Oh my gosh, you guys.
Oct 2017 was the last time I updated. Are any of you still out there?
I'll admit, I've been dreading this chapter since the day I realized how I was going to plot out the last section of WFR. It's a lot of talking, a lot of angst, and without a big plot device to move things forward. These are the most difficult for me to write, plus all the logical arguments the lawyers were going to make, which I didn't know what going to happen when I started this story so I had to account for all the details I idiotically included in the first quarter of the story.
That, plus increasing grad school to full time and all of the travel for my job I just failed miserably at keeping you guys updated.
I tried. The story is a permanently open file on my laptop. But every time I pulled it up after weeks of being completely stymied about how to make it work it felt like I was going through the stages of grief whenever I looked at it. I missed writing about Joe and Caroline. I hated this story for being so difficult. I felt like the entire thing sucked and wondered why should I go on sucking. I wanted to finish it so badly but didn't know how. It was a lot of frustration and turmoil for what was a fun hobby. So I avoided it, and now here we are over a year later. I'm so sorry.
Thank you everyone who stayed with me and who dropped reviews encouraging me to stick with it. If it weren't for you guys I'm not sure I would have gotten the motivation to sit down and finish it.
What's below is the result of fifteen months of plunking away in airport terminals, hotel rooms, between grad school papers, and when my wonderful husband threatened to unplug the internet router to force me to work on it. I wouldn't post something that I think it terrible for you guys, but if any of you have any suggestions for changes or constructive feedback I would love to hear it.
Anyway, enough excuses. I hope you enjoy Chapter 50!
It's not real.
The sun burns my skin and reflects off the stones of the courtyard in blinding white. The honeysuckle bush still creeps over the wall, but instead of a gentle lull the buzzing bees are incessantly loud static. There is no breeze and instead the air weighs like a heavy blanket across my face. The sky is washed pale, a featureless dome upended overhead like a glass prison, trapping me back here.
With Joe. And Henrich.
They stand a few feet away, shoulder to shoulder and as silent and still as figures carved out of wood. Their eyes are glassy in their sockets as they watch me, unblinking as a doll's.
"What do you say, Caroline?"
His voice tunnels into my ears from somewhere behind me, a taunt breaking across the white noise and wrapping around me in an iron fist. The stagnant air suddenly stinks of cigarettes.
You're dead. I can't say those words to him. My jaw refuses to move. It doesn't give when I dig my fingers into it, trying to pry it loose. Looking down, I see the ancient, dirty pajamas I was wearing the night we were arrested. My hands are smaller when I hold them out in front of me, unmarked by the coming years of violence and hard labor.
But this is a dream.
"What do you say, Caroline?"
It's all my imagination. I snap my fingers but they make no sound. I twist the skin of my arm but don't feel any pain. Joe and Henrich continue to stare emptily ahead, sculpted soldiers looming over me like pieces on a chess board against the colorless sky.
"What do you say, Caroline?"
A command to say it again about my parents. About traitors. I shake my head violently. This is a dream. He's dead. The rancid pajamas stick to my clammy skin.
A hand snaps down on my shoulder, as heavy as a pile of bricks. It makes my legs buckle and forces me to the ground. The boiling stones burn into my kneecaps just like the rocks around the flagpole and I swallow a scream from my locked mouth. Wake up. Just wake up!
Joe suddenly moves, brought to life like a flipped switch. Shifting his weight, he looks at me, raising his eyebrows in unspoken confusion.
I stare back, unable to speak a word.
He turns his head, sees a still-rigid Henrich beside him, and gives a menacing scowl. Henrich doesn't respond.
"What do you say, Caroline?"
In a flash Joe is abruptly behind Henrich. A length of cord appears between his fists and he strings it around Henrich's stiff neck. It isn't until he rips the cord tight that Henrich finally awakens as well, falling to his knees to mirror me and bringing his hands up to claw at the cord.
Joe stands over him, not loosening his grip. The cord bites into his hands from the force he is putting into it, blanching the skin white. Henrich is turning equally red, the veins pulsing along his forehead. His fruitless attempts to pull the noose away only lead to him slicing his own skin open, and blood drips from his neck to stain the front of his old khaki uniform.
Violence. Always more violence.
Each of those times Joe and I committed it – when we caused pain, when we killed – the horror of it had been intrinsic to me, a kneejerk reaction to what in the end was essentially murder or at the very least the threat of it. But I learned to suppress it usually, in part because of the times where the violence was just as much my doing as his. In another because when it was his turn I rarely disagreed with the result. It was hard to be aghast or sickened by the ruthless cruelty of our actions when they were bred from an essentially basic emotion: desperation to survive. Adrenaline caused the decisions made at the time - decisions to end someone else's life – to be the most logical and straightforward. It was fight or flight, and in my prison of a house flight was an option we had the leisure to exercise only once. And until the possibility that our frantic escape to the Americans became remote survivable our only choice was to fight. So we did. The soldier left in the road, Schueller, the men searching for Joe in my house, Mueller... all of them inadvertently set themselves on a collision course with this resolution, and none of them emerged on the other side of us alive. Yet even then these victims were only additions to the tally we both accrued before stumbling into one another. Bloodshed was a solution we equally knew how to use with unnerving ease, and the toll that took was slowly suffocating us alike until somehow we found solace in each other.
But this isn't the same, here in this courtyard. There is no peril, no death hiding in every shadow. Dreams aren't about survival. This is about cold revenge.
"It's what you want, isn't it?" Joe sneers at me, talking through his clenched teeth. Henrich jerks, throwing his feet out to try to escape, and Joe stumbles a few steps until he regains his balance. Growling, he cinches the rope tighter. "This is what you want me to do?"
