Free Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum Page A

with nobody to care for him, afflicted by chronic ulcers?
    Anna braves a look at her father, a tall man running to fat, his head lowered bullishly as he glares. Max would have been no match for him. She feels in her stomach, as if it were Max’s, the lift of anticipation when the door to the stairwell opened and then, when it revealed Gerhard instead of her, the catapult of dread. She grasps an end table and screws her eyes shut, trying not to vomit.
    All right, says Gerhard. All right, that’s enough.
    Having assured himself of his victory, he can now afford to be magnanimous; his voice drops into the confiding register he uses when, having cowed a jury with the forceful oratorical tactics he has borrowed from the Führer, he wishes to befriend them.
    You’re damaged goods now, he tells Anna, tainted by that Jew, but nobody need know, thank God. We’ll put the best face on things. Yes, we must think only of the future. Hauptsturm-führer von Schoener—he is your future. He may be a weakling, but he is a kind man. Think of all he has already done for you! Who but Joachim spared you being assigned Land Service in some Godforsaken place? He knows the value of family, of keeping a family together. He would marry you tomorrow.
    Anna opens her eyes and stares at Gerhard. Can he be serious? Will he never see her as anything but child or chattel? For the past few weeks, Anna has never been more aware of her own body: her swollen breasts chafing against her brassieres; the weariness that dogs her every step; the tiny aches and pains in her joints, as though she is a house settling; the constant nausea accompanied by the copper taste of Pfennigs. She is not yet that thick in the waist, and she wears dresses without belts. But can Gerhard truly have not noticed that she is four months pregnant?
    But of course, he is the very definition of a selfish man. Anna moves to the chessboard by the window and turns on a lamp. The ivory and onyx squares glow. Perhaps Gerhard never really saw Max either, not as a human being, a fellow man with whom he might bend his head over these handsome pieces and engage in the strategies of small-scale, harmless warfare.
    She touches the crown of the white king. Thunder mutters, distant now.
    Think only of the future, she repeats. I suppose you’re right.
    Gerhard nods.
    I’m so sorry, Vati, for the trouble I’ve caused you. I will make Hauptsturmführer von Schoener a fine wife.
    That’s my Anchen, says Gerhard.
    I’m tired now, Anna tells him. I’d like to lie down. Forgive me, but would you mind getting your own dinner? There is a pigeon pie in the icebox.
    Yes, yes, Gerhard says. He smiles, exuding an oily mixture of schnapps and forgiveness.
    Anna puts her cheek up to be pinched and leaves the study without looking back.
    In her bedroom, she switches on the lamp. Its shade is a globe of frosted glass, bumpy with little nodules. Her mother’s choice, as are the flowered coverlet, the extravagant armoire. Nothing in the room is really Anna’s. It is the impersonal chamber of somebody perpetually asleep.
    Anna takes her old school satchel from the armoire and packs three changes of clothes. There is no need to bring more; by this time next month, these dresses will not fit her. She adds her hairbrush and a pair of comfortable shoes. She burrows into the bottom drawer of the bureau and retrieves her christening gown, rustling between yellowed layers of tissue paper. Then she steals down the back staircase and runs from the Elternhaus through the servants’ door.
    The road to Weimar is deserted, as gasoline is impossible to get without connections and it is long past curfew. The only vehicle that might pass now would belong to SS or Gestapo, and Anna has no desire to encounter either one. She quickens her pace, jumping at movements in the weeds, her palms slick. The night is moonless and black but for the occasional sullen flare of lightning on the horizon, over the hump of the Ettersberg where