Disclaimer for social media: This is historical fiction for entertainment only.
Dateline: November 1, 1960, Berlin, Germany
As the sparkling air resolved into a new scene, several rows of moss-covered tombstones came into view. Beyond the stone wall, a dog barked. There was a clatter of bottles and a shout. But inside the tree-lined cemetery, all was serene and cold. Mackenzie dismounted her perch and grabbed her Spanish blanket.
“Where are we?” Her breath formed a puff of white fog. Behind her rose a massive stone building with arched windows and doors, probably a medieval church.
“Berlin, November 1, 1960.” Nik coughed.
“How can you be sure?” Sean asked, bending over a tombstone. “You’ve been guessing this whole time. This date says 1657.”
“I haven’t guessed since Boston. I reprogrammed the tablet, and I think it’s working now. We can even jump a little further ahead next time.” He coughed again and reached for his inhaler. “This cold air is really doing a number on my asthma.”
“You mean you knew we were going to Leningrad?” She could hardly believe he would endanger their lives on purpose. Her voice rose, and she tried to contain it. “You’re the one who taught us about the Soviet gulags and pogroms! And now Berlin? For all we know, Britain lost World War Two, and Hitler’s still in power! You know what he did to Christians and Jews, not to mention anyone suspected of spying!”
“But socialism done right is such a gift to the world!” Nik protested. “Why wouldn’t we want to see it in action?”
“Wait, the Nazis were socialist?” Sean rubbed his arms.
“More like anti-capitalists,” Nik wheezed. “I was hoping to observe the success of their economic policies.”
“Excuse me, friends.” The gentle voice from behind sent icicles of fear down Mackenzie’s spine. “I think perhaps you are very lost.”
* * *
The parlor was pleasantly warm. A wide-bellied stove in the corner pumped heat into the small room. Mackenzie draped her blanket over the back of a wooden chair and sat down.
Their host entered from the hallway, adjusting the white clerical tab under his shirt’s black collar. “Your friend fell asleep almost as soon as he laid down. Have you been traveling long?”
So much for programming the tablet, which Nik had brought inside the parsonage for that purpose. Mackenzie wondered if they would ever get home.
“Do you think he’ll be okay?” Sean asked worriedly.
Mackenzie frowned at her friend. “Are you kidding me? Coronavirus ring a bell?” Turning to their host, she continued, “I’m sorry, sir. I’m afraid he’s really sick.”
The man cocked his head, thinking. “I thought I recognized that cough,” he said finally, “although usually it’s a childhood infection, and it doesn’t get this bad. Franz!”
A short, dark-skinned man came to the parlor door. “Jawohl, Herr Bonhoeffer? Das zweite Frühstück ist fertig.”[1]
She couldn’t tell what he said, but his servant demeanor irritated her.
Herr Bonhoeffer rattled off something in German, and then turned to his guests. “Franz will set up an inhalation tent for your friend. The herbal steam should help his cough. Meanwhile, Second Breakfast is ready.”
“Second Breakfast?” Sean repeated. “Like the Hobbits?”
Mackenzie gave his shoulder a warning shove. Who knew whether Tolkein’s books had even been published, much less reached Germany?
They gathered around a kitchen table loaded with rolls, giant soft pretzels, sausages, and a pitcher of beer.
“I know Second Breakfast hasn’t quite caught on in Berlin,” Herr Bonhoeffer said, “but it’s a luxury I afford myself from my native Breslau. Shall we pray?”
He offered a blessing in German. The wood chairs scooted loudly on the linoleum floor as they sat. “Beer?” he offered.
“Yes, please,” Sean said, a little too eagerly. He immediately plunged his mustache into the foam.
Mackenzie accepted a glass as well, sipping it cautiously. She couldn’t help wrinkling her nose at the sour smell.
“So, what brings you to Prussia?” their host said, passing a plate of white sausages.
Sean made a face and passed the sausage without taking one. “Mac, I thought we just left Russia.”
“Prussia was a northern area of Germany.”
“Hmm.” Herr Bonhoeffer looked puzzled. “That is a name I am not familiar with, so let me be more clear. You are in the Electorate of Brandenburg, an Imperial Estate of the Holy Roman Empire. And you, I take it, are not from this place – or time.”
“Is it that obvious?” Mackenzie speared a sausage onto her plate. Vegan or not, she was hungry. “Sean, go get Nik’s tablet for me, okay?” She figured her clergy host wouldn’t approve of her going into a man’s room.
Sean took another swig of beer and trudged away.
“It is indeed obvious.” Herr Bonhoeffer raised an eyebrow halfway up his very bald forehead. “You are not a typical, demure Prussian Fräulein.”
“Why should a Prussian woman be demure? These are the Sixties, after all, and…” Her voice trailed away.
“You were saying?”
“America’s not a country, is it.” It wasn’t even a question. She knew.
“It’s a continent, if that helps. Two, in fact, North and South. Mostly ruled by the King of Spain. You speak English quite well for a Spaniard, Fräulein. Help yourself to the pretzels.”
She shook her head. “My mom’s mother is Hispanic. My dad’s family came from Poland and Wales. I don’t know what you’d call me.”
“Confused.” Sean placed the tablet at her elbow and grabbed his beer stein for another libation.
