Julius whimpered, and when she looked down, she saw not the spiteful child but her sister, Hazel. How she missed her. With no letters for months, Elsie could only imagine the worst. Julius was Hazel’s son, her kin and a frightened little boy. She reached out and ran her fingers over his soft, blond crown.
“Forgive me, Julius.”
He wrenched away, angry tears streaking his cheeks. “I hate you!” He screamed. “I hate you all!” He grabbed his brown Pimpfen-patched jacket and ran out the back.
Elsie’s hands went numb; her vision trembled around the circumference. The throbbing sharpened. She stumbled out of the kitchen and up the stairs. She had to get to her bed or collapse where she stood.
She gave a soft cry when her temple hit the pillow.
“Elsie?” Tobias whispered behind the wall. “Elsie, what has happened?”
The room went spotty, smoldering black and gray polka dots.
“I’m unwell,” she moaned. It took all she had to form the words.
The board scraped open and feet pattered across the room. As with the fever at Christmas, Tobias climbed into the bed beside her and hummed in her ear. The dulcet melody eased the stabbing. He smelled sweetly of lamb’s wool and pretzel dough.
“Thank you, Tobias.” She rested her cheek against him. For a moment she wanted to forget everyone: Julius, Hazel, Peter, Frau Rattelmüller, Cecile, Josef, Mutti and Papa, even herself. She wanted nothing to exist but Tobias and his beautiful voice in the darkness.
“I knew you were a traitor!”
Elsie awoke to the thunder of boots. She hadn’t been asleep very long, but enough that her perception was bleary and her mind disoriented. Before her eyes had time to focus, someone had her by her hair; he dragged her out of bed and downstairs to the company of armed Gestapo.
“Traitor!” boomed the voice behind her.
Overhead, boots stomped, a lamp crashed, furniture overturned with great thuds that shook the dust from the floorboards aloft.
Tobias, she thought. They have Tobias! Her heart flapped like a hawk in a snare. She couldn’t catch her breath between palpitations.
The guard holding her by the head swiveled her to face her accuser.
“Kremer!” she gasped.
“Fräulein.” He grinned smugly.
The Gestapo released her, and she fell to her hands and knees at Kremer’s boots.
“Josef will be so disappointed that his little baker turned out to be a Judas.” He shrugged. “But I knew. I knew.” He pulled off his leather gloves, finger by finger, and tossed them on the wooden baker’s table.
A guard aimed his rifle at Elsie’s head, so close she could see the soot ringing the barrel.
Kremer stroked his mustache sprout. “We have the authority to dispose of traitors in private, but I’m a firm believer in the power of spectacle. Don’t you agree? Those who betray their country must be made examples, so what shall it be, hmm? Bullet or rope? As a German, I’ll give you the choice.”
For herself, she cared not. She hated this man and if her blood was on his hands, she prayed for all God’s vengeance with it. But what had they done with Tobias? She couldn’t bear to think of his torture.
“He’s just a boy!” she cried.
“That doesn’t change your treason,” said Kremer. “It’s a shame. Herr Schmidt makes the best lebkuchen in Bavaria.”
Papa and Mutti? No, she wouldn’t let them be sacrificed for her actions.
A small bowl of filberts sat on the table with a nutcracker. Kremer pinched a nut, placed it between the metal levers, and squeezed. Shell fragments fell to the ground exposing the sweet kernel. He popped in his mouth.
“Please, spare my family. They are innocent.” She gathered her skirt in her palms. “I’ll give you anything you want. Anything.”
He scoffed and spat the hazelnut back in the bowl. “Wormy.”
From upstairs came a shout and the armed man at her side turned sharply.
Kremer nodded up. “Go.” He unclipped his pistol from the holster sling and pointed it at Elsie. “Just you and me, fräulein.”
The guard obeyed and left them alone in the kitchen.
“Please, Major Kremer,” begged Elsie. “It’s one Jew. What does it matter now?” Her voice broke.
It was almost the end of the war. Everyone knew it. Hitler was holed up in a Berlin bunker awaiting surrender. Why more bloodshed? Even a man like this had a conscience capable of recognizing unnecessary savagery. Heaven and hell saw no race or creed. Death would come for him as surely as it would come for her and Tobias. But it was the choice he made now that determined which gate he walked through.
Kremer turned to her, his eyes two ghoulish lights. “Jew?”
“If you believe in God, please.”
“Bring the boy here!” Kremer yelled over his shoulder, then knelt down to Elsie.
“ ‘Peoples that bastardize themselves, or let themselves be bastardized, sin against the will of eternal Providence.’ So says our führer.” He winked at her. “That’s the only God I believe in.”
“Let me go! I told you what she said—she’s the traitor!” Julius squirmed and pitched against the Gestapo’s grip.
Kremer studied him, then gave a horsy snort. “Amazing. It’s so hard to tell sometimes. He doesn’t even look rodent.” He cocked his head. “Maybe in the teeth. The shiftiness of the eyes, perhaps.”
“Me? I’m not a Jew!” screamed Julius.
Kremer raised his pistol. The soldier moved out of the way.
“Nein!” Elsie stood and shielded Julius. “He is the son of my sister, Hazel, and your comrade Peter Abend. He’s pure Aryan—born and raised at the Lebensborn Program.”
Kremer held the gun straight ahead with his right hand. “I’m not the one who called him a Jew. You did.” With his left pinky, he picked a nut skin from behind his incisor.
“Liar!” Julius fisted Elsie in the small of her back. “Traitor!”
She winced and bowed to the side.
Kremer chuckled. “I believe you, boy. Too much vigor in you to be inferior.”
The Gestapo who’d ransacked her room came down to report: “Nothing, sir.”
Elsie looked up. Tobias was safe? Lowering her gaze, her eyes locked tight with Kremer.
He looked to the ceiling and clucked his tongue. “I do believe there is something.” He smiled at Elsie. “A mouse in the attic?”
Elsie’s heart stammered, stopped, and started again. She shook her head.
The two soldiers turned to go back upstairs, but Kremer halted them. “Stop!” He pointed to Elsie. “You will bring the Jew to us.”
Elsie swallowed hard. “There’s no one here except my nephew and me. My parents are at the church.”
“A traitor and a liar, indeed,” said Kremer. He pushed her to the floor and clapped Julius about the face, his hand over the boy’s mouth and the barrel of the pistol pressed hard at his temple.
“He’s German!” Elsie cried.
The Gestapo in the kitchen shifted uneasily.
“Come, come, come,” he baited. “This is the bastard son of a whore. A good whore albeit. I rather liked her myself, but truly our race has no use for such depravity. It may be more humane to put this child out of his misery rather than allow him to grow up in a family of deviants like this—traitors and harlots.” He shrugged.
Julius’s eyes, ringed red from crying, bulged under the pressure and panic; his arms went stiff by his side; the suede front of his pants grew dark and wet.
Kremer scoffed at him. “No son of the Fatherland. He’s not even toilet trained.” He leaned in to Julius’s ear. “Retarded, perhaps. You know what the Program does with the retarded—cyanide in the breakfast milk or”—he pressed the gun—“a quick bullet to the brain. This was the case for your brother.”