After the Train (3 page)

T
HE NEXT DAY
I have one of my nightmares. The nightmares come less often than they used to when I was younger, but after Travemünde the bad dream comes slinking back like some animal living in the shadows. The nightmares began when I was little, hardly able to walk. In the dream everything looms over me. There are shouts. Someone is pleading. I am lifted up by a young woman; my face is wet with tears, my own and hers. I scream as I am pushed through a door or a window from darkness into light. I awaken, afraid my parents have heard me screaming, but at breakfast they say nothing.

Hearing my screams when I was little, Mother and Father would hurry into my room in their nightclothes, Mother’s hair in a long plait, Father’s hair standing
up every which way. As I sobbed out the nightmare, Mother and Father would become as upset as I was, insisting that what I had dreamed was not true and that all was well. But there was something about the way they spoke that was not convincing. I saw they were troubled by my nightmares, and I began to believe there must be something real in them, something my parents knew and wouldn’t tell me. The nightmares continued, but unwilling to upset Mother and Father, I managed to keep myself from crying out. Little by little the nightmares came less often.

After church I wander around the empty house, cursing the rain that is keeping me indoors and thinking of my nightmare and the secret I am sure my parents share. Father and Mother have gone to spend the afternoon with the Kesslers down the street. I begin poking about in Mother’s dresser drawers. Mother is neat and organized and has a place for everything. She doesn’t like me rummaging about. I am looking for the bundle of letters Father and Mother wrote to each other during the war. Once before, I gave them a quick glance, but it embarrassed me to see the soppy things they wrote, especially since they are so old, at least ten years older than the parents of my friends. Now I untie the ribbon that holds the letters together and begin to read.

In the early years of the war there are long sticky paragraphs about how they miss each other. Father is stationed in Berlin, and Mother worries about bombs falling on his office. She says the small garden she planted is producing vegetables and that there is little bombing in the part of Swabia where she is living. Soon she is writing about her work with the German Red Cross, helping soldiers. The letters are carefully written and give little information about what she sees. I guess that letters to soldiers were censored by the Nazi government. It takes me an hour to make my way from 1941 to 1944. I find no secrets and am hurrying through the last of the letters when something Mother writes puzzles me. The letter is dated July 30, 1944.

Mother is the most sensible person in the world. She thinks over everything twice and then once again. What
chance did she take? And what is her “deepest longing”? Eagerly I open Father’s reply.

He goes on to describe the weather and his life in Berlin and says he has a surprise for Mother. He has been given a few days’ leave and will soon see her.

Quickly I turn to the next letter written after Father’s leave. Mother speaks of how happy she was to see Father and how relieved she was that he had shared “the greatest joy and the greatest terror” she has ever known. After that some nonsense about picking wild raspberries in the fields and complaining that you cannot make jam without sugar. Father’s final letter comes just before the war ends and is full of talk of a reunion and kisses to her and to “little Peter,” and other such mush. There are no more letters, only an envelope with no address. I open it and draw out a picture of a young woman. I have seen the woman. She is the woman in my nightmare, the woman whose tears mingled with mine.

My hand shakes as I put the picture into the envelope
and carefully arrange the dresser drawer as I found it. I make my way into the kitchen and throw myself onto a chair. There in its usual place is the woodstove, which we use when there is wood and don’t use when wood is scarce or too expensive. Also in its place is the nearly empty icebox, with its drip pan underneath that I forgot to empty, and the sink, which Mother scours so severely that the metal shows through the white enamel. At the window is the yellow striped curtain Mother made from an old dress of hers. On the floor is the oval rug braided with scraps of clothes; if you look closely, you can see Father’s old tie and a blue shirt of mine that I have outgrown. Nothing has changed, yet everything has changed.

It is not a nightmare at all, but a memory. Who is the woman? What has she to do with me? Questions I have put out of my head now came tumbling out. I know about the birds and bees, so why haven’t I wondered how Mother could have become pregnant when Father was away in the army for a year before I was born? Why, when there are so many pictures of me as a young boy, are there no pictures of me as a baby? Why has there been no mention of me in the letters until the last one? Why have we moved so far away from our home in Swabia? Why were Mother and Father so upset
over my nightmares? What does Father mean by his talk of the one thing he is proud of? Little by little, like the colored bits of a kaleidoscope, all the questions form themselves into a pattern. Mother and Father are not my parents. Whoever my parents were, for some reason their identity is being kept from me.

