Chapter 34 Treasure Beyond Measure. Again #2
No child has ever been so excited at Christmas as we were pulling out the contents of that box, with me translating as we went.
Breakfast, the first interior box read. Here’s what was in it: Canned chopped ham and eggs, a packet of biscuits, malted milk tablets, and a packet of oatmeal.
And an envelope of instant coffee and a packet of sugar!
Each item left us more speechless than the last, and Frau Adelberg was moaning for a different reason now.
Lunch, the second box said. A tin of cheese, a bouillon cube—soup!—more biscuits, a bar made of dried fruit, tablets marked “orange drink,” and another packet of coffee—real coffee, I was guessing—and still more sugar.
By the time we got to the box marked Dinner, everybody was gathered around the bed, Frau Adelberg had her hands on her cheeks, and the little boys were jumping up and down. A tin marked “pork loaf,” more biscuits, more bouillon, more orange-drink tablets, more coffee, and more sugar.
And a packet with four cigarettes. And an orange. And two sticks of gum. And a bar of chocolate.
“Go ahead,” Joe said, grinning through his pain. “Take it. It’s the least I can do.”
“Soup,” Frau Adelberg said. “With ham in it. Ham and potato soup! No, this I must make myself. Oh, my.”
Joe held out the cigarettes to Dr. Becker. “Seems I owe you a favor. Will this do?” Dr. Becker took them almost reverently, and the matches, too.
The little boys didn’t answer. They were staring at the orange, the chocolate, the chewing gum. Joe picked up the orange and tossed it to Matti, who promptly dropped it and went scrambling for it. “Be sure you share it, now,” Joe said. “Who takes custody of the chocolate and gum?”
Andrea raised a tentative hand and said, “I’ll share it out.”
Joe said, “Good for you.” Then he lay back against the pillows and gestured at the bounty spread out around him. “Take the rest of it away,” he told me, “and use it. If you can spare a cup of coffee, though, I’d be glad of it.”
Frau Adelberg didn’t respond to that. She was too busy repacking all the wonderful food items into their boxes, ready to carry them off with her.
“You can have coffee once we get that wound re-stitched,” Dr. Becker said.
“Yeah,” Joe said. “Once we do that.” Then he fixed me with his gaze again.
His face was so open, his eyes so kind even in his pain.
“I hope you’ll take what you want, too,” he said.
“I only wish I had more to give you. Can you ask the doctor to get on with it, please? I seem to want to go to sleep.”
“Yes,” I said, with a surge of—what? Gratitude? Tenderness? I couldn’t even have said. “Yes. I’ll bring you that water now.”
“And hold my hand while the doc—he is a doc, isn’t he?—stitches me up?” Joe asked.
“Of course I’ll hold your hand,” I said. “And yes, he’s a doctor. My father’s doctor, in fact, and my mother’s and mine, too. A very good doctor.”
Dr. Becker had been assembling the contents of the first-aid kit. Now, he told me, “A basin of hot water, please, Daisy, and more clean towels. But first, boil the kitchen scissors and the large sewing needle for at least three minutes. Boil the spool of thread again, too.”
“My good sewing thread,” Frau Adelberg moaned.
Dr. Becker ignored her. “Bring him a glass of water first, though. We’ll give the morphine time to take effect.”
“Yes,” I said. “At once.”
I was at the door when Dr. Becker said, “Daisy? Translate one thing more for me, would you?”
“Of course,” I said, turning.
“Tell him,” Dr. Becker said, then seemed to reconsider. He drew himself to his full height and looked straight at Joe. “I am a doctor,” he told him. “I am also a Jew.”
I translated, something like pride filling my chest. And Joe said, “Well, thank goodness for that. Because so am I.”
“Talk about a meet cute,” Alix said.
“A what?” I asked.
She gestured. “A meet cute, like in a romantic comedy. A memorable meeting.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, yes, it was that.”
“But what happened then?” Ben asked. “How did he get back to his … squad, or whatever? Or did he stay with you?”
“He stayed with us,” I said, “that night and all the next day. He was tired after Dr. Becker cared for his wounds the second time—the broken collarbone was quite painful, and bullet wounds seem to hurt a great deal also. He slept and woke—he was very restless, and became feverish on the afternoon of the second day despite the sulfa powder. Dr. Becker said it was due to bacteria from the bullet and that he needed more antibiotics. We were quite concerned, especially as there was still fighting in the streets. Do you remember that?” I asked Matti.
“No,” he said. “Mostly, I remember the orange. And the chocolate. And the grenades, of course. How Gerhardt and I longed to throw the grenades and watch them blow up!”
I laughed. “Yes, but we were a step ahead of you, fortunately. Here’s what happened, then.
Late the next afternoon, the fighting ceased.
At least we couldn’t hear anything anymore, even the far-away explosions.
It was very quiet. Very. Frau Adelberg said we should wait until the next day, but Joe was quite feverish now, so—” I shrugged. “I went out to find the Americans.”
I told Joe I was going. He reached for my hand and clutched it tight, the sweat standing out on his face. I sponged it again with cool water and said, “I’ll be back soon with your comrades. What do I tell them? I don’t want to be shot as a saboteur.”
His hand tightened on mine. “Carry a white flag. Made of something—anything. A shirt.”
“Oh, no,” I said, trying to joke, for he looked most distressed. “Shirts are far too dear now. I’ll cut it out of the sheet we destroyed to make your sling.”
“Yes,” he said. “Out of something. And tell them the Rainbow Division, the 42nd. Sergeant Joe Stark, Rainbow Division.”
I nodded. “I will.”
I straightened, but he didn’t let go of my hand. “Be careful.”
“I’m not a very frightening person,” I said. “Nobody could be tempted to shoot me.”