Henrich is turning purple. Tears leak from his eyes and he no longer looks like the villain he is, not when Joe slowly tears the life away from him in front of me. I always wanted him to suffer as much as I did at his hands but as I watch them twist together I only see the black stain bleeding across Joe's irises. My jaw is still shut tight. I shake my head at him.
"After what he did to you?" Joe drags Henrich forward, closer to me. "You know he deserves to die. You know I'm going to do it."
This isn't real.
"Are you sure?" Joe hisses down at me, his eyes dark even in the blinding sun. "The blood sure feels real, doesn't it?"
My hands are wet at that moment and when I look down they are covered in dark red blood, so thick it drips onto the glaring stones in a steady patter. Beyond them the pajamas are gone. I'm back in my Party khaki too. Another wet, maroon handprint streaks down the front, as if someone grabbed me before being dragged away. The hand grasping my shoulder presses even harder, until I have to catch myself from flattening to the ground, leaving bloody palmprints across the boiling white pavers.
"We're all the same, dear."
When I jerk my head back up Henrich is now standing over me, not Joe. The whites of his eyes are filled horrifically red in his bloated face and he smiles, his teeth glinting in the overwhelming brightness. The buzzing of the bees grows louder until he has to shout over the noise. "What's so different, after all? A uniform? A side in a war? Killing is killing."
He twists the cord tighter again and I reluctantly look down at the victim in his grasp.
"What do you say, Caroline?" Dr. Muller whispers again.
It me, limp against Henrich's legs. My eyes are rolled back in my head and a weeping wound encircles my bruised neck as the cord grinds deeper.
"You're a murderer," he sneers. "Just like me. Just like Joe. And this –" he pulls me up, until my limp head bumps against his chest, "– is the only thing you deserve."
A deafening crack of a gunshot echoes through the courtyard, surprising us both.
Joe is back, walking towards us from the far wall with his rifle cradled in his hands.
Henrich sputters.
Joe raises the gun again and fires. Henrich jerks, holes tearing in his jacket as the bullets punch into his body. Still steadily approaching Joe pulls the trigger once more. The third shot causes Henrich to collapse. My boneless body crumples to the pavement next to him, turning until my blank eyes are staring back at me.
Joe doesn't stop. Again and again he shoots Henrich, until the blonde is as lifeless as me. A pool of more blood seeps out from beneath us. When Joe finally reaches the bodies he pauses, considering them contemplatively.
"What do you say, Caroline?"
Joe's head swings over to me, his face gone wooden once more. When he speaks his voice is as flat and empty as his expression. "We're all condemned."
"Pull the trigger!" Dr. Mueller screams.
Another gunshot bursts catastrophically in my ears. I recoil and over the piercing ringing of my ear drums hear a shriek, but it isn't mine.
Mother. When I open my eyes she has taken the place of Joe, tied to a post looming over the bodies. Henrich has disappeared too.
Anne lays dead beside me, her face frozen in a look of unending terror.
No, no, no, no.
The smoking Luger rests in my hand.
This is a dream.
A red stain grows larger and brighter in the center of Mother's chest. She stares at me, her eyes bulging out of her head. No one moves. Then she opens her mouth –
"Why did you do this?"
I don't have an answer.
The buzzing and ringing stop abruptly and it's so quiet I hear the boiling air scraping down my throat. Tears burn my eyes and when I wipe to clear them I see Daniel has materialized next to Anne, limp and dead on the fiery ground. Then, one after another, the rest of the Jews who tried to escape with them appear, surrounding me in a lifeless, rotting circle. Then Anne's family, then the group that fled out our back door that frigid night, expanding the circle wider and wider from me. Their heads are turned towards me and they watch with their dry, wilting eyes.
The nerves and vessels inside my body twist until my organs are in a tight knot deep in my stomach. This isn't real.
"Why, Caroline?" Mother wails. I look back to her and her nightshirt is soaked down to the hem with blood.
Father rests at her feet, his chin resting on his chest and a horrific hole shattering his forehead. He stares, saying nothing, but the I feel the same question as I tremble to my feet in the middle of them all. They still watch. The courtyard is as silent as the graveyard it's become.
WHY?
"Please state your name and rank for the record."
"Joseph Liebgott, Technician 5th Grade."
My eyes feel like they are full of grit. A drumming headache sifts through my skull. My hands are pink and aching from the number of times I scrubbed them but still feel of dripping blood.
When I lift my unseeing stare from the table he is sitting in the same chair that Henrich occupied yesterday. I find that he watches me too, if in an entirely different manner than my former tormentor.
Shortly before now, when I was waiting in the stale and damp box in the basement of this building, illuminated by a harsh lightbulb swaying over our table, my lawyer outlined the repercussions of what had transpired so far.
"We are walking on a thin wire here, Caroline. It's a miracle that this whole thing hasn't been declared as a mistrial. We can't start over. The Russians aren't going to drag Lehmann back. I don't want him to come back. This is our only shot at creating enough doubt about your involvement. There can't be any further issues with you, or Corporal Liebgott, or anything. Do you understand?"
Word of these issues must have spread, because far more people sit in the rows behind me than usual, clearly waiting for another spectacle. I hear their whispers and their low murmurs and it makes me want to slump onto the table and cover my ears. Joe seems irked by their presence as well, and throws more than one exasperated glance at the gallery.
Then his gaze finds me again, and for the lingering seconds our eyes connect I can read the hope there, a willful promise that everything here will turn out in our favor. I can't return it.
Why did you do this?
