Chapter 40 Scrambling
SCRAMBLING
I expected Ashleigh to be gone, off to Prague to find a more promising source of bite-sized history lessons, so I was surprised when I came down to breakfast and found her sitting with Ben, both of them staring at her laptop.
I took my own seat, unfolded my napkin ostentatiously and placed it in my lap, and said, “Another unusual sight in Germany—computers on restaurant tables.”
“Yes,” Ashleigh said, not a bit deterred—although Ben, I noticed, was putting his own napkin in his lap—“but how are we supposed to tell you about the reaction your story got without examples?”
“Maybe she doesn’t want to know,” Alix said. She really is quite protective; it’s good to see it, even if I don’t need it.
“At least let her get her coffee first,” Sebastian said.
I received it, and placed my order—I could never grow tired of Brotchen, butter, cheese, boiled eggs, and today, even strawberries, small and bursting with flavor rather than overlarge and disappointing. Then I said, “Tell me about this reaction.”
“Well,” Ashleigh announced dramatically, “I haven’t put up the non-tiara-finding yet—I haven’t had time, for one thing; there’s so much to produce, and I want to drag it out while I still have viewership—every little bit counts!
But I did share the other footage I took.
I figured, when you started talking about concentration camps and so forth, that the TV station might not air it—especially now that we haven’t found the tiara!
—so I recorded it myself, and Ben and I put it up last night in two parts.
First the part where you hold up the stars and trash the Germans for killing the Jews, and then your husband’s letter.
That one was easier—I found some footage of the concentration camps and put that in there while you’re reading the letter in a voiceover.
It’s pretty terrible stuff. Very dramatic.
Nobody can look away.” She sounded half-moved and half-cheerful about that; such must be the documentary maker’s life.
“Why wouldn’t I want to know about that?” I asked. “That it got a reaction? That was my purpose, after all.”
“But what reaction?” Ashleigh said. “What were you expecting?”
Ben burst in, then. “She means you got pretty trashed in the comments. Mainly, people say that they didn’t do it, and they don’t appreciate being blamed for it.
It’s like—'My grandfather fought in the war, but he never did anything to the Jews, he just did what he was told the same way her husband did, so where does she get off?’ And, ‘My parents lived through the war, and they swear they had no idea about the extermination camps. They just thought the Jews had been resettled, and were probably better off than they were here! The Jews wouldn’t have been bombed, while my parents lost their home and almost all their possessions. ’ And like that.”
“Are the comments in English, then?” I asked.
“A mixture,” Ben said. “AI translation. But hey—some people say that you’re right. Especially people from other countries. Most especially people from England and France and the Netherlands and—”
“And Poland,” Ashleigh said. “Boy, do they hate the Nazis. Other people—well, some Germans, especially the ultra-right ones, from what I can see—are calling you a traitor for how you took in an enemy soldier and are dumping on Germany now. They say it’s easy for you to say, being a princess and then running off to America while real Germans stayed here and starved.
It’s great, really. Controversy drives clicks. People love to fight on the internet.”
“I can’t imagine why,” I said. “What would be the point?”
“Exactly,” Sebastian said. “First rule of the internet—don’t read the comments.”
“Are you talked about then as well?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said. “Some guy loses his bet because I missed a field goal? He doesn’t blame himself for betting.
He blames me for missing. I don’t read anybody’s opinion about the game and I don’t watch commentary about the game.
I listen to my coaches and talk to my teammates, the stuff that’ll actually get me somewhere. ”
“Very wise,” I said. “I find I have remarkably little interest in what a stranger thinks of my words. Perhaps I’m too old to care about such things.
In any case, I said what I said for my own reasons, and it’s done.
Thank you for putting it out there, though,” I told Ashleigh.
“You and Ben both. At least it reached a few people.”
“Excuse me?” Ashleigh said. “It reached hundreds of thousands of people already, all over the world! So I think we should keep going.”
I blinked. “Keep going at what? The tiara isn’t there.”
“Yes, but—” She was sitting forward at the edge of her seat, looking like she’d spring into action at any moment.
What energetic companions I have! “See, they wanted to know about the tiara, but they also want to know more about you. Most people haven’t been through a war.
OK, they’ve watched war movies, but what happens to regular people after the war?
