Free The Diaries - 01 by Chuck Driskell Page A

single being who the real father
is.  
    I left Berlin wearing her tailor-made clothes,
looking the part of a debutante (a slightly pregnant one) carrying only a grip
with my diaries, walking all the way to Potsdam.   It was awful.   My morning sickness, of course, was at its very worst.   I would stop in alleyways, retching uncontrollably.   People on the sidewalk looked at me like I
was a leper.   One man, wearing the party
emblem, was walking with his two children when I was heaving on the street.   He openly cursed me for
bringing my sickness out into the Reich.   I ran, even while retching, for fear he would have me arrested.
    Once I reached Potsdam, I used my knowledge of
housekeeping to convince a frazzled housewife to allow me to work for a meal.   Her husband was a kind man and, after three
days of cleaning and arranging their home, he gave me enough money to reach
Frankfurt.   But when I arrived, I learned
my parents and cousins were gone, no one knew exactly where.   They had fled to the north.   My aunts and uncles were still there, too old
to run, but telling me to follow suit.  
    Because of my sickness, I have to stay here and
convalesce.
    And now some good news!   Last night I met Heinrich, from the same
neighborhood, a kind man, a grocer.   He
fed me, allowing me use of his cozy attic room where I sit now.   I like Heinrich, and I think tonight I shall
tell him I’m pregnant.   Because in what
remains of my life, I feel compelled to trust someone, anyone, lest I die all
alone.   And I would rather painfully
perish with but a friend, than to stagger through this life with only
emptiness.
    Perhaps Heinrich will leave with me?   Hope, diary, hope!   It keeps me going.   I am not sick right now, so I will take
advantage of this moment to enjoy a bit of sleep.

    Gage closed his
finger in the passage, closing his eyes, leaning his head back.   He knew he was living out a bit of his own
agony through the eyes of this poor Jewish girl.   She had crossed Germany, with child, without
the benefit of family or friend.   More
than half of the diary still remained; perhaps it would provide some sort of
positive denouement to what had thus far been a tragic, sometimes disturbing
tale.
    His finger hovered
above the red button.   When touched, it
closed the connection to the Internet and notified the man at the front of the
amount of time used on the Internet.  
    Wait…Heinrich?
    Gage concentrated,
thinking back to the stumble-stone in front of the Keisler Building.   Heinrich Morgenstern and family…
    Heinrich was
listed as killed…
    Wife was listed as
killed…
    The date they had
been taken was in November, 1938, because Gage remembered it being right around
the time of the infamous Kristallnacht .   He flipped to the back of the diary, seeing
empty pages.   He backed up…the last entry
was November 10 th .
    Sonofabitch…
    He squeezed his
eyes shut, growling through clinched teeth.   Greta had surely married Heinrich because, presumably, according to her
writing, Heinrich had been single when she arrived.   He must have been Jewish, too.   She said he was a kind man.   He must have married her and they both died,
with prejudice, soon after.   Gage slumped
in the chair.   A person could hear of the
millions who died in the Holocaust—a shockingly large number, but the thought
would soon pass like so many tragic facts do.   The number was old news, too large to seem real, just like the deaths
from the U.S. Civil War or the World War II casualties from the eastern front.   It wasn’t too unlike the view from an
airliner, viewed from such great height to even seem threatening.   But stand on the ledge of a three-story
building and lean out over the concrete.   Death seems imminent from that height, available to a person in mere
seconds.   Gage had just viewed the
atrocities of the Holocaust from a three-story view, and it had left him
shaken.
    He glanced at his
watch.   It was time