For Such a Time (16 page)

Stella hesitated, then shook her head. Recalling how he had improved the food in the ghetto, she offered him a hopeful smile. “But I believe your living just might.”

“Your continued belief in my ‘goodness’ has cast its spell.” He returned the Bible to the nightstand and then propped his cane beside the bed. “It would explain my latest act of madness. Who knows? You may yet witness martyrdom in the making. I’ve no doubt incited murder in a few of my men.”

Foreboding pierced her as she asked what she already knew. “What madness?”

He must have seen her worry; he placed his hands on her shoulders, and the warmth in his touch soothed her. “A small incident.”

He said no more about what he’d accomplished for the Jews in the ghetto. “However, I imagine Sergeant Brucker will have dreams about me at night.” He flashed a humorless smile. “Bad ones.”

“Speaking of dreams . . .” Inspiration struck her. “I’ve had more nightmares.”

His brow creased. “When did they return?”

“Three or four nights ago,” she lied. “It’s the same dream, but different from those I had before. Men are breaking into this house.” She searched his face. “Men who try to kill you.”

“Who are these men?”

“One is Sergeant Koch.”

“And the others?”

“Only one other, but I’ve never seen him before.”

“Do your dreams tell you why these men want to kill me?”

She could tell by his indulgent smile that he didn’t take her seriously. “Because . . . you keep me here, with you,” she whispered. “In the dream, I’m also in danger.”

“What danger?”

His gentle touch had turned painful. Stella tensed. “These men, they think I’m Jew.”

“Are you?”

His eyes narrowed, all tenderness gone. Stella raised a quivering chin at him. “If you believed that,” she said with as much truth as she dared, “you would have let them shoot me at Dachau, regardless of your manifest.”

“Enough nonsense, Stella.” He gave her shoulders a light squeeze before releasing her. “Nothing will happen to either of us.”

Stella hoped that he was right, yet her mind flashed with images of him lying in a pool of his own blood, and the devastation she felt made her angry. She must be insane. Aric von Schmidt was a hard-bitten man with an unpredictable nature. While he ordered children to bury the dead and hide the Nazis’ hideous secrets, he was also defending the Jews’ right to decent food in the ghetto—and endangering his own life.

He’d refused to stop sending trainloads to die in Auschwitz, and yet weeks ago he’d rescued her, a total stranger, from a firing squad at Dachau. Was she being fair? Was Aric such a contradiction, or just a man who’d seen too much of the world and understood its hard realities?

And why was she so desperate to believe the latter?

“Humor me, Aric,” she said, placing a hand against his cheek. “Be on your guard. I have a strong feeling something will happen . . . tonight.”

His hand reached to cover hers. “I’m pleased to know you care whether I live or die.”

She pulled her hand away. “I . . . I’ve gotten used to you. It would be difficult working for someone else.”

“Ah, Süsse, I think I mean more to you than that.”

She felt her cheeks warm. “I’m your secretary, nothing more.”

“And what if I said I don’t believe you?”

“I . . . I don’t know what you mean.”

He laughed. “Would you like to find out?” He pulled her into his arms. “Give me your kiss, Stella,” he said softly.

She leaned against him, unable to resist his tender touch.

“Please,” he whispered, and lowered his head to hers.

Stella’s body seemed to move of its own volition; her eyelids drifted closed as she raised her lips for his kiss. Just as before, the warm contours of his mouth fit hers perfectly. He tasted faintly of Kaffee, reminding her of their first breakfast together when he’d worn his gold spectacles and sipped from his cup while perusing his morning papers. Just like any other man might do.

She next tasted his sorrow. The barrier shielding her heart cracked a little as she slid her arms around his neck, wanting to give him comfort. Then as he drew her closer to deepen the kiss, Stella sensed a longing that matched her own. Suddenly nothing else mattered except the two of them, in that moment. The world outside could remain cold and unforgiving while in the circle of his arms she felt warm, cherished, and safe.

When their kiss ended, she rested her cheek against his chest, too moved to speak. Through his sweater she felt his heart beating as rapidly as her own.

“I’ve wanted to do that for the longest time.” He sounded out of breath as he held her in his arms.

“You kissed me before, in the ghetto.”

“That was unfinished business,” he said softly, all traces of humor gone. “Now say it, Stella-only-my-secretary. I want to hear the words.”

His gentle voice invited her response. Leaning back in his arms, she considered her surrender. No other man had ever made her feel this way. To deny the truth now would only make her look foolish. And it had been a good fight, if not a fair one.

“You win,” she whispered. “I care.”

 17 

The girl pleased him and won his favor.

Esther 2:9

S
he tasted so sweet. And time was running out.

Aric kissed her again to banish the thought; he allowed himself a few more blissful moments to simply
feel
. The enchantment she cast over him would warm the cold, bleak days that marked his future.

How naïve to think he could set her free or remain unaffected by those soulful eyes and the delicate line of her jaw that so often revealed her emotions. He wanted her for his own, despite his self-seduction and blind intent.

How could he let her go—even when she grew to despise him?

