“There’s a complete naval blockade around the country,” Martin answered, “so there’s no escaping by sea.”
My parents wanted us to leave as soon as possible, and I’d convinced them to at least talk to Ludo and Hilda’s parents about letting Ludo and Hilda come with us if it came to that, but my mother could not bring herself to imagine leaving without final news of Edwin.
“You and Ludo will get drafted when you’re eighteen,” my father told us. He and my mother were anxious to think of ways to get us clear of that.
“Why is that so bad?” I asked.
“Wake up, son,” my father said. “Ludo’s arm will ensure he’s sent to a work camp. God knows what will happen to you.”
“We were there. We know,” I said, my feelings hurt. I was trying to act smart in front of Hilda.
“You weren’t really there, and you don’t know. We’ve kept you from knowing what’s really happening.”
“Well, you did send them to camp, Hans,” my mother said.
“Not now, Drika.”
My mother curled over on her side on the couch, the wind taken out of her questioning. She reached over and took my hand in hers. “You have to carry your family in your heart, all of your family,” she said, “and make it out of this nightmare.”
That Sunday, when we prepared for Mass, my father made more loaves of bread to bring to Father Heard and several other families in town. Food was becoming harder to come by, but because we still had a full larder, my father wanted to share. My mother had stopped cooking since Edwin was lost. The only thing she continued to do was play the organ at church. It was the only time she wasn’t in her blue bathrobe.
I had been working in my father’s factory after school every day since the German occupation, and the floor was buzzing that week with talk about Father Heard’s letter. Everyone at the factory wanted to know what Father Heard was going to follow up with during his Sunday Mass; we expected his next service to be more crowded than usual.
We got there early and my mother let us in with her key. She unlocked the door that opened below where the windows used to be; Ludo’s father had finally covered the holes with plywood the day before. My father and I sat in the back row, as we usually did, while my mother went to the organ and started to warm up. She struck each key once and let it dole out and fade. Across the ivory keys, the pitch of each note changed ever so slightly, so that listening to her warming up taught my ear how to detect deviations of noise. Ludo could never guess the exact type of plane soaring overhead, but I always knew not only what it was, but which country it belonged to, and thereby what level of threat it posed, all by the pitch of its engines.
By the time she’d gone through the whole keyboard, and played a few partial songs to warm up, the church was already half full. She walked to the church’s back room, where Father Heard would get ready.
Sitting with my father, I felt an overwhelming need to call out to Edwin. To speak his name and never stop calling out to him.
“Dad,” I said.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What for?” he said. His mind had been elsewhere.
“I’m sorry,” I started. I needed to tell him how sorry I was for Edwin. To let those words reach his ears. To confess how Edwin wanted to stay put. That I had forced the one person with the most potential to do something great with his life to his death.
But then my mother came back out and jogged to the back pew, passed me, and sat next to my father.
“He’s not in back,” she said. There was a quick tremor of nervousness in her voice. “He’s always here by now.”
“Play some music for a bit then,” my father whispered. “Jacob, go to his house. See if he’s all right. Hurry.”
Outside all the windows of the apartment buildings in the village were iced over. Several Heinkels zoomed in from over the North Sea. They echoed off the buildings as they crossed overhead. Father Heard’s small home sat several houses past the apartment buildings, a one-level cottage with an angled roof that helped the snow slide off. I wished Edwin were with me as I knocked on the door and waited. When he didn’t answer, I knocked again, then tried the doorknob. It was unlocked and opened into the foyer.
“Father Heard. Hello. Father Heard?”
The kitchen smelled like stale tea and sage. The living room had a bookshelf and a simple wooden crucifix nailed to the wall next to the large window that overlooked the street. I remembered the word gar?onniére, a bachelor’s quarters. The faint scent of church incense and an older man’s musk filled the bedroom. The blankets on the bed were unmade. A comforter was crumpled and hanging off the side like it had been tossed in a hurry.
“Father Heard,” I called out one last time before leaving.
As I walked back across the center of town, I passed my uncle standing around a garbage can fire with several soldiers. One of the soldiers, with a charcoal-colored rain cape, spread his arms out to capture the warmth like a giant vulture. He breathed little white clouds into the billowing smoke. They all laughed at something Uncle Martin had said. Then Uncle Martin saw me and walked over.
His heavy black boots left tremendous prints in the snow. His jacket was buttoned up to his neck and hung down below his knees. He had leather work gloves, worn black and smooth at the fingertips. “What are you up to?”
“Seeing if Father Heard was at home. Have you seen him?”
“No,” Uncle Martin said, falling in step with me.
When we were close to the church, I could hear my mother playing J. P. Sweelinck’s “Polyphonic Psalms,” which was something she never played during Mass, which meant Father Heard was still not inside the church.
I opened the door and everyone turned and looked at us. Hilda sat in the front pew with her parents. She gave me a small wave and I wanted to swim through the air to be beside her. Others let their eyes linger on Uncle Martin’s uniform. My mother kept playing. Uncle Martin shut the door behind him. People looked like they either were terrified of him or wanted to stab him. I sat back down next to my father and listened to the people in the pews around us, wondering where Father Heard could be.
“I couldn’t find him.”
My father bent over with his hands on his knees. “I feel sick.” He looked at Uncle Martin. “What if they took him? What can we do?”
People whispered to one another. They began to speculate that Father Heard had been taken, and then they started to worry it was because he read the letter. Someone in the room must have told the Germans. People started looking at my father and me. We owned the factory. We owned the big house. Then they stared at Uncle Martin in his Nazi uniform. There was a feeling of shifting, uncertain loyalties. When several other dispatches came back without the missing priest, the entire congregation fell silent beneath my mother’s playing. The music had burrowed itself into the spaces between everyone and was now the common voice of worry. When she let her song fade, and then go to nothing, the silence in the room was absolute.