Henrich was such a bastard, and his twisted lies yesterday about what he did to me were as infuriating as they were false and I was going to make sure everyone here knew it. Everything else though – everything else photographed and filmed and documented – that couldn't be refuted. I was a Nazi. I am a murderer. Even if Joseph Liebgott thinks it can be justified I don't believe history will be so kind. If I can't convince even myself of my innocence what chance do I have here?
Body upon body, surrounding me like a tightening noose.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I take a breath and dig my fingertips into my palms.
Joe seems to hear my thoughts and his glare for everyone else softens in my direction. Pursing his lips, he looks at his lap for a moment before reaching to his collar. He's wearing yet a different uniform again, another I hadn't seen. He still has the belted wool coat and necktie, but this one is more adorned than what he wore yesterday and a brimmed hat covers his entire head rather than the cloth cap. In it he looks so different than the soldier I remember chopping wood in stolen medical clothes. So official. So American.
Directing his attention towards me once more, he tugs at one of the dog tags from the chain at his neck. It's only for a brief second before he tucks them back into his shirt and leans back composed once more, straightening his tie. To anyone else he is appearing to get more comfortable but I understand the message, just like I didn't that day Schueller dragged me to the car. Everything will be fine. He'll take care of it.
If only he didn't know just as well as I do that there is nothing either of us can do. The weight of the dozens of stares hitting the back of my head is evidence enough of that. It takes a shot of pure will, but I manage a wavering smile back to try to appease him. He doesn't look satisfied, but my lawyer speaks again before he can do anything else.
"You are a paratrooper with Easy Company in the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, as part of the 101st Airborne, correct?"
Joe's eyes slide over to the Smith and shimmer slightly with dislike, but when he answers his voice is even and calm. "Yes, sir."
"And you joined in 1942, when the unit was based in Camp Toccoa, Georgia?"
"Yes, sir."
"When did your unit enter combat?"
"6 June, 1944."
"So you have been classified as combat activated since D-Day?"
Joe makes a faint motion towards the sling. "Until I was injured last spring, yes, sir."
My lawyer flips a page. "And in the course of your service you received commendations for your actions, correct?"
"Yes, sir. I received a Bronze Star for the Brécourt Manor engagement in June 1944, as well as the citations the company received as a whole."
"This includes the Distinguished Unit Citation as well, awarded 13 March 1945, for the defense of Bastogne, Belgium?"
"Yes, sir."
"So it is safe to say that you are thoroughly experienced in combat against the German military?"
"I think so, sir."
"Can you give us an estimate of the number of enemy KIA attributable to you, personally?"
Joe is expecting the question, but his face still goes unnaturally still.
"Objection – relevance," the prosecutor announces from his seat before Joe can answer.
"This establishes Cpl. Liebgott's mindset in regards to Germany and the Nazi Party prior to meeting the defendant, sirs," my lawyer answers to the officers in charge.
"Overruled," one of them responds.
Joe presses his lips together for a moment, looking in my direction. "It depends on what qualifies as 'in action,' but around thirty, sir, before I was injured and sent to England."
I stay slumped in my seat. The number didn't matter, not when I am sitting here for being a part of the genocide of a people who couldn't shoot back.
This is the only thing you deserve.
"On the 20 March, 1945, you participated in the operation to take the village of Holzhausen, Bavaria, correct?"
"Yes, sir."
"Tell us, what was your opinion of Germans at this time, and the Nazis in particular?"
Despite his stony expression, Joe glances at me again. I try arrange my face into something resembling reassurance but it feels numb. Even the stitches don't pull tight and everything seems blank and gone, as if the skin has been peeled from my bones.
Joe focuses on the defense lawyer once more, his mouth flattening further. "I was no different than most of the men fighting in the Battle of the Bulge. Germans were the enemy."
"But after nearly nine months of fighting it was a different for you, wasn't it? By the time of this offensive the majority of men you jumped with on D-Day were either casualties or worse."
From the preparation my lawyer gave him he knew these questions beforehand, but that doesn't blunt their impact and his jaw works with visible discomfort. "Yes, that's true. I had no love lost for Germany. A good number of my friends were dead because of this country."
"And the Nazis?"
Joe gives a slow blink. "I thought they deserved to die. I didn't see why they had to invade half of Europe and drag us over here to fight them but since they did, they got everything they deserved."
Heroes are those who die for their Fuhrer –
"Do you ever regret killing the enemy combatants you did, Corporal Liebgott?"
Drawing his brows together, his eyes drop to the top of his crossed knee, thoughts shifting back and forth behind them. Behind me the gallery is dead silent. The line of his shoulders is stiff, even in the sharp tailoring of his uniform.
"I wish I had more compassion to put some of them out of their misery more quickly than I did, but overall no. No, I don't regret doing what I had to do to win."
That day, on the sunlit hilltop when the air was dimmed by the realization of Greta's betrayal, he had told me this. He doesn't enjoy it, but he won't apologize for the bodies trailing in his wake. Still, I can see, although he's not on trial here my lawyer's questions are digging deep into the swath of damage still lingering underneath his controlled exterior, and it's a reminder that although now the war is over and the Nazis are vanquished only a few months ago he wouldn't have spared me a second glance or a hesitant second in pulling the trigger if I had been in one of my uniforms while walking that road. Instead the civilian clothes fooled him into thinking that my involvement with the Party couldn't be as high-level as it was and that oversized sweater was mine instead of belonging to a dead Jewish woman.
It feels like my stomach is being tugged out through my belly button and I clench my hands in my lap.
"So by the time you met the defendant is it reasonable to say that your feelings towards her were that she was just another enemy civilian? And she was to be treated suspiciously as such?"
