The German Girl Read online

  Anna

  New York, 2014

  The day Dad disappeared, Mom was pregnant with me. By just three months. She had the opportunity to get rid of the baby but didn’t take it. She never lost hope that Dad would return, even after receiving the death certificate.

  “Give me some proof, a trace of his DNA, then we can talk,” she always told them.

  Maybe because Dad was still a stranger to her in some ways—mysterious and solitary, a man of few words—she thought he might reappear at any moment.

  Dad left unaware I would be born.

  “If he’d known he had a daughter on the way, he would still be here with us,” Mom insisted every September for as long as I could remember.

  The day Dad never returned, Mom was going to prepare a dinner for the two of them in our spacious dining room, by the window from where you can see the trees in Morningside Park lit by bronze streetlamps. She was going to tell him the news. She still set the table that evening because she refused to admit the possibility that he was gone. She never got to open the bottle of red wine. The plates stayed on the white tablecloth for days. The food ended up in the garbage. That night, she went to bed without eating, without crying, without closing her eyes.

  She lowered her gaze as she told me this. If it were up to her, the plates and the bottle would have still been on the table—and, who knows, probably also the rotting, dried-out food.

  “He’ll be back,” she always insisted.

  They had talked about having children. They saw it as a distant possibility, a long-term project, a dream they hadn’t given up on. What both of them were sure of was that if they did have any children one day, the boy had to be called Max and the girl, Anna. That was the only thing Dad demanded of her.

  “It’s a debt I owe my family,” he would tell her.

  They had been together for five years, but she never managed to get him to talk about his years in Cuba or his family.

  “They’re all dead” was the only thing he’d say.

  Even after so many years, that still bothered Mom.

  “Your father is an enigma. But he’s the enigma I loved most in my entire life.”

  Trying to resolve that enigma was a way to unburden herself. Finding the answer was her punishment.

  I kept his small silver digital camera. At first, I spent hours going through the images he left on its memory card. There wasn’t a single one of Mom. Why bother, when she was always by his side? The photographs were all taken from the same spot on the narrow living room balcony. Photographs of the sun rising. Rainy days, clear days, dark or misty ones, orange days, violet-blue days. White days, with the snow covering everything. Always the sun. Dawn with a horizon line hidden by a patchwork of buildings in a silent Harlem, chimneys spewing out white smoke, the East River between two islands. Again and again, the sun—golden, grand, sometimes seeming warm, other times cold—viewed from our double glass door.

  Mom told me that life is a jigsaw puzzle. She wakes up, attempting to find the correct piece, trying all the different combinations to create those distant landscapes of hers. I live to undo them so that I can discover where I came from. I am creating my own jigsaw puzzles out of photos I printed at home from the images I found on Dad’s camera.

  From the day I discovered what had really happened to Dad, and Mom understood I could fend for myself, she shut herself in her bedroom and I became her caretaker. She converted her bedroom into her refuge, keeping the window overlooking the interior courtyard always closed. In dreams, I would see her falling fast asleep from the pills she took before going to bed, engulfed by her gray sheets and pillows. She said the pills helped ease the pain and knock her out. Sometimes I would say a prayer—so silent that even I could not hear or remember it—that she would stay asleep, and her pain would go away forever. I couldn’t bear to see her suffer.

  Every day before I leave for school, I take her a cup of black coffee, with no sugar. In the evening, she sits at supper with me like a ghost while I make up stories about my classes. She listens, raises a spoon to her mouth, and smiles at me to show how grateful she is that I am still there with her, and for making her soup that she swallows out of duty.

  I know she could disappear at any moment. Where would I go then?

  When my school bus drops me off outside our apartment building each afternoon, the first thing I do is pick up the mail. After that, I prepare dinner for the two of us, finish my homework, and check if there are any bills to pay, which I pass on to Mom.

