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Then Ada's voice said: "Oh! Sir! Good morning!" She sounded surprised and a bit worried, though not scared. Carla wondered who would induce that particular mixture of reactions in the maid.
There was a heavy masculine tread on the stairs, then Werner walked in.
He was dirty and ragged and thin as a rail, but there was a broad smile on his handsome face. "It's me!" he said ebulliently. "I'm back!"
Then he saw the baby. His jaw dropped and the happy smile disappeared. "Oh," he said. "What . . . who . . . whose baby is that?"
"Mine, my darling," said Carla. "Let me explain."
"Explain?" he said angrily. "What explanation is necessary? You've had someone else's baby!" He turned to go.
Frieda said: "Werner! In this room are two women who love you. Don't walk out without listening to us. You don't understand."
"I think I understand everything."
"Carla was raped."
He went pale. "Raped? Who by?"
Carla said: "I never knew their names."
"N
ames?" Werner swallowed. "There . . . there was more than one?"
"Five Red Army soldiers."
His voice fell to a whisper. "Five?"
Carla nodded.
"But . . . couldn't you . . . I mean . . ."
Frieda said: "I was raped, too, Werner. And so was Mother."
"Dear God, what has been going on here?"
"Hell," said Frieda.
Werner sat down heavily in a worn leather chair. "I thought hell was where I've been," he said. He buried his face in his hands.
Carla crossed the room, still holding Walli, and stood in front of Werner's chair. "Look at me, Werner," she said. "Please."
He looked up, his face twisted with emotion.
"Hell is over," she said.
"Is it?"
"Yes," she said firmly. "Life is hard, but the Nazis have gone, the war is finished, Hitler is dead, and the Red Army rapists have been brought under control, more or less. The nightmare has ended. And we're both alive, and together."
He reached out and took her hand. "You're right."
"We've got Walli, and in a minute you'll meet a fifteen-year-old girl called Rebecca who has somehow become my child. We have to make a new family out of what the war has left us, just as we have to build new houses with the rubble in the streets."
He nodded acceptance.
"I need your love," she said. "So do Rebecca and Walli."
