Page 75 of Hell to Pay
At last, his coat was off—he had patches with stripes on his shoulders, which probably meant something, but I didn’t know what—and he was in a shirt of khaki cotton. Khaki cotton stained with blood. I realized there was a hole in back, too. That meant the bullet had gone through, right?
Put pressure on it.We’d had first-aid training in the BDM—this was certainly the first time I’d been grateful for anything I’d learned in the BDM!—and I grabbed my clean dishtowels, then realized there was a problem.
“Can you roll to the side?” I asked him. He grunted, but obliged. He was sweating now, great beads standing out on his forehead and upper lip. I pressed one towel to the front of him and one behind, and shouted as loudly as I could.
“Dr. Becker!”
“I remember that,” Matti—I knew I should call him Matthias, but to me, he was still dear Matti—told me in theBiergarten, full of sunshine and flowers and cheerfulness. “I remember the soldier on the floor. The American soldier. It was very exciting.”
“Oma,” Alix said. “You pulled him off thestreet?With people shooting?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I did. Your grandfather.”
“Why, though?” Ben asked. “He was the enemy!”
“Frau Adelberg asked the same thing,” I said. “Shewailedit. ‘What have you done?’ She was sure that an avenging party ofWehrmachtsoldiers would break down the door at any moment and shoot us all, but really, they had enough to keep them busy.”
“But why?” Ben asked again.
“Why?” I said. “Because of the boy, I think. It was a reflex, really, but I think it was the boy. He was only ten or eleven. Axel, his name was, though I only discovered that later. If he shot again, he was likely to kill the soldier, and I didn’t want him to. For his sake, I didn’t want it. Joe was reaching for a grenade, too, and it would certainly have been a bad thing for him to kill the boy. That’s half the reason. The other half? Maybe I’d seen too many dead people by then, and I couldn’t bear to see another one right there outside my door. Not when I could do something about it, I couldn’t. So I did something.”
“But—” Alix didn’t seem to know how to go on. Ashleigh, of course, was filming.
“Thank goodness for Dr. Becker,” I said. “He knew what to do. He cut off Joe’s shirt with scissors and examined the wound, then went upstairs again and came down with a bottle—a pint bottle with no label, with clear liquid inside. I thought at first it was water, but when he came back from washing his hands, he told the soldier—Joe, of course, though I didn’t know his name then—'I’m going to lay you down flat and pour this on the wound, and then you’ll need to turn so Ican pour it on the back. It will sting. Are you ready?’ I translated, and Joe said, ‘Yes,’ and Dr. Becker did it. Joe jerked and set his teeth, but he didn’t cry out. Then Dr. Becker cleaned the wound in back in the same way and said, ‘That will sterilize part of the wound, at least, and the bullet’s gone clear through, which is good. You’d better have a drink, because I need to set your collarbone.’ That hurt a great deal, I could tell, and when it was over, Dr. Becker fashioned a sling for him, stitched his wounds, and bandaged him up, all with strips torn from a clean sheet. Joe sat against the wall, then, his face white and beaded with sweat, breathing hard with the pain.
“After that,” I said, “Dr. Becker stood and said, ‘Bring some glasses, if you would, Frau Adelberg. Four, I think.’ Oh, he was calm. Frau Adelberg poured Schnapps—for that, of course, was what it was,Apfelschnappsfrom Herr Langbein’s special store, a parting gift—into four glasses, and we all had a drink and felt much better for it. How warm it was, going down! It was really very good Schnapps.”
“I remember that, too,” Matti said. “All of you drinking. I was cross because I didn’t get a drink. And then you and Dr. Becker helped the man upstairs. It was rather dull afterwards, as he lay on the bed only. The noises outside were more exciting, and Gerhardt and I made our soldiers fight.”
“So what happened then?” Alix asked. “Did Grandpa swear his undying love for you? He should have, after all that.”
“No,” I said. “Mostly, he sweated and tried not to cry out, and slept in between, for a night and a day, and only sometimes talked a bit with me. To distract himself from the pain, I think. And I put cold compresses on his head and fed him sips of water and soup and wondered what on earth to do now.”
34
TREASURE BEYOND MEASURE. AGAIN
We put Joe on my bed. “He’ll need somebody with him,” I said. “I’ll sleep on a pallet on the floor, and Andrea can?—”
“Can what?” Frau Adelberg said. “Can help shelter the enemy?”
Andrea came in at this moment along with the two little boys. They were all panting, and dragging the soldier’s rucksack. It had clearly taken all three of them to get it up the stairs. Matti said, “Here’s his stuff. We should search for secret papers!”
“No,” Gerhardt said, “for weapons! There are two grenades downstairs,” he told Frau Adelberg. “We should dispose of them, but I said we should ask permission first. You pull the pin out and throw them, so we could throw them in the street. That would be safe.”
Frau Adelberg shrieked, and Andrea said, “I’ll go put them up high, shall I?”
“No,” Dr. Becker said, “you stay here.I’llgo put them up high. In a minute.”
Frau Adelberg moaned, patting her ample bosom. “Oh, what have you done, Daisy? We’ll all die in our beds!”
“Well,” I pointed out, “I’ll be the one sleeping in here. If he kills me, I’ll try to make noise in the process, so you can escape with your lives. He only has one good arm, though, and it’s his left. I’m sure it’s much harder to kill people with only one good arm.”
“He’s not our enemy,” Dr. Becker said, “at least he’s not mine. He’s the Third Reich’s enemy, certainly, but we—” He caught himself with a look of horror, then relaxed and said, “I forget that I’ve told you already, Frau Adelberg, that I’m a Jew. I’ve been hiding for so long, you see. But in this, yes, you can say I’m disloyal. Even during the bombings, I’ve wished only for the Allies to hit their targets. Not to hit me, you understand,” he said with another flash of that humor, “or any of us, but to hit the marshaling yards and the factories? Oh, yes, I’ve wished that. I’ve wished for them to do enough harm that Hitler has no choice but to end this war.”
Frau Adelberg hadn’t been listening, but had continued patting her bosom and shaking her head. Now, she said, “Oh, what have we done? What have we done? You must have been seen, Daisy.”
“By the boy, yes,” I said. “Your neighbors may know, if he’s gone back inside to tell them, but do you think they care at the moment? They’re probably all hiding under the bed.” The battle was truly upon us now, the chatter of a machine gun, the loud reports of rifle fire, the shaking force of an explosion.