  Today we received a large envelope with yellow, white, and red stripes and its warning in big red capital letters: DO NOT BEND. The sender is in Canada, and it is addressed to Mom. I leave it on the dining table and lie down on my bed to begin reading the book I was given at school. A few hours later, I remember that I haven’t opened the envelope.

  I start knocking on Mom’s bedroom door. At this time of night? she must be thinking. She’s pretending to be asleep. Silence. I keep knocking.

  Nights are sacred for her: she tries to fall asleep, reliving things she can no longer do, and thinking about what her life might have been like if she could have avoided fate or simply wiped it away.

  “A package came today. I think we should open it together,” I say, but there’s no answer.

  I stay at the door and then open it gently so as not to disturb her. The lights are off. She’s dozing, her body seems almost weightless, lost in the middle of the mattress. I check that she’s still breathing, still exists.

  “Can’t it wait until tomorrow?” she murmurs, but I don’t budge.

  She closes her eyes and then opens them again, turning to see me standing in the doorway, the hall light behind me—which blinds her at first, because she’s used to the dark.

  “Who sent it?” she asks, but I don’t know.

  I insist she come with me; that it’ll do her good to get up.

  I finally manage to convince her. She stands up unsteadily, smoothing down her straight black hair, which hasn’t been cut for months. She leans on my arm for support, and we shuffle to the dining table to discover what we have been sent. Perhaps it’s a birthday present for me. Someone has remembered I’m going to be twelve, that I’ve grown up, that I exist.

  She sits down slowly, with an expression on her face that seems to say, Why did you make me get out of bed and upset my routine?

  When she sees the sender’s name, she picks up the envelope and clutches it to her chest. Her eyes open wide, and she says to me solemnly:

  “It’s from your father’s family.”

  What? But Dad didn’t have a family! He came into this world alone and left it the same way, with no one else around. I remember that his parents died in an airplane accident when he was nine. Predestined for tragedy, as Mom once said.

  After their deaths, he had been brought up by Hannah, an elderly aunt we assumed was dead by now. We had no idea if they had kept in touch by telephone, letters, or email. His only family. I was called Anna in her honor.

  The package was mailed from Canada but it’s really from Havana, the capital of the Caribbean island where Dad was born. When we open it, we see it contains a second envelope. “For Anna, from Hannah” is written on the outside in big, shaky handwriting. This isn’t a present, I think. It must contain documents or who knows what. It probably has nothing to do with my birthday. Or maybe it’s from the last person to see Dad alive, who has finally decided to send us his things. Twelve years later.

  I’m so nervous, I can’t stop moving around, getting up and sitting down again. I walk to the corner of the room and back. I start playing with a lock of my hair, twisting and twisting it until it’s tangled. It feels like Dad is with us again. Mom opens the second envelope. All we find inside are old photograph contact sheets, and lots of negatives, together with a magazine—in German?—from March 1939. On the cover is the image of a smiling blond girl in profile.

  “The German Girl,” says Mom, translating the title of the magazine. “She looks
like you,” she tells me mysteriously.

  These photos make me think I can begin a fresh puzzle now. I’m going to enjoy myself with all these images that have reached us from the island where Dad was born. I’m so excited at the discovery, but I was hoping to find Dad’s watch, an heirloom from his grandfather Max, which still worked, or his white gold wedding band, or his rimless spectacles. These are the details I remember about Dad from the photo I always keep with me, and which sleeps beside me every night under a pillow that used to be his.

  The package has nothing to do with Dad. Not with his death, anyway.

  We don’t recognize any of the people. It’s hard to make out such small, blurred images printed on sheets that seem to have survived a shipwreck. Dad could have been one of them. No, that’s impossible.

  “These photos are seventy years old or more,” Mom explains. “I don’t think even your grandfather was born then.”

  “We have to get them printed tomorrow,” I say, controlling my excitement to avoid upsetting her. She goes on studying the mysterious images; those faces from the past she is trying to decipher.

  “Anna, they’re from before the war,” she says, so seriously it startles me. Now I’m even more confused. What war is she talking about?

