“Lucky,” he repeated, and gave a sour laugh. In some ways he was—lucky to be alive, lucky to be picked up by sympathetic Germans—and in some ways he wasn’t—injured in enemy territory, mostly ignorant of the language.…
“You are lucky,” she insisted. “God was looking out for you.”
He was a pro-forma Anglican who attended church services at holidays only, and then mostly for the music. “I’m not sure if God had much to do with it.”
Herr Schäfer heard them talking and came in, his bulk blocking most of the doorframe. “God has everything to do with everything. Now make the poor man some breakfast, Maria. I’ve brought in the eggs.”
What saved him from despair was the courage of Maria and Hans Schäfer. He had no idea what the price would be for harboring an enemy soldier, but it had to be bad.
The Schäfers knew he had flown over their land, dropping bombs, and yet they fed him white asparagus with butter, golden fried potatoes, coarse sausages, and plum cake. They would not take any of his marks, which all RAF pilots flying over Germany were given in case of an emergency, to help out with the added food ration. “We live on a farm,” they said to him. “What is one more mouth to feed?”
In return, he held hanks of coarse, greasy yarn between two upraised hands while he lay in bed, while Frau Schäfer wound it into balls. Often they would sit together in silence. Sometimes she would speak to him, and he would try to keep up as best he could. And sometimes she would pray, her eyes closed, her hands still wrapping strands of yarn around the ball. This was his favorite time. Whatever happened—and he knew that anything could happen, at any moment—this was peace.
They knew they couldn’t take him to a hospital, but they called their veterinarian, to take a look at the Briton.
The veterinarian, Dr. Lang, a stooped-over man with scraggly white eyebrows, examined his injuries with cool, gentle hands. His ken was pigs and sheep and chickens—not humans. Certainly not humans this damaged. “Wait here,” he said to the young man, as if he were in any condition to get up from the bed, and then went to talk to the Schäfers.
“It’s beyond what I can do,” Dr. Lang said, sitting down at the table to a cup of coffee and Brötchen with sweet butter and gooseberry preserves. “The boy needs a hospital.”
The Schäfers looked at each other. They had been married for more than thirty years, raised three daughters who lived nearby with their own families, and could read each other’s minds with a glance. It was clear they both thought it was unsafe to take their British refugee to a hospital.
“I have an idea,” Dr. Lang said. “My son—I still have my son’s Luftwaffe uniforms.” Dr. Lang’s son, Helmut, had died in one of the early air raids over Britain. “There is a comradeship among pilots, even pilots of warring nations. I know he’d want …” He swallowed. “I mean, if Helmut had been shot down, over England—”
Frau Schäfer put her hard, callused hand over his. “—you’d want an English family to take care of him. Of course.”
Dr. Lang shook his head, focusing on the present. “So, we put him in the Luftwaffe uniform and I drop him off at a hospital in Berlin. I say that he must have been shot down. He’s been gravely injured—and that, because of trauma, he can’t speak.”
“Do you think they’ll believe it?”
He shrugged. “What choice do we have?”
And so, after profuse thanks that only seemed to embarrass the Schäfers, and promising to return after the war was over, the British pilot was carried into the truck Dr. Lang usually used for transporting large animals. Dr. Lang drove from the rural countryside of Rietz to Charité Mitte in Berlin.
The young nurse at the admissions desk wanted his papers, but Dr. Lang feigned insult. “Look at him!” he cried. “Look! A German pilot, a war hero, shot down while defending his country. Defending you!” The more he said, the easier the lies poured from his lips. “His entire plane went down in flames—you really think he had time to reach for his papers?”
“Of course not,” the nurse said, backtracking. “I’m very sorry, sir. We will admit him immediately, and have our very best doctors examine him.”
“Thank you, Nurse,” Dr. Lang said, giving the pilot a wink. He placed a hand on the younger man’s shoulder, then whispered in his ear, “You’ll see, they’ll take good care of you here.”
Looking around at all the doctors in long white coats with swastika armbands speaking rapid-fire German, RAF Flight Lieutenant John Sterling felt a wave of fear. Then he thought of Maggie. And so he smiled at Dr. Lang, and then at the young nurse in gray who came around from behind the nurses’ station.