Motherland (14 page)

A few thrashing minutes later, one twin ran for help while Liesl helped the other twin hobble onto the grass and sank down beside him, spreading out her robe, propping the boy’s skull.

“Ernst pushed me,” he said.

“It was an accident,” she said in a firm but consoling tone. Inside, she panicked. She would be fired for this, and then what? Back to the farm where no one wanted her? Her wet suit wilted against her belly with each exhale.

“Can you sit up?” said a male voice.

Liesl leapt up to face him, tall, blond, a spa co-worker she knew by name only. Unlike most of the staff, he wore no uniform, just a rumpled white shirt and wool trousers, and he carried a large leather bag loosely in his fingers, the way a tennis player might hold his racket after a game.

“Oh,” she said. “Is his mother coming?”

Something about the man’s expression made her aware of her wet hair, plastered to her forehead and ears. She lifted the rank locks and pushed them back.

“I heard the shouts.” The man set his leather bag on the grass, kneeling down beside the boy. He spoke quietly to him, first putting pressure on the head wound, then asking Max to squeeze his fingertips and toes, and touching each joint as he did. Without even looking at Liesl, he opened the bag, tossed her a white lab coat, and told her to put it on before she got hypothermia. Chills slid up her arms as she shoved them through the cotton.

“Am I going to bleed to death?” said Max.

“You’ll have a headache, that’s all.” The doctor looked Liesl in the eyes. The frankness in his gaze unnerved her. “Keep a good watch on him,” he said to her. “Wake him up once or twice tonight—”

“I’m not—” Liesl said, puzzled. She attacked her wet hair again, trying to sweep it behind her ear. “Do you know where his mother went?”

The doctor looked puzzled. “No.”

An awkward silence fell. The doctor pulled out a silver pocket watch, staring at the face. Max sniffed and leaked more tears. Liesl hugged the white coat closer, peering up the hill to the circle of yellow-painted buildings where officers soaked and relaxed.

“You have another appointment?” she said.

“Just bedtime.” The doctor gave a comic frown. “I have my own children to get home to.”

“That’s wonderful. How many?”

His cheeks flushed. “Well, just one,” he said. “And one on the way.”

Liesl’s congratulations faded as Ernst and his father appeared on the crest of the hill and barreled down the grass toward Max. Colonel Steitz wore his S.S. uniform buttoned to the top, his robust body puffing out of the tight black cuffs and collar. Earlier that summer, he had ordered two of his officers to beat up a waiter behind the kitchen. The waiter had made a snide comment about the Führer’s height. The beating had left him half deaf.

“What happened here?” the colonel snarled when he reached them.

Liesl felt the corners of her mouth quirking into a stupid grin, but she couldn’t speak.

“Your son was just being a good German boy,” the doctor said. “He has to risk his life at least once a day.”

The colonel laughed and sank down to his knees beside Max. “Twice a day for my boys.”

“Ernst pushed me off the log,” said Max.

“Ach
, Max.” His father cuffed him lightly on the chest.

“He did. She didn’t believe me.”

Liesl shrank back, but the colonel didn’t even look at her. “No one likes a tattle,” he said gruffly to his son as the doctor told the colonel to watch Max carefully that night.

“I want some hot chocolate,” Max said.

“I’ll be back on Friday,” Dr. Kappus said. “I’d like to see him again then, Colonel Schultz.”

“Steitz,” said the colonel. He gathered Max up in his arms and lifted him like a bride. “You’re all right, Maxling,” he murmured into his son’s wet hair. Ernst stepped closer. Suddenly both boys seemed much younger, and their father larger, like the statue of a man.

“Good day, then,” the doctor said, turning away.

The colonel reached out and grabbed his sleeve. “And my wife? Where is she anyway?”

The doctor gazed at the hand twisted in the cloth.

“Frau Steitz,” the colonel bellowed. “Where is she?”

“I have no idea.” The doctor didn’t move, but his neck grew hard cords.

“She had an appointment with you at two,” Steitz growled. “Surely you saw her?”

As the doctor shook his head slowly, Max shifted to better regard the scene.

The colonel’s eyes began to bulge. “She had an appointment—”

“Oh, that’s right,” Liesl heard herself say. “She told me she was going for a walk instead.” She ignored Max’s sudden stare.

The colonel snorted. “Well, they didn’t hire you for your brains, did they?” he said, and resumed climbing the hill with his sons.

Liesl bowed her head and waited for the doctor to leave, but he remained beside her, watching the family retreat. Wind shifted over the pond. Near the far shore, a duck paddled alone, its brown feathers ruffled white.

When the family was almost out of sight, Liesl straightened. “Good day, then,” she said.

The doctor bent wordlessly and picked up his leather bag. A wadded blue napkin rolled out across the grass to reveal a slice of almond pastry. Whipped cream squeezed out the sides. He made a soft, embarrassed noise, half chuckle, half sigh. Liesl plucked up the cake, rewrapping the napkin.

“For your son,” she said, holding it out. The cake was heavy, flesh-weight.

The doctor’s fingers grazed hers as he accepted it. “My wife, actually,” he said, with a rueful smile. “It’s a bribe.”

Liesl picked up her bloody robe and folded it under her arm.

“She wants to know why I won’t bring her here,” he said. “Our little Hans could run around and she could relax. She deserves to relax.”

“It’s a good place for that,” Liesl said.

Water trickled down her scalp.

“Pardon me,” he said, and grabbed his bag. “Who are you here with anyway?”

