Gestapo

5

     Food. Peter, you dummkopf. Of course Rebecca would need food. How would he do that? There was no way he could get it to her before sunset, but how even after? Frau Schäfer cooked for the both of them and they had their meals together - Peter couldn't very well pick up a basket of fruit and walk around to the cellar with it! What would he tell Frau Schäfer? That he was just feeding the Jew girl hidden there?

Peter lay on his bed, feeling rather nauseous and lightheaded, breaking into cold sweats at the million ways his plan could go wrong. It was already failing, after just a few hours. And then it came to him. He could pretend to be sick, and take his dinner up here. Then he could hide some food to take to Rebecca later at night. Maybe he would even take bread! The obstacle of food had been avoided for now, but Peter couldn't be sick forever.

Peter began to still his shaking to go downstairs, before deciding that it may actually aid him in his act.

"Frau Schäfer?" Peter called out weakly as he trembled down the stairs. "I don't think I'm feeling too well," he had made it to the kitchen now, and leaned against the wall as if for support, "I would request that I could eat dinner in my room. I would not want to inconvenience you."

Peter took a shuddering breath as Frau Schäfer squinted at him myopically. Just as he decided he must have overdone it, she nodded.

"You must be feverish, poor boy. You need hot soup and tea! I will get some, you just go and rest now," Soup and tea would go cold by the time Peter got to Rebecca, and would be easy to spill, but they were better than nothing.

Peter went to his room and waited.

He had really hoped for bread.

"Herr Herrmann?" there was a soft knock at the door before Frau Schäfer stooped in with a steaming bowl and mug.

Peter had fallen asleep, and felt a little more refreshed as he sat up to receive the soup. Frau Schäfer must have noticed, because she said, "eat and rest. You will be healthy again tomorrow," before making her way out and down the stairs.

A floorboard creaked and the soup sloshed against the side of the bowl, but Peter held his breath and made it through the last stretch to the door. He would see Rebecca, and he would bring her food. She would be thankful to him, and she might have even told him she loved him if he had brought her bread.

Looking over his shoulder, Peter could see the pantry, and almost smell the bread inside. He set the soup and tea down and tread softly towards it. The door squealed quietly in protest as he opened, but it seemed to know that he was on an important mission. He retrieved the bread and stepped outside.

The air outside was chilly. Rebecca must be cold in the cellar. Whay hadn't he thought to bring a blanket? He would next time

"Rebecca?" Peter called softly, as he jostled the door closed behind him. "Are you here?"

"Yes," of course she was here, where would she go?

Peter stepped forward and lit an old oil lamp in the corner. When he turned, he was frozen by the beauty of Rebecca's face. Again, Peter was pulled into a trance, and he set down the now-cold soup and tea and moved towards Rebecca.

"Peter?" His name on her lips caused something in his chest to burst, and he closed the distance between them quickly.

Why did he kiss her? She may not even remember him - had he told her his name? Or maybe she didn't love him at all, maybe she only remembered him as a stupid fool of a boy. But the cracked roughness of her lips still held the ghost of softness, and they were sweet, and they had said his name, so Peter kissed them again. And again. But as he held her, he became aware of the fact that she was stiff, and struggling slightly against his hold.

Peter pulled back, and felt his cheeks flush. "Leid," wasn't that the word he had uttered to her so long ago? But this time he did not mean it. He just wanted to kiss her again. And he would have, if she had not blurted out a single word.

"Max," she said, and she did not need to explain. The crack in her voice and the look on her face explained enough.

And then her expression changed. She was suddenly so fearful as she looked past Peter that he turned to see why she her knees were shaking again.

Standing there in the frame of the door that hadn't closed right was Frau Schäfer, who was shocked for only a second more before she turned and yelled into the streets.

"Polizei! Polizei! There is a dirty Jew! And a boy - a corrupted German boy! Polizei!"

Almost before Rebecca or Peter could move, there were officers streaming in.

As the Gestapo mowed down the door, Peter felt a sinking sense of failure to help his broken beautiful girl. But when the officers clamped their iron hands around her arms, she screamed only one thing, tears rolling down her face, "Max! Meine Max!" And from the way she sobbed his name, Peter knew that he could never be her Max.

That night, Peter was separated from Rebecca, the girl he was deeply in love with. When he was thrown into a cell that was no more than a crevice in the wall, beaten and bloody, he was thinking of Rebecca, and when the man in the cell next to him pulled out a block of the cement wall between them and told Peter that there was a way out of this Hell on earth, he was thinking of Rebecca. "Sohn," Peter turned his head and watched through slitted, swollen eyes as a small chunk of the wall was moved carefully out of its place, disappearing into the darkness of the cell beyond. "Who are you?" But he didn't really care, did he?

The man on the other side moved back cautiously so what had previously been just a pair of sad, blinking, eyes was now visible as the face of an old man with wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, although he could not have possibly smiled for ages now. "You're too young to be here," he told Peter softly, not answering the question. "Do you want to get out?"

"Yes," that was all he wanted. For Rebecca.

"Do you see this, sohn?" The man gestured to the rectangle of empty space he was peering through, "a year of work. I have been here for fifteen months, in this very cell, and it has been torture each day," the man sighed.

"Who are you?" Peter, still in shock, could only repeat those words, but the man merely shook his head.

"It will not matter. I have a plan, and in one week, you will be gone. Do you want it?"

"No," if Peter wanted Rebecca to be free, to go to her Max, he could not do it himself. He needed this man, with the confusion now etched in his wrinkled face, to help him. "Rebecca," now the man's face cleared. He had seen the girl and the boy being brought in together.

"I'm sorry, I can only get one of you liebha out," there was regret written clearly in his words, but Peter was slowly waking from a trance he had not known he was in.

"Yes, Rebecca," Peter repeated firmly. "She will make it out,"