Wunderland Read online

  “It would save time,” Ilse offers, though her tone turns the statement into a question.

  The Führerin swivels slowly to look at Renate again. “Fräulein Bauer,” she says, articulating each word clearly. “I fear I still haven’t made myself clear. It is against regulations for any non-German to wear the uniform of the Bund Deutscher Mädel. In fact, it goes against nearly everything we stand for. If you can, as you say, supply proof that you meet our requirements, then we can discuss taking further steps toward membership. Until then, however, this discussion must be finished. It is late, and we have other matters to attend to. Komm, Fräulein.”

  Turning on her heel, she begins walking briskly back down the corridor, the brown-haired girl scurrying behind her.

  Renate stares after them, her gut hollowed by shock, her mind a buzzing blank. “Ilsi?”

  It comes out barely a whisper, and when at first there’s no answer she assumes Ilse hasn’t heard. She turns back to see that Ilse also is staring after the Fuhrerin’s receding shape, with an expression that Renate—who can usually read her best friend like a beloved book—this once finds completely unreadable.

  “I must go get my press card,” Ilse says at last. “You should go home—it will probably take some time. But I can come back with you tomorrow.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Ilse nods. “We can fix this.” Her voice is certain, though Renate can’t help but notice that the other girl doesn’t quite meet her eyes. As she turns away, the thought of being left behind becomes inexplicably devastating—as though she were being cast into a stone gray ocean. Don’t leave me! she wants to cry out. Please stay! But the words won’t or can’t come, and Ilse is already several steps away.

  “Call the Albrechts tonight,” Ilse calls over her shoulder. Her family doesn’t yet own a telephone, so they share the neighbors’.

  And then she is pacing quickly down the hallway after the Führerin and the brown-haired girl who looks more Jewish than Renate but is somehow fully German nevertheless. She pauses at a door, checks the number, knocks. The door opens. And then she is gone.

  Slowly, Renate turns back toward the staircase. Her lungs feel strangely tight. Her hand hurts. Looking down, she sees that she is clenching her identity card hard—hard enough that its sharp edges dig into her skin. Forcing her fingers to loosen, she slides the card into her satchel.

  As she starts her descent she imagines the Chancellor’s picture watching her; feels the set of small, dark eyes studying her from behind, checking her stature, her alignment. It’s an absurd thought, she knows this. Nevertheless, she lifts her shoulders and straightens her back as she makes her way down the stairs.

  When she reaches the first floor she stops at the landing, unsure of where she is actually going. Home, of course, makes the most sense. But she can’t really ask her parents about the District Census records—obviously, that is out of the question. She could ask her grandmother, who seems to know every detail about every ancestor on both sides of Renate’s family. But knowing her Oma, she will doubtlessly report the query right back to her parents.

  That leaves Renate’s own brother—Franz. He had to register at the university this fall, so he will know where to find the right paperwork. And while he ridicules the BDM—he says the letters actually stand for Bubi, drück mich (“Squeeze me, laddie”) or Bund Deutscher Milchkühe (“League of German Milk Cows”)—at least he won’t judge her for having gone behind their parents’ back. Not when he himself sneaks out to meet his friends at the Brauhaus. Not with the Book Lady and those other postcards beneath his bed.

  Outside, a church bell sounds out the hour in silvered tones: One. Two. Three…By Five she has decided. She will go home and—directly, before doing anything else—she will go straight to Franz, tell him what has happened, and ask him what to do. And by the evening’s end she’ll be able to call Ilse at the Albrechts’, and they’ll laugh over the misunderstanding.

  “Fräulein?”

  She turns to see the man seated to the stairwell’s left, looking up from his desk. “Is there something more we can help you with?” His tone is clipped and cold. She realizes with a hot flush that he must have heard the entire exchange.

  “No,” she says. “I just—I just need to go locate my family records. The correct ones.”

  “The correct ones.”

  She nods. “The ones the city had for me are incorrect.”

  “Hmm,” he says. His expression says preposterous. She wants to tell him that the Oberrottenführer of their district’s Hitlerjugend is her very own secret sweetheart. And that he says that she is just the kind of German girl the BDM needs.

  Instead, she does the only other thing she can think of: she salutes.

  “Heil Hitler!”

  “We close in thirty-five minutes,” he says.

  He doesn’t even bother to stand up.

  * * *

  The journey back feels surreal, the lights of the U-Bahn too brightly yellow against the dank darkness of its tunnels. As the train approaches the station a group of boys platform-jump it, leaping from between the cars with Indian-style whoops, letting the engine’s momentum hurl their bodies onto the platform and past the stationmaster’s tiny glassed-in office. As they land—one, two, three—just at the top of the stairwell, one of them whistles at her. “That was for you, little beauty!” he calls. If Ilse had been there they’d have shrieked and giggled together. Now, though, it’s as though his voice reaches her from a distance. The way a breeze might carry cries from far-off gulls.