Liesl blinked. On her index finger was a tiny tuft of whipped cream. She rubbed it away with her thumb, spreading the grease. She felt him watching her. She forced her voice to be light. “I run the
Kinderhaus.”
She pulled off one sleeve of the coat, but there was a sudden motion beside her, like a bird flying past her waist. When she looked down, she saw his broad hand encircling her wrist.

“Please keep it. You’re still cold,” he said, and showed her the prickled skin on her arms.

She’d refused, of course, blushing. Frank had shrugged, checked his watch, and rushed away, patting the cake in his pocket.

The hospital where Frank used to work was an old castle of a building. Its plumbing and lighting dated from the days before electricity and running water, and it had adapted uneasily to modernization. Iron hooks for oil lamps still remained, curving like torture instruments from the walls. The new lighting gave the old plaster a damp, cheesy hue and drove the spiders to the darkest corners, where they spun deep furs and dotted them with egg sacs. The engineers had not been able to submerge all the new pipes, so cords of metal ran everywhere, catching Liesl’s reflection and warping it as she hurried down the corridor to the medical records office.

The pram rattled before her. Jürgen’s hat slid off just as she reached the door. She stretched down to straighten it. When her fingers grazed his bare skin, she halted. She cupped her palm over his forehead. Hot. He rolled his face away and whimpered. She touched her own brow for reference. It didn’t feel much warmer than her hand. The baby blinked, but his eyes seemed unfocused. She ought to turn around. She ought to turn around right now, but she had promised to help Uta.

Inside a man sat before a large collection of ledgers. They rose in neat towers all over his desk and lined the shelves behind him from floor to ceiling. A few gaped open on the desk, exposing long columns of numbers and letters. The air had the stifled quality of a room that
contains too much paper. The man did not look happy to see her. His hands drifted fitfully over his columns as she explained that her husband needed to get in touch with an old colleague.

“He has a special case just like one Dr. Schein had,” Liesl said, hoping the excuse would be enough.

The man checked his stacks with his eyes. He seemed afraid that she would make some sudden move and knock them down. He softened slightly when he heard Frank’s name but insisted it was not part of his job to handle the addresses of outside doctors. His job was handling
patient
records at
this
hospital.

Well, then who might be in charge of the addresses of doctors?

The man shrugged. Had she tried the registration office in the
Reichsbüro?

“He’s not listed,” Liesl said. Jürgen began to cry and she picked him up, patting his back.

“I don’t have time for this,” the man snapped. He glanced side to side, as if he suspected someone else was hiding in the room with them.

Jürgen moaned. Liesl set him clumsily back down in the pram. She pulled his blanket over him, then pulled it off again. The baby twisted. Suddenly he no longer resembled a miniature human, but some other life-form, something trapped.

“I really can’t help you,” the man added, yet at the same time he slid across the desk a directory. It was a big book, with tiny handwritten corrections. Liesl swayed there a moment, hovering over Jürgen. The baby grabbed for a ribbon she’d tied to the pram handle. She gave it to him and he began to suck on the satin.

The man cleared his throat.

Liesl grabbed the heavy book and sat down. It was organized by type of practice, and then by city or town. She didn’t find Schein among gynecologists, so she began looking in every category, scanning for his
name, secretly hoping not to find it. The man at the desk looked at her from time to time, and then back to his stacks.

She had been in the room with Uta that day. Uta had insisted on her presence, groping for Liesl’s hand but clamping her wrist instead.
I won’t do it without her
.

Liesl had watched Uta, gassed and half asleep, while the doctor did his work. She had kept her eyes on her friend’s slack, quiet face, but she had heard the clatter of instruments, the slurry noise of flesh coming out of Uta’s body, then slapping the basin. Uta had been spared that. Uta had woken up in pain, but freed. She hadn’t witnessed a murder. Liesl had.

Jürgen began to kick his feet against the side of the pram. She towed it back and forth with her free hand. The baby spat out the ribbon. Soon he would wail. She was only halfway through the listings. The old man glared at her and clacked his dentures. His skin was the same color as the walls. But she didn’t have time to return his scorn—a cry erupted from Jürgen’s mouth, a full-fledged scream, as if someone had just stuck him with a knife. She leaned over him and the book slid from her lap and crashed to the floor. The man at the desk glared. She leapt up and shoved the pram out, bashing the threshold.

Outside, she pressed Jürgen to her chest. She carried him all the way home, the boy sobbing, then lying hot and quiet in one aching arm. Her other hand pushed the empty pram, its pale insides shaking over the cobblestone.

Uta was sitting with her feet dunked in steaming water when Liesl burst in and set Jürgen down on the table, stripping him.

“Where are the boys?” Liesl said.

“They’ve been playing in the cellar,” Uta said. “I can’t stand it down there but I’ve been listening.”

Jürgen began to cry again as she exhumed him from his clothes, but even beneath the noise, she thought the cellar was too quiet. She wedged the half-naked baby against her shoulder and walked to the head of the stairs, calling the boys’ names.

“That child’s going to catch a cold,” Uta observed.

“He has a fever,” Liesl snapped. “And I didn’t get the address.”

Uta was silent. Her bare feet stirred in the water.

“The boys might have liked a hot bath, you know,” Liesl said. “Did you ask?”

“I should have gone,” said Uta. “Was it a man in charge? I’ll go tomorrow.” She pulled her feet out of the tub and wrapped them in a towel.

Liesl took the naked child in one arm and filled a bottle of cool water with the other. She pressed the nipple to his lips.