The world shifts. I am no longer sure who I am. I have always been Peter Liebig—I even have my father’s name—but now I could be anyone or no one. I look in the mirror that Mother keeps by the doorway so she can fuss with her hair and put on lipstick before she goes off to school each morning. A familiar face looks back at me, brown hair that flops over my forehead and always needs pushing back, brown eyes, the small white scar from my fall off Father’s bicycle, which I had sneaked for a ride when I was seven. I feel if I pull the familiar face off like a mask, underneath I will see someone quite different, someone I don’t know.

I wait to confront Mother. I will tell her I read the letters and saw the picture of the woman and I know the woman. Night after night the mysterious woman came to me in my nightmare wanting something. I will ask Mother, “Who is the woman? What does she want from me?”

Luckily another hour goes by before my parents
return, giving me time to come to my senses. How can I be sure the woman in the picture and the woman in my nightmare are the same? Even if they are, after all the years of caring for me, how can I confront Mother and accuse her of not being my mother? The whole thing might be my imagination. If I am wrong, how could I make up to Mother for such a terrible accusation? I will have to find the answers to my questions for myself. Though it will be nearly impossible, I will pretend nothing has happened.

Father goes off to his study to pore over his blueprints. Mother catches me staring at her and says, “Peter, why are you looking at me as if you didn’t know me?”

I feel myself flush and manage to mumble, “You’ve got your hair in some new way. It looks very nice.” It’s a safe answer, for Mother is always looking for another way to wear her hair. “If I can’t have new clothes,” she says, “I can have a new hairdo, which costs nothing.”

She glances in the mirror, the same mirror that has held my two images. “Why, Peter, imagine you noticing. What a nice compliment. For that I’ll make you some cocoa. The Kesslers gave us a packet of chocolate.”

“Not now, Mother, I promised Kurt I would meet him. We have to talk about an assignment from Herr Schmidt.” I know that if I stay in the same room with
her, I won’t be able to keep from asking questions. I suddenly have to tell someone my story.

I throw on my jacket and I’m out the door, my mother watching me, a puzzled look on her face, for I have never been known to refuse anything with chocolate, which is my favorite and very scarce. I’m surprised and a little disappointed to find that the city takes no notice of how I have changed. People walk about under umbrellas. No one gives me a second glance.

I think about going to see Hans. Hans works for his father, who manages a hotel in town, and Hans is making what seems a small fortune by carrying travelers’ luggage up and down stairs. “I smile a lot,” Hans said. He gives Kurt and me a huge grin as a sample. “No matter who they are, I tell them the hotel is honored to have such important guests. I pretend to mistake the women for movie stars and the men for important politicians. I get huge tips.” I think of telling Hans, but he says whatever comes into his head, and he would blurt out my story the first chance he gets. I decide to talk to Kurt.

Kurt is working in the market, where his father is a butcher. He tells Hans and me how he is instructing the owner of the market on better ways to run his business. The Niehl family lives in the upstairs of a small house near the Lindenplatz. Herr Niehl is a jolly man, and
when I go with Mother into the meat market where he works, he always has a friendly greeting and a little joke. Kurt’s mother is more reserved. Kurt says she misses her family in East Germany. Visiting back and forth isn’t allowed.

I tell Kurt I want to see him for a few minutes outside. Gustav is in the kitchen, busy at the stove, a dish towel tucked in his belt. There is the smell of walnuts. He pulls a cake out of the oven. Since Gustav has moved in with the Niehls, the whole family has gotten fatter.

Frau Niehl says, “Gustav insisted on making a
Nusstorte
. You can take some home with you when you get back. Don’t go far now. Dinner is nearly ready.”

Kurt and I head for the path that runs along the river. A flock of migrating ducks drifts down onto the river without a splash. They are like messengers from some wild and distant place. I imagine being an explorer traveling to the Arctic or maybe the Antarctic.

Kurt says, “The ducks will be gone by morning. Someone will shoot them. You can’t blame them. At the shop they have a terrible time trying to find meat to sell, and a roasted duck is plenty tasty.”

