Martin followed the Grabareks without asking where they were headed. He would do whatever they did—it was an unspoken understanding between them. Wolfgang was the leader. He was younger than Anselm, but stronger and bolder. And they accepted Martin only because he didn’t try to manage their activities or corral them into games the way Fritz did. When they were all together, Martin was the bridge.
They made their way past the church, the frozen millpond, and the bombed factory, through the town square with its billboards plastered with American posters. these shameful acts: your guilt was emblazoned over photographs of dead bodies, naked, and emaciated, piled like sticks. In one, a boy stared at the camera, squatting behind a barbed-wire fence, his skeleton visible through his skin.
The boys passed these without looking. They had already seen them. When they were first posted, Marianne had marched them all down from the castle to look. “This is what Hitler and his people did,” she said. “Don’t let anyone tell you his death was a tragedy.” Katarina had begun to cry, and the people walking through the square had glared in their direction. You were not supposed to stop and stare, Martin understood. To stop and stare was to admit guilt: your guilt, the sign read. You were only “You” if you were the one reading.
But Martin wanted to look at the horrific pictures. Propaganda, the people of Ehrenheim said, but Martin believed Marianne. And in the images he saw the hugeness and menace of the world beyond what he knew—a threat and horror even larger than any he had experienced. The boy in the photograph stared at him like a face glimpsed through a sheet of pond ice. It was as if he lay beneath Martin’s own feet.
Today he kept the brisk pace of Anselm and Wolfgang, though. They continued to the far side of town, down the narrow pedestrian passageways, past the row of fine villas once owned by Ehrenheim’s most prominent Nazis, now appropriated to house DPs. And finally back out in the countryside. The sky stretched above them, as cold and gray as the underbelly of a dead fish. They followed the road through the frozen meadows in the shadows of craggy, snow-covered mountain peaks. They were heading west toward the French zone. The border was not far. And finally Martin understood: they were going to the French camp for German prisoners of war.
“Qu’est-ce que vous voulez?” a French guard asked when they arrived at the gate. The camp was housed in some sort of military barracks—a collection of low buildings surrounded by a chain-link fence. Wolfgang answered in German—“We are here to see our father.” Martin looked over at him, confused. no visitors except family members, the sign read.
“The greeting area is over there.” The guard waved them through and pointed toward a stretch of fence to the right. A number of people, mostly women and children, waited there with gifts—cigarettes, potatoes, lard, and slices of salt pork, wrapped in bundles small enough to press between the links.
Prisoners were lined up on the other side of the fence.
“Who are you looking for?” asked a thin, long-necked prisoner in a tattered Gestapo uniform with all the insignias cut off.
“Franz Muller,” Wolfgang answered with a glance at Anselm. Martin was filled with a combination of nerves and embarrassment. They had not seen Herr Muller since the Russian incident.
The long-necked man called the name over his shoulder, where it was picked up by another and another until it disappeared into the barracks. Then they waited, claiming a small section of fence for themselves. On the other side, small groups of prisoners walked past with their hands buried deep in their pockets, their breath escaping in clouds. Others leaned against the building despite the cold, caps pulled low over their eyes. And then, almost miraculously, Franz Muller appeared and walked toward them, his broad, impassive face transformed by surprise. It was awkward to see him here, among this sorry lot. Behind the barbed wire, he was more intimidating now than he had been while chopping trees in their woods. Martin glanced over at Anselm and Wolfgang. But to his surprise, their eyes had already moved on, as if they were looking for someone else.
“Here!” Martin was the first to speak. “We brought this for you.” With frozen fingers he pushed his half candy bar and tin of cheese through the fence.
“For me?” Herr Muller asked, studying their faces.
Martin nodded.
“Do your mothers know you came here?”
Martin shook his head.
“Ah.” Muller seemed to consider this. “It was kind of you.”
The boys stamped their feet against the cold.
“Have you met anyone named Brandt?” Wolfgang asked, and his words were slightly breathless, as if he had pushed them out.
Muller frowned. “I don’t think so. From where?”
The Grabareks exchanged another glance. “The Warthegau.” Anselm answered this time.
Muller shook his head.
“Your father?” Martin asked, unable to stop himself.
“No,” Wolfgang said, his tone harsh. “Our father is dead.”
Who, then? Martin wanted to ask, but didn’t.
Muller regarded them in silence. “Well, thank you,” he said finally. “Take care of yourselves. And your mothers. And don’t come back here.”
On Christmas Day, the Catholic Church of Ehrenheim offered an open mass, and all the inhabitants of Burg Lingenfels traipsed down the hill through the cold. Never mind that aside from Martin’s mother, they were all Protestant.
“Catholic, Protestant, Jewish—such nonsense,” Marianne responded when Elisabeth pointed this out. “These divisions have never caused anything but grief.” Apparently her own newfound religion existed outside of these lines.
Tonight was different, though. The vespers service was open to all and would feature the Ehrenheim orchestra, performing together for the first time in years. “They are quite good,” Marianne conceded. “The conductor studied in Berlin as a young man. No one thought he would come back.”
Even his mother, who never left the castle in the cold, bundled herself into an old fur coat of Marianne’s and walked down the moonlit hill with the rest of them. They made their way through the streets toward the church’s famous crooked steeple—a tall shingled spire built hundreds of years ago to point straight to the heavens but that, through some fault in its construction, instead curved slightly south. Like the German soul, Marianne joked. Aiming for heaven but stooped toward hell.