He told us to follow him, and we did. As we walked down the street laden with our things, I wondered if we were attracting attention—no one else was walking down the street with luggage—but no one paid us any mind. There seemed to be a heaviness in the air, not from the cold, but from what I know now is the austerity of war. War takes a toll on civilians that is different from what it bleeds from its soldiers. The deprivations of war are a slow but steady sacrifice. I’d learned of it first in Davenport, and then in Crystal City, enough so that I recognized what I was seeing in this town. I knew that to bear the continual loss of ordinary joys you had to erect a kind of barricade within yourself, like a cave in which to hide. You could then walk around on the streets of what once had been a pretty city, but was now battered, in an insulated semi-daze. This was how you dealt with it, and the more grievous the loss, the thicker the insulation around you had to be.
The people we passed had been in the throes of true war for more than five years. The husbands and brothers and sons of my father’s hometown were off fighting or were dead or missing. There was hardly anything to sell and therefore very little to buy. The Allies had retaken France and surely would soon be marching into Germany, but the townspeople of Pforzheim moved around slowly, heads down against the cold and the realities of war.
That was why no one cared that we walked the icy streets carrying suitcases. Such a sight mattered not in the least to anyone here. We passed a few businesses where the windows were boarded up and a sign reading Geschlossen hung on the door. These shops were closed but other shops were open for business, even though their shelves of wares were nearly empty. We passed a butcher shop that was open, but a sign on its window read Heute haben wir kein Fleisch, nur Eier, which Max told me meant they had no more meat today, only eggs.
We’d walked three blocks when Papa stopped in front of a shop I had seen before, in his photographs. It was the three-story watch shop that belonged to his uncles, Werner and Klaus. I could see through the shopwindows that very little in the way of merchandise was for sale under the glass cases. People didn’t have the extra money to buy new watches and the uncles probably didn’t have the time to make new timepieces anyway, if they’d been required to produce fine instruments for submarines in their workroom.
“Warte hier auf mich,” Papa said. I recognized enough of what he said that I knew he had told us to wait.
He said something else that I didn’t understand, squeezed Mommi’s hand, and opened the door to the shop. A bell jangled on a string. Max turned to me and I leaned in close to my brother.
“He wants to ask about Oma first. Without us right there. Just in case,” he whispered to me, in English.
We watched through the window as Papa approached an older man behind a counter who appeared to be fixing a pocket watch. When the man looked up and saw Papa, he froze for a moment in surprise, and then he set the watch down on a worktable, came out from behind it, and hugged Papa tight. The two spoke for a moment and Papa broke into a smile and I saw him wipe his eyes.
It appeared Oma was all right. Seconds later, Papa and the man were coming toward us and both were smiling. Papa swung the door open and let us inside, and the man enveloped Mommi in his arms while my father brought in our suitcases off the street. I couldn’t understand what the old man was saying to Mommi. He spoke too fast. This would happen to me over and over on this day. I would be in the company of people who clearly loved my parents and by extension me, and yet I couldn’t understand a word they said except “How wonderful to finally meet you!” and “You look just like your father.”
The man let go of Mommi and turned toward me.
“Und hier ist Elise,” Papa said to him. And to me, my father said, “Dein Gro?onkel Werner.” My great-uncle Werner.
Werner leaned over and kissed me on my cheek. He smelled like cloves and menthol, and he looked a little like our old neighbor Mr. Brimley, the barber who died and left Mrs. Brimley a widow.
While they were speaking, another older man who looked very much like Werner came down a staircase at the back of the shop. There were more embraces and tears and introductions. This was my great-uncle Klaus, Werner’s brother. Papa had to explain again why we had come because Klaus was as surprised as Werner that we were there. Papa had written his mother that we were coming, and as far as we knew, the German government had checked to ensure that Papa had means to live and care for himself if he was repatriated so that he would be a boon to society and not a burden. Someone in a position of authority had checked to make sure Oma could take us in. But the uncles seemed surprised nonetheless that we were there.
Papa must have asked if the uncles had a vehicle and could take us to Oma’s house, which I gathered was too far away to walk to with so many suitcases. There was more chatter and then the uncles were locking the shop and we were again out on the street with our luggage. Werner told us to wait for him there on the sidewalk.
He returned with a truck with the name of a bakery on its door, which he’d apparently borrowed from a neighboring merchant. The uncles loaded our suitcases in the back of the truck, and then Max, Mommi, and I got into the backseat while Papa sat in the front with Werner. Klaus said he’d meet us at the house after he’d alerted his wife and Werner’s. He said he would join us at the house with the rest of the family.
We drove past picturesque streets and bridges as well as bombed city blocks that stood in stark contrast. We passed sandbagged corners, antiaircraft guns at the ready, and searchlights pointed to the sky for when night would fall.
We entered a residential area, and at first the houses were built so close together that a person could not pass between them, but after about a mile or so we turned onto a street that led us up a winding hill, and there the houses stood by themselves. These had been built on large lots, and some had barns and fencing for livestock and open snowy fields where I could picture green things growing on warm summer days. We pulled into a driveway and I recognized the front of Oma’s house from the pictures I had seen. It was a large three-story, half-timbered, with shutters painted with blue, pink, and yellow flowers. Window boxes, empty now, waited for spring. It was a beautiful house, straight out of a fairy tale. The heavy oak front door had a stately brass stag’s head for a knocker. Pots of black dirt, frosted now, stood on either side of it. I could picture them full of red tulips.
As we started to get out of the truck, the massive front door opened and a woman I knew at once to be my grandmother peered out. She looked just like she did in the black-and-white photograph Papa had of her from his christening day, except for the silver hair and wrinkles at her eyes. She was petite in height but rounded in ways that made her look soft and pillowy.
She staggered back a moment, almost as if the sight of us was too much to take in, and then she flew into Papa’s embrace. She began to weep with what I can only describe as joy and sorrow. She was sobbing words that I could not understand. I’m not even sure Max could understand all of them.
There were a great many things said the rest of the day that I did not understand, and I would openly turn to Max for a translation as often as I could because I knew I was among family now. They all knew where I had been born, and what language was my mother tongue, and that I was an American citizen through no fault of my own. But Max could not spend the entire day translating for me, and I knew he would have to explain to me later much of what everyone had said.
At that moment all I could discern was that as my Oma hugged Papa, the words she spoke seemed to come from some deep ache inside of her. It wasn’t until hours later when Max and I were alone in the room he was sleeping in that he told me what had been said.
My brother told me Oma had written to Papa when we were still in Crystal City and told us not to come, that it was not safe, and that it would be better for us if we stayed in America. As much as she wanted to see us, she begged Papa not to come. But of course, Papa never got that letter.
Who can say which country’s censors decided this was not a letter that could be delivered? Perhaps the German censors believed it painted too grim a picture of Germany’s status. Oma may as well have said, Germany is losing the war! Do not come!
Max said Oma was happy to see us, but her happiness was woven in with her great sadness, and they were impossible to separate.
After she had let go of Papa, she turned to Max and me and hugged us, too. She spoke many words of endearment to me, but I only understood that she was very happy to finally meet me because I shared her name, at least the American version of it. And then she at last reached for my mother.