He sighs. But I can’t tell whether the sigh is for the fate of the birds or for a longing to taste one of the ducks. I want to tell Kurt what I have discovered, but now that I am with him I, can’t bring myself to give
away my secret. He will think I have taken leave of my senses. I clear my throat. “I just read this strange story,” I say.

“What strange story?” Kurt asks.

“This boy found out he wasn’t who he thought he was—that he was adopted.”

“What do you mean? Are you making up one of your weird tales?”

It’s true I like to make up weird tales. I made up a great story about inside-out creatures whose insides were all on the outside. It was really disgusting. Another one I invented was about how gravity doesn’t work anymore and the whole world is littered with all the stuff that doesn’t fall down but just floats around in the air.

“No, it’s a real story,” I say. “I read it in a book. The boy has nightmares about a woman. One day he sees some letters and a picture. When the boy sees the picture, he recognizes the woman from his nightmare. It’s his
Geburtsmutter
, his birth mother. He realizes he’s adopted.”

“How could he be sure the woman in the picture was the same woman?”

“She doesn’t just look the same, she feels the same.”

“How come you know how he felt, and how come you came all the way here at dinnertime to tell me something you say you read somewhere?”

“I’m just saying what was in the story. He saw some letters that suggested that his parents weren’t his real parents.”

“So why doesn’t he just ask his parents?”

“He doesn’t want to upset them. Suppose he’s wrong? It would be awful if he accuses them of not being his parents. They’ll think he’s out of his mind and probably never forgive him.”

“He can look for his birth certificate,” Kurt says.

“With the bombing during the war, a lot of stuff like that has been lost.”

“I know. When we escaped from Gross Methling, in East Germany, we had to leave all our papers behind. Anyhow, why should you worry about some boy in a story?” Kurt gives me a suspicious look.

Quickly I say, “I don’t know. It was just kind of interesting. I guess thousands of kids lost their parents during the war. That boy has new parents, and they’re good parents, so it’s no big deal.”

Kurt says, “When you’ve got something besides stories from some crazy book, come and see me.”

By now we’re back at the Niehls’ house. Frau Niehl wraps up three slices of
Nusstorte
, and I carry them home, eating only a small bite from each piece.

T
HE NEXT DAY
at work my head is still dizzy from finding the woman’s picture and trying to make sense of it. I can’t get used to myself as someone else, someone I didn’t know and don’t know how to know. I think about asking my father, but I’ll have to confess to reading the letters. Besides, I’m not sure I’m ready to hear what he says.

I want to escape the puzzle and decide to spend the evening doing my assignment. I head for the library with my notebook and ask the librarian, Frau Kaiser, if she can find me some information on Claus von Stauffenberg.

“Claus von Stauffenberg,” she says. “A good man who came to an unhappy ending. Let me see what I can dig up for you.” She bustles about and returns with
a stack of old newspapers and magazines. “There are some tasty bits here,” she says, and hands me the bundle as if it were a plate of delicious candies.

I turn over the papers, chew my eraser for a bit, and plunge in. I learned long ago that nothing is as scary as a blank page, so I fill it up with the first thing that comes to mind: my wish to find good people in Nazi Germany. Stauffenberg, I learn, was born to an ancient and aristocratic south German Catholic family. I do the arithmetic and figure out he would be forty-eight now. He grew up with his two brothers, Alexander and Berthold, in a sort of castle in Jettingen, a little town in Swabia. I look up the town on a map. Jettingen is only a short distance from the town of Ulm, where we lived when I was little and where Mother waited out the war. No wonder Father knew about Stauffenberg. He must have been a legend to everyone around there.

Stauffenberg was tall—six foot three—and handsome. He was brilliant in school, wrote poetry, and could speak fluent Greek and Latin. He read every book he could get his hands on, but he was no bookworm. He excelled at sports, was crazy about horses, and even rode with Germany’s Olympic equestrian team. He was going to be a musician or an architect like my father, but he finally decided to follow the family tradition
and become a soldier. Because of his love for horses he joined the cavalry.

During the war he fought with the German army: in the Sudetenland (the western part of Czechoslovakia), and in Poland, France, Russia, and Africa; but all the while he despised Hitler and especially the Nazi Party’s paramilitary SA troops.
Kristallnacht
was a turning point for Stauffenberg. On that night the stores and homes of Jews were destroyed, their glass windows shattered. Jews were dragged out onto the streets and humiliated. Stauffenberg was horrified at what Hitler was doing to the Jews. His brother, Alexander, was married to a woman with Jewish grandparents, and Stauffenberg had many Jewish friends. As early as 1938 he was plotting against Hitler.