  We go through the negatives and come across a faded old postcard. She picks it up with great care, as though she’s afraid it might fall to pieces.

  On one side, a ship. On the other, a dedication.

  My heart starts racing. This must be a clue, but the date on the card is May 23, 1939, so I don’t think it has anything to do with Dad’s disappearance. Mom is handling this postcard like some kind of archaeologist, like she needs to put on a pair of silk gloves so that it won’t be harmed. For the first time in ages, she seems alive.

  “It’s time to find out who Dad is,” I say, using the present tense just as Mom does whenever she mentions him. I stare at the face of the German girl.

  I am sure my father isn’t coming back, that I lost him forever one sunny day in September. But I want to know more about him. I don’t have anyone else, apart from my mother, who lives shut away in a dark room overwhelmed by gloomy thoughts she won’t share with anyone. I know sometimes there are no answers, and we have to accept it, but I can’t understand why, when they got married, she didn’t find out more about him; try to get to know him better. By now, it’s way too late. But that’s how Mom is.

  Now we have a project. At least, I do. I think we’re about to discover an important clue. Mom goes back to her room, but I’m ready now to snap her out of her passiveness. I hold on to this object sent by a distant relative who I am now desperate to get to know. I prop the small card against my bedside lamp and turn down the brightness. Then I get into bed, pull up the covers, and stare at the picture until I fall asleep.

  The postcard shows an ocean liner bearing the name St. Louis, Hamburg-Amerika Linie. The message is written in German: “Alles Gute zum Geburtstag Hannah.” Signed: “Der Kapitän.”

  Hannah

  Berlin, 1939

  Yanking open the huge, dark wooden door from the inside, I banged the bronze knocker without meaning to. The noise reverberated through the silent building where I no longer felt protected. I prepared myself for the blaring noise of Französische Strasse, which was full of red-white-and-black flags. People were walking along, stumbling into one another without any apologizing. Everyone seemed to be fleeing.

  I reached the Hackesche Höfe. Five years ago, it belonged to Herr Michael, a friend of Papa’s. The Ogres took it from him, and he had to leave the city. As with every midday, Leo was waiting for me in the doorway of Frau Falkenhorst’s café, in the interior courtyard of the building. And there he was, with that mischievous expression of his, ready to complain about me being so late.

  I got out my camera and started snapping pictures of him. He struck poses and laughed. The café door opened, and a man with a blotchy red face came out, bringing with him a gust of warm air and the smell of beer and tobacco. When I got closer to Leo, I was hit by the fragrance of hot chocolate on his breath.

  “We have to get out of here,” he said. I smiled and nodded.

  “No, Hannah. We have to get out of all this,” he repeated, meaning the whole city.

  This time I understood him: neither of us wanted to go on living surrounded by all these flags, these soldiers, all the pushing and shoving. I’ll go with you wherever you wish, I thought to myself as we set off at a run.

  We were running against the wind, the flags, the cars. I tried to keep up with Leo as he raced along, adept at slipping through this throng of people who considered themselves pure and invincible. When I was with Leo, there were moments when I didn’t hear the noise from the loudspeakers, or the cries and chants of men marching in perfect unison. It seemed impossible to be any happier, even though I knew it wasn’t going to last.

  We crossed onto the bridge, leaving the City Palace and the cathedral behind us, so that we could lean on the parapet and gaze down at the river Spree. Its waters were as dark as the walls of the buildings lining it. My thoughts wandered, following the rhythm of the current. I felt as if I could throw myself in and let it carry me along—become even more impure. But that day, I was clean; I’m sure of it. Nobody would dare spit at me. I was just like them. On the outside, at least.

  In photographs, the waters of the Spree tended to have a silvery sheen, with the bridge looming at the far end like a shadow. I was standing in the center, above the small arch, when I heard Leo calling me in exasperation.

  “Hannah!”