"Yes, sir, at least until I found out that she was a Party member later the night we met."
"Why don't you tell us what happened? How did you meet the defendant?"
Taking a short breath, Joe acquiesces. The courtroom stays quiet and still as they learn about the retreat, the shrapnel wound, the German soldier who found him and that soldier's ultimate demise. And then me, stumbling across the body, running away from him, fighting him. It's here where he first stumbles.
"Then she punched me in the jaw and tried to run towards the back door. That's when I tackled her and… and threatened to, ah…" His jaw clenches, his eyes pinned to his knee, unfocused. "Break her neck. I threatened to break her neck unless she stopped fighting me."
"Were you actually going to do so if she didn't obey your command?" my lawyer asks.
"I didn't plan on it if she cooperated, but if she kept fighting… if she got away to tell someone…" He gives a painful pause. "Yes. I would have done it."
No one make a sound, including me.
"Was that the only time you threatened to kill her that night?"
"No. Shortly after my arrival she was visited by a Nazi official. I heard from their conversation that she was a member of the Nazi Party. After he left, I was questioning her about who the official was but she tried to evade answering. I threatened again to hurt her if she didn't cooperate."
The words are clearly practiced, the cadence level and rehearsed. But his body language tells a different story. He is so rigid that if he tried to move his limbs might snap off. Just like a toy soldier, pale as the blank wall behind him, frozen as a chess piece. My heartbeat thuds heavily inside my ribs.
"And were you going to follow through as well, then?"
The fingers visible in his sling flinch into a fist. "Yes, sir. I went as far as putting my hand around her throat."
"What were your thoughts during this moment?"
Joe raises his head, but his gaze skims over me and focuses on Smith. The line between his brows deepens and his chest rises with a deep inhalation of air. "I thought that it was a ridiculously terrible twist of fate that I ended up hiding in the house of a Party member and that there was no way she wasn't going to try to escape and turn me in. I hated her for that, just like I hated every Nazi for the deaths of the men in my unit. I hated her for her arrogance in thinking she could negotiate with me. I hated her for being the one to find me in my most vulnerable moment when I was completely alone and couldn't stop bleeding. I hated that she knew I needed her help and tried to leverage it against me by not answering my questions."
I feel glued to my chair, listening to the self-loathing lurking in his words and suddenly aware of how very far apart we were in the cellar that night even as his body pinned mine to the wall.
His eyes close, but he continues. "So I wanted to make sure she knew that if anything happened to me I wouldn't hesitate in making her pay with her life. I wasn't going to be taken alive again, by anyone. I wanted her to know that she continued to exist solely by my decision and that when it came to her, I had no qualms about… about killing her like I would any other Nazi."
The ache is piercing, a hot lancing through my chest cavity that makes my eyes water as I watch the shame flicker behind his still-shut eyes and iron-fisted expression. He had relayed this same message during our first tense days together and it had been received loud and clear. I had known that my life held limited value to him at the time, a value that he used solely as one factor in the tactical calculation of his odds for surviving. Much like his weapon or the shelter of my home, my presence was a tool to be used or discarded the way he saw fit to avoid an agonizing death at the hands of the enemy. I remember his dirty, damp face after he pulled off his helmet for the first time, bloodless even in the faint light of the lamp, and the barely checked panic burning in his grip whenever he touched me. I can still picture his careful movements as he tried to sew his own side back closed on my flimsy cot, blood smearing across his fingers and torso, so very alone and far from the people who could help him. Leaving just me, a sworn enemy, as both his only hope and a vulnerability almost greater than the hemorrhaging wound.
In that context, the idea that he felt shame about what had transpired made a wretched feeling knot painfully in my throat. He had reasoning and extraordinary circumstances behind the decisions he made – things I would never be able to articulate to defend my own. I could never resent him for how he treated me, for in the end there was no justification for him to act any differently. If anyone in here wanted to suggest otherwise it was ludicrous because not one of them had experienced being left behind in the dark shadows of war with only luck and the will to live to depend on.
Maybe that's why Joe and I ended up as we did. The feeling of being trapped, of being locked in a cage with the restless urge to do something to save yourself but having no idea of what that was, while simultaneously knowing that every single person surrounding you risked only betrayal… well, that was very a peculiar sort of trauma hard to understand unless it's been experienced first-hand. We both have and managed to find each other despite the odds and the efforts of half a dozen Nazis.
"That's what you felt towards the defendant?" My lawyer sounds carefully incredulous.
Joe moves his head as though he's shaking off unpleasant thoughts like droplets of water and opens his eyes once more. "Yes, sir."
"It is markedly different than what you think now, correct?"
"Yes, sir," Joe repeats.
"What happened that caused such a drastic change in your feelings?"
"At the time I thought that she was going to turn me in at the first chance, so I kept her tied up. Then I passed out from a fever I got from my wound. When I woke up two days later I found that she had escaped. But instead of running off to tell the Nazis about me she had stolen some medical supplies from a German aid station and properly cared for my injury, which probably saved my life. She kept my presence a secret, and continued to do so despite the massive amount of risk it caused her. While I stayed in her house I also realized that she was desperately poor, yet she gave me all the food she had despite already being nearly starving herself. She did all this even after I treated her the way I did."
"But she was still a member of the Nazi party, wasn't she?"
"She was. Initially her assistance for me stopped me from threatening her, but it didn't mean I trusted her." He looks down in concentration. "But then things weren't adding up. Why was she helping me? Why was an impoverished girl living alone in the countryside a member of the Party? Why did the Nazi officials who came to her home treat her so badly?"
"How did they treat her?"
