Safe Haven (29 page)

Driven by her realization that at the cannery she would be able to talk to Detlef, she hurried back to the boardinghouse to collect her things. Detlef would tell her what had happened in his meeting with Ilse—of course, he would provide only his version of that meeting. At some point she would need to find a way to get the other side of the story from Ilse.

Buch was already at his station when she arrived. The foreman glanced up and frowned as she hurried to her place on the line. She was sure to get a warning for her tardiness. She fell into the rhythm of the work and waited for Detlef to say something. But he simply nodded as he continued the repetition of the work. It occurred to her that in the few times they had met once she had agreed to hear his story, he had never been the one to instigate the conversation. He always waited for her questions. He would give nothing away. He watched her and waited, like a cat toying with a mouse.

She shuddered as she imagined this man sitting in his office in Germany—a person his men had arrested seated before him, unsure of the crime. In her interviews with others in the fort, she had heard such meetings described—had heard how in many cases the Gestapo agent was unfailingly polite—sometimes even kind, offering water or tea.

Is that how Detlef Buch saw her? Was she just a person he needed to break? She felt a sudden chill and with it the unmistakable need to escape.

Her anxiety built as she launched into the repetitive tasks that were the mainstay of any assembly line. It upset her to suspect that Theo might be right—that once again she had trusted someone and been duped. At least this time the story and her name weren’t spread all over the front page of a major newspaper. But would she ever learn her lesson? What if she wasn’t the gifted journalist that Edwin had said she was? What if he was wrong and she just wasn’t that good? And if that was the case and she could no longer find a place for her writing, who was she?

Instead of making any attempt to ask Detlef about his meeting with Ilse, she worked in silence until the blast of a horn signaled that it was break time. Without a glance at Detlef with whom she usually shared a cup of coffee while she plied him with questions, she hurried off to the restroom. She leaned against the sink and closed her eyes, blocking out her image in the smeared mirror.

“Your boyfriend is waiting, hon,” one of the other women said as Suzanne washed her hands at the next sink.

For a moment Suzanne felt hope and relief. Theo had followed her here? Wanted to talk after all? Would rescue her and see her safely home?

“Can’t think what you see in that Nazi. He’s old enough to be your father, for starters, and you could do a lot better.”

“It’s not what you think,” Suzanne muttered as she ripped the cloth toweling to an unused section and dried her hands.

Back on the factory floor, she walked right past Detlef on her way to the office. She tapped on the door frame, and the foreman looked up from his paperwork. “You were late,” he said and turned back to his work.

“I know. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

The foreman grunted. Suzanne stepped inside the office. He glanced up. “Something else?”

“I was wondering if I could switch positions on the line with one of the others.”

He rolled his eyes. “Look, the POWs are—”

“It’s not that. Look, if I can find someone willing to switch, would that be okay?”

“I had this feeling you were going to be trouble from the day you showed up. But I need you, so work it out if you can on your own time. Right now get back to work.”

“Thank you. I really—”

He gestured toward the door and the factory where the others were moving like cows in a field back to their stations. “On your own time,” he repeated.

“Got it.” She returned to her station.

Detlef glanced at her with one raised eyebrow. “You are in trouble with the foreman?”

“Not at all.” She turned slightly away from him and focused on her work. When the shift ended, she hurried to find the woman from the bathroom. She made her case for making a switch.

“Lovers’ quarrel?” The woman grinned knowingly.

It was the second time someone had said that on this day. “Something like that,” she said, giving into the fact that it was easier to let it go than to try and explain. “So will you trade?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Thanks. I’ll go let the foreman know.”

By the time she spoke to the foreman and got her coat, everyone on her shift had left and the next workers were in place. She hurried out, hoping she had not missed the bus back to town. The last of the workers were climbing aboard as she ran across the road waving at the driver to wait for her. And when she boarded there was only one seat available—the seat next to Detlef Buch.

He pressed himself closer to the window, making room for her. She hesitated and then walked all the way to the rear of the bus to the last row of seats that stretched across the entire width of the vehicle. Two men and a woman seated there moved closer together to make room for her to sit.

“Glad to see you finally came to your senses,” one of the men muttered.

Once Ilse got Liesl settled for the night, she joined Gisele outside on the back steps of the barracks. The late April night was unseasonably warm, and Ilse was glad for the breeze. They were facing the lake; the only light came from the tip of Gisele’s cigarette and the lights in apartment windows above and to either side of them. If they looked out toward the water, all was darkness—an infinity of blackness and the unknown.

“What will you do?” Gisele asked.

