Silence by Mechtild Borrmann Read Free Book Online Page B

before today? The little things a person scarcely paid any attention to? Perhaps because one didn’t pay attention to them, they collected like droplets in a bowl, spilled over the rim years later, and demanded the attention they had not been given before.
    September 1939
    Alwine was already at boarding school, and the war had begun, unreal and distant. Leonard and Jacob received their call-up to the Labor Service only a few days before they had to report for duty. Leonard ran to the Pohls’ house, and Therese had hardly opened the door before he took her in his arms and whirled her around him. “We’re going together!” he cried, overjoyed. “Jacob and I are going to Münster together!”
    The morning of their departure was foggy, and the sky hung low. When Therese arrived at the station, after a ten-minute walk, she was late and soaked to the skin because of the clammy moisture penetrating the wool of her knitted jacket and her thick, braided hair.
    Frau Kalder, Jacob’s mother, was there, as was Herr Kramer, who was saying good-bye to his son, Leonard, and to Wilhelm. The train was ready to depart. She saw the two of them behind dirty panes of glass in one of the compartments and ran over. Jacob was heaving Leonard’s suitcase onto the luggage rack. They were laughing. Jacob pulled the window down. He jokingly complained about the weight of Leonard’s suitcase and promised to write. Leonard blew kisses at her. She held up a bundle containing a carefully packed apple cake she had baked the night before. The train moved off, and the two young men leaned out of the window. Leonard called out, “See you at Christmas.”
    Their heads and their waving arms disappeared into the fog, like a pencil drawing being rubbed out, line by line, by a dissatisfied artist.
    When she came out of the station, Frau Kalder had already left. Herr Kramer was standing next to his car, with Wilhelm. She went over to them and heard Kramer thank Wilhelm. When he saw her, he climbed hastily into the car and drove off. Wilhelm came over to her and smiled. He said, “And then there were three.”
    “Yes, but where’s Hanna?” she asked, surprised.
    “She said good-bye yesterday evening. She has to help with the milking in the morning, she says, but I think she’s a little jealous of Leonard. After all, he’s going to have Jacob by his side every day.” He laughed.
    He had come by bicycle, and he gave her a ride back on the crossbar. She sat between his arms and felt his tobacco breath on her neck.
    “What was Herr Kramer thanking you for?” she asked as the damp fog gathered in fine pearls of water in her hair. Wilhelm’s head was immediately behind hers.
    “I did him a favor.”
    “What favor?”
    Wilhelm said nothing for a moment. Then he said, “But you’re not allowed to say anything about it, promise?”
    She nodded.
    “Leonard was actually supposed to do his labor service in Hannover. Old man Kramer asked if I could arrange for Leo to be with Jacob and not so far away . . . and, well, through Hollmann, I was able to do something.”
    There was both embarrassment and pride in his voice. Therese laid her hand on his arm and cried out happily, “You’re a sweetie, Wilhelm. Someone who can be relied on.”
    He asked her to come to the Jägerkrug pub with him that evening, and she accepted his invitation.
    That day, for the first time, she thought about the many things she now had to keep quiet about.
    A few days before, her mother had asked her to be careful with Tönning, the shoemaker, and his mother, Thea. She was not to tell them that her father was often absent at night. Her parents had been friendly with the Tönnings for as long as she could remember. Her father had treated the shoemaker’s stump for months, without charging him, and Thea Tönning had been in and out every day when Therese’s mother lay ill with diphtheria.
    What if Father, with his firm rejection of the National Socialists, was wrong? She heard it