He thought that because they were serving under Hitler, he and his fellow soldiers were fighting and dying for a dishonorable cause. He said he was “hungry for honor.” He believed that God had assigned him the mission of getting rid of Hitler, but it was no easy job. Hitler kept changing his headquarters, and giving out information on Hitler’s whereabouts was punishable by death. Stauffenberg himself couldn’t get close to Hitler. Impatient and frustrated, he asked friends of his who felt as he did, “Is there no officer in the Führer’s headquarters
capable of shooting that beast?”

In April of 1943 he was serving in North Africa with the Afrika Korps when his vehicle was strafed by British fighter-bombers. He lost his left eye, right hand, and two fingers of his left hand. After he recovered from his injuries, he was promoted and made staff officer to the commander of the reserve army. In his new position, he knew, he would at long last have a chance to be in the same room with Hitler. Stauffenberg decided the time had come. He said, “I’ll kill him myself with my three fingers!”

On July 20 he flew to meet with Hitler at Wolf’s Lair, one of Hitler’s retreats. There were 80,000 land mines encircling Wolf’s Lair to protect Hitler from anyone trying to steal into his headquarters. Hitler never imagined that it would be one of his own officers who would try to take his life. In his briefcase Stauffenberg had two bombs. Using specially made pliers because of his injured hand, he armed one of the bombs by breaking a capsule with acid in it. In less than half an hour the acid would eat its way into the fuse and set off the bomb. Once Stauffenberg broke the capsule, there was no going back. In the meeting room he placed his briefcase under the table just where Hitler would be sitting, explaining that because of his injuries in Africa, his
hearing was bad and he wanted to be close to Hitler so he could hear all the Führer had to say.

Stauffenberg arranged for one of his coconspirators to summon him to the phone once the briefcase was in place. He left before Hitler entered the room. The plan was that as soon as he knew Hitler was dead, he would fly back to Berlin, take over the radio transmitters and police stations, and organize a coup against the Nazi government. He wanted to work out a conditional surrender with the Allies. He didn’t want just to get rid of Hitler, he wanted to destroy the whole Nazi regime. When he was a short distance from the meeting room, he heard a huge explosion. A dead man was carried out on a stretcher with Hitler’s coat over him. Stauffenberg was sure the dead man was Hitler.

At once Stauffenberg flew to Berlin and announced, “The swine is dead.” He began to arrest the Nazi leadership, including his own superior, General Fromm.

Hitler wasn’t dead. He had been protected from the blast by the heavy oak meeting table. Perhaps someone had also moved the briefcase. The man carried out under Hitler’s coat was not Hitler. Hitler’s uniform was in shreds and one eardrum had burst from the blast, but he was still very much alive and the war was still on. After surviving the explosion, Hitler bragged, “I am indestructible!”

Hitler vowed a terrible vengeance. He ordered the Stauffenberg family exterminated down to the last member. Stauffenberg was executed that very day. After he was buried, Hitler had his body dug up and burned, and the ashes scattered to the winds. More than five thousand people thought by Hitler to have some connection with Stauffenberg were arrested and tortured. More than two hundred were executed. Hitler insisted on watching some of the executions himself. Both Stauffenberg’s wife and one of his brothers were sent to concentration camps. His other brother was strangled to death slowly. Almost all the Stauffenbergs’ close relatives were imprisoned. The Stauffenbergs’ five children were placed in foster homes and given new last names.

I read and reread every word, but I can’t discover what happened to the children.

Pencil in midair, I stop reading. Some of Stauffenberg’s children were just toddlers. Could I be one of those children? There is my nightmare and the picture of the mysterious woman. Hasn’t Father mentioned Stauffenberg himself? Is he trying to tell me something? When Father refuses to make me go to the Protestant church on Sunday, is that because I am Catholic, like the Stauffenbergs? I love Mother and Father, but how proud I would be to find that I belong to the aristocratic
Stauffenberg family! How honored I would be to be related to that hero.

