Love and Hate Read online

  He didn’t look frightened, just somber and tired. He slid the palms of his hands together back and forth, as if he were cold.

  “Look, I will take you to her now, no brandy.”

  “Okay.”

  He silently got up and walked toward the back of the house. There were French doors that led to a beautiful garden that had a fountain with a statue of Cupid pouring a bucket of never-ending water. Water that flowed down and back into his buckets as his wings stayed static—not flapping.

  He paused there, staring at the water flowing down from the bucket.

  “Where is Lilo?” I demanded.

  “She is here, in the water.”

  “Okay, I am tired of you, old man...”

  “Lilo is dead.”

  His words reverberated through my ears: “Lilo is dead, Lilo is dead, Lilo is dead...”

  My ears were ringing, a deafening ring. He was trying to talk, and I saw his lips moving, making sounds that he pushed out. Sounds that pulsated in the air—creating more ringing. It was as if he was continually hitting a gong right at the entrance of my eardrum. Each syllable was a deafening “boom!” I couldn’t take it any more and felt lightheaded, like I couldn’t breathe. I put my hands to my ears to block out the sound, but it just made it all worse. I eventually knelt on the ground, trying to crush my eardrums with pressure from my hands.

  I cried silently. I wanted the sounds to continue and was afraid they might stop, and I would then have to face whatever he had originally said that caused them. All I could think about was the sound of the words he said, the meaning drowned out by the shrillness. All then went black.

  I woke up in a dark room, but I was lying by curtains that mostly covered the dull light that attempted to illuminate the room. There was a person sitting in a chair by my bed. Was it Lilo?

  “Lilo?” I asked softly.

  “No,” came an older man’s voice, “It is Walter. Walter Franz.”

  A frigid arctic air had been pushed into the room and suddenly blew upon me. I was tense. I had goosebumps all over my body. My body was preparing me to fight or run.

  “Lilo is dead, Lilo is dead, Lilo is dead...” played on the record in my brain...over and again. I was about to scream.

  The man placed a note in my lap. It looked as if it was just written, no wrinkles, and the paper looked freshly folded. It was folded into thirds and had blue ink that I could see under the pages, tempting me to read it.

  He looked up at me. “She used to write you every week. The letters, because she couldn’t send them—she would always save them aside for you. She wanted to give them to you when...” His voice trailed off. He regained his composure with a steady breath. “When you were to meet again. And so...”

  He lifted a shoebox full of letters, at least twenty or thirty.

  “But the one that you have in your lap is the final one, the one that she wrote last. The one not in an envelope. But we have never read it. It is not for us, it is yours. I will leave you now. When you are ready for that brandy, perhaps you might come get me.” He smiled half-heartedly.

  I looked at him vapidly. “Yes, thanks.”

  He left, and I stared coldly at the letters as if they were some legal documents. Letters were meant to keep your fingers warm. There was nothing but more coldness to be emitted from these documents. They must contain secrets that would hurt me, but they would be lovely secrets. Lovely no longer, but full of mothballs and death and cobwebs, they would be old secrets whispered from the grave. I didn’t want to know what she had said. I decided this coldly, as though my mind had been taken over by a computing machine. I would destroy these letters. I was going to remember my time with Lilo—and not from some fucking old letters, talking about time that we had not gotten to spend together. This time that she wrote about was unconsummated; it was a lie, because these letters narrated my return to Lilo alive. If she was dead, there was nothing to return to, and these letters now had only a negative meaning for me. I got out of bed and ran to the fireplace crackling in the grand hallway. I threw in the letters and wasn’t even sad, at first, as they burned to a crisp. The flames licked them clean of their false promises. The burned edges glowed into eternal embers. I fell to my knees as I witnessed the glow of the fire grow longer, and burn faster, fed by Lilo’s writings.

  Tears came, but I wasn’t crying because I missed the letters and wanted to know what was inside them. I was crying because it was Lilo’s funeral day. She was being cremated. I had just placed her body on the funeral pyre; it was now burning. The fire was using it for energy to send her to the shadowlands. Those letters were the last things I didn’t know of her, they were the last things she had to say to me. Burning those letters meant sacrificing knowledge of her. It was as if I had been here when she died.

