Behind the Bedroom Wall Read online

  The Krugmanns now stared at the candles, waiting to be left alone. Quietly Korinna pushed the wardrobe against the wall, shutting out the soft sound of the melodic Hebrew prayers.

  Chapter Ten

  Korinna aimed the snowball carefully. Then, in one fluid motion, she let the missile fly from her hand, directly at Rachel’s face. But when the snowball hit its target, it turned out to be a glass ball instead of one made of snow, and it shattered into a million brilliant shards, each one piercing Rachel’s skin. And Rachel just stared at her attacker with wide, innocent eyes filled with tears. Then came the banging. A loud solid banging, sounding as if God were knocking on the steel colored clouds, demanding to be let down to earth.

  Korinna woke up, but the banging continued. It wasn’t God knocking from above, it was someone pounding on the front door below. She heard her father walking down the stairs.

  Korinna’s mother came into her room. “Are you awake?” she whispered through the darkness.

  “Yes, Mother. What’s going on? Who’s at the door?” Korinna asked as the banging continued.

  “It must be the Gestapo,” Frau Rehme said, her voice trembling with anxiety. “No one else would come in the middle of the night.”

  Korinna’s heart shuddered in her chest. “The Gestapo! But why? Will they find the Krugmanns?” She sat up, her hands clenched tightly on her blankets.

  “Hush, there’s no time for questions now,” her mother said as she softly knocked a rhythmic beat against Korinna’s wall. She stopped, and then repeated the prearranged warning once again.

  “Pretend you are sleeping,” she told her daughter, and she quickly left the room as they heard the front door open and the booted officers stomp into the small front hall.

  “What’s going on?” Korinna heard her father demand.

  “This is a search,” said one of the officers in a brusque voice. “There are some stinking Jews hiding in this area, and we just want to make sure they’re not here.”

  “We are loyal Germans, loyal to the Führer,” Herr Rehme protested, glancing at the Führer’s picture.

  “It’s easy to hang a picture,” said a second man.

  Korinna recognized Hans’s voice. Did Rita know her brother was searching her best friend’s house? Maybe Rita herself had told him about her black notebook. But no, Rita wouldn’t do that. She was her best friend. And she’d promised she wouldn’t tell anyone.

  Korinna could hear banging and stomping downstairs. Soon the noise made its way upstairs.

  “Go in there,” Hans said to her parents. She heard them move into their own room.When her door swung open she closed her eyes tightly, and she heard the heavy hammering of her heart pounding in her ears. She saw the bright stab of light behind her eyelids as someone aimed a flashlight at her from her doorway. Then the light moved away.

  Korinna watched through slitted eyes as Hans walked into her room and looked under her bed. He walked over to her closet. She held her breath. He opened and shut each drawer with a snap. Then he opened the cupboard-like doors behind which she hung her blouses and skirts. Pushing aside the clothes, he felt the back of the wardrobe. Korinna was sure Hans must be able to hear the frantic pounding of her heart and her erratic breathing. Finally, Rita’s brother closed the wardrobe doors with a bang and stalked out of the room, a frown pulling at his face. He looked as if he were disappointed at not finding anything.

  Korinna didn’t dare move until she was positive she was really alone in her room. Then she tried to relax her rigid body and her clenched fists, but she couldn’t. She listened to the men search the bathroom and then move into her parents’ bedroom.

  She heard only the swish and snap of drawers being opened and closed. Suddenly her father’s voice rang out. “Leave those alone!”

  “Bernd, no,” her mother cried.

  Something heavy fell against her parents’ desk. Terrified, she scrambled out of bed and raced into her parents’ bedroom.

  Everyone turned to look at Korinna as she ran into the room. She stopped abruptly, her heart pounding, as she took in the scene before her.

  Her father was sprawled on the floor, partially raised up against the foot of the desk. A narrow line of blood, trickling from his nose, shone in the bright overhead light. Her mother crouched protectively beside him, and Hans stood menacingly over the two of them, holding the brass figurine in his fist, ready to strike again.

