Page 73 of Hell to Pay
“Indeed it was,” I said. “This is my granddaughter, and—” I introduced the rest of them, using a mix of German and English. “Ashleigh is making a sort of record,” I told Matti. “A video record, for this tick-tack and so forth.”
“TikTok, Oma,” Alix said.
“Yes,” I said. “That’s the one. About the war, and my return.”
“Come, then,” Matti said. “Sit down, all of you, and tell me about it. Or—wait. Konrad, what can we do aboutMittagessen?Our guests must have lunch.”
“Oh, please don’t bother,” I said.
“Nonsense,” Matti said. “It’s time for my walk anyway. Let’s walk to the Grüner Brauhaus, shall we?”
“It can’t still be there,” I protested.
“And why not?” he said. “It’s been there since 1709, hasn’t it? It would take more than a war to kill the place off. They make an excellentSchnitzeland a very fineBratwurst,and, of course, it’s still a brewery, too. A fine day to sit outside and enjoy a beer.They also have potato soup, but you and I will skip that, no?”His smile reached all the way to his blue eyes, and he was still so dear.
How I laughed! “Yes,” I said, “let’s skip the potato soup.” I remembered the others, then. “I’ll do my best to translate,” I told them, “but?—”
Matti said in English, “I have some English. Enough to follow, even if perhaps not speaking so much.”
Alix said, “That’s great, then. Let’s go do that, and you can catch up.”
“And eat,” Ben said. “I’m starved.”
Matti smiled a bit and said, “Ah. Starved. Well, perhaps.”
We did put up Frau Adelberg’s Swiss flag that first afternoon—April 17th, 1945. We could hear the deepboomof shelling more distinctly now. “Artillery fire,” Dr. Becker explained, though I couldn’t imagine how he knew. It was coming from the west, and heading our way, “because,” Frau Adelberg said, “the Americans must come east, mustn’t they? Perhaps they’ll even drive my Emil toward me, who knows?”
The shelling grew louder as the afternoon progressed, and Dr. Becker boarded over the lower windows as best he could, pulling apart packing crates for the purpose. There were still gaps, but they weren’t man-sized. “Who knows what the Americans will do?” Frau Adelberg said. “They’re still men, after all, and if they’re anything like the Russians …” She stopped and looked at me. “Do you understand what I’m saying? When they come, you and Andrea must hide.”
“I understand,” I said. I hadn’t understood, when I’d been that protected princess in Dresden and the warning was coming from my parents, but all those women fleeing from the east had long since told me the tales. No female from eight to eighty was safe, they’d said. Some girls had even died of their injuries. Oh, I knew very well by now what she meant.
“Will you show me the kitchen now, please?” I asked. What use to worry about things that hadn’t happened yet? “You can explain your techniques so I’ll be prepared to work in the morning. What time will I need to get up?”
“I begin work at four,” Frau Adelberg said.
“I think I’ll begin a little sooner,” I said. “I’m bound to be slow the first day. How about three-thirty?
It didn’t work out that way. Oh, I rose at three, right enough—Dr. Becker had slept with the two boys in one bedroom, while Andrea and I shared the other. What luxury, to share a room with only one other, and to once again have someplace to wash! The shooting and shelling continued through the night, but I slept straight through it, so accustomed was I now to odd discomforts.
In the kitchen, though, with the sounds of battle much nearer, Frau Adelberg said, “No customers will come today, surely. They’ll be hiding.”
“Then I’ll make only enough bread for us,” I said. “That works out perfectly—I can learn without being anxious that I’ll spoil the whole batch. As our flour supplies are low, I’ll bake potato bread this first time. That one, I know well.”
Frau Adelberg raised her arms and let them fall. “For one so young—” She shook her head. “You have the confidence of a queen. Or the foolhardiness.”
“Or both,” I said. “Almost certainly both. But please—watch what I do and correct me if I go wrong.”
I started by peeling, chopping, cooking, and draining a pot of potatoes—still the easiest foodstuff to come by, alas—then mashing them in an enormous commercial mixer in which they were nearly lost. The bowl held forty quarts! When the potatoes were well mashed but not gluey—I knew the difference, for I’d made that mistake more than once—I used some of the warm cooking liquid to dissolve the yeast, along with a scant teaspoon of precious sugar, before adding the mixture to the potatoes along with salt.
“The Holy Trinity,” Frau Heffinger had once told me, “sugar, salt, and butter. You cannot cook well without these.” Sacrilegious; but then, she was Lutheran.
I didn’t have butter, but I did have a bit of oil, so I added that to the potatoes along with the flour. As much wheat flour as I could bear to use up, and rye flour to stretch it. As the mixer ground slowly away, the dough began to look shaggy, as it should, less like mashed potatoes and more like bread. What a relief it was to know that the laws of baking, at least, hadn’t changed, whatever else went wrong with the world!
After the mixer had labored away for five or six minutes, I tipped the mound of dough out onto the wooden counter and finished the kneading by hand, partly to feel when the elasticity was right and partly for the pleasure of accomplishment. I’d put the dough in the oven with a pan of hot water, and then?—
The explosion was so unexpected, I jumped, banged my side against the counter—I’d feel that bruise tomorrow—then ducked, purely from reflex.
Frau Adelberg called from the bottom of the stairs, not venturing into the room, “You must come up now and hide!”