"Threatened her. Insulted her. Were violent towards her. Dealt with her like a prisoner rather than a fellow Party member."
"What incidents stand out in your memory?"
"Her encounter with Henrich Lehmann does, particularly."
It's strange, seeing him in his meticulous and clean uniform describing the barn, the photography, and Henrich's treatment. Foul, bloody, desperate days, now recounted as if what had happened was so far removed from this courtroom that it may as well have been a fairy tale, a shared delusion that doesn't feel quite real.
"Then he struck her hard across the face. She lost her balance, and when he grabbed her he started kissing her."
"Did it appear that she welcomed the embrace?"
"No, it did not. She bit his lip, and when he pulled away I saw it was bleeding. He called her an – an impolite name, then attempted to assault her again and ripped her clothes." The edges of his face sharpen at the memory. "It was clear what he was going to do if she or I didn't try to stop him a second time."
Count by count, breath by breath, the hours he spent watching and memorizing my undignified existence are painfully drawn out and picked apart with planned precision. To think I started this with so many secrets, with the blighted company of just silence and my disintegrating brain in that isolated house for nearly two years. Months of biting my tongue, of slinking along the fringes of the village, of holding a history so burdensome so close to my chest that I felt it with every beat of my heart yet still trying to pretend it never existed. So much time of being so careful and now it comes to this, with these strangers finding out everything in a language I couldn't understand and looking at me with expressions I didn't want to read. Joe tries to sound disinterested, as if he could tell everything he knew about me with the detachment of an impartial spectator, but I can tell. I can hear the memories in the unnatural thickness of his voice even as he speaks English, saying the things words of any tongue could never describe and what no one but us could ever know. Our vulnerability, our pain, our hopelessness.
"The bombing the night of the 23rd did significant damage to her home, but she mainly appeared concerned for my wellbeing."
Standing in the kitchen, the cold breeze and stench of wood smoke drifting in through the broken wall to wrap around our legs. His arms tightly crossed between us and his eyes amber in the morning light but pointed to the ground. "You did. I don't know how, but… you did."
"How did she continue to treat you as time progressed? Did you see anything that would suggest she was still loyal to Germany?"
"She treated me well – fed me, got me civilian clothes to hide my identity, washed my uniform, and took care of my wound. I did not know why she was a Party member because nothing indicated she held any allegiance to them. She only helpful towards me and apparently couldn't stand Henrich or Schueller."
The warm relief of his outline in the lamplight and the growls of the approaching battle rattling the earth. His fingertips drifting across my face and the hard edges of his dog tag in my palm.
"How you were feeling by that time, mentally? You had been stranded several days."
"Things were… difficult. Exhausting. Always being on watch and never able to relax…I was ready to be back on the friendly side on the line."
The air is heavy and tastes of copper. Blood and sweat splattered across his flinted eyes. The dripping of the knife in his hand at a steady bead to the floorboards. The body behind him, the other downstairs, and a cruel sneer towards Schueller on his face. "Do you really think you'd have a chance?"
"So Schueller was going to kill her if you didn't follow his commands? Like he knew she was on your side?"
Joe's eyes drift to mine. "Yes, sir."
The cold steering wheel pressed against my hot forehead. The door opening, letting the sunlight in, and him pulling me free from the tangle of limbs and broken glass to fold against his body. "You knew I wasn't really going to let him take you?"
"Then she took his sidearm and shot Schueller once to kill him."
"Did she tell you why she did this?"
"No, but it was clear he did not have a survivable wound and would only risk exposing us until he finally succumbed. By putting him out of his misery Caroline allowed us to make a successful escape back to the American line."
The smooth pull of the slide to chamber a round. The practiced grip on the trigger. Him stepping away, knowing what I aim to do and moving aside. Watching the familiar embrace of madness.
"And she showed no hesitation in killing a fellow Party member?"
"No, sir."
The chill of night as cold as the breath of death. The body of a murdered man disappearing between the trees. Legs so heavy and numb but his guiding hands pushing me onward. Running, but knowing the lies are inescapable.
"What was your impression of her mental state during this? Exhausted as well?"
"Objection," the prosecutor says. "Hearsay. And the question is leading."
"Sustained," one of the officers answers.
My lawyer nods and concentrates on Joe once more. "Corporal Liebgott, did Ms. Alsbach every ask to go back to the American side of the line with you? Did she ever speak of escaping as well?"
"No. Our original plan was for her to barricade herself in her home until Easy took control of the village. She said she wanted me to stay with her because she was afraid that I was going to be injured again, but she never suggested she try to escape as well."
"Did you suggest it?"
"No, not initially. I did not have anywhere for her to stay behind the line. We were not offering civilians shelter or rations at that time, so her existing home was the only place she could be housed with relative safety."
"What changed?"
"We were discovered by her neighbor, who turned out to be a collaborator with Dr. Mueller."
Greta's eyes dark and knowing and the cold grip of panic in my gut. The three of us standing there, silent and staring at each other with the growing pain of suspicion. The flagging relief when Joe steps forward, ax flashing in the sun.
"So, until it became inevitable that she was going to be arrested, Ms. Alsbach was going to stay behind voluntarily to continue to be subjected to the same people you had already witnessed mistreating her?"
Joe's face is slightly glazed, as if he were traveling back to those heady days as well. "At least until the battle was won, yes, sir."
"Do any of these actions strike you as those of someone secretly still devoted to the Nazi Party?"
He rouses, straightening slightly. "No, sir."
"How about as those of someone just trying to endear themselves to the side that happened to be winning the war?"
"No. In fact, I heard her tell Henrich that she hoped the Americans would win so she could leave the Party."