  “No!” Korinna cried, immediately running to her father’s side, tears stinging her eyes. “What have you done?” she demanded, looking up at Hans’s face.

  “Go back to bed,” her father commanded, struggling to stand up.

  His wife took his arm to help support him. “Be careful, Bernd.”

  Hans looked as if he would step forward to hit Herr Rehme again.

  “No, Hans!” Korinna said, standing up and suddenly moving forward to hold back the officer’s arm. “Leave them alone! Please!” she begged.

  Hans shook his arm free and looked down at Korinna with a scowl. Korinna remembered playing tag with Hans when he had been young. She even remembered having a crush on him at one time, giggling and following him around like a puppy. It seemed like so long ago. Did he remember?

  Slowly he lowered his arm and tossed away the figurine. It thudded onto the floor. “Come,” he said to his fellow Gestapo officer. Then he took another sweeping look around the room before turning sharply on his booted heel and marching out of the room.

  The Rehmes didn’t speak as they listened to the two men stomp down the stairs and finally out the front door, leaving it gaping open behind them. They heard the car roar to life, then drive off. Apparently they were through searching the neighborhood for the night.

  Not until the sound of the car was swallowed up in the quiet of the night did Korinna dare breathe again. Then all the tension left her, and her knees started to quiver.

  Now her father sat on the edge of his bed, his red hair an unruly mass around his head, holding a white cloth to his nose. Korinna’s mother came over to her daughter and hugged her, rocking her back and forth.

  “It’s over now, dear,” she crooned.

  Korinna sniffed back her tears. “What happened? Why did Hans hit Papa?”

  “They were searching through my drawer with the photographs in it. Papa worried they would ruin them with their rough hands. See? They ripped that one there,” she said, nodding toward a precious photograph of Korinna’s grandfather, which now lay on the floor, practically in two pieces.

  “Damned Nazis!” growled Korinna’s father. “Insanity,” he said. “That’s what it is. Insanity.” He turned to his daughter. “Are you all right, Korinna?”

  She nodded.

  “It was very brave of you to step forward like that, but also very stupid. Next time stay in your room,” he ordered.

  Korinna felt the sting of the reprimand. “But I know Hans. You know Hans. He shouldn’t have been treating you like that.”

  “We knew the old Hans, Korinna. Things have changed. People have changed. It’s too dangerous to intercept the Gestapo. They don’t listen to reason, Korinna.”

  “Now go to bed,” her mother said gently.

  Korinna slowly walked back into her own room and got into bed. She wasn’t too anxious to rejoin the dream of throwing the ball of glass at Rachel, but she closed her eyes anyway. She blew into her icy hands, trying to warm them. They still trembled.

  A few weeks ago she never would have believed she could be as frightened as she was right now. Hadn’t she recently told her mother she had nothing to fear from anyone because she was a loyal German? And now, what? Now she was a traitor and it seemed she feared almost everyone. Suddenly no one could be trusted. Should she trust Rita, her best friend? Or should she trust the Krugmanns, the hated enemy?

  And who did she love? Of course she loved her parents, but they were traitors to the Fatherland. And she had always loved her Führer, but now his officers were frightening her. Nothing made any sense anymore
.

  Chapter Eleven

  Korinna didn’t see the Krugmanns again except at meal times when she helped her mother deliver food and later take away the dirty dishes.

  Sunday afternoon, Korinna felt restless. It was hard to imagine little Rachel cooped up behind her bedroom wall, day after day after day. She was bored, yet she could go anywhere. Rachel must be going crazy, Korinna decided.

  On sudden impulse, she knocked on the wardrobe and then pulled it away from the wall. Two faces peered anxiously up at her. Because it was daylight out, it would be too dangerous for Rachel to come out into her room with the curtains open. And it would be too suspicious looking to close the curtains this early in the day, so Korinna knew if she wanted to keep Rachel company, she would have to venture into the dark, smelly hole the Krugmanns had been forced to call a home for the past week.