  When you love someone, nothing is ever over. You have never said all that you have to say. Not if you truly love them. There is always a comma and not a period at the end of the conversation. The fire caressed the last piece of unconsumed envelope and burned until for a moment I could see the glowing blue ink underneath, and I watched it. I saw the loop of Lilo’s handwriting, and later I dreamed about that last bit of paper. I tried to remember the moment the last of the blue ink dissolved. Did it disappear as I thought of her, or did it absently slip away? Was I already turning to leave when it happened, and what did it look like as it faded? Was it just blue and then nothing, or was there a moment in between? Was Lilo dead and gone forever? Or was there a moment in between? Could I meet her in that moment?

  I suddenly needed to leave the house. I ran down the stairs and slammed the door behind me to announce my departure. As I was almost off his acreage, having made my way back up the long driveway, I saw Mr. Franz calling to me. I couldn’t hear, but he was trying to tell me something. He seemed distraught that I couldn’t hear him, so I waved to him. That was all I could give him. I was cold and felt as if someone had hollowed me out. I was no longer substantial. It began to rain, a perfect complement to my mourning. It provided the tears that I currently lacked as the rain traced itself over my grief. I walked away. Into a future without Lilo. I didn’t look back at the house, not wanting to see where she had died. I looked ahead, grimly, but toward the future, dark as it was.

  Chapter 36

  I moved into town. I had a little money left from what Sister Claire had given me. It was enough for the first month’s rent in Schaffhausen’s less expensive apartments. I had only ever been a guard or a soldier. I could kill a man or guard many men, but I didn’t really have any other marketable skills. And so I was hired to be a nighttime guard at the local city jail. It was a mostly uninhabited place, just the occasional drunk or low-level criminal who would spend a short time there. It was a safe town. Eventually I got my papers in enough order that they hired me on as a police officer, and I got a significant pay raise.

  In addition to the Swiss Canton-level police, we had a very small municipal police force. There were usually ten officers available to handle small matters that the city needed, dispatched to rescue cats from trees or settle neighborly disputes. I was eventually made the police chief for the municipal force of Schaffhausen. This didn’t provide for a rich man’s lifestyle, but I could now live comfortably, so I bought a house a few minutes outside of town. Nothing fancy, but it was mine, and I could be alone when I needed to be. It had been eight years since I learned of Lilo’s death.

  I carried my guilt regarding Lilo with me everywhere for those eight years. I was guilty for even yearning to leave her memory and the guilt associated with my love for her behind, and I had never grieved her. I had been through so much that I had pushed my grief away rather than allow it and the trauma of the war to consume me.

  And the trauma did consume me in moments; it condemned me when there was silence, it lived in the silent places. One quiet day, I was reading the newspaper when I saw a headline that sent tingles up my chest and arms.

  The headline proclaimed, “Infamous Nazi Leader Erich
Beck Executed.”

  It went on to say that he was hung until dead and talked of his ruthlessness during the war. I didn’t finish the article. I wasn’t happy that he was dead. It just made me more numb and guilt-ridden. I felt guilty that I hadn’t been able to change Erich when we were younger. I had never truly stood up to him. I hadn’t even tried. Would that have helped the Jews he tortured? Would it have saved his soul? I would never know.

  Every year, Mr. Franz would write me a letter. I always returned them unopened, hoping he would get the message. I didn’t want to hear what he had to say, I didn’t want to know what he knew. I was to blame, after all, for taking so long to come to Switzerland, for not putting Lilo first. I didn’t want to feed my ulcer of guilt and further strengthen that constant pain.

  I had not been with another woman, though to my surprise I had the opportunity on several unanticipated occasions. I didn’t want to admit the real reasons why I refused on every occasion. I'd even taken the initiative myself once or twice. The last time I went out with a woman was with a university student I had helped when she crashed her bicycle into a tree. I had been passing by and stopped to help. She was a striking redhead. We chatted over an Italian dinner that I had made for her at my house. Rain was pattering outside the kitchen window, and I saw Lilo outside in the crying rain. She put her hand on the window and looked me in the eyes. She was the color of the rain and dissolved back into the falling drops hitting my window.

