The Baker's Daughter

Chapter Thirty-four

ARMED FORCES R&R CENTER

19 GERNACKERSTRASSE

GARMISCH, GERMANY

JUNE 26, 1945

“Add Kirschwasser to cream,” instructed Elsie in English. “Stir to stiff.”

Robby nodded. “Gotcha.” He whisked.

“More oomph!” She motioned with her arm for him to do it harder.

He picked up the pace. Beneath his olive-drab undershirt, his biceps moved in rhythm with the sweet filling, round and round the bowl. Elsie tried not to notice, not to imagine the familiar flesh beneath. So she focused on shaving chocolate with a carrot peeler.

She’d made schwarzwälder kirschtorte a thousand times, but never before had sifting flour and pitting cherries seemed so provocative. It was irrational and absurd—this was a normal kitchen with an oven and pots and pans. Nothing alluring or risqué about it, except that it was an American kitchen with Robby Lee in it.

“How’s that?” Robby held the whisk right side up. The cream remained a perfect whorl.

Elsie swiped a finger through the twist’s top curl and licked. “Gut. Taste.”

Instead of sampling the filling, he put a hand behind Elsie’s neck and kissed her sticky lips.

“Sure is,” he said.

Elsie elbowed him back to his bowl. “We have to bake a cake,” she told him in German.

“Ein kuchen. Jawohl, fräulein.” Robby laughed and saluted.

Elsie had been coming to the Armed Forces R&R Center since it opened. Within a week of occupation, the Americans turned the Nazi compound across town where she’d attended the Weihnachten ball into a G.I. playground. Soldiers across Europe came on vacation passes to ski, hike, play cards, and eat food that didn’t come in a C-ration. The town was swarmed with smiling men wanting a day or two out of the trenches.

When the war ended, her family all hoped to hear from Hazel. Elsie expected her to walk through the bakery doors any hour, but she didn’t; and with each passing day, their hearts grew more certain of what their minds refused to imagine. Rumors swirled of men, women, even whole families killed by foreign bullets or their own hand. The Lebensborn Program and all its members had disappeared overnight. Even those who spoke of it with high regard months prior now shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders. It infuriated Elsie, who saw it as another act of betrayal. She bit her tongue whenever Papa brought up Josef.

“What’s the news? Did you check the mail?” he’d ask daily, as if nothing had changed and the post was running routinely. “Josef might’ve sent word.”

She hadn’t heard from Josef since his scribbled note and imagined him on the shores of Argentina or Brazil, someplace far from Germany. He would not make good on his promise to find Hazel. He had no remaining authority. There was no German authority. Berlin had been obliterated. Whatever archives might’ve been were piles of dust.

She hadn’t heard from Frau Rattelmüller either since that icy day by the woodpile, before the Allied troops invaded. The Americans confiscated the frau’s home and made it into a makeshift officer’s quarters. At first, Elsie had feared for the old woman’s life and the lives of her hidden boarders, but the house had not been ransacked by the Gestapo as they had the bakery. Elsie had gone to check, peering through the open windows. There was not one crumb on the floor. Not one cat hair. The pillows on the parlor couch sat comfortably in their usual places; the Hummel figurines aligned just so. The house had been purposely abandoned.

Elsie hoped Frau Rattelmüller had joined her Jewish friends after all, and it brought her great peace to imagine Cecile might be in the care of such kindness. It would have brought Tobias solace, too, she thought. She missed him profoundly. Her room felt as if its heart had been extracted, void of the quiet beating that had become a natural rhythm. Her consolation was that despite the thorough searches of the town and forests, the Americans had not reported the body of a small boy. He got away. She had no doubt of that and only hoped that one day she might hear from him again.

Julius never spoke of Tobias or Kremer’s attack. He never spoke of those grim April days at all. Something in him had changed. He was still a brooding boy, but the affectation of his former self had greatly diminished. He did as he was told without argument and seemed to have a natural aptitude with numbers. He helped Mutti count the money in the till and was excellent at gauging the dough segments to make an exact baker’s dozen. They were all glad to see his interests expanding; his toy soldiers were piled in a milk pail, abandoned.

In an attempt to usher in normalcy, Mutti enrolled Julius in Grundschule as soon as the local elementary reopened; but it was nothing like his Lebensborn education. He sulked for two days because the teacher sat him next to a girl with a strawberry birthmark across her forearm. Papa explained that skin colorations had nothing to do with a person’s character. It was a lesson lost when two black Amis came into the bäckerei and Papa refused to serve them.

