“Yes. Everything.”
Riedman stood for some time in front of the apartment building, where his parents lived and stared at it as though seeing it for the first time. Finally, he took a deep breath, like an underwater diver and walked briskly inside, running even faster up to the third floor, where he came to an abrupt halt in front of one of the doors.
“I should have written to them that I was coming,” he muttered under his breath. “My mother will give me a fine dressing down for not warning her in advance. And I brought a guest with me, too and if she doesn’t have enough to put on the table before us…”
Johann grinned, nudging him forward. “We have our ‘leave rations’ with us. She can put that on the table.”
“Leave rations” were a laughable matter. Just as it was prohibited for the locals to mention any air raids, it was equally prohibited for the soldiers to mention the situation on the front. And therefore, the first ones were putting up a brave face and taking long detours to escape as many bombed-out areas as they could and the latter arrived with tremendous packages under their arms, with sausage and chocolate which they barely saw on the frontline but which they ought to put before their families to show how well they fared at the Front. A nation of blind men, led by the blindest of them all.
A small woman of about forty, with oily blond hair pulled into a tight bun and hands like a bird’s claws, opened the door and looked the couple over with suspicion.
“What do you want?”
“I’m looking for the Riedman family,” Walt mumbled, shifting his gaze from the number on the door to the woman and back.
She narrowed her eyes with even more mistrust. Johann noticed a Nazi Party badge pinned to her cardigan. “And who would you be?”
“I’m their son, Walter Riedman.”
“They don’t live here anymore.”
She was about to slam the door in their faces when Johann stepped forward and pushed it open with more force than was necessary. “Where are they?”
“How would I know? When I was given this apartment, it was empty already.” She pulled the ends of her cardigan closer, trembling with righteous disdain. “I don’t know where they are. Now, leave at once, or I’ll call the police.”
“We aren’t leaving anywhere until you tell us where the rightful occupants are!” Johann stepped even closer to the woman.
Walter pulled his sleeve, shaking his head. “Come, Johann. She doesn’t know. We’ll find out later… we’ll ask someone. Someone should know.”
Johann turned to him, started saying something but then saw Walt’s pleading eyes◦– please, don’t make it worse!◦– and gave up at last. Only outside did he make a gesture of exasperation with his hands, breaking into laughter that sounded hysterical. “Has the whole country lost it?!”
A man, wearing military trousers and civilian jacket, threw a glare in his direction. Riedman quickly pulled him even further away, searching for a U-Bahn entrance. Johann remained grimly quiet, biting down the words that were ready to tear away from his tongue and then there would be no stopping it, the torrent of everything that he had been holding inside for too long and that was ready to break the dam of carefully erected silence around it.
“It’s all right. We’ll find them. Maybe they have gone to the village,” Walt reassured him in his usual soft voice.
How it reminded him of the times when he, Johann, was pacifying Willi the same way… Willi was the most vocal of them all while Johann knew better than to speak his mind. Maybe that was his mistake though? He was quiet far too many times when he should have been screaming at the top of his lungs? Maybe if more of them were screaming the truth that their new Reich didn’t want to hear, it wouldn’t have gone so far? Maybe Willi had to die so that Johann would take his place and become the loud one, the unafraid one, someone who would put his very life on the line for others just because it was the right thing to do?
“We’ll find them,” Johann repeated after Walt.
Mina sat at the table, round and positively glowing, while Johann was helping Frau von Sielaff set the table for their guest. Walt was still in the shower; Johann had already taken his. Mina followed her husband with her eyes, loving and concerned at the same time, while her hand rested on top of her stomach peacefully.
“Your hair is too long,” Mina finally said. She wanted to say so much more but didn’t dare.
He swiped it, still damp and now wavy, off his forehead. “I’ll find a barber tomorrow.”
Frau von Sielaff brushed it with her hand, as she passed him, in a purely motherly gesture. “Wilhelm always said the same thing when he would come on leave.” She lowered the plate with the sausage from his ‘leave ration’ on top of the perfectly starched tablecloth. “Only, unlike with you, with him, it was almost always empty promises.”
Riedman joined them, smelling of lilac soap and aftershave. Like a civilian, he beamed at Johann, catching the same bright smile in return. That’s what they longed to be now. Civilians. Not doctors, farmers, lawyers, and athletes like before, but civilians. War truly made some matters so very simple.
“I didn’t know you had a son.” Walt wiggled his fingers at little Willi, whom Frau von Sielaff brought down for dinner as well. He just woke up from his nap and observed the two unfamiliar men at the table with a scowl.
“It’s Wilhelm’s. We adopted him. Wilhelm’s wife, Lotte, died during the air raid,” Johann explained and winked at the boy. The child turned away, hiding his face on his grandmother’s shoulder. “He doesn’t remember me.”
“Children have a short memory,” Mina said softly, navigating a spoon into her nephew’s mouth. “He’ll have plenty of time to get used to you once you return from the front.”
“He’ll be too big by then.”
“No, he’ll still be a small child.” Mina met his gaze and shrugged calmly. “We know what’s going on despite all that brassy propaganda that they’re pouring down our poor throats daily. I work in the hospital; I see all the injured. They talk a great deal too.”
“Isn’t it prohibited?”
“One isn’t afraid of a court-martial when one is on his deathbed,” followed another dispassionate reply.
“I suppose,” Johann agreed.
They put Walter in Willi’s old room for the night. It started snowing; a good thing, Mina noted with a knowing look about her. Bad night for bombers. They’ll sleep soundly tonight. There won’t be any air raids.
Johann watched her undress, still and mesmerized, hardly breathing from the sight of her body that was life itself◦– strong, lean, and proud◦– which still could carry life in it despite the death around.
“I’m a veritable cow, aren’t I?” she grinned at him, undoing her hair.
Johann slowly shook his head and put his hands around her belly.
“You’re a mother,” he whispered, taking her into his arms. “Mothers are the only hope this world has left. I touch you and I feel as though I touch life itself. I feel, when I’m with you, nothing will ever happen to me.”
“Nothing will ever happen to you.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I love you,” she said simply. “You can’t die because I can’t lose you. You must promise me that you will survive and come back to me from the war.”
“Not fair. I can’t promise you something that doesn’t depend on me.”
“Just say the words and try your best to stand by them. That you can promise.”
Yes. That he could promise when all else was lost.
We don’t have any more information.