The hours stretch. They continue on, back and forth, again and again, trying to unwind all of the little details to prove who's side I was really on.
The cellar lit in the orange glow of the stove. His stare is hard, his grip on his gear tight. "Don't ever touch my shit again, understand?"
The rain hitting my face in the heavy drum of cold fingers. A shadow approaches, wet and dark, and then the rain stops, blocked by his warmth. His helmet low over his unreadable gaze but his touch softer than I've ever known it, lifting me from the mud.
The night closing in but broken by the glow of war to the south. Rough fingers skimming my cheek, heart thudding surely under my hand. Dread tainting every touch.
His lips on mine, hands tearing at clothes, hips grinding into one another… the last grasp before an unavoidable destruction.
"What did these photos contain?"
Joe looks haggard, visible pain deepening the lines around his mouth. "They were pictures of her with who I knew was Henrich and who I suspected were Dr. Mueller and the commandant of the camp."
"And what were they doing?"
Chin falling to his chest, Joe stares at nothing when he answers. "Posing for the camera at locations around the concentration camp."
His grip so hard on my arm the bone aches. "You were exterminating us."
"So this was evidence to you that –"
"That her involvement was much deeper than what I had guessed, yes."
"Why, Caroline? Why?"
"What did this lead you to do?"
He doesn't move his gaze. "I'm Jewish. My people were slaughtered." The ticking of the clock above his chair is deafening when he finally raises his head once more, his eyes connecting directly with mine.
"I made a terrible mistake."
I'm back in the basement, alone and at a table holding an ignored lunch.
The look on Joe's face after my lawyer announced he was finished with his questions – after he had gone through the steps of our confrontation in the woods, of seeing me in the battle for the village, of how he found my file, and how he discovered where I was and rescued me – made him nearly unrecognizable. His shoulders slumped, his face ashen, his hand unconsciously tugging at his sling… Joe was always a headstrong and deliberate man, recklessly or not. To see him so overwhelmed was excruciating. It was clear he still blamed himself for the events so far beyond his control that there was little he could have done to change the outcome. Fate entangled him with a Nazi, yet it looked as though he was paying all the consequences and that fact was almost more heartbreaking than all the others being determined in that courtroom.
The bulb overhead hums relentlessly.
I now know what happened between him and Henrich. I know why he tried to keep it from me.
It was the only time he snapped out of the cloud of anguish surrounding him. When he told of finding Henrich in Greta's house his spine straightened and a flush passed over his cheeks. He spoke of confronting Henrich in the detail my lawyer requested, repeating the questions asked of Henrich and the pain inflicted at the unsatisfactory answers. He uttered the words, again, that Henrich inadvertently mumbled to seal his fate.
What happened there, in Greta's home on that early spring day, was a single afternoon of his brutality I had never seen and one he obviously didn't regret. Not one bit, he made clear, after he realized the full extent of what Henrich had done to me. But despite this confidence his gaze still returned to me every few seconds, trying to read my reaction.
I understood why it had to be said – Henrich's treatment of me belied the possibility that I wanted anything to do with him and Mueller or that Henrich's stories yesterday had any grain of truth – but I still expected something other than what I actually felt. Hearing Joe talking about dislocating Henrich's joints and throwing Greta down my cellar to go mad, I thought I would be horrified, and his wary glances confirmed he felt the same. It was the same thing that stopped my questions the previous evening as we sat in the visiting room, Henrich's fate unspoken but clearly decisive. I didn't want to know, not when it would clearly only bring another unpleasant and brutal event into our history already fraught with them. Some sanity was needed in this mess and leaving Henrich an unknown but no longer threatening question mark was a cloyingly easy way to achieve it. Greta too. Last night I found myself almost indifferent to the pain they suffered at Joe's hands and where they ultimately ended up. It was Joe himself that consumed my thoughts, worry permeating every new event I learned about where his control was stretched past a breaking point. After all, it is a dark and slippery slope into moral depravity, to place where actions are measured in satisfaction rather than righteousness. It's a place I know, and that makes what is happening now the reason why my stomach is still in a painful knot.
Instead of being horrified as I sat in the courtroom I felt… gratification? Relief? The pain they caused me was now returned in measure and hearing about it brought a bitter pleasure to sour my mouth. I hated it, but I knew what it meant. I dragged Joe down the slope with me, trapping him with my uncompromising circumstances that forced him to bloody his hands in my name, and that's not forgivable.
I may have to fight against these charges, but when this eventually doesn't work out – when remand to Nuremberg finally comes down – I'll know why.
The only thing you deserve.
The top of the table is cool against my hot, pounding forehead. I'm still pressed there when the door opens next to me and footsteps cross the threshold.
"Hey."
The agony of Henrich's presence lingering on my skin. The ceaseless dripping of my hair on the floorboards of the bedroom. Hands at my shoulders, pulling me up to see the scar slicing across his neck.
He's crouched beside me when I rise, just like on that rainy, miserable night. But instead of my quiet, ransacked house around us, the cacophony of voices, slamming doors, and footsteps vibrate through the walls. A guard is at the door, holding wrist irons. Everything's changed, most of all him.
He looked at me with guarded, almost bewildered curiosity that night those months ago. His touch was soft but detached, his actions measured and careful. Now, as I lift myself up to look at him he reaches out without thought, brushing a strand of hair out of my face. "You alright?"
I nod. His hand falls to rest lightly on my knee, his palm warm through my dress. "They said we can't talk about the facts of the case. The translator is out in the hall, probably listening."
"Why?"
"Something about 'collusion'. Getting our stories straight, I'm guessing. But your lawyer thought it would be good for me to see you. You looked… unwell in the courtroom."
