Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

“‘Silent Night.’”

“So I know this is December 1944.”

Froelich tears off a piece of bread and feeds it to the dog, whose black nose glistens just below table level. A new layer is unfolding in Jack’s mind. Fried worked in a criminal place, so it follows that Froelich would associate his face with brutality, but it does not necessarily follow that Fried personally committed crimes. Still, he must have known about the hangings. Does Simon know? I cleared him for security myself . “So he was a scientist.”

“Who?”

“This fella you saw, the man from Dora.”

“A scientist? He was just an engineer. Es macht nichts . He is a criminal.”

“Are you saying he was a — what? SS?”

“I never saw a uniform at Dora,” says Froelich. “Only the guards wear uniforms. Von Braun does not wear his uniform.”

“Von Braun?”

“ Ja , he visits his rocket.”

“Von Braun was SS?”

“Natürlich . But the other one, always brown wool.”

“What?”

“The engineer — he wears always a suit of brown wool. And small glasses, round like pebbles. No face — I mean to say, no expression. His eyes do not change, his voice does not change, always quiet. With him, alles ist normal . This is what I remember.” He pushes his bowl away and sits back. “An ordinary man.”

Jack sips in order to wet his lips; they have gone dry.

Froelich continues, “Except for his flower. It was rare. It grows in the tunnel.” He shakes his head. “People are not boring, Jack, do you agree?”

“What did he do, Henry?”

“He was an engineer in the tunnels.”

“No, I mean, what did—?”

“He saw over production in his sector. He hated to see his rocket to be built by us. We were scarecrows. He looks for sabotage. He finds a great deal. He wishes to impress his superiors, verstehen? ”

Jack leans forward. “What was his crime?”

Froelich likewise leans forward. “You know how many people are killed by the V-2?”

“No, I don’t,” says Jack. Their faces are only a foot or so apart.

“Five thousand.” Froelich drops his palm to the table with a smack. Jack doesn’t move. “Do you know how many die of building this rocket that is so fascinating you, Jack? Mehr als —more than twenty thousand.” The palm slams down again and the empty glasses jump.

The dog barks, the back door opens and Madeleine’s little friend comes in.

“Colleen, Schatzi, hier zu Papa, bitte komm.” The girl goes to him and he hugs her, stroking her rough hair. The narrow blue eyes stare at Jack over Froelich’s shoulder.

“Hello, Colleen,” says Jack. The child doesn’t answer. Jack notices a faint scar at the corner of her mouth.

Froelich fills a bowl for her and she takes it from the room. The dog follows. After a moment, music comes from the hi-fi — a woman singing “Mack the Knife” in German.

“In the camps, I am not so young and strong but I know something. If you help another to survive, maybe you also survive. At Auschwitz, I take a boy’s glasses when we are pulled from the train. There are dogs and lights and music very loud, and screaming of guards, all to confuse, but underneath is very organized, you can see this if you are not so terrified, and I am lucky, I am not so afraid because I know my wife is safe. Also”—he looks at Jack as though imparting a secret—“I have a trick. I imagine that I have lived before these experiences.”

Froelich looks expectant so Jack nods.

“This boy,” continues Froelich. “A student, probably — I knock his glasses down and I tell him what to say, ‘electrical mechanic.’ They push him to the right. To right is work. To left is death. I have already been from Bühne so I know. Perhaps he has survived.” Froelich closes his eyes. “Also, I do not realize the bombing until after the war, so this also helps me.”

“What bombing?”

“Hamburg.”

Jack remembers — that’s where Froelich is from. “Your wife?” he asks quietly.

Henry breathes evenly, eyes still closed. Memory is lapping up. The whisper of shells, combings of silent seaweed and stray shoes, are they teeth or pearls that shine down there, pebbles or bones? The wash of lost objects, memories cut adrift from their owners, memories released by death. If he kept his eyes closed long enough, would all the lost memories find their way through Henry Froelich, as through a living portal?

“My wife was safe from the camps. And so was I, for a time.”

Jack has the curious feeling that, if he rose to leave now, his body would stay behind, seated at the table, a shell.

“She was, according to Nazi classification, Aryan. Which is ironic because, when I brought her to meet my mother, my mother did not approve. My mother was sehr rafiniert.” He smiles. “Annie was a peasant.”

“What was your father’s view?”

“He was killed in the Great War.”

“My father fought. My uncle was killed.”

Froelich nods. Jack sighs. Something has been understood between them, so he feels he can ask, “Henry, why didn’t you leave Germany when Hitler came in? Why did you stay?”

“I am Deutsch . This does not change. You are right, Jack, it is a beautiful country, it is my country. We were Deutsch , you see. Then slowly we find that we are not. This does not happen over one night, there is not an invasion. Friends — those one has eaten with, at the table, as you and I here. One realizes, too late, this is the enemy.”

Jack feels the headache coming on. Like muffled footfalls on a metal staircase. Froelich is saying, “And my mother refused to leave Germany. When she died we tried to come to Canada but we were not admitted.”

“You couldn’t get into Canada?”

“We were admitted nowhere, and my wife refused to leave without me.”

“But you were a professor or something, you should’ve had your pick.”

Froelich shrugs. “I was a Jew. Not a very good Jew, but from 1933 it did not matter. Good or bad, when the knock comes at the door in the middle of the night, you are a Jew.”

“How did you wind up at Dora?”

“We had a good apartment in Hamburg. The block warden did not have such a good apartment. He reported me for listening to the BBC. I was arrested and taken away in April 1942. In July 1943 came the bombs.”

Jack recalls the name of the mission: Operation Gomorrah. British and Canadian bombers dropped nine thousand tons of explosives on Hamburg in three days. Forty-two thousand civilians died in the firestorm — incinerated, asphyxiated, crushed, swept away by thermal winds. Jack does not ask if Froelich had children.

“I love Canada,” says Froelich.

It seems Oskar Fried is the farthest thing from Froelich’s mind at this moment. Jack eases his chair away from the table, but Froelich is still talking. “So. I did not fight in the underground. But at Dora I do what I can.”

At the mention of the factory, Jack sinks back onto the spent vinyl of the kitchen chair as quietly as possible.

“Nobody sees the entire rocket, only the piece he works on, but I am in the Elektriker Kommando . My job is to spot-weld the skin — the casing, and also to fix the welding machines, therefore the rockets are near to me and I have … opportunities.”

“Sabotage?”

“You put a bad piece for a good, loosen a screw, perhaps you can urinate on some wires to make rust. Maybe you weld not always perfectly at the seam. This helps me to survive. I knew a Pole who was hanged for making a spoon. But I am more afraid of my Kapo.”

“Is that who he was? A Kapo?”

“What?” Froelich shakes his head, impatient. “A Kapo is … a Kapo . He is a prisoner also, in stripes, ra gs, ja? But with a green triangle, for criminal . He has power. This one tries to kill me. Every day with the Gummi —this is a hose — black, thick. He says, ‘No Jews on my Kommando,’ he wants his squad should be judenrein . Not only guards and Kapos , the engineers also enjoy to beat the prisoners. It is not necessary to hang a man, most starve and the sick are selected for extermination.”