Every day, Frau Vortmuller wore the same tweed skirt and green jacket with a Nazi Mutterkreuz, which she had been awarded for bearing eight children, on the lapel. Four of these were dead: two killed in the war, one dead at birth, and another who had “succumbed” in an institution for the “feeble-minded.” Frau Vortmuller hung this one’s picture in the pantry, where she could see his face every time she pulled out the ingredients for supper. Of those living, her sons had not yet returned from wherever they’d been fighting, and her daughters were married mothers themselves. Martin found the Mutterkreuz pin beautiful—with its gold points and shiny blue inset—and the pride with which she rubbed it clean and wrapped it in a handkerchief every evening lent it an almost holy significance.
In the weeks after the war ended, Frau Vortmuller, a religious woman, began to speak to the children about God. Once she was the only supervisor left at the Children’s Home—Herr Stulper had taken off at the first sign of the Americans—who was there to reprimand her? The Americans, who held church every Sunday in their barracks and wore crosses underneath their uniforms? She included Bible readings and nightly prayers in the children’s bedtime routine. Herr Stulper would have reported her. He had taught them about racial purity and German Heimat and the divine wisdom of their Führer and had no patience for what he called “Christian superstitions.” Mostly the children hated him. Although he had led them on a few wonderful hikes in the mountains and let them listen to Nazi-endorsed radio programs. Martin grew to love one song that was played often: “Erika,” which he understood to be a folksy ballad about a flower and a pair of childhood sweethearts. Until Liesel “Falkman” whispered to him that singing along to it was as bad as spitting on his father’s grave. Martin did not understand this. How could it be like spitting on his father’s grave? The fathers and mothers of the children in the home had made “mistakes,” he understood. Now they were dead. And it was Frau Vortmuller and Herr Stulper’s job to ready them for new families—rich, powerful Nazi families who would teach them to be good Germans.
Bullshit, Liesel said. Our mothers aren’t dead—they’re in prisons or concentration camps.
For what? Martin asked.
For plotting to kill Hitler, Dummkopf.
Martin was filled with shame. For plotting to kill the Führer, who Frau Vortmuller assured them in many ways was all-knowing, kind, and good? His own mother and father had done this?
At eleven, Liesel had a wider, darker sense of the world than Martin. When Frau Vortmuller extinguished the candles at night, Liesel would climb into Martin’s bed and whisper secrets. She was not supposed to be in the home with the others. Her parents were Communists, not aristocrats. Her bloodlines did not date back to Frederick the Great or Bismarck or anyone else of national significance. But somehow, when her parents were taken by the Gestapo, Liesel had been brought here. Maybe because she was pretty and blond and blue eyed. This Martin understood. Liesel was the prettiest girl he knew. She would make a good child for an important Nazi family. Wasn’t she happy then, that they had made this mistake? No, Liesel would scowl at him when he asked such questions. She didn’t want to live with Nazi pigs.
Then, suddenly, it seemed Liesel was right. Their mothers were alive. The first to arrive was Adalbert “Schmedding’s”—a gaunt, hollow-cheeked woman with a dark-haired baby in her arms. She had cried and cried as she held her son, stuffing his face against her belly as if, rather than reuniting, they were saying good-bye. And then others came in batches: Claus and Gretel’s glamorous aunt from England, who was taking them to their mother in Switzerland; the “Beckers’” sweet, tired mother straight out of solitary confinement in Ravensbrück; the “Hansers’” mother by way of a fancy American armed forces escort car. At first Martin’s heart had leapt every time the gate bell chimed. His mother! He thought of her blond head bent over the game of marbles they would play, her fine strands of hair catching the sun—and the tight grip of her hand as she walked beside him past the bombed fountain to the Apotheke or the market. He recalled how it felt to press his face against the stiffly washed fabric of her dress and, underneath it, the softness of her breast.
But Martin’s mother did not come and neither did Liesel’s.
My little sparrows, Frau Vortmuller called them, looking increasingly worried. It was the beginning of June. Her youngest daughter, Magda, had come to stay with them, along with her two mean little boys, who called them “traitors’ spawn.”
“Why don’t you throw them out?” Martin overheard Magda ask her mother one night. “The war is over! Your responsibility here is finished!”
From then on, Martin was extra careful. He did not want to be thrown out. And he knew it was true: Frau Vortmuller did not have to stay with them anymore. There was no one commanding—or paying—her to do so. She just wants the extra rations, Liesel said. But he did not believe this. In her way, he thought, Frau Vortmuller loved them.
And then one day, a tall, stern-faced lady named Marianne von Lingenfels arrived. With her cape and high boots she reminded Martin of a toy soldier. Is that your mother? Liesel whispered, watching through the window with him as the woman strode up the path.
Then they heard her in the foyer. She had a loud, clear voice that carried up the tile stairway. She had come to claim Martin Fledermann (the sound of his name crackled inside like a spark along dormant wires: Martin Fledermann, of course that was his name). She was a friend of the family. She would take him to find his mother in Berlin.
Beside Martin, Liesel grew still. She would be alone if he left. Martin could see her thinking this, too.
The woman strode into the room, Frau Vortmuller scrambling behind her, wheezing up the stairs and looking alarmed.
“Martin Fledermann,” the woman announced, clapping her hands together. She had a long, intelligent face and startlingly bright brown eyes. Her hair was pulled back severely.
“Marianne von Lingenfels,” she said, bending to his level and extending her hand. “You don’t remember me. Your father was my dear friend.”
Martin stared back at her.
“And who is this?” The woman straightened, and her eyes moved to take in Liesel, whose pretty face grew petulant.
“Liesel . . .” Frau Vortmuller said, pausing, “Stravitsky.” She cast a nervous look in the girl’s direction. It was not a name Martin had heard before.
“Ah.” Frau von Lingenfels frowned. “What was your father’s name, child?”
“Bartosz,” Liesel mumbled, and then, seeming to consider something, she looked up. “Do you know my mother? Johanna? Is she alive?”
Frau von Lingenfels looked uncertain. “I don’t know,” she said, finally. “I didn’t know her.” Martin had never heard these names. But he understood something he could not put into words and reached over to take hold of Liesel’s hand.
“Ach mein liebes Gott,” Frau Vortmuller said, and crossed herself.
Liesel snatched her hand away.
“Why don’t you come with us?” the woman said. “I will try to help you find your family.”
Liesel shook her head.
“Nha! Liesel!” Frau Vortmuller gasped at the rudeness, but the woman gestured away her protests.
“You can stay here with Frau Vortmuller, who obviously cannot do anything to help you find your mother, or come with me and I can promise nothing, but at least I will try.”
Liesel scowled, and then finally she nodded.
“It is settled then,” the woman said, clapping her hands to her sides. “And”—she turned to Frau Vortmuller—“you can do your explaining to the Americans.”