Hastily I finish my assignment and run into the library bathroom. For the second time I find myself staring into a mirror, wondering who I am. This time I’m trying to see if I resemble Stauffenberg. I am of medium height and Stauffenberg was six foot three; still, I am only thirteen and haven’t reached my full height. I have to know the truth. I decide I can’t wait another minute. I head for St. Mary’s, where Father went after supper to meet with Pastor Heuer over some construction problem that has come up.

He looks pleased to see me. “One minute, Peter, and I’ll be right with you.” I shift from one foot to the other while Father and Pastor Heuer bend over the blueprints of the church and mumble about this and that. At last father follows me out of the church. It’s nearly nine o’clock, but in the long June evenings the sun is still above the top of the row of old merchant houses. I like walking down the main street with my father. Lots of people know he is the architect working on St. Mary’s. I love him and I’m proud of him, but guilty and ashamed as it makes me feel, I’d be prouder of being the son of Count von Stauffenberg.

Mother says you can see through me like a pane of
glass, and it must be true, for after giving me a brief look, Father says, “Peter, is something bothering you?”

I keep my head down, concentrating on kicking aside the maple tree seeds that have spiraled down onto the sidewalk. “Father, you know those nightmares I used to have, and I would cry out and wake you and Mother up and Mother would get so upset?”

“Yes, of course I remember. But you don’t have those nightmares anymore. Why do you bring them up now?”

“I still have them, only not so often and I don’t tell you because I’m not a baby anymore, and besides, I saw how much they worried Mother.”

Father looks troubled. “You say you still have the nightmares?”

“Yes, but that’s not what I want to talk about. I was rummaging around in Mother’s dresser. I know I shouldn’t have, but I thought there was something you and Mother hadn’t told me, some secret. I saw your letters to Mother and hers to you.” My voice gets hoarse and I feel my face grow red. “I saw what Mother said about taking a great chance and how maybe she shouldn’t have. She worried that you wouldn’t approve. There was a picture. The picture was of the same woman in my nightmare.” I stop talking because Father’s face is stormy.

Roughly grasping my arm, he pulls me toward an iron bench. “Sit down.” He shoves me onto the bench and settles down beside me. “Peter, you had no right to go through your mother’s things. It’s inexcusable to read private letters.”

“I guessed you had some secret, but you would never tell me what it was. Now I know I’m right.”

Father puts his hands to his face, then quickly takes them away and glances about to see if anyone is watching. The street is deserted except for a large tabby cat prowling among the shrubbery, searching for a bird. “You’re right, Peter. We have not told you the truth. Your mother was very much against it and I went along with her wishes. If you went to her as you came to me just now, bursting with your story of reading the letters and worst of all trying to connect the woman in the picture with the woman in your nightmares, I tell you honestly, Peter, it would break her heart. I promise I will talk with her, but give me a few days to think of how I will do it.”

“Can’t you tell me now? I won’t tell her I know.”

“No, Peter. Hard as it may be after what you have seen, you must trust me.”

“Can I ask just one question, Father?”

“Just one, but then the subject is closed until I am
ready to discuss it with you.”

“Am I related to Claus von Stauffenberg?”

“Stauffenberg! Whatever gave you that idea? Certainly not! Now, I have answered your question. Not another word on the subject.”

Father appears shocked at my question, but I can’t tell whether I am very wrong, which I refuse to believe, or whether I have hit upon a truth Father will not admit. Maybe he is afraid the Stauffenbergs will take me away. I promise not to say another word to him or to Mother, but I hatch a plan. I have no intention of waiting for days or weeks or years to find out who I am, and I didn’t believe Father when he said I am not related to Stauffenberg. I am sure he is just trying to put me off.

After dinner I sneak some good writing paper from Father’s desk and a picture from our photograph album of me taken on my fifth birthday holding a pet rabbit I had been given as a present. I have no address for the envelope, but surely everyone around the area of Jettingen will know the Stauffenberg family.

I stuff the letter into an envelope and, before I lose courage, run to the mailbox and drop it in. It’s nearly dark now, but I find Hans and Kurt under a streetlight. We walk along the darkened streets planning what we will do on the weekend. I feel bad, knowing that if I go and live with the Stauffenbergs, I might not see Hans and Kurt again. I tell myself that I will send them train tickets and comfort myself with thoughts of going to meet them at the station in a big black Mercedes—and maybe with a chauffeur driving.