  Why did he have to rouse me out of my daydream? Nothing at that moment could have been more important than to be able to cut myself off, ignore my surroundings, and imagine we didn’t have to go anywhere.

  “There’s a man taking photographs of you!”

  It was only then that I noticed the thin, lanky man with the beginnings of a potbelly. He was holding a Leica in his hands and was trying to focus on me. I shifted around, moving about to make it more difficult for him. He must have been an Ogre who was going to report us, or one of the traitors who worked for the police station on Iranische Strasse and spent their time denouncing us.

  “He photographed you as well, Leo. It mustn’t have been just me. What does he want? Can’t we even be on our bridge?”

  Mama insisted we shouldn’t wander around the city, because it was full of rough enforcers. Nobody even felt they needed to put on a mask to offend you. We were the offense; they were reason, duty, enforcement. The Ogres attacked us, shouted insults; we were supposed to remain silent, mute, while they kicked us.

  They had discovered our stain, our impurities, and denounced us. I smiled at the man with the Leica. He had an enormous mouth. A thick, transparent liquid was dripping from his nose. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, and pressed the button on his camera several more times. Take all the photos you want. Send me to jail.

  “Let’s grab his camera and throw it in the river,” Leo whispered in my ear.

  I could not stop gazing at this pathetic man, who was leering at me and almost threw himself at my feet in search of the best angle. I felt like spitting at him. I was disgusted by his big, wet nose. It was as big as those in the caricatures of the impure on the front page of Der Stürmer, the magazine that hated us and had become very popular. Yes, he must have been one of those who dreamed of being accepted by the Ogres. Dirty lowlifes, as Leo usually called them.

  I started to tremble. Leo ran off, dragging me along like a rag doll. The man started to wave and tried to catch up to us. I heard him shout:

  “Young girl! Your name! I need your name!”

  How could he have thought I was going to stop and give him my name, surname, age, and address?

  Attempting to blend in with the traffic, we crossed the street. A crowded tram went past, and we saw him still standing on the bridge. We laughed, and he had the nerve to shout good-bye!

  We headed for Georg Hirsch’s café on Schönhaus
er Allee. It was our favorite café in Berlin, where we usually gorged ourselves on sweets and could spend the entire afternoon without fear of being insulted. Leo was forever hungry, and my mouth was already watering at the thought of fresh Pfeffernüsse spice cookies, even though these weren’t holidays. I preferred the ones sprinkled with sugar and aniseed extract, while Leo preferred the cinnamon-coated ones. We’d stain our fingers and noses white, and then make the Ogres’ salute. Leo would change it into a traffic policeman’s signal to Stop! Bending his hand up vertically, making a letter L with his arm. That joker Leo, as Mama would say.

  As we approached the café, we suddenly froze on the street corner: the windows of Georg Hirsch’s café had been smashed as well! I couldn’t stop taking photos. I could see Leo was sad. A group of Ogres came around the corner marching in step and singing an anthem that was an ode to perfection, to purity, to the land that should only belong to them. Good-bye, Pfeffernüsse!

  “Another sign that we must leave,” Leo said mournfully, and we ran off again.

  Leave, I knew: not this corner, or the bridge, or Alexanderplatz. Simply leave.

  It was quite likely they were waiting at home to arrest us. If not the Ogres, it would be Mama. We were not getting out of this unscathed.

  At Hackescher Markt Station, we got into the first car of the S-Bahn. We sat opposite two women who were complaining the whole time about how expensive everything was, about all the food shortages, about how hard it was nowadays to find proper coffee. Every time they waved their arms in the air, they gave off waves of sweat mixed with rose essence and tobacco. The one who talked the most had a smudge of red lipstick on her front tooth, which looked like a cut. I glanced at her and, without realizing it, started to perspire. It’s not blood, I told myself, staring at her huge mouth. Troubled by my insistence, she flapped her hand at me to stop looking at her. I lowered my eyes, and her stale odor filled my nostrils. The conductor in his blue uniform came up and asked to see our tickets.