Lilli's Quest (6 page)

“It is strange,” Lilli says to Muriel. “They are not in the Army?”

Muriel gives Lilli a questioning look. “No. Can't you tell? These fellows aren't Brits. They're prisoners of war . . . Germans. Most of them were shot down in flights over England.”

Lilli is aghast. “Nazis!”

Muriel nods.

“Why aren't they in prison?”

“They are,” says Muriel. “Haven't you seen the Nissen huts down the road from the hostel?”

Lilli is irate. “They are the enemy! How can you let them mix with you?”

“They aren't the leaders,” Muriel tries to explain. “They're only boys who were forced into fighting by Nazi propaganda. Listen, Lilli, you have got to be . . .”

Lilli won't listen. “I am a Jew,” she shrills. “These people killed my Papa.” She runs from the hall, retrieves her bicycle, and rides her way by flashlight in the direction of the hostel.

Eight

The English summer has arrived, but Lilli finds the weather surprisingly cool and rainy, especially when compared with her last summer in Germany, when she and Helga spent time outdoors in the hot, dank garden at the Bayers.

The farm is thriving, and the hostelers are busy gathering up root vegetables and the early plantings of cabbage, carrots, and lettuce. Because of complaints about the dullness of the food served to the farm workers—mashed turnips, beets in vinegar, and boiled cabbage—Mrs. Trumbull has taught Lilli how to make special treats like rabbit stew, as well as sweet desserts and puddings.

Today, Lilli is strolling along one of the country lanes in search of wild berries for her fruit cobbler. She comes upon a clump of blackberry bushes that lure her off the road and into a gently shaded area, where the fruit is ripe and abundant. As Lilli wanders contentedly from shrub to shrub, tasting the juicy, sweet berries, she experiences a moment of contentment with her present life. Even though the letters from Mutti have stopped coming
since the Nazi invasion of Holland, she finally received a letter from Papa's brother in America. Uncle Herman told her he cannot promise much, as it is impossible to bring Jewish refugees into the United States at this time. The quotas are extremely limited and, while the US government supports Britain in its struggle to hold off Nazi Germany, most American citizens oppose entering the war. Perhaps, if America did become involved, he writes, things might change. Lilli is disappointed, of course, but she never expected that getting to America was going to be a simple matter.

When Lilli emerges from the undergrowth, with her well-filled tin bucket, she finds herself on an unfamiliar stretch of the dirt road. From where she is standing, she can clearly see the odd-looking Nissen huts in which the POW's are quartered. The huts look like huge semi-circular logs, and are newly made of corrugated iron that gleams in the sun.

Suddenly, Lilli sees the figure of a man in the near distance. He is wearing a brightly colored yellow vest over his drab prison uniform, and there is a large letter
P
painted on his trouser leg. He is bent over, clipping the weedy roadside verge. One of the Nazi prisoners! Lilli cringes in panic and turns quickly to hide herself in the foliage. She's barely out of sight when she hears a voice calling softly in German, “Fraulein, don't worry. I think you know me.”

The sound of her home country's language is both familiar and frightening to Lilli. She writes her letters to Mutti in German, of course, but she hasn't heard German words spoken out loud since the last Nazi official left the Kindertransport as the train crossed the border into Holland.

The young man is right. Lilli does know him. He is the POW who played the piano at the dance, whose eyes had remained fixed on her for an embarrassingly long time. Even then, he had waved at her as if they knew each other.

He comes toward her through the underbrush and his friendly smile is the same as it was on the evening that Lilli fled the dance hall. “You are always running from me,” he says. “I am sorry if I frightened you. My name is Karl Becker. Yes, I am a prisoner of war. Our plane was shot down just off the British coast a month ago.”

Lilli is speechless. Her eye is drawn to a long smooth scar on the prisoner's left cheek, as from a severe burn. She also noticed that he stumbled toward her with a slight limp. However, she knows he won't harm her. Carol and the other hostelers had calmed her after her flight from the dance by explaining the British policy of treating POWs humanely unless they are suspected of being strong Nazi supporters or having knowledge of German military plans. Most POWs are not even
required to work, but many do to keep busy; on the roads, digging ditches, rebuilding bombed-out homes, even on the farms at harvesting time.

“Have you been wounded?” Lilli finally asks. She finds it hard to take her eyes off his shiny scar.

