a little idealistic and na?ve. But amazingly courageous. Were they all killed?”

“All of them were executed the day they did it. And the Nazis took everything, our homes, everything in them, all the money. My father was supposed to meet my mother in Paris. She was waiting for him, and they killed him that day. She called me from Paris to say goodbye. She had to disappear in case the SS was looking for her, and I never heard from her again. Even now that the war is over. I know my mother, she’s a strong woman, she can do anything. If she was alive, she’d have done everything to find me, and she would have. Maybe they killed her too. Hitler really is dead now. But I haven’t heard anything from her. I’m going to France to look for her when I have saved a little money and things are a little less crazy and one can travel more easily. She doesn’t even know that my brother is dead. I want to find out what happened to her. She’s half French. I have cousins there. I thought they might know something or have seen her. I’m going to visit them and find out. I have to know,” she said earnestly, and his heart went out to her. “Maybe the SS killed her, or maybe she’s still hiding,” she added. He hoped for Marianna’s sake that she’d find her mother, but he thought it unlikely. It was more likely that she’d been executed too, as retribution, if they’d found her.

“I do remember the failed attempt, though, and the plot. Your father must have been a very courageous man.”

“He was, he had strong principles, and his friends were good men too. He just hated Hitler, and felt someone had to stop him. So he tried to. My brother was very ashamed of him, which is sad. But Viktor was very young. He was only nineteen. He died in Belgium.”

“And how old are you now?” he asked her gently.

“I’m twenty-three.” She had celebrated her birthday with her roommates. “It all happened almost a year ago, last summer.”

He looked at her with a warm expression. She had lost her whole family, and everything they had, and she was alone in the world without protection. It made him want to protect her, since there was no one else to do it.

“We had a very nice house,” she said wistfully, “and a schloss that had been in my father’s family since the sixteenth century.”

“Eventually, you should be able to get restitution for that, once they get set up for it. It probably won’t be for a while, but you should be able to get something for at least part of it.”

“Do you think so?” She looked surprised. She hadn’t thought of that. She was an innocent in so many ways, and had been shielded all her life from harm until the war.

“I do. I’m an attorney in real life. They are going to make restitution to the Jews for what they lost, especially the deportees. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t get some of that too. You’ll need a lawyer to help you.”

“I have no money to hire a lawyer.”

“I’ll help you find one. A good one should do it for you for free, and only collect a fee if he gets you restitution.”

“That would be very nice,” she said quietly. She hadn’t thought about restitution at all, and didn’t think she’d be eligible, since her father was shot as a traitor.

“Nicer than working here,” he said in a low voice. “What time do you finish?”

“Now,” she said.

“I came to walk you home, so no one drags you into a back alley.” But it sounded to him like the Nazis had, and raped her, and stolen everything she had.

“I was married when it all happened,” she added. “I was only married for a year, and then he was killed. He was shot down on a bombing raid, after my parents were gone.”

“Your parents, your husband, your brother, that’s a lot, Marianna. I’m surprised you’re still standing.”

“There’s no other choice. And I’m hoping to find my mother, or at least learn what happened to her.” Tim nodded, but he didn’t think she’d be lucky with that. Her mother would have surfaced by now if she were alive, and certainly now, with the war over. He thought Marianna was an incredibly strong woman and had gone through more than any one human should have to go through. He felt that way about the people who had been in the camps too. What Marianna had been through was easier, she hadn’t suffered physical damage, or torture and starvation. But losing her entire family in the last year was enormous. And he would have liked to meet her father. He had been mesmerized by the plot when he read about it, and remembered it perfectly now. He hadn’t made the connection with her name when she introduced herself, but he did now. Ludwig Beck had sounded like an interesting person too, and a brave one. He had carried the briefcase with the bombs himself. One had failed to detonate, and the briefcase was moved by someone and placed too far away to do any real damage when the other bomb went off. He remembered it distinctly now. They were brave men who had died for their cause.

“I’ll get my jacket,” she said to him, and was back a minute later, wearing it, ready to walk home with him.

They left the beer garden together, and the drunks paid no attention to them. The owner noticed them though and glanced at the bartender.

“It looks like she landed a big fish,” he commented, and the bartender shrugged.

“It doesn’t matter how big a fish they are when they’re here. Eventually they go back to their wives and girlfriends where they came from, and our girls will get forgotten. He won’t take her home with him. They never do. She’s a pretty girl. She’ll find someone else after he leaves.” Franz Ernst, the owner, wasn’t as sure. Marianna was a beautiful woman, and he could tell she had come from a different world.

—

Walking Marianna home from work rapidly became a habit with Tim McGrath. He showed up every night at eleven, had one drink at the bar, and then escorted her home to make sure that she got to her apartment safely. Occasionally, one of her roommates walked with them if they didn’t have plans after work, which they often did now, with soldiers they met. Tim provided Marianna first-class personal security service, and he enjoyed it. She was fun to talk to and a lovely young woman.

