The Baker's Daughter

Chapter Thirty-one

SCHMIDT BÄCKEREI

56 LUDWIGSTRASSE

GARMISCH, GERMANY

APRIL 29, 1945

Elsie took the stairs one at the time, each step an insurmountable climb. She imagined this was how the road to Calvary felt. She prayed for some kind of salvation, but unlike Christ, she wasn’t endowed with supernatural powers over hell. Three days dead, and she’d smell like worm rot.

She didn’t need to turn around; Kremer’s stare burned into her back.

The bedroom door was ajar, something rammed behind it. Her overturned nightstand barred the way. She pushed through and went to the wall, smoothing her palm along the long plank.

“Tobias,” she called.

Though there was not the slightest flutter, she could sense the warmth of his breath like a single flame in a church cloister.

She leaned her cheek to the coarse wood. “You must come out.” She knew he was leaning back against her—a finger width between them.

The plank scraped open half an inch. “Are they gone?”

The warmth evaporated into the upturned room, and a chill settled in Elsie. Her bones seemed to rattle against it, and she wrapped her arms about herself.

Tobias crawled from his refuge. “What did they want?”

Elsie pulled him to her breast. “Hear me, Tobias,” she whispered. “There are men waiting to take you.” He flinched. “I’m sorry.” Her knees shook, and she swayed unsteadily.

Tobias tightened his grip, holding her back. “Don’t be sad,” he comforted. “I’ll get to see my family.”

“Forgive me,” begged Elsie. “Please, forgive me.”

She pulled his stocking cap off and kissed the top of his head. Before she could place it back, the door slammed open; the nightstand splintered; boots pounded into the room. She closed her eyes and didn’t open them as Tobias was silently yanked from her arms.

“ ‘And so the choice must be again, but the last choice is still the same,’ ” she recited. Her palms remained warm from him. She clasped them together tight and hugged them to her chest. “ ‘And God has taken a flower of gold and broken it.’ ” She leaned her forehead to the wall, moored to Tobias’s hiding place.

The stomps retreated down the steps and out.

“We’ll deal with the Jew,” said Kremer behind her. “You and your family are under house arrest.”

She turned then, “But you said.”

Julius stood under Kremer’s grip, his cherub face bloated red.

“There’s never one rat in a nest.” Kremer came close and pushed a disheveled lock back into her braid. “Besides, I’m not sure I’m ready to kill you. Your sister was more beautiful and quite skillful in her trade, but you—you’ve got a healthy German spirit. We were interrupted on Christmas Eve.” He grabbed the back of her neck and jerked her onto the bed. “And I always finish what I start.”

Julius bleated softly and shrunk down in the corner.

Kremer’s hand was thick and hot around Elsie’s throat. She stared at the cotton sheets, each thread distinctly linked to the next. Her body was as numb as the stiff pines against the windowpanes. The hem of her dress fluttered over her ears, Mutti’s stitching so neat and even. Kremer’s skin pressed coarse against her thighs. What came next was separate from her. Her spirit hovered at the threshold. No tears. Those were too much of the living. Only darkness.

Then, a shot rang out. Two more followed by the rat-tat-tat of machine guns.

“Major!” A soldier burst into the room. “He got away!”

Kremer’s nostrils flared. “What?!” he seethed, and in one fluid motion, he slapped the soldier and did up his trousers. “How could a child get away from four SiPo?”

The guard tucked his chin, his jaw rosy. He flushed at the sight of Elsie prostrate on the bed. “He bit Lieutenant Loringhoven and ran.” He kept his eyes to the floor as he spoke. “We went after, but then I thought I saw—I couldn’t say for certain, but it looked as though—he vanished, sir.”

“Vanished?”

“Ja.” The young guard was visibly shaken both by the slap and all he’d witnessed. “A sudden fog came, a storm, and then there was a sound unlike any I’ve heard in my life and … he vanished.” His breath caught. “A poltergeist,” he whispered.

“I heard nothing. Which way did he go?” Kremer cocked his pistol.

“East. Toward the forest of Kramer Mountain.”

“Fools! Done in by the Brothers Grimm!” He raced down the stairs with the guard at his heels.

Minutes passed; street shouting trickled in through the windowpanes; Julius sniffled in the corner; a train whistle blew somewhere far; rain started to fall then stopped; the world outside pressed on.

There was a sharp pain in Elsie’s legs, and she realized the metal edging of her bed had grated both her knees. Her sheets were stained with smears of blood.

“Elsie! Julius!” called Papa and Mutti from below.

Julius stood and ran to them.

Papa and Mutti gasped when they entered.

“Oh, Elsie … Elsie!” Mutti sobbed. “What have they done to you, child?” She held her palms above the bloody sheets like a priest above the sacrament. “Not my daughter.”