“Not so badly as the others,” he replies. “Our
Luftwaffe
Captain was killed with another officer of our crew of four. The other survivor is missing a limb. He was sent to a British military hospital. So, you see, I've been lucky.” He finds a grassy patch of ground and sits down, gesturing for Lilli to do the same. After a moment of hesitation, she joins him. She offers him some of the blackberries she picked. He takes only a few, saying, “You will not have enough for your baking.”

Karl then tells Lilli a little about his past. He was a ten-year-old music student when he was first recruited into the Hitler Youth. When he entered his teens, his father, who had been an airman in the First World War, insisted that Karl apply for the
Flieger
, the flying division. “I cared nothing for either fighting or flying; only the piano. But the father is supreme in the German household. So this is what happened.” Karl seems to harbor deep resentment toward his father, as well as his mother, who deserted the family when Karl was forced to enter the
Flieger
. He tells Lilli sadly, “I don't think I will ever go back to Germany.”

Lilli is magnetized by Karl's story. She sees that he, too, has been a victim, as were many boys growing up
under Hitler. Too innocent to understand the real meaning of the Nazi creed, they were drawn into the militaristic youth movement, attracted by the uniform, the banners, the bugles, and the drums. They were taught to sing the Hitler Youth “Jewish blood” marching song:
And when Jewish blood spurts from the knife, then things will again go well.
They were pressured by their friends and, in Karl's case, by a father who had dreams of a son in the
Luftwaffe.

Lilli wants to hear more, but she has to get back to the kitchen to start the evening meal. She gets up and bids Karl goodbye. He smiles at her, then rises from the ground and walks toward the Nissen huts.

Mrs. Trumbull looks somewhat cross when Lilli comes flying into the kitchen a few minutes late. However, she softens at the sight of the bucket full of plump blackberries. Lilli quickly wraps herself in an apron and begins to prepare the pastry dough in a whirl of flour.

“Where did you get these lovelies, dear?” Mrs. Trumbull asks as she begins peeling the vegetables.

Lilli gulps. “Oh, quite far down the road. I could even see the Nissen huts from there.”

Mrs. Trumbull interrupts her vegetable peeling, and waves the sharp knife in Lilli's direction. “Don't go down there again, my girl. You don't want to meet one of them POWS working on the roads.”

Lilli shudders. How could Mrs. Trumbull know what happened? Still she asks, “Why? Are they dangerous? They play in the band at the dance hall on Saturday nights. The girls are quite friendly with them. They tell me they're harmless young Germans who were dragged into the Nazi ranks by Hitler's propaganda.”

“Harmless, are they? We Brits are too soft on them. Think if it was the other way around, if they got their hands on an English prisoner?”

Lilli has to agree that the Nazis would probably be as barbarously cruel to their war prisoners as they have been to the Jews. But shouldn't some nation set an example of trying to deal justly, even with an enemy, she wonders?

“Don't go fraternizin' with them fellows,” says Mrs. Trumbull with a big chop of her knife. “Those be my last words on the subject.”

It is Saturday, and the girls are pleased to learn that Lilli, despite what happened last time, is going to the dance hall with them. “So you've gotten over it,” Muriel says with relief. “We girls must have a bit of fun now and then, you know, or we'll all become as dull as turnips.”

Lilli wears her flowered chiffon dress again. It makes her think of her mother, and a wave of sadness envelops her. Still, this is the dress that Mutti hoped Lilli might one day wear in America. Even if Lilli never gets there, she has friends, plenty of food and a clean bed. And
she has met Karl. England, it turns out, is not so bad. America can wait.

The dance hall is even more aglow to Lilli this evening, and it is impossible for her not to gaze toward the raised platform where the band is already playing. Karl is there, having seen her immediately, and he smiles and lifts one hand from the keyboard in his characteristic wave.

Lilli is soon dancing, with Alice, with Muriel, with Maude. Then an older man, one of the local farmers, asks her to dance. His grip is clumsy and he isn't as nimble as her female partners. But Lilli, who hasn't danced with any man except Papa when she was a little girl, experiences the pleasure of having matured beyond her childish years.

Lilli's dance with her male partner ends, and the musicians go off on their break. Alice comes rushing up to her with a concerned frown. “Lilli, you are beet-red. Come and sit down.”

Lilli takes her leave politely and lets Alice lead her to a quiet corner behind the refreshment table. Alice draws out a handkerchief and wipes Lilli's brow in her typical motherly fashion. “Are you well? I've never seen you this way.”

“I'm fine,” Lilli protests. “I'm having such a good time.”