She found that she could talk to him about anything and everything, like about her father trying to kill Hitler. Nothing shocked him, many things amused him, and he made her laugh too, about small things as well as big ones. Seeing him at the end of every evening, having him protect her, always ended her day on a happy note. But she didn’t expect him to continue doing it forever. Sooner or later, he’d leave Berlin and go back to New York. She was realistic about it. But it was nice being with him for now.

He’d been walking her home for two weeks when he invited her to dinner. It was the end of May, and things were still turbulent and chaotic in Berlin. He had been out to dinner several times to restaurants he liked, but one was a particular favorite. The restaurant he’d chosen to take her to was well known in Berlin, and she was surprised and touched when he invited her.

He picked her up at her apartment, like a real date. Marianna surprised him when she opened the door to her apartment. She was ready to leave in a chic black taffeta skirt, with a jacket to match trimmed in silver. High-heeled silver sandals her roommates had lent her completed the outfit. And one of them had also lent her a pretty little silver clutch to go with it. Her outfit was from a few years before and she had taken it with her when she left Jürgen’s apartment. Her mother had bought it for her in Paris, at Chanel.

They talked for hours over dinner, and never ran out of subjects that interested them both. He told her about his college days and school days before that, and his family. He had two high-achieving older sisters, a dozen years older than he was. One was a physician, the other a high-powered lawyer who had her own firm. Tim had refused to join her in her practice, because he didn’t want to engage in family arguments if something went wrong in business.

After dinner they walked for a while. It was a romantic evening, as he had intended, it felt almost like a normal date in spite of the chaotic time in the damaged city. When he took Marianna back to her apartment, he kissed her at the foot of the stairs. It was a searing kiss that made her dream. Together they had stepped into a whole other world than he had originally intended.

He was the youngest of his siblings, and his parents were no longer alive. He had never been married, and said he had always felt too young to take on that responsibility. He had focused on his career, and was a partner in the law firm where he worked in New York. It sounded as though he had a very orderly life, and a career he thoroughly enjoyed. He had enlisted in the army after Pearl Harbor, and had spent the first two years in Washington at the Pentagon on the legal staff, and the last year in London, attached to the war office, as an American legal adviser. Berlin had been his first combat experience. His father had been an investment banker, and his mother an attorney who eventually became a judge. One of his sisters, the physician, was married and had two children, and the other had never married and didn’t want to.

“I’ve always planned everything in my life. I’ve done everything I was supposed to, that was expected of me, except get married. When I was in college, I dated every debutante in New York. I was always bored.” He wasn’t bored with Marianna. He was enchanted by her. “And then suddenly I met you, and I’m crazy about a girl whose father tried to kill Adolf Hitler. It’s certainly colorful. You’re the most exciting woman I’ve ever met.” She felt the same way about him. And it sounded as though they had had similar upbringings. Tim’s family, both his parents, had money and position, and he had lived well all his life and felt extremely fortunate. He couldn’t imagine what Marianna’s experience had been like, losing everything, her entire family, her home, and even her husband, and having to fend for herself. He hated that she worked at the beer garden, in the current postwar insanity, with Berlin crawling with soldiers who were dangerous, drunk, and disorderly, and he was worried about the neighborhood she lived in. Her parents would have been too, but when Jürgen’s family evicted and abandoned her, she had had no other options, except a life, a job, and an apartment where she was at risk, and she had made the best of it. Marianna wasn’t bitter or angry or complaining about what she’d lost. She had accepted her reversal of fortune with astounding grace. Tim was looking forward to his six months in Berlin now that he had met her. What he wanted to do, now more than ever, was stay for the war trials, but his law firm needed him back in New York. In the meantime, he could help set them up.

“Would you really have shot the Russian?” Marianna asked him over dinner, curious. It was the best meal she’d had in nearly a year.

“I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve never shot a person. But I was so furious, I might have. It’s just as well I didn’t. It would have caused an international incident. I’ve only given orders in the army, and drafted legal documents. I’ve never had to shoot anyone.”

She reminded him again that she was going to France as soon as she could, to look for her mother. She didn’t know how to contact her cousins after the war, but she knew the location of their chateau.

“Maybe I should come with you. It might be dangerous,” he said. She loved the way he wanted to protect her. It reminded her of when her parents were alive, and even Jürgen, but he’d been younger and much less serious and mature than Tim. He was closer to her age. Jürgen had been a boy. Tim was a man.

Tim was planning to visit what was left of the concentration camps, to get a better sense of the locations where the crimes were committed, and the living conditions of the people who were sent there and those who died there. From what he already knew, they were going to be very hard investigation trips, and they would be life-altering for him. He felt he owed it to the victims to go there and see it for himself. And he was willing to go to France with Marianna too.

They went for a long walk that night after dinner, talking about the things they cared about and the values they shared. When he kissed her when he took her home, he didn’t tell her he loved her, but he didn’t need to. She could see it in his eyes. And for now, that was enough for her.