Pt. 2: Entdeckung(Discovery)

Is this Germany?

I cannot speak. I cannot even scream.

I had felt the shuddering blows from bombs that had fallen earlier on this land, in a different time. I saw the bruises they caused on my own skin. I felt the pain of lives suddenly severed by the dagger of too soon. I heard their cries of anguish, of anger as to what their leader, their madman, had lead them into. I had seen this carnage before, in London as I fought Britain hand to hand among the ruined houses for the privilege of owning his land, of controlling him.

But it never occurred me that what I had done to his people, he was now doing to mine.

The only landmark that I see is a sign, face up, lying flat on the road. Himmel. The name of the street I was now standing on. I swallow a choked sob. This was no heaven.

The next thing I see is my reflection in a pane of glass that miraculously, though cracked, had remained intact in one of the nearby houses. I turn my head, and there I am, staring back at me. There is an angry, throbbing gash on my forehead, which arcs and ends just above my left eye. My hair is matted with dirt and blood. I blink as I realize dully just how close I had come to becoming blind. My jacket and the legs of my pants are torn and soaked with blood from my head and arm. With a start, I realize that my boots are gone. There's so much shattered glass on the ground, how have I not shredded the soles of my feet?

It is only moments later that I see the first corpse.

She lies on the ground, still intact, with her skin torn to shreds and red from the cooling blood. She is an older woman, her hair grey and falling out of the bun at the nape of her neck. Her face is calm, not shocked, so she must have been sleeping when the bombs killed her. I kneel down beside her. I have to know.

Sudden screams ricochet from further up the street. I look up and see that rescuers are pulling out a bony, blonde-haired girl from the wreckage of a house. Alive. He screams echo through the wreckage. "Papa! Papa!"

I turn back to the woman in front of me and quietly place my right hand on her temple. In a flash, I have her story in my hands. She is Gertrude Holtzapfel, a mother with two boys. I rock back on my heels, recognizing the names. They had fought Russia alongside me. One I knew was dead. What happened to the other one, Micheal?

My hand, almost involuntarily, reaches out to her temple again. I close my eyes. I see black at first, then a thin, white silhouette. A rope, tight, with a figure dangling at the end of it. Micheal Holtzapfel had hung himself with a rope of Stalingrad snow.

I jump back, and crouch to the ground, the bile scorching my throat as it crawls up my throat and splashes out onto the earth, dampened by her blood. I wretch. This can't be happening, even as I wipe my mouth and spit.

Shakily, I stand to my feet, feeling my sanity slowly sliding off of me. I clench my fists to keep it in place. Your people need you. Start walking, Deutschland. And watch your step.

There are so many bodies, so many, with more being carried out of the rubble by rescuers. I know. My heart is heavy. There is no one else to rescue. The blonde-haired girl would be the only survivor here…

I hear a crash behind me. I look back to see her. There is an instrument, an accordion, at her feet. She had just seen Frau Holtzapfel.

I continue to walk, but she suddenly rushes past me, screaming "Rudy!" I look up from where I am watching my step and see what she is running towards. The rescuers have just pulled out another body and are gently laying it down on the earth. A boy with hair the colour of lemons. With a sudden, unexpected spurt of panic, I see that Death is standing above him. There is a colour perched on his…her…its shoulders. Deep blue this time, a welcome relief from the soupy red of a fire-seared sky. It looks up and sees the girl, but I know it would not realize I was there. Death can only see what can die.

Something is pulling me towards them. I don't want to go, but I owe them this much.

I stand a few feet away, observing. She is kneeling on the ground beside him now, shaking him. "Rudy, please." She has him by the shirt front now. Tears are streaming from her brown eyes.

Wait…brown? I look at the two of them and in a moment I know both of their stories. His name was Rudy Steiner. He was a boy that wished for a kiss from her, who excelled at school and athletics, who once covered himself completely with coal dust just so that he could be like Jesse Owens. If his eyes were open, they would have been blue. He was likeable. He was loveable.

He looks like me.

I stagger back in shock even as words like a river flow out of the girl's mouth. Her name was Liesel Meminger, now Hubermann. She was a girl who was torn away from her parents because they had been Communists and was placed into her new family. She loved her papa most of all. She had stolen words, and she had given them back into a black notebook that she had dropped beside the boy.

And her eyes look like Italy's.

"Come on Rudy, come on Jesse Owens, wake up wake up wake up…."

I saw her fall forward onto his chest and hold him in her pain and disbelief. I turn away then, as everything breaks and the hot tears sting as they slide down my own face. I don't see her kiss him in vain. I don't need to.

You killed them.

I shake my head in disbelief as I lean against the remains of a brick wall that was once Frau Diller's shop. "That is the cost of war." I murmured. "Britain or America killed them. Not me. Why would I…"

You had the opportunity to go against your leader, to stop him from starting this war in the first place. It could be done. France did it once. But you became drunk on the madman's vision and power, and now…

I blinked and saw a portrait of Hitler, torn to shreds on the ground near the shop. It was fitting.

So many dead. So many…

"Mein Gott," I whispher, burying my head in my hands. "What have I done?"