~ Far Away From Home ~
I had been walking for weeks. (Or at least, it felt like weeks) My feet hurt, my neck hurt, everything hurt. I was out of food and dying of thirst. No hyperbole intended.
My head throbbed, and the blisters dotting my toes bled over my threadbare socks. The heels of my shoes were worn thin, and my clothes were muddy and stale.
I never should have left Munich. Here I was, about to die, with no one here to save me.
Crack.
I jumped. “Who’s there?”
A shadowy figure flickered behind a clump of trees in front of me.
I flinched. “I said, who’s there?”
No reply.
Another shadow flashed, this time directly in front of me. As though there was a person above me, watching my every move.
My heart thumped against my chest as I hurried down the road, eyes darting every which way. The hair on the back of my neck pricked up at the slightest breeze as I raced past trees, rocks, flowers, sun and shade, until I reached a fork in the road. Which way did I go? I could hear rustling leaves behind me, and I whipped my head around. Nothing. Then, the sound of boots against gravel.
“Who is that?”
A man’s voice. I tensed.
“I know you’re there. Who are you?”
Clearly, he knew I wasn’t a German. No one talked to a Nazi that way. Not even a bold boy.
I didn’t answer his question. Just waited for him to appear. Surely, if he knew there was someone around, he would come investigate.
Sure enough, a moment later, a man stomped out from behind a cluster of bushes. “I said, who are you?” he growled, and I fell back a step but refused to back up more. “Do you expect me to answer that?” I asked defiantly, and he gaped when he caught sight of me. Clearly he hadn’t expected a girl to appear. He grunted, then said, “Yes. Women serve men,”
So this was how it would be.
“Well, then I suppose I am not like the servant girls at your mansion, then,” I tilted my chin up and looked right at his face. He wasn’t an ugly fellow, I suppose. With his light brown hair, brown eyes, and tan, rounded face, he could have been my brother.
He turned pink. “I don’t live in a mansion.” I smirked, looking a bit like Ingrid, I supposed. “It was a metaphor, idiot. Did you not go to school?” I could be stubborn and appear mean when I wanted to. Gunter often said it was the one thing stopping people from taking advantage of me.
“Of course I went to school. Did you?”
I crossed my arms. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. And if you had, then you would know that men and women are equal in the eyes of God.” He grinned in a lopsided way. “‘In the eyes of God’. And I suppose you enjoy quoting rules you don’t follow?”
I stalked toward him, sticking my finger in his face. “I am a sister of God.” He looked close to laughing as he replied, “And I am a Brother. So I suppose that makes us even, doesn’t it?”
“No, it certainly does not. A Brother wouldn’t say – to quote you – ‘Women serve men’.”
“And yet, you stand here, talking back to a man as though you’re better than me.”
“I rest my case. And yes, I am better than you,”
He crossed his arms as well. “Well, that’s a humble opinion.”
This was stupid. “What do you want?” I demanded, and he smirked. ‘I told you, I want your name,”
“Fine. But you must tell me yours as well,”
“Of course.”
“Emilia Kaplan,”
“Gunter Hoffmann.”
I stumbled back. “That’s a German name,”
He looked ready to smack himself. Regretfully, he admitted, “Yes, it is. My mother was German; her whole side of the family was.” I felt the strong urge to bolt just then, out of instinct. If he was German, then I didn’t want to stick around. He could be a spy!
“Well, then I suppose that means this is where we part,” I nodded shallowly at him, making sure my face was a hue of disgust and odium. “But–” He started toward me, hand outstretched. I turned away. “You think we’re just the best of friends, don’t you?” I glared at him. “Well, we’re not. And we never will be, alright? Never. Now get away from me. I don’t want to see you ever again.”
“Emilia! Wait,”
Gunter started after me, desperation in his voice. Why oh why did I tell him my name? He seemed to be saying it as though he relished the word on his tongue.
“Emilia! You haven’t heard the full story! You haven’t even asked me who I am!”
“That’s because I don’t care who you are.”
“Emilia.”
He had caught up with me by then, and placed his hands on my shoulders, repeating my name. I spun around, knocking off his hands. “Don’t. Touch. Me.” I hissed, and he held up his hands, backing away. “Okay, okay, got it. Just… listen to me, okay?”
I didn’t want to listen to him. Whatever he had to say mattered not to me. I didn’t care a heck who he was. He could be a king for all I cared. All I knew was he wasn’t a Nazi, and that was enough. They were the only offensive things in this war that mattered to me. But he knew something, I was sure of it.
“What do you know?”
He grinned. “Oh, so now you’re interested. Funny.” I shook my head. “No. Nothing about this is funny. And I’m not interested in you. Just your information.” He clicked his tongue. ‘Picky, picky.”
“I said, what do you know?”
He sighed, crossing his arms for a moment before motioning to a log on the side of the road. “We should sit. It’s a long story.”
“Fine. I’ll sit on the log. But you better find something else to sit on.”
He sat down on a large rock opposite me, and began to talk.
“I was thirteen when the war started in 1939. My mother loved Adolf Hitler. ‘He’s the miracle of the century,’ she used to say, back before the bombing started. My father hated them. ‘More dangerous than a storm at sea,’ was what he would murmur to my mother, who would scold him for putting our family at risk like that.
“And then in 1942 our house was bombed. That was the first time Mutter saw the Nazis do something ‘murderous’, as she claimed. Never had she seen the horrors of boxed up Jews and starving children. She lived as an Aryan. Everyone in our region did. She started to hate the Nazis. And then she started hating herself for hating them. ‘We are supposed to be a light!’ she had cried the night before Vater was taken. ‘We cannot hate these men for doing only what they thought was right!’ This was how it was for a long time. She went from hating them to loving them to hating them again. It was horrible. And after Vater left, there was no one left for her to hold on to – or rather, to hold on to her. She started doing crazy things with soldiers – things she would never have done if she was sane. But she had left herself behind. Everything she was now? It belonged to Hitler.
“After a year of her insanity, I couldn’t bear it anymore. I left for the resistance. I found them and they took me in, fed me, and gave me work. I was one of their best agents. I blew up trains. I stole extra rations from Nazi warehouses to give to Jews in the ghetto. No one questioned my life behind the bombs. I forgot about my crazy mother and my lost father. All that mattered at the moment were my missions.
“And then it was decided that I should leave for Kassel. I was given a special job. We planned to murder Hitler.”