Sighing, I stare back at the table and the untouched sandwich on it. From the corner of my vision his fingers move from my knee to flick out, pushing the plate towards me. "You should eat."
The thought of food is nauseating so I shake my head and eventually he rises to take a seat next to me. He breathing is quiet in the clammy stillness of the room, his posture slumped tiredly in the chair. Then: "I hoped that wouldn't have to hear about what happened between me and them."
"I know." My words are soft.
He sits for a moment longer before I hear the strained question I am already expecting. "Are you afraid of me?"
He is terrified of this possibility, of returning to wary adversaries staring at each other in a dimming cellar. Of me jumping at his every move and him watching my every breath with guarded eyes. Of hilltops and pleading and tears.
I force a wry smile. "Where have I heard that before?"
Relief unwinds some of the tension I can see in his limbs and he motions towards the sandwich again. "At least the food is better this go around."
His gaze is glued on me as my smile fades and another bout of silence passes. The guilt builds and rolls in my head, sapping at my energy until I can barely get the words out. "I'm so sorry, Joe."
"…For what?" His voice is soft.
"For making you do that to them. For making you hurt them." I chew on my lip, tasting the dry, flaking skin. "If I could redo anything it would be sparing you from having to do that for me – "
"What did you feel after you shot Schueller?"
The question is unexpected and I sit there, mouth still open to say continue a sentence I've forgotten. When I don't answer he leans forward, his face suddenly intent, and continues, "As we stood there you had this look on your face, and I know what it was."
Despite this clammy subterranean room once again I feel the cold night piercing my skin, at odds with my sweaty grip on the hot pistol. Schueller limp and lifeless, face contorted with his final scream, his uniform crumpled and bloody against the crashed car. He wasn't in the dream last night; he wasn't one of the dead swarming around me. Why not?
Joe's voice drops, until only I can hear him over the noise around us. "I know it because it was the same thing I felt as I watched Henrich beg for mercy."
I stare at him until the weak answer passes through my lips with unsteady certainty. "Vengeance."
Slowly nodding, he doesn't look away. "It made you feel better, didn't it? After all he did to you?"
My breath is unsteady. It did. In the falling light of that evening, I thought of all the times he had beaten me and all the damning reports he made for Mueller that sent Henrich to darken my doorway. Seeing him there, twisted and broken, I knew that I was falling down that slope to deprivation with every triumphant burst of gratification over his brutal death and for those minutes I couldn't bring myself to care.
"If I had a do over, I would've killed Henrich that day. You shouldn't be sorry for what happened between me and him because he doesn't deserve forgiveness. Neither does Greta. It isn't a bad thing to give people the punishment they deserve." His conviction is without hesitation, and he seals his point by rapping the table with his knuckles. You know he deserves to die. You know I'm going to do it.
"Joe," I start, trying to keep the quiver from my voice, "playing both the judge and the jury is what the Nazis did. What I did to my own mother – "
"Don't." He shakes his head furiously, a flash of what looks like anger crossing his face. "Don't equate the two, Caroline. That's implying you had a choice under Dr. Mueller's control. He played God, not you, and you feel guilty about it because you know it was wrong. I know you don't feel the same about any of those who tortured you. Would you feel better if you knew Mueller was still alive?" His finger jabs the table with each word.
"But…" I stop, struggling to come up with a rebuttal. What he was telling me is the complete opposite of everything I had known. The crimes I committed would always be on my conscious and mine to atone for, because killing was wrong. At least, when it's not in self-defense… and the nights Schueller and Mueller died I wasn't fighting for my life. They weren't attacking me. And that's only counting those who were evil. The others that weren't – Mother, Anne, everyone else – were victims because of me. Yet, he was right that Mueller being alive wouldn't make me feel better. On the contrary, it was a relief that he was dead just like it was comforting to know that Henrich and Greta could never hurt me again. So how can I feel so much guilt over all the bloodshed yet not regret any of it? What does that make me? "But what gives me the right to decide who lives or dies?"
He takes my arm then, his touch so light I nearly don't notice, and turns it face up on the table. His fingertips glide up from my wrist and cross the edge of the bandage until they are hovering over the spot where the letter M is healing into a scar under the thick gauze. They rest there for a moment, and when I look up to his face I see the muscle of his jaw clenched hard as he stares at them.
"Don't you understand?" he finally says, his hand lowering to rest over the wound. "With them, you are the only one who has the right."
"Corporal Liebgott, what exactly did Ms. Alsbach tell Oppensgrupenlieter Schueller when he arrived at her home the night you found refuge in her cellar inquiring about the dead German in the roadway?"
"She told him she hadn't seen anything."
"So she lied to him? And he believed her?"
"Given that he didn't search the house for me, I believe so."
"And what about when her neighbor, Greta Ludenn, found you in Ms. Albach's yard, what did Ms. Alsbach do then?"
"She told Greta that I was a friend visiting while I was recuperating."
"So, she lied again?"
"…Yes, to protect me."
"What she did she do when Schueller can looking for you?"
"She told him I wasn't there, but –"
"Another lie."
"Let me finish – "
"Corporal Liebgott, what exactly did Ms. Alsbach tell you about her past while you were staying in her home?"
"She said she had been part of a program similar to the Hitler Youth."
"What did this include?"
"She said it was propaganda stuff – speeches and photographs."
"But not what it really entailed, right? Anti-Semitism? Convincing everyone the Holocaust was needed?"
"…No, but why would she? I was an American soldier who was threatening to kill her."
"Not by this time though, correct? According to the deposition you gave yesterday you too were already on friendlier terms."