The question was one that needed no further explanation for any of the residents at the fort. As the time came closer for them to leave, it turned out that they might have choices after all. So far none of them involved staying in America, but no longer was their only choice that of returning to the place they had lived before they had been arrested, evicted, or imprisoned.

“I need to go back to Munich. I need to find Marta and the children.”

“And Liesl? She doesn’t want to go. She thinks of herself as American. Her friends are here.”

“But we will have to leave anyway. She cannot stay here, so why not go back to a place we know?”

“She was not happy there. You were not happy there.”

“I was a fool in those days.” Ilse’s voice drifted off as she looked out into the night. “What about you?” she asked, turning her attention back to Gisele, who was crushing out the stub of her cigarette. “Will you go to Paris or to Palestine?”

Gisele sighed. “Does it matter? I know I have been talking about the new state, and if I were ten years younger that might indeed be the best option. As for Paris? Either way I will again be starting over, and I am so very tired of new beginnings. Like your Liesl I have grown used to these Americans and their ways. I would like to stay here—go to New York City and open a little boutique there.”

“I can see you doing that. Of course you could also open your shop in Paris.”

“Paris will not be Paris for some time once the war ends, and I cannot live on the memory of what the city once was.”

“Do you not have family you want to find back there?”

“My family was taken in the first war—brothers, father. My mother died of a broken heart.”

“Friends, then—those you told me about working with to get Allied airmen back to England.”

“Perhaps.” She pushed herself away from the steps and stretched. “The fact is that there is nothing we can count on to still exist from our pasts, Ilse. And so—like it or not—we must make a new future.” She bent and kissed Ilse’s cheek. “Good night.”

Ilse sat alone for some time after Gisele left. She listened to the laughter and conversation coming from the open windows of the barracks until one by one the lamps went out and all was quiet. It was so quiet that she could hear the lapping of the lake against the shore at the base of the hill where the barracks sat. Their “villa on the hill,” as Franz had called it.

The sound reminded her of the ocean—the tide coming and going. She thought about Franz, wished he were still with her, and she allowed the tears that she refused to show Liesl or indeed anyone else to fall. “I miss you so very much,” she whispered. “You would know what to do. You would decide for us.” She buried her face in her hands as the tears evolved into sobs. “I cannot do this alone.”

Not alone
.

It was as if someone had whispered the words in her ear. She lifted her tearstained face and listened to the wind, to the water, and to the reassuring sound of stillness.

She realized that she had no choice other than to surrender to the will of others and that she would never do. Somehow she would do what needed to be done—protect her child, find her sister, and make a home for them all.

  CHAPTER 15  

T
heo stared at the document before him. Leading citizens of Oswego had banded together to pen a petition to the president and to Congress, recommending that the refugees be permitted to reside in places of their own choosing, accept gainful employment to rebuild their broken lives, and be eligible to apply for full citizenship.

Reading the copy of the petition, Theo felt something he had not felt for some time. Perhaps with the changes in the government following Roosevelt’s death—resignations in key departments and the unknown status of Truman’s views on the situation—there was reason to hope. He wanted to talk with someone about the changes, consider what they might mean. He wouldn’t do that with Ilse or indeed any of the residents of the fort, for they would assume he knew more than he was telling them, and he would not raise false hopes.

The truth was, the one person he wanted to talk about the changes with most was Suzanne. But ever since that night they had argued, she had avoided him. She had taken to leaving for the cannery early and returning late. He suspected she was spending the time before and after with Buch. And the truth was that this idea filled him not with the rage he had felt that night but rather with jealousy and envy.

Gordon Langford had been calling Suzanne several times a week, and he’d seen from the mail that Selma left for tenants on the hall table that she had also begun receiving official-looking letters from Washington. Gisele told him that Suzanne continued to interview various people in the shelter, although as word had spread of her association with Buch, more of the refugees had pulled away and refused to have anything to do with her.

He wished he had not accused her of being so tied to her career that she had lost all perspective when it came to human kindness and understanding. That was not true. And just because the congressman was calling and writing did not necessarily mean that Suzanne was returning his attention. Theo suspected that whatever drove Suzanne was rooted in her past beyond the disaster of the news story that had destroyed her career. Something had happened earlier in her life that lay at the root of her cynicism and devotion to her work.

He had noticed that in spite of her many contacts she did not appear to have much interaction with her family and she did not have any real friends. What was
her
story?

That night he sat on the front porch of the boardinghouse, rocking in the swing until he saw her get off the bus and walk slowly, wearily toward the house.