“Sit here, and I'll get you something cool to drink,” Alice commands. But Lilli is already on her feet. “Don't trouble. I'll get it myself.” Lilli is surprised that she is
brazen enough to walk away from Alice, but her eye has noticed Karl leaving the dance hall, cigarette already lit.

However, when she peers out the door, wanting to say a few words to him, she loses her courage. Mrs. Trumbull would surely call this “fraternizin',” she thinks to herself. Lilli isn't even sure why she is so drawn to this slight young man, with his scar and his limp. He feels as familiar to her as an older brother, or a fellow orphan, stripped of family, with a blank future.

It is now the autumn of 1941. More than a year has slipped by. The
Luftwaffe
has stepped up its Blitz in order to weaken Britain in preparation for a land invasion. The countryside is no longer spared, as German bombers seek to destroy the British aircraft industry and the airfields of the Royal Air Force.

Although the hostel is not very far from one of Britain's hidden strategic air commands, there have luckily been no direct hits so far. Every day, Mrs. Mayhew keeps a worried eye on the sky.

The land-army girls continue with their never-ending farm tasks: milking, shoveling manure, digging and planting, hoeing and harvesting. And the threshing season is here again. The first time Lilli witnessed the arrival of the enormous, throbbing, horse-drawn machine, steam-powered and fitted with crushers and spikes, she was shocked to learn that some of her fellow hostelers
had actually volunteered to work at threshing. Feeding the machine, which separates the wheat grains from the chaff, means climbing the narrow, shaking ladder to the top, cutting the binder off the sheath, and inserting the sheaves into the maw of the noisy monster.

“I'd not do it for all the pearls in India,” Maude declared.

“Nor I,” added Elsie. “Not even if they paid us more than the extra bit they do.”

But Alice was thrilled to do what she called, “a real man's job.”

“Don't see how you can do it,” Maude retorted. “It's not only the fearful noise and the choking dust. It's all the mice and huge rats, escaping and scurrying around in the grain fields.”

The great machine arrives at the hostel's wheat field. This year, a POW crew has been assigned to help with the job. Karl, of course, is among them. Counter to Mrs. Trumbull's accusations of “fraternizin',” the girls and the young men, many of whom already know each other from the dance hall or from other cooperative farm work, are as casual as old friends.

For Lilli, Karl has become a warm companion, the only person in all of England who knows that her name isn't Helga, and that she is fourteen years old. He also knows about Kristallnacht, when they took Papa away forever. He knows about her hiding out with the Bayers
and about Mutti and the mysterious Captain Koeppler. And Karl even knows how it came about that Lilli substituted for Helga at the last minute.

“I will never forgive myself for what happened, unless and until I find Helga,” Lilli told him one day. “This guilt I must live with all my life.”

“Your intentions were for the best,” he answered. “If Helga is alive, I promise you will find her after the war.”

Lilli's eyes flooded with tears.

Curiosity and the delivery of lunch for the hostelers has drawn Lilli into the fields to observe the threshing. From a distance, it looks like a great party of happy harvest workers, merrily tossing the sheaves about and shouting to one another. But on closer inspection, it's more like a deafening dust storm from hell. The air is thick with the dried debris forked up from the haystacks and buzzing and whirring insects, disturbed by all the activity. And, true to Maude's description, panicked field mice are definitely underfoot. Fortunately, the land girls are well-protected, having covered their heads and tucked their pants legs into heavy socks.

It's a great relief when the wildly pulsating machine is finally turned off and the threshers break for lunch. Lilli distributes the sandwiches and tea, and sits with the other girls in a wagon drawn up beside the horses that pull the thresher, who are now quietly grazing on ample amounts of spilled grain. The POWS have all come
down off the stilled machine, except for Karl. He has climbed to the very top and appears to be making some sort of repair. He looks so alone up there, his stark figure silhouetted against the sky.

Suddenly, one of the horses harnessed to the thresher violently kicks up a rear leg and emits a skittish sound, almost like a human shriek. The horse then takes off, tilting its heavy burden sharply to the right.

Lilli jumps down to the ground and screams out in German, “Karl, Karl! Take care! Jump clear, before it's too late!” The machine with its great metal teeth and formidable weight is beginning to topple.

Lilli's call of alarm has alerted the other POWs. But they can do little except run fearfully alongside the moving menace. Karl is now clinging to a precarious foothold on the swinging ladder that he has kicked loose, for the purpose of making the broadest jump possible. Lilli cannot bear to look. Will he be able to leap before the thresher crashes to the ground on top of him?