  A heavy guilt overcame me as the rain turned to snow outside and lightly melted on the window. A stone around my neck, strangling me. Unassuageable guilt, like I had cheated on Lilo in having dinner with this lovely young lady.

  I stood up from the table. “Edith, I have to take you home.”

  But she sat there with her fork in the air, her smile having faded, and any last remnants of our happy conversation had been swallowed by my barking the order again. “Don’t you understand me? It is time to go. Get up and I will drive you back to town.”

  She dropped her fork and cried. Her makeup was washed off by tears, exposing what looked like a little girl under all of that eyeliner. I felt sympathy and went to her side as she turned her face away from me. I hugged her face into my chest as I kneeled beside her chair.

  “I am so sorry for shouting at you. You don’t deserve that, and I am sorry that I hurt your feelings.”

  “I believed you thought that I was pretty and funny.”

  She was pretty, and we had laughed together.

  “Yes, I do think you pretty and funny.”

  “No, you don’t, or you wouldn’t have demanded to take me back to town.”

  “I cannot talk about it, but it is not about you, I promise.”

  She must have really liked me, I guess I didn’t realize how much. I only thought of her as a pretty and nice distraction.

  “Well,” she stopped crying, “you can call me when you are yourself again.”

  She sniffed and wiped her face with the back of her hands.

  I didn’t know that there would be another time, I thought, as I drove her back to town. To me in my mid-thirties, she seemed like a child who had never seen anything but calm Switzerland. She had no scars from the war. As I drove silently, I stopped thinking about Edith and thought about Lilo again. As Edith climbed out of the car in front of her house, Lilo came up to the side of my car. She had risen from the street’s shadows into a piece of night flesh, dark and made from the street’s soot. She came to the side window, the driver’s side, the ghost she was.

  “You don’t even know how I died.”

  Edith was entering her house. I waved back, looking to the window, and Lilo was gone.

  I was miserable driving home, and the rain started again, only lightly this time, and not snow. I was nearly home, and I kept driving past my house. I didn’t choose to do it. I didn’t forget where I lived—I just kept driving.

  I wasn't sure where I was going, but a few minutes later I found myself in front of Mr. Frantz’s manor. Lilo’s ghost must have sent me. I felt the weight of all those eight years. Because I was selfish, I had not wanted to know how she had died. I was too scared to find out. I felt like I would be to blame in some way, and I had wanted to shut it all out. I had successfully done that—until now. I could no longer do it. I had to expose the wound to suture and heal it.

  Mr. Franz opened the door, looking no older, strangely. He looked shocked, pausing for perhaps two seconds, and then asked me in.

  “Come in out of that nasty drizzle, Police Chief.”

  “Hans, please call me Hans, and thank you.”

  “I know why you are here, Hans, and please call me Walter.”

  I smiled to get rid of my anxiety and asked earnestly, “Why do you think I am here?”

  “I think you want that brandy now.”

  “I do, I would like some brandy, very much, actually.”

  And so we walked to his study. Although he appeared no older, I had to slow my gait to match his.

  “Sit, please,” he said as he handed me my glass.

  I sat on the couch facing his chair by the fire.

  “I will get right to the point. I know why you are here. You want to know what happened to her. You are ready now.”

  “Yes, I do, I am ready.” I swallowed to harden my resolve.

  “Well, I can tell you, or you can read her last letter first, and then we can chat.”

  I looked stunned. “But I burned all the letters.”

  He smiled kindly. “All but the one that was not sealed in an envelope. I had placed it in your lap and tried to chase you out of the house to give it to you. Never mind, though, I still have it.”

  He got up and took out a book. Inside was the letter. It had been crumpled, probably from when it slid off me as I lay in the bed years ago.

