“David!” she called louder. There was still no answer. Where could he have gone? He wasn’t strong enough to walk a block, let alone climb a tree. She stood completely bewildered in the alley.
The snow collected in her collar. She could feel the heat of the thermos in her backpack. She felt a panic rising within her. Where could he be? Had he gone back into the house? But he had told her it was dangerous now, and the window well had been closed up tight with a thick board. He wasn’t sure why.
She looked around. She called softly again. She had to do something. She walked along the back wall that continued the length of the alley. Two houses down from David’s house, she found one alley door that was open to someone’s garden. She walked through. The hedges that separated the back gardens of the neighboring house were covered in mantles of thick snow. But she could see that the hedge directly ahead had been broken through. Not only broken through, but as she approached, she saw that there was a tuft of eiderdown. She reached out and took it. This was not from a duck that had flown over the garden, but from the quilt she had brought David. She was sure.
She pushed through the hedge. Then she saw the shallow depressions, like shadows in the snow. He had walked this way. It must be David. The snow was falling so fast that the shoe prints were being erased quickly. But there was a crust of bread. She bent over to pick it up. It was from the bread she had brought him before. She had been bringing him food whenever she could.
Within a few steps, she stopped short. There were clear footprints with dark spots in the snow. She crouched down—blood! She felt a strange paralysis seize her. Eider fluff, bread crumbs, and blood! This was like a darker Hansel and Gretel story. Where would it lead? She heard a soft cough and raced across the next yard and through the hedge.
She was in the secret garden again. The moon suddenly rolled out from behind the thick clouds and showered silver light on the snow. It was magical. She saw him beneath the branch of the alley tree they had once perched in when he had first shown her the secret garden. Alice called his name softly as she approached. But there was nothing. “David!” she shouted, then screamed. She rushed toward him. Leaning against the tree, David Bloom looked like a collapsed marionette. The quilt had fallen away, as had the blankets. She reached out for him and now whispered, “David, David . . . no . . . no . . . no . . .”
She noticed a small piece of paper in his lap. She picked it up. There was writing on it. But through her tears she could hardly read it. Then, gasping and gulping, she wiped her eyes, and the writing became visible.
Thank you, Alice.
I came to see the hellebore—winter bloom, you know. See it right over there by the birch tree?
Love,
David
She covered her mouth and moaned. Then, sobbing, she folded his frail body into her arms, and began to rock back and forth.
She would leave him here in his mother’s secret garden. For this was where their souls might meet. She would leave him and cover him in snow. When she was finished, she walked over and broke off some of the branches from the weeping pines—the rabbis, as David called them—and placed them over the snowy mound. She settled down at the base of the birch tree and cried and cried and cried, until the first streaks of the dawn and the morning star began to rise in the east.
The words of the Kaddish, the Hebrew Mourner’s prayer that she had learned in Rasa camp came back to her quickly, and she began to whisper these words into the soft breeze.
May His great name be exalted and sanctified. In the world which He created according to His will! May He establish His kingdom during your lifetime and during your days and during the lifetimes of all the House of Israel, speedily and very soon! And say, Amen. May His great name be blessed for ever, and to all eternity!
Thirty-One
Would She Rather?
What happened on that late November night in the snow-swathed garden would be her secret. Alice Winfield would never tell anyone about David. She found herself often thinking about him with a profound sadness. He remembered her. He never forgot her name, Ute, but how delighted he had been when she told him her real name, Alice. She recalled that time, just a day before, when she had told him that she was a spy and her name was not Ute but Alice. I love your name, Alice. I love saying it. It’s . . . it’s delicious. She had laughed and asked what her name tasted like? Without hesitating, he had answered, Like lingonberry jam on buttered toast.
But she tried as best she could to push such memories out of her mind. Things were becoming too dangerous. Hitler had left Berlin soon after the party at the Reich Chancellery. He had headed first to the Wolf’s Lair, and then, on December 10, in his special train to the Eagle’s Nest, a secret camouflaged complex in the woods near Berchtesgaden.
She was not required to attend, as the Christmas holidays were approaching. Not that there was much to celebrate. The air raids had multiplied. Alice and her family lived almost exclusively in the basement of the Reich garage. If they happened to be out, they often had to run to the nearest air-raid shelter. It was hardly a festive season. According to her mother, the people in the OKH office were stupefied by Hitler’s complete denial of the facts that were surging into the ministry’s office. From the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic, nearly seven million Russian troops had massed in a hard line, and yet Hitler didn’t believe it. The German intelligence reports were “completely idiotic,” according to Hitler.
Nevertheless, the rest of the city was hardly in the mood to celebrate the holidays. There would be no Christmas goose, for there were no geese, ducks, or even chickens.
Every citizen was on short rations. And the people became gaunt. Children’s eyes grew larger and ringed in shadows as their bodies shrank around their bones. There was no “Stille Nacht”—“Silent Night”—to be sung. What humor was left turned dark. A favorite joke in the season of merriment was that, as a Christmas gift, “one should be practical and give a coffin.”
Because of the frequent air raids, Alice’s school was let out early for the holidays and no return date was set. When walking by a house not that far from David’s, Alice saw that one had been reduced to only two standing walls. Scrawled on the brick was a message: “Erich, we are fine. We are staying with the Obers.” Alice surmised that Erich was a soldier returning from the front.
The air raids increased. There was a pattern, with the British bombing by day and the Americans at night. The Red Army was expected to surround Budapest by Christmas Eve. In another favorite joke, the initials LSR, which stood for Luftschutzraum, or air-raid shelter, were said to mean “Learn Russian quickly.”
On Christmas Eve the Winfields sat down to a strange dish made of tinned liverwurst that Posie had mashed into patties and cooked with mutton fat and chopped onion. They smeared it on disgusting bread made from pea meal flour and barley.
Alice looked at the gray mess on her plate. “I am almost longing for snoek.” She sighed.
Her mother laughed and reached over and patted her hand. Then she got up and turned the sound loud on the gramophone. How many times had Alice listened to the four operas of the Ring cycle? One hundred? She knew every word. Every note. These days in their apartment at the garage, the Winfields always had the gramophone playing to camouflage their conversation. They were focused on leaving Berlin as soon as they could.