Papa turned away with Julius. Mutti swaddled Elsie in her arms and rocked her.

“It’s my fault. I betrayed us all,” said Elsie. She remained in Mutti’s steadfast clutch and felt like a child again, safe and protected.

“Shh—I’m here.” She rocked and smoothed the sweat from Elsie’s forehead. “We came home as soon as we heard the news,” explained Mutti. “Everyone is leaving the city.”

Papa picked up the broken ledge of the nightstand, turned the splintered wood over, then set it down again. Julius hid in the hemline of his coat, covering his face and moaning.

“It’s the end of the world,” said Mutti. “The Americans have taken Dachau. They could be here any hour.”

Josef, Elsie thought, then curled herself into the buttery smell of her mother’s embrace.

“Every SS soldier has been ordered to evacuate and meet the enemy en route,” Papa continued.

“They’re abandoning us,” said Mutti.

Only then did Elsie’s eyes sting hot.

“Don’t cry, dear,” Mutti soothed.

“Thank you, God,” whispered Elsie.

Mutti stopped rocking.

“We’re saved!” said Elsie, unable to contain her tears any longer. “All of us! It’s over.”

Papa studied her sternly. “God is not responsible for the end of the Fatherland. That is man’s doing.” His eyes were sorrowful dark.

“ ‘Whatsoever man soweth, that shall he reap,’ ” quoted Elsie.

Papa lifted his chin to her.

“She’s in shock, Max,” Mutti reminded.

“Who did this to you?” demanded Papa.

Nazi countrymen; an officer friend of Josef; men capable of atrocities she could not say in front of her papa—because she concealed a Jewish child, because she didn’t believe in the man Papa quoted, because she didn’t agree with this land anymore. Elsie wasn’t sure how to begin or if it was wise to at all. She tucked her knees to her chest and turned away from him.

“Are we to leave, too?” Mutti asked.

Papa gave a heavy exhale. “This is our bakery, our home. I won’t leave it to be looted and destroyed. We’ll lock the doors and pray for God’s mercy.”

Mutti squeezed Elsie’s hand in short, nervous bursts. “I best bring in a bucket of water. We need to tend to your wounds as soon as possible.” She turned to Papa. “The stove is cold. Light a fire, Max.”

“Come, Julius,” said Papa.

Julius looked up then, tracing over Elsie and Mutti to the bloody bedsheets. His pants were still damp with urine, his eyes shot red as cordial cherries. His shoulders bowed inward with shame. Papa put his arm around him and ushered him out quietly.

Perhaps he would tell her secret, but not today. Today, he finally saw that the world was not contained in the delusion of his perfect reflection. Today, he bore witness to the end of his childhood.

A hard rain fell through the night and next day, washing the cobblestone streets as clean as the stream floors. By the first of May, the whole town smelled of thawed dirt and wet pine needles swept down the valley from the melting mountain peaks.

Though Elsie had searched the alleyways and roads around the bakery there was no sign of Tobias. It was as the soldier had claimed: he’d simply vanished. In the haze of morning when mist rose from the streets like awakening ghosts, she almost convinced herself he had done exactly that—been spirited to heaven on horses of fire like the biblical Elijah.

From the bakery storefront, she watched the American tanks roll into the city. Brandishing flags of colorful stars and candy cane stripes, it looked almost like a holiday parade if not for the gigantic chain-link wheels that grumbled and screeched over rubble and cars and anything else that got in the way. Helpless to stop them or find Tobias, she could do no more than pray—not for peace and understanding, though. Such things she knew would only be found in the afterlife. She prayed simply for a reprieve.

Hitler was dead. It took less than a day for word to spread from one corner of the German Empire to the other. Shot through the head with a Walther pistol. With defeat undeniable and Nazi authority extinguished, public reaction was divided. Half the town cried for him and thought his end noble. The other half called him a coward and deserter. After all, they’d stayed to face his adversaries; and though the Americans entered with pointed guns and grim expressions, Elsie quickly discovered they were far less terrifying than Nazi propaganda portrayed, far less terrifying than her own Gestapo.

The day before, a handful of American soldiers stormed the bäckerei and cleared the shelves. Mutti locked herself in the bedroom with Julius, but it took more than a gun or a foreign accent to scare Elsie anymore. She insisted on facing the enemy. Indeed, the men were not as Nazi propaganda had described. Their banter had the happy, songlike quality she remembered from the movies she’d idolized as a child.

