Still no one stepped forward, but a voice stooped out and ambled toward the sergeant. It sat at his feet, waiting for a good kicking. It said, “Hubermann, sir.” The voice belonged to Erik Vandenburg. He obviously thought that today wasn’t the appropriate time for his friend to die.
The sergeant paced up and down the passage of soldiers.
“Who said that?”
He was a superb pacer, Stephan Schneider—a small man who spoke, moved, and acted in a hurry. As he strode up and down the two lines, Hans looked on, waiting for the news. Perhaps one of the nurses was sick and they needed someone to strip and replace bandages on the infected limbs of injured soldiers. Perhaps a thousand envelopes were to be licked and sealed and sent home with death notices in them.
At that moment, the voice was put forward again, moving a few others to make themselves heard. “Hubermann,” they echoed. Erik even said, “Immaculate handwriting, sir, immaculate.”
“It’s settled, then.” There was a circular, small-mouthed grin. “Hubermann. You’re it.”
The gangly young soldier made his way forward and asked what his duty might be.
The sergeant sighed. “The captain needs a few dozen letters written for him. He’s got terrible rheumatism in his fingers. Or arthritis. You’ll be writing them for him.”
This was no time to argue, especially when Schlink was sent to clean the toilets and the other one, Pflegger, nearly killed himself licking envelopes. His tongue was infection blue.
“Yes, sir.” Hans nodded, and that was the end of it. His writing ability was dubious to say the least, but he considered himself lucky. He wrote the letters as best he could while the rest of the men went into battle.
None of them came back.
That was the first time Hans Hubermann escaped me. The Great War.
A second escape was still to come, in 1943, in Essen.
Two wars for two escapes.
Once young, once middle-aged.
Not many men are lucky enough to cheat me twice.
He carried the accordion with him during the entirety of the war.
When he tracked down the family of Erik Vandenburg in Stuttgart upon his return, Vandenburg’s wife informed him that he could keep it. Her apartment was littered with them, and it upset her too much to look at that one in particular. The others were reminder enough, as was her once-shared profession of teaching it.
“He taught me to play,” Hans informed her, as though it might help.
Perhaps it did, for the devastated woman asked if he could play it for her, and she silently wept as he pressed the buttons and keys of a clumsy “Blue Danube Waltz.” It was her husband’s favorite.
“You know,” Hans explained to her, “he saved my life.” The light in the room was small, and the air restrained. “He—if there’s anything you ever need.” He slid a piece of paper with his name and address on it across the table. “I’m a painter by trade. I’ll paint your apartment for free, whenever you like.” He knew it was useless compensation, but he offered anyway.
The woman took the paper, and not long after, a small child wandered in and sat on her lap.
“This is Max,” the woman said, but the boy was too young and shy to say any
thing. He was skinny, with soft hair, and his thick, murky eyes watched as the stranger played one more song in the heavy room. From face to face, he looked on as the man played and the woman wept. The different notes handled her eyes. Such sadness.
Hans left.
“You never told me,” he said to a dead Erik Vandenburg and the Stuttgart skyline. “You never told me you had a son.”
After a momentary, head-shaken stoppage, Hans returned to Munich, expecting never to hear from those people again. What he didn’t know was that his help would most definitely be needed, but not for painting, and not for another twenty years or so.
There were a few weeks before he started painting. In the good-weather months, he worked vigorously, and even in winter, he often said to Rosa that business might not be pouring, but it would at least drizzle now and again.
For more than a decade, it all worked.
Hans Junior and Trudy were born. They grew up making visits to their papa at work, slapping paint on walls and cleaning brushes.