He rubbed his face. “How long did I sleep?”
“All afternoon,” she said.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, rising from the sofa.
“It’s quite all right. You needed rest.”
They sat at the table and ate dinner that Anna had prepared from his leftover turnip latkes, as well as cabbage and bread that she’d brought with her. Afterward, Max—rejuvenated by sleep and food—invited Anna to join him at his grand piano, which took up much of the living room in his modest-size apartment.
“It’s beautiful,” Anna said, tapping a key. “Did yourvatermake it?”
“Ja,” he said. “You remembered that he made pianos.”
“Of course.”
Max felt a strange tug in his cheeks, and he realized that he was smiling, perhaps for the first time in months. He positioned his hands over the keys. “What would you like to hear?”
“I think you already know,” she said.
He nodded, and then began playing the first movement toLight Suite.Performing on the piano, Max believed, was one of the few remaining things he could do that didn’t exhaust him.I’m unable to take long walks, but I can still give her the gift of music.
As his hands and fingers glided over the keys, a calmness washed over him. Flashes of his time with Anna, transcribing the piece—bar by bar—onto staff paper filled his head. He felt her warmth next to him, and his loneliness, which had encompassed him since leaving her in Oldenburg, faded away. A deep fulfillment swelled within him, and the emotional wall that he’d created came tumbling down. He played each movement of the piece, and as the resonance of music was replaced by silence, he rose from the piano and extended his hand.
She clasped his fingers and stood.
Nia, lying beneath the bench, gave a high-pitched yawn, then lowered her head back to the floor and closed her eyes.
Max felt Anna move close, her fingers entwining with his.
“I don’t want you to sleep on the sofa again tonight,” she said.
“But we agreed last night that you would have my bed.”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” she said. “I want us to be together.”
Butterflies fluttered in his stomach. He pulled her close, then paused. “I don’t know if I’m capable of—” His forehead touched hers.
“It’s all right,” she breathed. “We’ll simply hold each other. I don’t want another day to pass with us being apart.”
“Nor I,” Max said.
Holding his hand, she guided him to the bedroom.
He released her, and then glided his palms up her arms and rested them on her shoulders. His heart thumped inside his chest. He slowly leaned in and their lips met, sending tingles through his body. Patiently, they undressed each other, undoing buttons and buckles. Clothing fell to the floor, and they slipped into the bed and embraced, their bodies melded as one.
CHAPTER38
PASSCHENDAELE, BELGIUM—AUGUST15, 1917
Bruno hunkered inside an abandoned church as Allied shellfire rained down on the village of Passchendaele, the last ridge east of Ypres. One side of the stone structure had collapsed from an exploding shell, giving view to a cemetery marred with broken headstones and grave monuments. Several soldiers gathered near a small fire, which they’d created from a wooden lectern. A nearby explosion quaked the church, sending bits of mortar onto Bruno’s helmet. His pulse thudded in his ears. A mix of dread and regret churned inside his stomach.I didn’t need to be here.
Heavy rains had turned the ground soft, causing a section of light rail—running along the front—to collapse into the muck. Therefore, the only way to deliver shells to the last section of the ridge was by pack mules. He could have ordered soldiers to transport the shells, but he eagerly volunteered to lead the men in the mission. Disgusted by the use of Fritz Haber’s new chemical weapon, mustard gas, he left the site of the atrocity, as well as the safety of his bunker. And while transporting the shells to the ridge, the Allies unleashed a surprise bombardment, forcing him and his men to abandon the mules and find shelter inside a church.
The preceding month, Bruno’s unit had received the first shipments of mustard gas. The shells looked the same as other gas projectiles, except for a yellow cross painted on the side of the casing. On the nights of July twelfth and thirteenth, his unit unleashed the new chemical weapon on British troops. Bruno had hoped that Fritz Haber’s promise—that sulfur mustard gas would change the tide of the war—would come true. But Bruno soon learned that this would not be the case when a German patrol captured a dozen British soldiers who were exposed to the mustard poison.
The prisoners were covered with horrific blisters and sores, and many were blinded or coughing up blood. Unlike other poison gases, sulfur mustard was absorbed through the skin, so gas masks were useless, and instead of dying immediately, the prisoners suffered for weeks. A soldier who received a lethal exposure of chlorine or phosgene gas typically died within a couple days. However, the mustard gas was clearly designed to disable rather than kill. And it was clear, to Bruno, that Haber and his chemists had created the poison to inspire terror.
Explosions quaked the earth. A few of the soldiers crawled under pews. But Bruno—his mind and soul ravaged by years of death—climbed steps to a large, ornate wooden altar. He removed a piece of paper, an envelope, and a pencil from the inside pocket of his tunic, next to the identification of the fallen French soldier whom he’d drowned in a water-filled shell hole. He placed the tip of the pencil to the paper and began to write.