  As she picks her way toward a seat, her schoolbag feeling as though it’s filled with cannon fodder rather than textbooks: her spaetzle arms ache. The U-Bahn itself feels different; the lighting less light. The fixtures and seats somehow ominous and sharper around the edges. The next seat over, a middle-aged woman and a younger one in her twenties pause in their discussion to look up at her before resuming chatting. And though they both smile politely, there is something toothy and raptorial in their faces that makes Renate’s stomach tighten in apprehension.

  “I still don’t think you should shop there,” the younger woman is saying.

  “But, you know, it’s so much cheaper!”

  “It’s cheaper only because the things are more cheaply made.”

  “No, really,” says the matron. “The goods there are just as well made as at German shops. They last as long. They are just so much cheaper. It’s a much better deal.”

  The younger woman grimaces. “I’m sure there’s some other way they’re going to make you pay,” she says. “That’s what they do, you know. Those Juden.”

  Renate stares at them, confounded. Do they know? Something Ilse said recently floats through her thoughts: What if all the world really is a stage, and everyone but you is acting, and you don’t know it?

  At the time Renate had laughed. Now she shivers a little and hugs her satchel to her stomach. She focuses on the clack-clack-clack of the rails below, losing herself in their predictable, harsh rhythm.

  At Friedrichstraße she gets off and descends to street level, distractedly planning the next hour. According to the station clock it is now six fifteen: Franz should be home, presuming he’s keeping to his normal Tuesday schedule. As she makes her way toward Unter den Linden, passing blind old Fritz and his pencils without a glance, Renate tries not to think about what will happen if Franz isn’t there. If, for some reason, he doesn’t get home until late, until after she goes to sleep. In the worst case she will simply stay home tomorrow—say she’s sick. At least it will get her out of school, and out of having to tell Rudi about the mix-up. Though—oh, no—what if Ilse ends up telling him anyway? That would be even more disastrous than Renate telling him herself.

  She’ll have to call Ilse tonight either way.

  She pushes the front door open as quietly as she can. Her parents are in the parl
or, having one of their hush-toned “discussions.” Hanging her coat on the wall, Renate carefully unlaces her boots and takes the stairs in stocking feet, hoping that Sigmund is shut up in Franz’s room so he won’t give her away with his whimpering welcome. At the top she pauses again, tilting her head. No sign of the Schnauzer.

  Below, her parents continue their tense murmuring. Renate makes out only a few words—exams and committee; then what sounds like attendance. Why, she wonders irritably, do they even bother to whisper? Must everything seem like such a weighty, secretive matter all of a sudden? Why do adults always think they’re so very important?

  Soundlessly, she deposits her satchel in her own room before continuing on tiptoe toward her brother’s. She finds herself hoping Franz has one of his jokes for her—she needs one. At the moment she’d probably even laugh at something dirty…the thought is interrupted by a muffled whining and the soft scratch of canine nails against oak.

  No, she thinks. Stay.

  “All right, buddy,” she hears her brother say. “Go say hello.”

  Almost before she’s registered the words Sigmund is tearing toward her like a furry bullet, barking joyously, as though he hasn’t seen her for years. Smiling despite herself, Renate drops to her knees and hugs the wriggling pup, turning her face away as he lunges at her cheek with his floppy tongue.

  Downstairs, the tones of hushed conversation stop.

  “Reni?” her mother calls. “Are you home?”

  “Yes,” she calls back reluctantly, holding the squirming Schnauzer at arm’s length.

  “Come have some dinner!”

  “I’m not hungry. And I’ve a lot of studying to do.”

  “You have to eat something.”

  “Can I eat it in my room, then? I want to go to bed early.”

  A pause. Renate hears her father murmur something; hears her mother sigh. “Fine. We’ll send Maria up with a plate. But please come down before bedtime to say good night.”

  “Fine,” Renate says, though she has no intention of complying. As Ilse frequently notes, Renate’s the worst liar on the planet. One look and they’ll know something is up.

  Standing, she pushes Sigmund back onto four paws, then wipes his kisses from her forehead with her palm.

  “Good day?”

  She looks up to see Franz leaning against the wall, his arms crossed and his sleepy eyes wry.

  “Good enough.”

  “You don’t look it,” he says. “You look like you’ve been eating lemons.”

  Worst liar on the planet. Once more she breaks into a brief, glum smile. “It’s been a very strange afternoon.”

  “A good kind of strange?”

  Shaking her head she stands, brushing the short dark hairs from her skirt. “Actually, can I speak with you for a moment?”

  “Aren’t we speaking right now?”

  He says it with one of his indulgent you’re such a child smiles, which normally would infuriate her. Today, however, she simply says: “It won’t take long,” and prays to Nobody in Particular that this is true.