And especially, what happened to you? And to Joe? They want, like—”
“Your love story,” Alix said.
“Exactly,” Ashleigh said. “Your love story. So I think you should tell it to us. We only have three more days before you leave, so this is my last chance. If there’s a happy ending, it doesn’t matter so much about the tiara.”
“All right,” I said, “but there was a great deal that came before that. Before the love story.”
“So tell me that, too,” Ashleigh said.
So I did.
I was baking bread as usual one morning in late May when Frau Adelberg came into the kitchen and hovered. She looked—apprehensive?
“Has something happened?” I asked, sliding loaves out of the oven with the large wooden baker’s paddle, concentrating on not burning myself. I had my own war wounds by now! War with the oven, that is. Fortunate, perhaps, that Dr. Becker knew so much about burns.
“I heard from my husband at last,” she said.
I shut the oven door and turned to her, beaming. “But that’s wonderful! What good news.”
“Yes,” she said. “He’s in England, in a prisoner-of-war camp. He was shot in the leg and has a bit of a limp, but is otherwise sound.”
“A double relief, then,” I said. “How are they treating him?”
“Quite well, he says. He’s fed, anyway—more than we can always say here!—and the people at the camp are decent.”
“And when will he come home?”
She hesitated, then said slowly, “I don’t know. Not very soon. The English say that conditions are too bad in Germany to send the POWs back now, but how can one believe that?”
“Well,” I said, “it is very hard here. We weren’t badly bombed in Fürth, but in the other cities, even in Nuremberg—”
She waved a hand. “I don’t believe it for a minute. Holding them hostage, more likely, to the German people’s good behavior.”
“What, we’re going to fight again?” I asked. “Nobody could believe that. With what weapons? What fuel? What soldiers? What leader?”
“In any case,” she said, “at some point, he’ll be back.”
“Oh.” I finally got it. “You’re saying that once he’s back, you’ll have no need for me. And the Beckers …”
“I don’t wish to be unkind,” she said, “but I cannot feed so many mouths. With what? It’s impossible.”
“Dr. Becker and Andrea do all the queueing for supplies, though,” I pointed out. “And the rations are—”
She shook her head. “Impossible. The shortages aren’t getting any better. In fact, they’re getting worse.”
There was a feeling like a hole in my stomach. “Let me think,” I said. “Let me talk to Dr. Becker, too. We’ll find an answer.”
“You said he could find work,” she said, “and what has he found? A few patients, certainly, but they hardly pay. And the heirloom …”
“You’re right,” I said. “I should have been more attentive to the problem. Let me see what I can do.”
Dr. Becker, when I told him, looked startled, then sad. “Where can we go?” he asked helplessly.
“There are Americans in Nuremberg,” I said. “Official ones, doing official things.”
“Doing what official things?”
“I don’t know, but we can find out. The train’s running now, and we can—”
He said heavily, “I have no money for the train.”
“I still have a few marks.” Frau Adelberg paid me a little, but it was a very little.
Otherwise, all the money the bakery took in went for food and other necessities—whatever we could get.
Toilet paper was nonexistent now; we used newspapers, which were limited by law to two pages due to the paper shortage.
Before the surrender, that had been about all those newspapers were good for, and it wasn’t much different now.
I said, “Let’s go see what the Americans say, anyway.
It can’t hurt to ask, and I can translate for you. ”
“All right.” He stood with more decision than he’d shown recently. “I have another idea, too. It’s time to try it.”
Once I’d finished my baking the next morning, we did take the train, covering the five miles that had taken us so many hours to walk in a mere fifteen minutes, even with all the train’s bewildering stops and starts.
The station in Nuremberg didn’t look much better than it had six weeks ago, but the streets were perhaps less filled with rubble.
I asked passers-by where to find the Americans, and eventually, a man told me, “They’ve set up shop in the Palace of Justice. But you’ll have to queue outside.”
He was correct. A roped-off area contained dozens of citizens, all queueing patiently as they’d queued throughout the war.
We may or may not have been the most skilled at fighting, but we were certainly the European champions at queueing!
At the front, facing them, stood a tall, broad man in a U.S.
Army uniform, with the letters “M.P.” on his armband.
I wondered how much he ate to remain so stocky.