“Unusual, I would say.” Herr Bonhoeffer cut into his sausage. “I do not know many who can claim such a mixed heritage and the freedom to speak it. Your homeland must be a very tolerant place.”
‘Tolerant’ didn’t fit with what she knew of America, but it wasn’t worth arguing over. She flicked the computer open and pulled up the encyclopedia. “What did you say your name was, sir?”
“Bonhoeffer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. May I ask what you are doing?”
“She’s looking you up in the encyclopedia,” Sean said before she could kick him under the table. “Ow. What was that for? He already knows.”
“Indeed.” The clergyman offered Sean the plate of rolls. “If you are able to look me up by name, you must be from the future.”
“By way of the past,” Sean supplied. “We’ve been all over.”
“Which explains your confusion at the current state of things. Finish your food, and then I have a reading assignment for you both.”
* * *
“I can’t read anymore,” Sean complained. “I got a headache.”
The wide-bellied stove pumped heat into the room. Whether from the heat or the beer, Mackenzie felt herself nodding as well. “Hand it here and go take a nap,” she said, holding out her hand for the book. Sean plopped “The History of the World, volume six” in her lap and fled to the guest room. At least Herr Bonhoeffer had picked up a copy of the book in English when he studied at the seminary.
She balanced the thick tome on one knee and Nik’s tablet on the other, trying to ignore the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She’d already learned that their host, the distinguished Pastor Bonhoeffer, should have been involved in a plot against Hitler. He was executed just months before the Allies liberated Berlin in 1945. What she was trying to piece together now was why the 1960 Pastor Bonhoeffer had no idea who Hitler was.
So far, all she had learned was that World War II never happened. The only news of the 1940s was that Imperial Japan swept all of Southeast Asia into its empire, including China.
She paged backward to the early 1800s. Without Napoleon, the Holy Roman Empire never split up into Germany and Austria-Hungary. Together with the Ottoman Empire, they defeated the Triple Entente of France, Russia, and the United Kingdom in what was called The Great War of 1914-1918. The defeated countries had to cede all of their colonies in Asia and Africa to the victors.
Mackenzie picked up the second half of a sandwich from a plate at her elbow and nibbled absently.
Russia had dropped out of the war in early 1917 due to bread riots, but even though Tsar Nicolas II had abdicated, the Russian Provisional Government named his daughter, Grand Duchess Olga, as a symbolic Tsarina. Her younger sister Anastasia inherited the title when Olga died in 1925.
Comparing that to the history on Nik’s tablet, the missing event in Russia was the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, which led to the deaths of Nicholas’ family, and to the Communist USSR. That led her down another rabbit hole of researching Karl Marx and what led to his Communist Manifesto, but she couldn’t figure out why it seemed to be missing in the current timeline. She was starting to feel better about their decision to change history, though, because at least the encyclopedia entry of “millions dead” due to Communism would never come true.
The tablet’s battery icon was down to 50%, so she shut it off to conserve power. Instead, she paged through the history book, retracing their own steps through time. There was a chapter devoted to the British colonies, so she turned there and skipped through the early colonial period: Jamestown, Plymouth, and the rest. The next entry, though, chilled her to the bone, in spite of the warm room. “Curse of the Coronas,” the headline screamed.
Thomas Jefferson was the disease’s first victim, but not before he identified a family of pickpockets who stole his coin pouch. The times being what they were, a fiction arose that the pickpockets were witches who cast a spell on Jefferson and all of Williamsburg. Thousands died. The entire area was quarantined, leading to even more deaths from starvation.
Worse yet, the pickpockets had said they belonged to the Society of Friends, which led to a general persecution of that religious sect. Eventually, all churches but the state Anglican church were outlawed in British America.
By far, however, the most disastrous revelation was the guilty family’s name: Corona. The adult children were Sean and Mac.
She was still getting over her shock when footsteps scurried down the hall and the parlor door banged open. Franz ran in and scooped up the glasses and plate on the coffee table.
“Fräulein, beeil dich!”[2] he hissed, pointing toward the door.
She couldn’t tell what he said, but she caught his anxiety. Gathering the book and tablet, she followed him into the next room. He said something else in German as he shoved the dishes onto a side table and hurried away. He whispered one final instruction as he shut the door. Mackenzie recognized only one word, but it made her gasp.
“Ruhe! Die gestapo kommt!”[3]
The Gestapo! How could that be, if Hitler never happened?
[1] ** Jawohl, pronounced Ya-voh, means yes in German. Herr means Mr.; Frau means Mrs.; Fräulein means Miss. The second sentence translates, “Second Breakfast is ready.”
[2] Translation: Miss, Hurry!
[3] Translation: Quiet! The secret police are coming!
This is historical fiction for entertainment only. Any resemblance to living persons is accidental. Resemblance to current events is pure imagination. Interaction with actual history is sheer conjecture. (The rest of us already knew this, right?)
Footnotes for chapter 8 can be found here.
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Copyright © 2020 by Carolyn Van Gorkom
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author, except as provided by USA copyright law.
Cover illustration: cropped flag from a larger oil painting by Ferris, Jean Leon Gerome, Artist. Betsy Ross,/ J.L.G. Ferris. , ca. 1932. Cleveland, Ohio: The Foundation Press, Inc., July 28. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2002719536/. Public domain. No known restrictions on publication. No renewal in Copyright office, 11/91.
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