  Without giving herself a chance to think and thereby change her mind, she grabbed a few sheets of paper and, taking one last deep breath of fresh air, squatted down and crawled into the narrow space between the walls.

  She knew she wouldn’t suffocate in the small room because air holes had been drilled into the bathroom. But the space was so confining, Korinna still felt short of breath. Pulling the wardrobe almost closed, she couldn’t help smiling to hear Rachel’s excited chatter.

  “You’ve never been in here before,” Rachel said, sounding pleased to have a visitor. “Mama sleeps there,” she said, pointing to a pile of old blankets which Korinna supposed served as a mattress. “And I sleep here, next to my baby.”

  Korinna looked in the empty, makeshift cradle. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to some rough hewn boards propped against the narrow wall behind Frau Krugmann’s sleeping space.

  Rachel giggled. “That’s the bathroom.”

  “Oh.”

  The room was narrow, fitting somehow between her bedroom and the bathroom, and also between the hall and the outside wall of the house. The space would have been impossibly small if it hadn’t been for the closet in the bathroom which had a fake back to it. Towels were placed in the closet to make it appear deeper than it was, but in fact, it was shallow to allow more room behind it in the hidden room. The other night her father had explained that no one would ever guess the room was hidden there, unless they were specifically and carefully looking for it. And that would never happen, her father had promised.

  “What’s this?” Rachel asked, lifting the paper and finding the small box Korinna had brought in with the sheets of paper.

  Korinna smiled. “What does it look like?”

  Rachel opened the box carefully. Out spilled a number of pencils of different colors. “They’re beautiful,” the little girl breathed reverently. She looked up at Korinna. “Are they for me to use?”

  “They’re for you to keep!” Korinna said. She had found them in a box under her bed when she had recently been looking for the kitten.

  “To keep? Honestly?” the girl asked, her eyes wide with disbelief.

  “Of course. Why would I lie to you?”

  “Because you don’t like Jews,” Rachel said simply.

  Korinna swallowed uneasily, afraid to look up to see if Sophie listened to their conversation.

  She stared down at Rachel’s bent head, searching for some reply. Could she deny it? Could she defend it? What should she say?

  “I like this color best,” Rachel said, holding up a pencil.

  Startled out of her thoughts, Korinna said, “What?”

  “This is my favorite color,” Rachel repeated.

  But what about what you just said? Korinna wanted to ask. I’m supposed to hate Jews, yet here I am giving my colored pencils to you. I should get up and leave, she thought. But instead, she said, “Why is that your favorite color?”

  “It’s the color of the setting sun and the color of your hair.”

  Korinna picked up a pencil of burnt umber. “And this is the color of your hair.”

  Rachel’s smile disappeared. “I wish my hair were this color,” she said, fondling the reddish yellow pencil.

  “Why?”

  Rachel twirled the pencil between her fingers. “Then I wouldn’t have to hide. If I had light hair, no one would know I was Jewish and I wouldn’t have to stay in this horrible little room!”

  “Rachel!” Sophie said sharply. “You’re lucky to have a room like this. Just think of poor Papa and Ruthie who have to sleep with cows and goats.”

  Rachel’s lips turned down at the corners. “I want Ruth and Papa to be here,” she wailed.

  “Shhhh,” Sophie said.

  The little girl bent her head and cried against her lifted knees.

  Korinna looked back and forth between Sophie and Rachel. All the pity she had been working so hard to keep from feeling now pinched at her heart. She picked up a sheet of paper and began to draw. After a few moments, Rachel’s sobs quieted to an occasional hiccup. Finally, she lifted her head and watched Korinna draw.

  “What’s that?” Rachel asked.

  “This,” Korinna said, putting the finishing touches on the flower boxes, “is your house.”

  Rachel frowned. “No, it’s not. My house doesn’t look like that. My house has white shutters and it’s bigger.”

  “Well, this is the house where you live now. This is what it looks like in the summer. Now there are no flowers in the window boxes, and there are long thick icicles hanging from the roof.”

