During the days, Ozzie kept his nose clean at work; in the evenings, he practiced his German and brushed up on his Latin, so that when the opportunity came to be assigned to the Intelligence unit, he’d beready. He had gone to the Federal Eagle Club for the past three weekends with his buddies and spent more money than he had intended on those nights with Jelka at the rooming house, which charged by the hour. When he had tried to negotiate with the thick woman in the scarf, she’d told him that her husband had been a local dentist but never returned home after the war. “This is how I make ends meet for my children,” she said with sad eyes.
After patronizing the house a few times, Ozzie noticed it was only Negro soldiers with their German brides who rented rooms, and when he asked the woman, she told him. “The one time I let a white American soldier in led to trouble. I do not understand the hatred in them.” She tsked her teeth.
Ozzie wanted to explain to her that the hatred had been bred, and at the root of it was fear, but when he was with Jelka, he didn’t feel like thinking about America’s race problem.
On his next Sunday off, Jelka asked him to join her at a small park a few blocks from the bar where she worked. The fall day was cool, and the orange and red leaves fell steadily all around them. Construction work could be heard on Käfertaler Street, the main throughfare, as buildings were being restored and roads repaved. Ozzie had worn a sweater under his army jacket so that he could offer it to Jelka if she got chilly. She had arrived first and was spread out underneath an oak tree on the wool blanket he had given her. She grabbed his face and kissed him gently on his lips. Out of habit, Ozzie looked around to see if anyone was watching them. He carried a brown paper bag with sandwiches from the mess hall, a tin of potato chips, and her favorite drink, Fanta. She smiled brightly when she tipped the drink to her fingers.
“Are you hitched?” Jelka tucked the Fanta between her fingers.
“No,” he said, pushing thoughts of Rita away. He still had not received a letter from her. “Why? Do you have someone?”
The corners of her eyes drooped before she turned her lips into a grimace. “Once. But… I lost him to the war.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” As if consoling her, he handed her a liverwurst sandwich.
“That was a long time ago.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” She took a big bite and changed the subject. “This tastes good.”
As Ozzie watched her eat the sandwich, he felt content. In the short time they had been seeing each other, he had come to enjoy taking care of Jelka. Last weekend, he had bought her a tube of lipstick and a bottle of fingernail polish from the commissary, and the look and kiss she had given him made him want to give her even more. She didn’t require much, and he liked that about her. He knew that he wasn’t in love, yet he enjoyed her company.
“Do you ever get time off from work?”
“If I want. Why?” She cocked her head at him, and he wiped away a bit of mayonnaise from the corner of her mouth.
“I have leave, a three-day weekend is coming up. I was thinking about traveling somewhere. I want to see more of Germany.”
Jelka looked up at Ozzie. “We could go to Frankfurt. I have a cousin there. She can put us up.”
“Really? You’ll take me?”
“Of course,” she said, sliding in closer to him and threading her leg with his.
On the second Friday in October, Ozzie had misjudged how far the Mannheim Hauptbahnhof was from his post, and by the time he reached the bustling station lobby for their trip to Frankfurt, Jelka looked flustered and red in the face. “What took you so long? I thought you were not coming.”
“I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to worry you. Just got a little turned around.”
She grabbed his hand. “We must hurry.”
They walked down the steps, through a long hall, and then up to platform four. Ozzie had only enough time to ask if she had the tickets when the train blew into the station. They found two seats together, and Jelka sighed.
“I have not been away from home in many years. The last time I took the train to Frankfurt, I was thirteen.”
“How old are you now?”
“I am twenty-one.”
Ozzie’s eyebrows rose with surprise. The way the light hit her face, she looked seventeen.
“You?”
“Nineteen, but I’ll be twenty soon.”
“I am older than you. That means I get to tell you what to do?” She kissed him and then put her forehead to his so they were eye to eye. “And how I want you to do it.”
When they got off the train in Frankfurt, Jelka hailed a taxicab. As they drove down cobblestone streets, the devastations of war were at every turn. What obviously once had been beautiful architectural structures now sat in ruins.