  I now looked at the letter as a holy grail. I had to read it. I had not honored Lilo or given her any sort of eulogy. This letter was my chance to honor her by finding out what had happened to her.

  Walter lightly laid it in my lap and said, “I will wait by the staircase for you for when you are ready.”

  I was now in the study, by myself, with the doors closed. I had put down the brandy and held the letter to my nose, half expecting to smell Lilo’s sweet scent. Would I still recognize it? I thought that I would, but I smelled only musty old paper. I suddenly could wait no longer, and so I unfolded it and read.

  My Sweet Husband Hans,

  I know that I have written you previous letters about all the things that I have done while here at Mr. Franz’s. I have decided of all the letters that I will have you read this one first. The others you can read at random, or in the order I wrote them. It is up to you. This letter is the first, though, because it will surely be my last before the baby. I hope one of the last before I see you. You will read this after you know.

  But as of my writing this you don’t, so yes, you read that right. You are going to be a daddy! I have been carrying our baby and dreaming of telling you when you get here.

  I dream at night, this dream about us—all three of us in a little house, after the war is over. I dream about there being fields behind our little cottage and it being a little out of town, like my house growing up in Nuremburg. In my dream we have a little girl (but I will love them no matter), and she has blonde hair like yours and brown eyes like mine. The girl loves to dance. And we dance, her and I in my dream, in the fields, while we pick little flowers to make arrangements. So that I can photograph them to decorate our house. But in my dream, there is a part of a nightmare too. I look for you and I search through the house with our girl and she begins to cry, and I do too—because we cannot find you. You never come home. At the end of the dream, I hear a knock at the door. Although I haven’t opened it yet, and I do not know who it is from sight, my heart has told me it is you, because my heart jumps for you, only for you. The little girl runs to the door, jumping up and down, waiting for me to open it. I smile at her as I am about to open it, I have m
y hand on the door, and it is all that stands between you and me—that door...and then I wake up. And I am sad and alone in my bed. I touch my stomach with the baby inside and think of you.

  I wonder where you are, and I pray each time for the Lord to keep you safe and to deliver you safely to me. And I know he will, I just know you will be okay. I feel it in my soul. Even if you doubt you will make it out of Germany, I believe you will.

  You have made it out, and that is why you are reading this letter. We are already a little family. You and I, and God, created a new person out of our love.

  But there is that little part of me, when I wake up and have prayed and am about to go back to sleep, that fears for you. That fears for us. I fear that you will make it back, but that you will no longer love me. I am sure it is not true, but fears are not always rational. I fear that maybe I am wrong and you won’t make it back? I then remember how I need to be strong for the baby. She will have no one to depend on but me. I need to take care of her until you are here.

  I cannot wait to open that door and find you on the doorstep, loving me. I cannot wait to make love to you under the stars of our little house’s fields. I cannot wait until I have a real ring from you. You are already my husband, but I want everyone to know it! I cannot wait to spend the rest of my life worrying about you and our little child, forgetting about myself—being enveloped into you and her.

  Let me tell you a secret. As I know, you doubt that there is a God. I thanked him today for the burdens he is putting me through. An old Jewish proverb says, “I ask not for a lighter burden, but for broader shoulders.” I feel closer to God than I ever have. What we have been through, what you are going through, is for a reason, and if you cannot see that now, you will know it later.

  I have done wrong things, but I am forgiven and so are you. You are so obsessed with being a good man, and that is why you are one. You think you aren’t forgiven, but you are. That is why you are standing on the doorstep and not coming in—to see your little girl and me in my dream. You are scared. You believe you aren’t worthy and that everything is your fault. The world is out of your control, Hans. You have done the best that a man could have done in your situation. You have done more than any man that I know has done. You are forgiven. Come, when you read this, come kiss me now. Come be with your wife. Know that you are only a man, but a forgiven one worthy of love. Of my love and of our child’s. We need you, all of you, and you must forgive yourself, to be with us, to be there for us. Come to me now, and throw away the war and hate, but most of all the guilt. The world is full of love and hate. Choose love. Choose me. Choose your family. I love you.