Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [189]
“Shhh ... shhh ... shhh ... he won’t touch you any more ... Ernestine is here ... Ernestine is here ...”
She struggled to her feet and got Hilde upright somehow.
Gerd walked toward them, menacingly. Ernestine backed Hilde into a corner and stood between them.
Gerd stopped and smiled cruelly.
“Oh God in heaven!” Ernestine cried in anguish. “Look at what has become of us! This is our victory!” She turned to her beaten sister, took off her own coat and put it over Hilde’s shoulders, and wiped at the blood spurting from the girl’s nose and mouth. She held her tightly in her own thin arms and braced her to walk slowly over the room.
Her mother looked up. “Where are you taking her?”
“Away from here! Away from you!”
“I forbid it!” Bruno rasped. “I forbid it!”
They continued toward the door. Herta climbed clumsily to her feet, knuckles on the table. “Obey your father!” the mother commanded.
“I forbid! I ... forbid!”
“Go to hell, Father,” Ernestine said.
“I won’t stand for you to talk to Father like that!” Gerd roared.
“My father,” Ernestine whispered. She spat on the floor and led her sister.
“Stop them! I demand it! Stop them!”
Gerd blocked the doorway. He saw in Ernestine’s eyes something more intense than the frenzy of a Nazi mob, more bitter than enemy soldier to enemy soldier. He stepped aside. “Let the little whore go.”
Ulrich Falkenstein set his book down, shuffling to the door in response to the urgent knocking.
“My God!” he cried at the sight of Hildegaard.
Ernestine held her hands open desperately. “We have been walking for hours all over Berlin. It is cold. We have no place to go. She is sick. Please help us ...”
Ulrich stood at the door of the bedroom watching Ernestine at her sister’s bedside. She was like an angel, speaking softly, giving warmth.
Hilde’s cheekbone had been fractured and several ribs broken. Her face was puffed and discolored, but the pain was now blocked by a wall of drugs.
“Ernestine. You are so good! I love you. Oh, Ernestine ... you are all that is left of us that is decent...”
“Please rest ...”
“You tried to tell me what a fool I am...”
“Don’t go back there ... ever!”
“Russian officers are in back of Stumpf ... Hippold ... they may kill me.”
“I’ll get you out of Berlin, I swear it.”
“Oh, God, Erna ... I’d give anything . .. anything . ..”
Hilde’s eyelids became heavy and she passed into sleep begging her sister not to leave her. Ernestine held her hand for an hour, and at last Ulrich took her back to his study.
She painfully told her uncle the story of Hilde’s downfall and of Gerd and her parents.
“I am the worst of them all,” she said. “I did not help her. But I wonder, Uncle ... do we deserve better?” And then Ernestine began to cry softly. “I have turned on my own father.”
She felt Ulrich’s hand on her shoulder. “It is high time some German sons and daughters do that.”
“There is good in Hilde. I swear I’ll do anything if she is given another chance.”
“First, she must mend. And then she will leave Berlin. There are friends in the Western Zones who will take her.”
It had been a long, long time since Ernestine felt the warmth of another human being. She knelt before her uncle’s chair and laid her head on his lap and let herself be comforted. “You are so kind,” she said.
“And you, my child, what of you? You cannot go back there.”
“I don’t know.”
“This is a lonesome place for an old man,” he said.
She looked up at the scholarly, slovenly room filled with books he had not been able to read and music he had not heard.
“Would you share this place with me, Ernestine?”
Perhaps, she thought, I can help him too. We do need each other. I will take care of him.
“You will stay?”
“I love you, Uncle Ulrich ... and I have been so cold for so long ...”
Chapter Twenty-four
BLESSING COVERED THE DOOR opening with his hulk, leaned against the frame, and chewed on a strip of beef jerky, which Lil always sent in the packages. Bo Bolinski finished packing, wordlessly.
Bo lay the last three