  Understanding began to show on Rachel’s face. “You mean this is this house? This is where we are right now?”

  Korinna nodded.

  Rachel smiled. “I like this house,” she said. “It’s pretty, even if it is smaller than mine. I like it very much.” She nodded her head and took the drawing from Korinna, placing it next to her mattress. “Now I know where I am,” she said happily, and she picked up the yellow pencil and started drawing on a clean sheet of paper while Korinna watched.

  Later, a knock on the wall startled Korinna. As the wardrobe pulled away from the opening, her heart beat faster. Even after she saw that it was just her mother with the midday dinner, her palms stayed sweaty and the heat around her neck still choked her. She wondered if the same thing happened to the Krugmanns every time the wardrobe moved. She glanced over at Sophie and saw that the older woman looked tense, staring at the opening with wide eyes. Korinna hastily looked away, feeling as if she were spying.

  Korinna crawled out from behind the wardrobe so the Krugmanns could eat. Before she closed the wardrobe, she opened her bottom desk drawer and pulled out a doll. The doll had a China face and hands, but the nose was chipped and a couple of fingers on the right hand were missing. And the doll had been so tightly hugged that it was rather limp through the middle.

  Korinna held out the doll to Rachel. “Here.”

  “She’s beautiful,” Rachel said breathlessly, not yet lifting her hands to take it, as though afraid it would be snatched away at the last moment.

  “She’s for you.”

  Reverently, Rachel took the doll. Briefly, their hands touched. Korinna smiled as the little girl carefully cradled the doll in her arms. “Tag never lies still in the cradle for me,” Rachel said, her eyes not leaving the doll’s blushed cheeks.

  “Tag?” Korinna asked.

  “The kitten,” Sophie explained. “Rachel only sees the kitten in the day when you’re not home. So she named it Tag— Day.”

  Korinna smiled. “I like that name. I have to admit, I never got around to naming the kitten myself. Tag is the perfect name.”

  Rachel lifted her eyes once again. “I like my doll,” she said. “And I like you. You’re so nice.”

  Korinna swallowed hard. Didn’t the girl realize they were enemies? She was a loyal German, and Rachel was a Jew. Like oil and water, they just didn’t mix. They could not be friends.

  On Monday, Korinna didn’t get a chance to talk to Rita until they met after dinner on their way to the Jungmädel meeting.

  “Why aren’t you wearing your unif
orm?” Rita demanded upon seeing Korinna in a sweater and gray skirt.

  “It was dirty.”

  Rita frowned. “How do you expect to get back on the good side out the leaders if you don’t even wear the uniform?”

  “I only have one,” Korinna said. “Mother’s washing it for me today so I can wear it tomorrow. At least I’m wearing my kerchief,” she said.

  Rita shrugged. “If you had two uniforms you wouldn’t run into this problem.”

  “My family can’t afford another uniform,” Korinna said evenly, trying to keep her anger in check. “And you know that, Rita.”

  “Maybe if your mother participated more in the Nazi Women’s Organization, someone would offer to help you.”

  Korinna stopped walking and faced her friend. “Are you trying to say that my mother isn’t a good German?” she demanded.

  “I’m just saying that she isn’t the most loyal person in this town.”

  “My mother loves Germany! She—she’s just as loyal as your mother. She’s just too busy to go regularly to the Women’s Organization.”

  “Busy doing what?” Rita asked.

  “Guten Tag!” Eva called, walking up to the two girls.

  “Hello,” Korinna said tersely.

  Rita ignored the other girl.

  “What’s going on with you two?” Eva said, stepping around the girls to continue on her way. “Aren’t you coming to the meeting?” she asked when she didn’t get an answer.

  “Yes,” Korinna said quickly. “We’re coming.” She walked beside Eva, leaving Rita glaring after them.

  “What was that all about?” Eva asked under her breath.

  “Nothing,” Korinna said. She was glad Eva had interrupted her conversation with Rita. She didn’t think Rita could really be suspicious of her mother, but she didn’t want to be questioned anyway.