“White flag,” he said, then fell back again. “Rainbow Division. Please. Remember.”
For all my brave words, it was frightening to step out onto the empty street.
It was also very quiet. People might venture out in the morning, but they were waiting a bit yet, it seemed.
The street was full of detritus from the battle: shell casings, discarded equipment, and worse.
I saw bodies as I walked—westward, for that was the way the battle had moved.
Bodies of German soldiers, not American ones.
Who would collect them and bury them? I had no idea, and tried not to look at the mangled corpses.
Gray hair on some, and often, only half a uniform: a military blouse or trousers only.
I saw bodies of SS men, too, and those aroused less pity.
See where your arrogance has landed you, I thought, remembering the things Dr. Becker had said about the SS in Poland, and farther east. Remembering how Dr. Becker had been barred from the university, barred from the trams, barred from Brühl’s Terrace, and then ordered to report for “evacuation” anyway.
Dr. Becker, and the children. No, the dead SS men stirred no compassion.
I thought about that so as not to be frightened. A few streets ahead, I saw a few people moving and hurried along, the piece of sheet I’d tied to a yardstick fluttering behind me.
Two women, it was, searching among the bodies. I stopped and asked, “Which way did the Americans go?”
“Which way?” one of the women said bitterly. “east, of course. East, to kill more of our men and boys. Why, oh why has this been visited upon us?” So you see, no help there.
I walked for thirty minutes, for forty, until I was in the countryside again, beside the river, the same way we’d come.
I saw something in the distance, then, at least I thought so.
It was hard to tell in the gathering dusk.
I ran—I didn’t want to reach them after dark, and was feeling more frightened now.
I came closer, and saw. Tents, surely. Tents, and figures moving around.
“Halt!” a voice called, and I stopped, my heart pounding, for a man had stepped out from behind a tree. A man with a rifle aimed at me. “No entry,” he said in English, then, “Eintritt verboten!” His German was atrocious.
I said in English, “There is a wounded man in my house. Back there.” I gestured.
“In the old city. His name is Joe Stark, of the … of the 42nd. The Rainbow Division. I’ve come to find …
to find somebody to take him home. To take him to …
to your camp.” Why hadn’t I rehearsed this speech? I sounded very muddled.
The sentry stared at me. “Why is he in your house?”
“Because I took him there. When he was wounded.”
“Are you English?” His eyes were suspicious now. “How can that be?”
“No,” I said. “I’m German. But I have Joe Stark, truly. He is shot in the shoulder, and he has fever.”
“Wait here,” the sentry said. He turned and spoke to another man, who’d come out of the bushes. The second soldier headed back to the camp, while the first waited, his rifle pointed at me all the while.
Five minutes later, four men appeared. Rifles in their hands with bayonets fixed, and grenades on their belts.
They didn’t look friendly. They asked me all about it again, and I explained again.
They stared at me skeptically, and one of them, who seemed to be the leader, asked, “Who else is with you?”
“Nobody is with me,” I said. “I came to get help for him.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. What does that matter? Perhaps I was foolish. Perhaps I am even a traitor. But he was shot before my eyes, I pulled him into my house, and he is lying on a bed now with fever.”
“Who else is in the house?” the leader asked. I told him, and he said, “Why didn’t the man come? Why did he send you?”
“He didn’t,” I said. “I volunteered. I thought you’d be less likely to shoot me.”
The leader grinned, then rearranged his face. “How do we know this isn’t a trap?”
I raised my free hand, then dropped it again. “I don’t know. This is your job, not mine. I suppose you can hold a gun to my head once we get there and tell him to come out. That’s how it would be done in films.”
“Why is your English so good?” the leader asked now.
“I had an English governess. An English nanny also.” I was becoming frustrated.
“Shall I tell you the story of the Elephant’s Child, who went to the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River to find out what the Crocodile eats for dinner?
Or sing you an English song? I know ‘God Save the King.’ Will that do?
What would satisfy you? If you don’t want him anymore, I suppose we can keep him. If he lives, of course.”
Another man said, “Ask her what he looks like.”
“She could know that from looking at his body,” a third man said.
“He has brown hair,” I said, “and kind brown eyes, and wears spectacles. He comes from California and has one year of university, and he is brave. This is what I know.” My English was failing me a bit now in my agitation.
“Come or don’t come, but decide, because I have bread to bake in the morning and must get to bed early. ”
“Sounds like the Professor to me,” the leader said. “Let’s go get him.”
“Boy, you were brave,” Ben said.
“Well, I’d saved him, after all,” I said.
“I didn’t want him to die after all my hard work.
We rode back in a Jeep. I sat in the front, and two men rode in back with their rifles pointed at the houses.
I felt extremely conspicuous, especially when they stopped outside the house, and was grateful for the gathering dark.
The leader said, ‘You have a Swiss flag,’ and I said, ‘My landlady is Swiss,’ and he said, ‘Why didn’t you say so?
’ I had no answer for that, so I just took them inside—well, I knocked at the door first, so Frau Adelberg wouldn’t have a heart attack, and then I took them inside, and they helped Joe down the stairs and put him in the Jeep, and off they went.
But first they gave the children another bar of chocolate. ”
“I remember that, too,” Matti said. “The second chocolate bar. I remember both of them. The orange, too, but mostly the chocolate.”
“So you didn’t have, like, an emotional goodbye?” Ashleigh asked. From behind her phone, of course, as she was filming again.
“Joe took my hand,” I said, “and told me, ‘Thank you.’”
“And that was all?” Alix said. “Way to waste the moment, Grandpa.”
“Well,” I said, “he was with his friends. Men don’t like to be too emotional in front of their friends. Also, he was feverish.”
“Still,” Ashleigh said. “Lame.” And I laughed.
Life isn’t a movie, after all.