One young soldier let a smile slip over his lips when he discovered Papa’s Black Forest cake, stale and sagging in the display case. Despite its age and crumbling sides, his face lit up, exposing hidden dimples on either cheek. She couldn’t help smiling back. And that’s when it happened: his comrades saw them smiling and smiled too; then they said something to another soldier who laughed, and the cheer seemed to spread like butter on a hot bun. Soon, all the men in the unit were carrying on like Christmas morning, cutting and wrapping dense cake wedges in paper. Elsie liked it. It’d been too long since she felt that kind of contagious satisfaction, even for the briefest moment, and part of her was pleased to see the cake go in such a manner.

Papa remained stern and indignant throughout the invasion. “I hope it rots their stomachs,” he mumbled under his breath. It was his cake, his bread, his domain, being stolen by enemy soldiers. Mutti buried her wedding band in the window dill plant for fear of confiscation. However, besides the cake, the men left with relatively no damage done or family goods seized. On his way out the door, the soldier who first discovered the cake nodded and said, “Danke schön.” Elsie had naturally replied, “Bitte schön.”

Papa gave her an earful once they’d gone. These were foreigners who would as soon as rape and murder as share a sweet taste or smile, he said. But she’d already seen her countrymen do such things. She’d stood at death’s doorway with wickedness at her back. She’d experienced what her papa could never have imagined and would never have believed. The stranger’s smile held little malice in comparison. Papa was of an old and withering generation. Hitler was gone, the Nazi government was in ruins, and Germany was under Allied control. If they were to survive, Elsie understood that they’d have to befriend these new faces—these foreigners. And she’d be the only one in their family to do it.

Today, the bäckerei was empty and quiet. Papa had enough nut meal and powdered rations to make brötchen, but no one came. The townspeople remained locked in their homes, afraid of the tanks and men and the uncertainty of their futures.

“What will they do with us?” Mutti asked everyone and no one in particular.

The four of them assembled together in the empty bakery, staring out the storefront window at the unrecognizable streets littered with building debris and trash and alien faces. It reminded Elsie of ancient Fasching carnivals, a pageantry of merriment. Only now, they were inhibited observers, not participants.

“Max?” Mutti sought an answer.

Papa read Möller’s Das brüderliche Jahr. “I don’t think they know.” He didn’t lift his attention from the page.

Mutti murmured a prayer and sipped cold chamomile tea. Julius hid behind the dill plant and marked each head that passed with finger pistols. Elsie stood by the door, unable to look away from the chaotic street scene.

American soldiers gathered by the small public fountain pump. They threw a pack of cigarettes around. Their voices siphoned through the beveled glass windows, bubbly and buoyant. A raven-haired soldier tapped the pack against his wrist, then flipped a cigarette to his lips in a single motion. His stature reminded Elsie of William Powell, and that’s exactly how it felt—like watching actors on film. Completely captivating.

The soldier caught her glance and held it. A fever swelled up from her chest and swirled into her cheeks. She turned her back to him. That never happened with Powell.

Outside, the soldier laughed. “We got ourselves an audience!”

Elsie kept her eyes to the ground so Mutti and Papa wouldn’t see her blush. At her feet, shuffled under the front door frame, was a small, white paper, dirty and unnoticeable except for its shape; the edges were too purposefully square to be litter. She picked it up and unfolded it, immediately recognizing Josef’s handwriting.

“What’s that?” asked Mutti.

“Nothing. Street trash blown under the door.” Elsie crumbled the paper in her palm. “If no one else is going to eat our bread, I might as well have a bite. Papa?”

He grunted over his book as she passed to the kitchen.

In the back corner by the oven, she smoothed the note open.

Elsie,

We have friends who welcome us to warmer climates. Do not fear. We’ll make a new life together. I know it will be hard to leave your family, but they have no connections to the party. They will be safe. As for us, we must leave Germany as soon as possible. I wait for you at the bahnhof, six o’clock. Bring only what you must. We have a long journey ahead.

Your husband, Josef

Your husband? She clenched her left hand. Indeed. She hardly knew him. Lieutenant Colonel Josef Hub working at the Dachau camp. How many men had he killed? How many women and children? Elsie wondered if he ordered the Gestapo search for Tobias on Christmas Eve, if he sanctioned Kremer’s brutal tactics. A sour taste crept up her throat. She tore the note to bits and threw them in the oven ashes. No, she would not meet Josef at the bahnhof. She would stay. Despite everything her parents had seen and not done, despite her nephew’s callused upbringing and her sister’s sacrifice, they were her family. Josef was not. Though she had worn his ring, her heart had never committed to him. She hung her head, ashamed of all the lies, big and small, she’d fostered. She was tired of pretending to believe what she didn’t and be what she wasn’t.

On the rack, half a dozen crusts cooled nutty brown and shiny. Elsie split one open and ate the sweet, steaming center. Tomorrow, she’d help her papa find real milk, flour, and eggs. Then they’d light the oven and bake bread.