Christopher Reich - The Runner

In better times, Sonnenbrucke had boasted a staff of ten housemaids and four manservants, not including the chef. Ingrid could see them now: Sophie dusting the family portraits; Genevieve polishing the silver; Herr Liebgott working his magic in the kitchen. All but one had left when the war ended. The Bachs were pariahs. Living reminders of Germany’s bloody fall from grace. Only Herbert, the family’s longest serving retainer and major-domo, remained. At eighty, he had nowhere else to go. These days, Ingrid relied on herself to keep Sonnenbrucke in order.

Reaching the ground floor, she continued across the hall and passed through the butlers’ pantry into the kitchen. Three months ago, she would have found it abuzz with activity, even at this early hour — a smoked stag hanging from a curing hook, copper kettles boiling with freshly made spatzle, mountains of red cabbage piled on the cutting board. This morning, the cavernous room was empty, save an elderly man, head in hand, seated on a stool next to the sink.

“Herbert?” she said. “What is the matter?”

The leonine gray head lifted. “ Kein mehr Brot ,” responded Herbert Kretschmar. “No more bread.” Despite the Bach family’s precipitous change in circumstance, he still wore the traditional black frock coat and striped flannel trousers of a professional butler. “What will we serve Master Pauli for breakfast?”

Ingrid rushed to the bread larder. A smattering of crumbs dusted the cutting board. “But the ration was for three loaves.”

“Last week we received only two. We are four mouths, even if your father does not eat so much. I should have foreseen the circumstances. Forgive me.”

Ingrid touched his shoulder. “No, Herbert, it’s my fault. I should have traded for more. We only have two days until we can draw our next rations. We will make do.” She injected a cheery lilt into her voice. “Come, let’s fry our little angel a sausage for breakfast. We’ll tell him it’s a special treat.”

Opening the meat locker, she found a last sausage dangling from a small hook. She laid it on the counter and cut it into six slices. From the vegetable nook, she retrieved a potato and set it in a pot of water to boil. A half cup of homemade blackberry jam remained. There was still some flour, a bowl of cherries and a few apples. They would have enough for today. But what about tomorrow? What if the rations continued to come up short? They couldn’t go on eating potatoes forever. Throwing a dash of salt into the pot, she felt her hands cramp with fear.

Keep moving, an urgent voice counseled.Keep moving and your problems will stay behind you.

Heeding the advice, she concerned herself with putting breakfast on the table. But even the busiest hands couldn’t divert her mind from its persistent nagging. Providing for the house had been Papa’s province, then her husband’s. She’d had little experience handling such things. With embarrassing acuity, she remembered her last trip to their banker, Herr Notnagel in Munich. “I’m so sorry, Frau Grafin,” he had said with suffocating kindness, “but neither you nor your father any longer possesses the least right to your family accounts. Everything has been placed in your brother’s name.” The Lex Bach — a decree from the Fuhrer deeding all assets of Bach Industries to her only surviving brother, Egon. Effective 2 August 1944. Egon’s reward for informing Adolf Hitler about her father’s vocal dissatisfaction with the continued prosecution of the war.

She’d been left with Sonnenbrucke, the family’s hunting lodge tucked away in the southeastern corner of the country, where she’d lived since Allied bombers had begun encroaching on the Reich’s frontiers. It was more hotel than home: twenty guest suites and ten bedrooms — all with private baths, two dining halls, a grand ballroom, winter garden, countless salons, six staircases, a free-standing smokehouse and seven dumb waiters. All of it done up to look like one of Mad King Ludwig’s ridiculous castles. She drained the copper pot and cut the potato in two, enough for Herbert and Pauli. She was not hungry. Setting the table, she inventoried what remained within the lodge that she might trade for black market goods. She’d sold the last of the Gobelin tapestries months ago. A dealer in Munich had offered two thousand Reichsmarks, knowing it was worth ten times that. She’d accepted. To cover the staff’s salaries, she’d been forced to part with several prized oils, portraits from the family gallery that had been painted by the famed British artist, John Singer Sargent. Only one thing of value remained: her father’s wine cellar. At last count, four hundred sixty-six bottles of vintage French wine lay in the damp tomb beneath the kitchen. Petrus, Lafitte-Rothschild, Haut Brion— les vins nobles du Bordeaux . She would not consider the glass displays full of her precious Meissen figurines and vases. The delicate blue and white porcelain was her single vice. Collected since childhood, each piece held a treasured memory. It was Pauli’s sole birthright.

It would be the wine, then.

She informed Herbert of her decision, then hastened from the kitchen and mounted the servants’ stairs to the first floor. Checking her watch, she saw that it was nearly eight o’ clock. Time to wake her son.

Pauli was already out of bed, sitting on the floor running a miniature tank back and forth across the carpet. He was a sturdy child with tangled blond hair falling short of determined blue eyes. Since the war ended, he’d been plagued by nightmares. A rumor had circulated at school that the Red Army was crossing Czechoslovakia to invade southern Germany, roasting German-born children on spits, then feeding them to its troops. She had told him such stories were ridiculous, but like any six-year-old boy he had an energetic imagination.

Kneeling, she gave Pauli his morning kiss and asked him how he had slept. “Fine,” he said cheerfully. “Next year I will join the Pimpfen and then I can fight the dirty reds. The Fuhrer will be proud of me.”

The Pimpfen was the entry level of Hitler Youth. A boy joined when he was ten and stayed until he was fourteen. In the Pimpfen , the Hitler Youth, the Volksturm , children were taught to fight before they could read. Killing had been deemed a virtue instead of a sin.

Running a hand through his ivory locks, she explained again that the war was over. There would be no more Pimpfen , no more Hitler Youth. For a child who had never known peace, the concept was difficult to comprehend.

“If the war is over, why isn’t Daddy home?”

Ingrid lifted his chin until he met her gaze. It was frightening how he resembled his father. “Don’t you remember what I told you, sweetheart? Daddy isn’t coming home.”

Pauli threw his eyes to the floor, grabbing his tank and running it furiously up and down his leg. She let him play like this for a few moments, then escorted him to the bathroom and helped him brush his teeth and wash his face. She picked out an outfit for him, and as he dressed she heard him singing the words to an anthem she knew too well.

He went on, the words to the Horst Wessel song, the Nazis’ sacred anthem, spilling as effortlessly from his lips as the Lord’s Prayer used to spill from hers. When would he finally take to heart that the war was over and his daddy wasn’t coming home?

Shuddering involuntarily, she ushered him out of the room and downstairs to the kitchen.

Breakfast was a rousing success. Pauli shouted joyously at the steaming plate of sausage and potatoes accompanied by a glass of fresh milk. Herbert sat beside him, entertaining the master of the house with stories of hunting parties of old. Ingrid studied them both, nibbling a fingernail, worrying. For six years, she had managed to outrun the privations imposed by the war. She was rich. She had powerful friends. She was a Bach. Finding and paying for goods on the black market was not a problem. But six months after Egon stole the family business, a new reality imposed itself. The upkeep of Sonnenbrucke — food, electricity, staff, medicine — was devastatingly expensive. By January, she was broke.