A tear from his eye matches my own as he looks down between us. “Everything will be okay,” he says, turning around and walking away. For what might be forever.
TEN
DANNER
MAY 1942
Munich, Germany
The closer I am to the city hall, more red flags donning a centered white circle emblazoned with the Nazi’s black swastika appear. The city is cloaked in blood-red flags rather than the familiar black, red, and yellow striped German flag. Nothing about this city resembles the Germany I used to be a citizen of. On each lamppost is a vibrantly colored poster with childlike illustrations propagating support of the regime and hatred against the Jews, naming us betrayers of the First World War.
But as usual, after checking the paper records that list deported or deceased male citizens of Munich for Papa’s name, I feel the familiar sense of surprise and disappointment when I come up empty handed. I leave without an answer as to where he might be, as I always do. There’s only so long I can remain in a state of denial that he wasn’t deported and is still alive.
The winds are mild, and the thick clouds give way to warmth from the spring sun. If I close my eyes, I can remember the city as beautiful, flowers blooming everywhere, and cheerful citizens shuffling down the streets. But those memories are from when Iwas a child. Now, the streets are barren, colorless aside from the red, white, and black flags. There are fewer people and none of them stroll casually.
The scuffles from my borrowed shoes scrape along the pavement and I can’t convince myself that I’m not making a racket and that I don’t stand out amongst others. We’re supposed to believe life has moved forward as usual, just without the Jewish population. Not all of us have. How many are like me, living with forged identification?
With heavy feet and heart, I amble around the back of the houses on the street I used to live on with Mama and Papa, the route I take to remain unseen by the neighbors. I’m just an intruder now—a temporary guest.The chains of a bicycle clatter and chirp as the rubber tires bounce along rubble behind me. If I didn’t recognize the sound of Felix’s bike, I’d be looking for a place to hide.
I peer over my shoulder, expecting him to whiz by me and pull up to his front door. Except this time he stops next to me, kicking up dirt from between the stones. He’s out of breath, and since the spring season seems to be hiding behind winter’s gloomy tail, steam pours out of his mouth like dry ice from a chemist’s beaker. “You have to get inside and hide. I’m so sorry. I’m so?—”
“Wh-what’s going on. What happened?” I peer past him down the road, but I don’t see anyone following him.
“Just go—go into the house, please,” he says, his words frantic. He shoves his hand against my shoulder, urging me forward, and I obey his strong command, making my way into the house as fast as I can.
With one step inside the back door, I hear his bike crash against the side of the house and his boots clomping behind me.
I walk through the mudroom and out to the living room, considering my options for where to hide. Frau Weber rushesout of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. “What in the world is going on?” Her cheeks flush with a dark red hue.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” Felix says.
“For what?” she shouts in return.
“We need to hide Danner. Then I’ll explain.”
We all look at each other with fear and puzzlement because there’s only one place to hide and apparently not much time. I lunge for the bookshelf along the stairwell. Felix helps me pull it away from the wall and search for the seam along the wall panels. It’s taking too long to find the crevice and Frau Weber runs toward the kitchen, returning a moment later with a butter knife. She knows precisely where the seam is, stabs it and releases the loose wall panel. “Go on,” she says, ushering me into the hole that’s hardly big enough to store a dining table chair, never mind me. Just as the wall is pieced back into a seamless sight, the bookshelf scrapes against the floor until it hits the wall, vibrating the interior of this black hole I’m crouched into.
Sweat forms and trickles down my neck, then spine, and each of my limbs until I’m soaking wet.
“What happened, Felix?” I hear the muttering of their conversation through the wall.
“I—I’m not sure,” he cries out. “When I was at Ed’s house the other night?—”
“You didn’t go to Ed’s house. You both stayed here,” Frau Weber corrects him.
“No, Mama, I went alone after Danner went to sleep. I shouldn’t have gone. I shouldn’t have had anything to drink. We were all talking and?—”
“You didn’t,” Frau Weber says, scolding him.
There’s a pause before Felix answers his mother. “We were all friends and I mentioned Albert would be coming with me earlier in the day. Ed asked if my friend was still on his way, and I said he wasn’t coming.”
“Then what?” Frau Weber hurries him.
I can tell her what happened next. It’s not Felix’s fault. It’s my own.
“There was a man there that Danner and I had gone to school with—a mutual friend of Ed’s, I guess. He stepped into my conversation with Ed and asked me if I was still friends with Danner Alesky—the Jew I had grown up with. I said we were talking about someone named Albert. I might have stuttered or—I don’t know, but Ed and the man Danner and I went to school with laughed at me as if I had no pants on. I wasn’t sure what to make of it.”
“So how did we get here, to hiding Danner?” Frau Weber shouts. I can picture her arms shooting out in every direction like she does when she’s angry.