Her rapid pulse kept pace with his, and it pleased him that she was equally affected by the kiss. Her nature always seemed illusory to him; like the snow-covered earth, she appeared cool and unchanged, while passion—desire, frustration, and oftentimes anger—burned at her core.

Desire had surfaced as she surrendered to his kiss. He’d also sensed her inexperience and felt a kind of wonder that she was still innocent, untouched. A pure light, illuminating his dark existence.

She’d also deceived him. “You lied to me,” he whispered against her ear.

She went still in his arms.

“The girl at Dachau. You told me she was yours.”

Stella drew back from him, her features still flushed. Her eyes flashed apprehension, before clouding with grief. He sorely regretted his game.

“She was like my own daughter. I taught school to the children at the camp. Anna was my brightest pupil, very quick. After her mother’s death, we were . . . inseparable.”

“Exactly why were you both taken to the shooting pit?”

She released a tremulous breath. Aric felt it like a knife.

“The guard, a woman in charge of our Block, wanted . . .” She hesitated. “She said obscene things . . .”

“And you refused her.” Aric knew she would never submit to that kind of degradation.

She nodded. “I was stripped of my clothes and taken to the pit. On the way, Anna ran up and tried to hand me a shirt to wear. The
Blockführerin
became furious. She screamed at the guards to take . . . the little girl, as well.”

Misery seemed to shroud her like an old, familiar robe. Aric understood—he’d worn the same garment for many years. “And then I found you,” he said.

She searched his face. “How could those soldiers . . . do that to a child? Where was God when it happened?”

How could a father destroy a son?
“You’re asking the wrong person,” he said flatly. “I don’t know the answer. I only know my duty.”

“Does your conscience end when duty begins?”

Her reproach brought back his memories of Stalingrad and the blood of thousands—including his own—spilled across a frozen, white wasteland. “It would depend . . . on the stakes.”

“What prize is worth the taking of human life?”

His smile took effort. “You’ve just described war. And in war, no other considerations are made—or deemed necessary.”

Yet Aric remembered when those disciplines began to lose
their reverence. He’d been promoted to the rank of Wehrmacht major and ordered to command a battalion of artillery soldiers under General Paulus. Their planned victory had ended in slaughter. The entire Sixth Army lay trapped and starved-out during the harshest winter he could remember, picked off by Russian snipers better at street fighting than their German counterparts.

Each time Paulus requested retreat, Hitler had refused, insisting the army stand and fight to the last man. Aric could still smell the blood, still see the soldiers under his command, boys mostly, falling alongside the million other bodies littering the snow. Some died from gunfire, but more perished from disease, frostbite, and starvation. He’d been lucky enough to get shot—and get out—only days before retreat became impossible.

After his father’s betrayal, he thought nothing else could alter him so deeply. Yet in those long, agonizing days of winter, his very humanity began to cease. God no longer existed for him. Aric simply shut down . . . until that day at Dachau.

“I cannot heal the past for you, Stella, any more than I can bring back the dead. I can only offer you this.” He brushed his mouth across hers in a light kiss.

“Should that make me feel better?”

“Yes,” he said with a ferocity that surprised them both. “Because in a world suffocated by death, you and I share something very much alive.”

He kissed her again, losing himself in her sweetness and the budding hope that began to unfurl in his chafing soul—a need greater than flesh, calling him back from the darkness.

The future was rapidly closing distance. Aric would cling to the present as long as possible and let her make him human again.

He was such a fool.

 18 

“For if you remain silent at this time . . . you and your father’s family will perish.”

Esther 4:14

S
he was such a fool.

The persistent thought roused Stella from the enticing depths of passion. They could never be together, not as long as he sent her people to die. And she . . .

Everything about Stella Muller was a lie. How could he know the woman when she didn’t know herself? “Aric, I can’t . . .”

She broke away first and buried her face against his chest.

“Hush.” He increased his hold on her, rocking her back and forth. “Don’t say it. Please.”

Stella heard his anguished tone. Did he understand the chasm that separated them . . . or was it something else?

She did care for him, as improbable and dangerous as that might be. His intelligence and humor, the quiet strength surrounding him—all drew her. He wasn’t a man to boast of his accomplishments, nor did he follow the typical mind-set of his Nazi brethren. Instead he struggled to combine duty with an inherent compassion he still refused to acknowledge.

She smiled faintly. She, Joseph, Helen, and Grossman—Aric had rescued each of them, all broken sparrows.

But who would save him?

She gazed up at him with new affection. She must try her best to protect him from Brucker and Koch; she told herself it was because Aric was her best and only refuge in this war, a safeguard to all who lived in the house—

“Herr Kommandant!” A shout from outside the door broke them apart. Joseph burst into the room. “Please, come quickly. Sergeant Grossman is hurt!”

Aric bolted toward the door, Stella on his heels. “What happened?”

“Outside, he . . . he got stabbed.”

“Has his attacker been caught?”

Joseph looked pale as he nodded. “Sergeant Koch’s holding him at the back door.”

“Who is it?” Aric’s tone held ice.

“A Jew.” The boy shot a miserable glance at Stella. “Morty Benjamin.”