"That doesn't mean she trusted me. We had only been together a few days at that point. Henrich had just left and she was beyond rattled. What was she supposed to say – 'Oh, by the way, since you haven't tried to shoot me in the last 24 hours I need to tell you I used to be a Nazi collaborator who visited concentration camps?' Give me a fuck – I mean, give me a break."
"But she didn't tell you anything, did she? Just some vague nonsense about being a magazine model. Why not admit the truth, including what she did at Kaufering and the fact that she was being punished for helping those victims escape? Wouldn't that have done far more good than lying to you, just like she had been to everyone else? Why didn't she just say that? Why add more lies? How many had she told by this point? Did she ever tell the truth to anyone during the days you were together?"
"I believe her."
"Just like you believed her in that house, or afterwards when you risked your life to bring her over to American side? You trusted her unquestioningly enough to run through live fire for her, but in the end it turned out to be all lies. Lies she didn't try to correct until you found the evidence of her real involvement. If she didn't trust you in her cellar, why didn't she after you proved your loyalty by saving her life multiple times? Why didn't she admit what she was as soon as you both were safe?"
"Given what happened after I found out, I would say she made the sane choice to keep me in the dark."
"But your anger was mostly caused by her dishonesty. In fact, didn't you initially assume she had lied to get to the American side without being arrested?"
"I did, but – "
"So even you believed that she was lying to escape the consequences of her actions."
"Sir, you weren't there when we found her after they interrogated her. They beat her nearly to death. Henrich carved words into her skin. Before she knew who I was she asked me to put her out of her misery. She killed Dr. Mueller – "
"Allegedly – "
"No, she told me she did when we were standing right next to their goddamn bodies –"
"How convenient."
Joe purses his mouth in frustration and looks at me, a shadow of concern crossing his features.
I feel it too.
There were so many times when we thought we were in the clear, that we had finally escaped the last trap and could take a breath of free air. That we could finally stop looking over our shoulders. Collapsing in that foxhole of American-owned soil after dashing across the battle line. The warm seclusion of the farmhouse. The brief seconds on the damp forest floor, released from Dr. Mueller's cage. But each instance was fleeting, a flash of light before the shadows descended once more. The relief of making it to the Americans was tempered by the hostility of the reception by some to a Nazi. The heat of our relieved embrace in the farmhouse shattered by the condition of my body and, later, the destruction of Kaufering. The quiet night of Dr. Mueller's compound shattered by gunfire and blood.
They were all mistakes.
Was this one as well?
The prosecutor hammers on relentlessly.
"She has killed people. Innocent people, both by pulling the trigger herself or by leading the Nazis to exactly who they were looking for – the Jews in her basement, the Jews in the woods."
"She didn't do that intentionally."
"How do you know that? Because she told you? I think by this point we both know we can't trust anything she's told you, Corporal Liebgott."
"It's different – "
"Different? What exactly has changed? She was supposedly under duress then, but wouldn't you say it's exactly the same now? Her life is still on the line. Aren't the stakes that made her a dishonest, ruthless killer are exactly the same now?"
"No. Nothing about this situation is the same now. She fought tooth and nail against the Nazis, but if she had her way here she'd let you hang her outside!"
"…So she says. One thing that isn't the same, Corporal, is that you know the truth now, even if you won't admit it. You know what she is, so she has to change her tactics. I don't see her volunteering any damning information. That would be number one on the list, wouldn't it, if she was so eager to be found guilty? Believe me, we've asked her over and over and over. And what are her answers? 'I don't know. I don't remember.' Or, better yet, just complete silence."
"You don't know what she's been through."
"On the contrary, I know exactly what she has been through. I know more, apparently, than you did before arrived in this courtroom yesterday."
Joe glares, but doesn't respond.
"So she lies to Schueller. She lies to Henrich. She lies to Greta. She lies to you. How are we to know the truth?" He turns on his heel and marches past me to the back of the room. The room is still silent as everyone turns their heads to watch him. He grabs a remote connected to the projector. "All we have is this… this… and this." With each pause he hits a button on the remote and new pictures splay on the wall. Me at another rally, my uniform spotless and the blood red swastika on around my bicep. Me at Kaufering, inspecting rows of emaciated prisoners. And, finally, me at the Wolf's Lair, bowing in apparent reverence to Adolf Hitler.
Joe turns his head away from the images, his discomfort at them palpable.
It's then I know.
"You can't bring yourself to look at these, at what she was? Even after seeing similar ones months ago?" Joe brings his head back around to stare daggers at the prosecutor as he makes his way back forward, leaving the picture of me and Hitler displayed behind him. "I never said I stopped hating Nazis."
"Except her. You love her."
"I do."
"Even after all of this?" He motions at the picture. "Even though you can barely look at her here?"
"Yes."
"But this," he points violently at my careful smile towards the Fuhrer, "is the only evidence we have, Corporal." He steps closer to Joe, his voice lowering. "Even if she supposedly changed her mind to draw the anger of Schueller and Henrich – which apparently didn't include refusing to take more propaganda photographs with him - do you have anything – and I mean anything – other than just her words that this and all the other pictures of her working fervently for the Nazi Party were nothing but a ruse?"
Joe raises his eyes again to meet mine then, and I know he's realized it too. "No, I don't."
The prosecutor sighs, moving back and shaking his head. "You aren't the first man to be blinded by love, Corporal Liebgott," he tells Joe forlornly. "And you won't be the last." He gathers his papers to return to his table, his destruction of Joe's testimony quick, brutal, and efficient. "The prosecution has concluded with this witness, your Honors."
We still stare at each other.
…Will hope always be a mistake?