Elsie thought it foolish to turn away any coin. A full till meant full stomachs for the patrons and themselves. Without Nazi patronage, the bakery’s accounts suffered. Weeks after the American occupation began, neither old nor new customers had come through their doors consistently. Though Papa never said a word, Elsie could tell by his gruff demeanor that something had to give. Since no one else was amenable, she took it upon herself and asked Robby if they could use a practiced baker in the R&R Center’s kitchen.

Military regulations were strict, however, and German citizens were suspect. Robby’s commander said he couldn’t run the risk of underground agents infiltrating the kitchen and conspiring a mass poisoning; but Robby convinced him she was harmless and might even make the men’s recreation a bit more recreational. A seventeen-year-old who looked like a pinup girl was an easy sell, though his superior warned him not to get too chummy. Military nonfraternization laws had been established. Any soldier found engaged in unprofessional socialization with a German was threatened with sedition charges. Luckily, the US War Department was an ocean away. Robby gave his commander a wink and a nod, and three days later received an authorized, semiofficial work permit for Elsie to be hired as a waitress.

She worked the dinner shift, but told Mutti and Papa that she got a job washing dishes at the Von Steuben restaurant. Papa grumbled at that. The Von Steuben had earned a fast reputation for catering to rowdy American soldiers who stumbled in for steins of dark ale, bratwurst, and oompah music. It was distasteful to think of Elsie among the patrons, but he soon relented, considering the pay and the fact that she was only a dishwasher. The truth would be harder for him to accept, and she simply didn’t have the energy to argue over it right now. They needed the money, and this provided it. She’d tell him eventually. Meantime, she hoped he never questioned why her hands weren’t raw and sore or why she consistently smelled of molasses, onion, and tomatoes. Robby’s barbecue was the center’s weekly special.

She didn’t like taking orders and carrying trays of hamburgers, fried potatoes, mac and cheese, and other dishes labeled “Home Favorites,” but she did enjoy the time in the kitchen. After hours, Robby taught her more English than all the lines of Libeled Lady, and how to cook American food. In exchange, she taught him German recipes.

Robby’s first lesson was American apple pie, which was basically Papa’s versunkener apfelkuchen, give or take an ingredient. She showed him how to make bienenstich, bee sting honey cake. He said he’d never tasted anything like it, and Elsie was glad for that. Next, Toll House cookies. Robby argued that they weren’t the same because they used military-issued chocolate instead of his favorite Nestlé chocolate. The cookies weren’t anything special, in Elsie’s opinion. Sugar dough with chocolate bits thrown in haphazardly. Too sweet for her palate.

So the days went: early mornings in the bakery and long nights in the R&R kitchen. She liked spending time with Robby, and it hadn’t taken long for their butter and sugar to come together outside the mixing bowl.

The chocolate cakes were baked and cooled. Elsie cut each through the diameter. “Kirschwasser.” She dosed the four moons with cherry liquor.

“This stuff might as well be German holy water.” Robby put his arms around her waist and kissed the back of her neck. Her arms and knees went weak, and she let the bottle glug into the soft center.

Before the wars, the Lutheran Church proclaimed sex outside of marriage as sin. Virgins were championed in life and fables; girls of lesser reputation were shamed and ridiculed; children born out of wedlock were shunned as bastards. But all that had changed. Hazel was regarded as a Nazi broodmare; commended, revered, and now, simply ignored as an unsightly artifact of war. Sure, everyone in Germany had regrets; acts no man could right or cleric forgive. Piety was out of fashion, and Elsie had quickly learned that her youth and beauty would either be put to others’ devices or her own. Never again would she be powerless. What she did with Robby had nothing to do with him and everything to do with herself.

She set down the Kirschwasser bottle. “You will ruin the kuchen,” she warned, then grabbed Robby by the shoulders and yanked him closer.

“What’s the next step?” he whispered under her grip.

“Fill layers mit creme,” Elsie commanded and nodded to the bowl of whipped white.

“And then?” He ran his fingers across her collarbone.

Her cheeks were hot, her dress too tight. “Icing.”

“And then?” He undid the buttons of her bodice.

She could breathe so much better with the front of the dress open, the cool air on her bare skin. The heat of her cheeks rushed down her center like molten chocolate, satisfying her hunger without restraint.

“Schokolade und …” He kissed the ridge above her breasts. Her skin goose-bumped. “Cherries.”

She shoved the bowl and cakes aside as Robby lifted her onto the counter.