She stood in the doorway, staring at him for several minutes, the music still floating through the air, before giving into the hunger pangs stabbing at her stomach. “Tomorrow will be the day,” she said out loud. “Tomorrow I find out who you are.” She took the key from the door and locked it behind her.
Her hunger took precedence over her need for a bath, so she went to the cupboard for a can of soup. Some bread would have been fantastic, but she’d finished the last of it along with the cheese she’d brought the night before. It was to have been her last meal. She sat back at the table, staring into space as the soup heated on the stove and making a mental list of what she was going to need to keep her and the man in the bedroom alive through the winter. Somehow she was going to have to make it to Freiburg to get food, gauze, plaster of paris, aspirin, and morphine—a journey of almost ten miles each way. In ordinary circumstances she would have driven in, but the weather had taken simplicity out of the equation. She got out of the seat and went to the closet near the back door. Her old cross-country skis lay untouched at the back, behind some old winter coats and other pieces of assorted junk that had built up over the years. It had been more than a decade since she’d used them, not since she was a teenager, back when her mother was still alive and they’d come up here every winter. She reached in and felt the weight of the skis in her hands. It seemed she had no other choice. She took the skis under her arm and brought them back to the kitchen. The soup was ready, and she poured it into a bowl, devouring it in seconds. It seemed only to awaken her hunger. She made herself another, promising that she would replace it when she went to Freiburg.
The second can of soup did the job, but the sweat-stained filth clinging to her body remained. The thought of heating on the stove all the water she would need almost seemed too much, but the sheer smell she must have emanated was motivation enough. She put the kettle and two large saucepans of water on the stove and sat, watching as they came to boiling point. The awareness of a strange, albeit immobilized and unconscious, man in the house was with her as she closed the door to change. Emerging in her bathrobe, she paced to the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. The candlelight lent the room an air of relaxation, but the lack of water did not. The wonderful bath she’d been dreaming of ended up being a case of sitting in the tub and scrubbing herself down.
The coldness of the cabin hit her as she emerged, dripping from the bath. She grabbed a towel and rubbed herself as hard as she could, using the friction to warm herself. Once she was dried and in her bathrobe, she went to the mirror. She hadn’t looked at herself in days. Her shoulder-length blond hair lay straggly, stuck to her neck. Her blue eyes were bloodshot, and large, darkened circles hung underneath them. She ran a comb through her hair, wincing in pain as the knots came out.
She thought about Herr Berkel and remembered his son, the charming Hitler Youth she’d fallen for during her time in the League of German Girls, the female equivalent of the Hitler Youth. Everyone she knew joined. It became a rite of passage. To not join would have singled out a young boy or girl as a weakling, an upstart, or a malingerer. Perhaps even a pariah.
A wave of paranoia hit her. How did she know Berkel hadn’t seen them? Maybe he had seen them and had already reported them to the Gestapo. It seemed unlikely, but there was no room for error when no one could be trusted.
Night had settled, and she lit candles in the kitchen and the bedroom, as well as the oil lamp in the living room. The man was still asleep when she peeked in on him. She went to her bedroom again, and though her body yearned for sleep, she couldn’t let herself. Not yet. She got dressed once more. The Gestapo could come at any time. He was exposed. Hiding him in the closet would only prolong by seconds the amount of time it would take to find him, and he was too injured to hide outside in the cold of winter. Running through nightmarish scenarios in her mind—each of them realistic—she went back into the bedroom where he lay asleep. They weren’t safe, even up here, particularly if she had to go into town. The Luftwaffe uniform was still bundled up in the corner where she’d thrown it. If, on the off chance, he was Luftwaffe, she could give it back to him. In the much more likely scenario that he was British or American, it would only serve to have him shot as a spy. It had to be hidden, but where?
She stomped her foot and heard the hollow wooden sound from the floorboards. She got the toolbox from the kitchen, went to the bedroom where he was sleeping, and pulled up a thin rug, exposing the wooden slats below. If she pried up the boards, she could create an effective hiding place. But first she would have to move the bed. She made her way over to the side of the bed and pushed it across the room, the man still asleep on it.
She dug the claw of a hammer into the space at the end of the long floorboard, then angled it back, wrenching it upward. After a few minutes of wrestling with it, the stubborn board gave way. She finished the job with gloved hands and placed the board against the wall, revealing a two-foot space below. It was filthy, and freezing cold, but would do the job nicely with a bit of cleaning and a few blankets. She set to work on the adjoining floorboard, wondering how many she would have to pry up to fit him in the space. The fewer the better—everything had to look as natural as possible.
A cough from the bed jarred her from her concentration, and the hammer fell out of her hand into the hole she’d created. She stood up as the man’s eyes flew open. He sat up in the bed, his face contorted into a horrible grimace. He clamped his eyes shut before opening them again and turned to where she, stunned silent, was standing. Pain and confusion clouded his eyes.
“Who are you? Why are you keeping me here?” he said in perfect German.
Chapter 4
His accent was hard to place. She’d known Berliners before, had heard their slender, harsh accents. He had some of the hallmarks of that, but it seemed there was something missing. It was hard to explain, almost like trying to describe a dance to a blind person. He was sitting up on the bed, his eyes imploring. It had been several seconds since he’d asked her, and his words were still hanging like smoke in the air. A thousand thoughts flashed through her mind, but she wasn’t quite able to catch hold of any of them. She stepped forward, her arms outstretched, her hands turned upward as if in a gesture of defense.
“I am a friend,” she said.
He didn’t reply, seemingly wanting more.
“I found you in the snow. You were unconscious. The pain you feel is the fractures you sustained in both of your legs.”
The man ran his hands along the splints she’d fashioned from the kitchen chair, and the grimace came again.
“My name is Franka Gerber. I brought you back here. It’s just the two of us. The nearest village is several miles away.”
“Where are we?”
“We’re about ten miles east of Freiburg, in the mountains of the Black Forest.”
The man brought a hand to his forehead. He seemed to recover from his confused state and spoke with some clarity now.
“You are with the police?” he asked.
“No, I’m not.”
“Do you have any affiliation with the Gestapo, or the security forces?”
“No, I don’t. I have no phone. I found you and brought you back here.” The words tumbled out of her mouth. Her hands were shaking by her side. She brought them behind her back.
The man narrowed his eyes before speaking again. “My name is Hauptman Werner Graf of the Luftwaffe.”
“I saw your uniform.”
“Why did you take me back here?”
“I found you last night. We were too far from anywhere that could have offered us any medical help. I didn’t have any other choice.”
“Thank you for saving my life, Fr?ulein Gerber. Are you associated with the armed forces?”
“No, I’m a nurse. Well, I was a nurse.”