Voices of the Dead by Peter Leonard Page A

three peaked caps with the same eagle above the skull and crossbones.
    Below the uniforms were two pairs of well-shined black jackboots. He got on his knees and moved the boots aside and crawled to the back corner of the closet, dug the tip of the knife blade into the seam between the floorboards and pulled back. The plank came up and Harry reached in the opening and took out a thick wad of marks, a photograph of Harry and his parents in front of the house, three sets of identification, and his uncle’s address and phone number in Detroit, Michigan, USA.
    His dad had said, “If something happens to your mother and me, I have left something for you.”
    It confused Harry at the time. He had said, “Papa, what’s going to happen?”
    “I hope nothing. I hope the Allied forces defeat Hitler. But we have to be prepared.”
    Harry placed the floorboard back in position, went back into the room and stood by the window. He looked at the ID cards, one each for him, his mother and father. Their photographs, but different names, aliases, and nothing that said they were Jewish. If his father had these documents, why didn’t they leave the country? He put his parents’ papers back in the floor. They weren’t going to need them now. He was counting the money, already up to five thousand marks when he heard voices downstairs.
    Harry stuffed everything into his trouser pockets. He moved into the hall and looked over the banister. The twins were coming up the stairs, wrestling. One had the other in a headlock, crashing into the wall. He heard a woman’s voice telling them to stop or they would be punished. It didn’t seem to do any good and now the mother came up the stairs and separated them.
    “Boys, go to your rooms,” she said.
    Harry went back in his parents’ bedroom, crossed to a door with glass panes that led to a balcony on the alley side of the building. He opened the door and went out. There were two chairs and a table. He looked through the glass and saw the woman enter the room. She stopped and turned, yelled something down the hall and moved toward the closet unbuttoning her dress. Harry crouched and froze.
    She came back from the closet wearing a robe, the curves of her body visible under the thin fabric. She had short brown hair and pale skin and heavy red lipstick. She picked up a magazine from the nightstand and sat on the edge of the bed with her back to him.
    Harry went over the balcony railing and climbed under it, wrapping his arms and legs around a support beam, looking down at the cobblestone alley ten meters below. A couple minutes later, he heard the door open and felt the wood creak above him. He saw her in the openings between the boards, barefoot, sitting in a chair. Saw her get up and move to the railing, looking at something. He heard voices. She turned as the twins came out, Harry catching glimpses of them pushing each other, one grabbing the other’s arms behind his back.
    The mother said, “Stop this now or I will tell your father.”
    They stood at attention, clicked their heels together.
    “No mamma, please. We will be good.”
    They acted like little kids, Harry thought.
    “Any more of this your father is going to hear about it.”
    One of the boys leaned over the railing. Harry could see his head upside down, hair hanging, until his mother pulled him up.
    “Go to your rooms,” the mother said. “I will let you know when you can come out.”
    The boys went in the house and she followed them and closed the door.
    Harry held on with his left hand and arm and reached over half a meter, grabbed the downspout with his right hand. He took a breath, pushed off with his legs, lunged and grabbed the downspout with both hands, clung with his knees, got his feet in position, pushing up to secure himself. He shimmied down a few inches at a time, and when he was a meter from the ground he jumped.
    He took a left on Westenriederstrasse. Passed the butcher shop, Joseph Bamberger, where his father used