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.”She opened it.“A diary?”“There’s a reason I don’t want to tell you,” he answered.“Draw your own conclusions…just read, then we’ll talk.”Monika eyed him for a moment, finally nodding.She fluffed the pillows, nestling into a comfortable reading position, the blanket around her waist.Gage stared at her form, closing his eyes and giving thanks that he had her, and that he’d had the courage to tell her the truth.He dug into the pack, retrieving the other diary, covering half of 1935.He settled in next to her, opening the diary and reading a passage from late May.She grabbed his right hand, moving it to her stomach, clasping her left hand over it.They stayed that way for another two hours, reading in silence.***Mannheim, GermanyThe train ride from Frankfurt’s Hauptbahnhof had been a short one, especially on the sleek ICE bullet train.Damien Ellis leaned against a towering column just off the platform, eating pistachios, dropping the wet shells into a paper sack.He was due to board the next ICE train in less than five minutes, a fact made clear by the green digital timer staring him in the face, ticking backward like a NASA countdown.He took steadying breaths, pressing his mind through the fear, trying to enjoy the nuts.The consternation had struck him on the train, sitting there in his second class seat all alone.And that was the problem.All alone.Since they’d met, he’d never gone anywhere for pleasure without Rose.Not once.Sure there were business trips when she was alive, but that’s the way he kept them—strictly business—and always in a rush to get the job done and get back home, back to his Rose.Unlike many of his contemporaries, he always viewed time away from his wife as an extreme inconvenience.He’d never once caroused; never hit the bars with the fellas.When Rose Ellis was home waiting for him, his top priority had always been getting back into her arms.“But she ain’t there no more,” Ellis said to himself, the deep bass of his voice reverberating in his whisper.“And she’d be so angry right now…flat pissed off if I don’t go on and enjoy this trip.”The digital clock displayed two more minutes.Ellis pocketed the remainder of the pistachios.He donned his trilby hat, tugging on it as two women boarded the car before him.After finding his seat, he hiked his right knee up on the ledge at the right side of the train, staring at the station as it slid silently away.“You can enjoy it with me, darling,” he whispered, a smile creasing his face.“’Cause we’re still together.”***The first diary covered May through December of 1935.While more upbeat in tone, it was just as compelling as the 1938 chronicle.The entries detailed Greta’s past, telling about her finishing Gymnasium, similar to American high school.After two extra years of schooling, which sounded the equivalent to an American junior college, her prescient parents bribed a well-connected government official to assign new identities, and new locales, to Greta and her brother.Instead of Jews, she and her brother were then viewed as good Germans.Greta spent weeks in mourning, each day lamenting her new city, Berlin, and the pain of the separation from her family:I’d rather be dead than never see Mama and Papa again.Papa told me over and over, on the day the I was driven to Kassel, to forget who I was.He kept saying, if I wanted to live, to forget the past and focus on the future.“Consider us both dead, or you will be too,” he told me.“A day is coming when they will try to kill us all.” Those were the last words my Papa ever left with me.They put Benjamin on a train to the north, I went east.Our family, our beautiful loving family is no more.I am considering suicide, diary.There is a nearby bridge that I have crossed over several times.Last night, all alone, I stood on its ledge, staring at the cobblestone below.Two times I leaned out, only to pull myself back.Something kept me from jumping.A purpose.But what purpose?Or is it just my cowardly fear?Gage read on, feeling Greta’s emotions, like a volatile stock, rising and falling.While he knew she didn’t kill herself, Gage certainly empathized with the pain of living a ruse.He cut his eyes to Monika, engrossed, her hand drifting up and down his leg.He turned the page, reading on.It seemed, as that first summer wore on, that Greta’s mood improved as she grew more comfortable being Greta Dreisbach.Her writing was stilted on August 7th, however.I responded to an advert for maid service yesterday, queuing for sixteen grueling hours before I was ushered in to the little building off of Wilhelmstrasse.The catty old women sat behind the table, studying me like they might judge a fattened sow at the autumn festival.They made me lift my arms, checking the skin to see if it might be saggy [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]