  After he’s shut the door she sits tentatively on his bed, with Sigi settling back into his usual spot at the foot. Renate finds herself relaxing a little bit, for the first time in what feels like hours. Franz’s room has always had that effect on her. In part it’s the smell: tobacco-tinged like her mother’s, but also aromatic in a way that has nothing to do with perfume or cologne. It’s a kind of boyish element, a faint whiff of musk to it. There is also a sourness, but it’s an almost pleasantly sweet sourness—like condensed milk left too long out of the icebox. It’s a smell that, for as long as she can remember, has made Renate feel safe. She watches in silence as he shuffles to the oaken secretary he works at, leaning his cane against the desk before falling into the cracked leather office chair he inherited from their mother’s clinic. Hoisting his bad leg up onto the desk he locks eyes with her, and Renate has a momentary image of the two of them, twelve years earlier.

  It was a cold winter morning, and he was six and she was three, and she’d woken up early and gone to bounce on his bed as she often did since their parents had forbidden them both to wake them before eight. Franz had groaned and complained. But eventually he’d made room, putting his arm around Renate’s shoulders and pulling her close. Reading to her from the books he loved—Schwab’s Heroic Legends, the kings and monsters of Hauff. An old version of Alice’s Abenteuer im Wunderland that had once belonged to their mother. Even then he’d had that sweet scent, though not yet infiltrated by the oily, adult pungence of perspiration, brilliantine, and tobacco.

  “So,” he says.

  “So.” There doesn’t seem to be any graceful way to launch the subject, so she just plunges in: “Are we Jewish?”

  “Ah.” He leans back slightly, tents his fingers before his nose. Behind him, Karl Marx stares down from his postered position above Franz’s desk, his hair wild and his expression inscrutable.

  “Ah?” She’d expected the question to shock him—or, at very minimum, to make him laugh. That it doesn’t makes Renate’s stomach knot with dread. “Ah?” she repeats. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  He holds up a finger: Wait.

  Opening his top drawer, he takes out his cigarette tin. Renate’s chest feels suddenly tight—as though her breastbone is expanding. I should leave, she thinks. I should leave now. I should go…

  But she finds she can barely breathe, much less move. Immobilized, she watches Franz place a Mona between his lips, holding it there slackly as he lights it the way Humphrey Bogart does in Big City Blues. The match’s flame casts her brother’s long dark lashes in relief against his cheeks. Ilse once said—only half in jest—that he has the loveliest eyes of any woman she’s ever known.

  “How did it come up?” he asks at last.

  She takes a shaky breath. “I applied to the BDM today.” And as he rolls his eyes: “It was my decision to make.”

  “Unfortunately, it isn’t. The Hitlerjugend have strict standards about the sort of blood they want pumping in their young folks’ veins.”

  Her heart plummets within her chest. “You can’t mean that what they told me is true.”

  “That depends. What did they tell you?”

  “They said that—that Vati is Jewish.” Renate’s voice is shaking, but she forges on. “That his parents were both Juden. And that that makes me a—” She pauses, trying to recall the term.

  “A Mischling,” he says quietly. “At best. But in their eyes, we are probably no better than Juden. It’s like poison, you see. One drop spoils the entire cup of water.” He taps his cigarette over his own half-filled water glass.

  Renate stares at him, then at the black specks as they swirl and whirl toward the bottom of the drinking vessel. And in that moment it seems the rest of the world has frozen: the walls, his books, the light fixture. Even Franz seems to take on a faint but impenetrable shine, as though he, too, might shatter if thrown or dropped. She pictures him, pictures everything tinkling to the ground in glistening shards. She feels as though she might vomit.

  “No,” she manages. “No, that can’t be right. Even Ilse said it was a mistake.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not.”

  Nonono. “But…but how can that be? We have photographs from my baptism!”

  He shrugs. “There are photographs from Vati’s baptism. They mean nothing.”

  “They mean he’s Christian!”

  Beside her Sigi starts, then turns to gaze at her with liquid-brown concern. Renate realizes that she was nearly shouting. Franz presses the air down with his palm: softly.

  “Not if his parents were Jewish,” he says quietly. “Which they were, originally. They converted to Christianity together just before they married. A lot of Jews were converting around that time. It was apparently quite the fashion.” He lets out a low, lon
g stream of smoke. “Before that they’d both grown up in practicing Jewish homes.”

  Practice, Renate thinks numbly. What do Jews practice? Piano? Violin? She pictures the somber-looking, dark-dressed people who live near Hackescher Markt and Mulackstraße: the women in their false-looking wigs and heavy, unbecoming clothing. The men with their corkscrew curls and furry hats. It’s like trying to connect her cultured, Christian father to aliens.

  “How long—how long have you known?”

  “Vati told me last winter.”

  Renate gasps. “Last winter?!”

  He holds up his hands again, once more pacifying. “He had to. Not only did I need the information to register at Friedrich Wilhelm, but it’s common knowledge there now that he’s a Jew.” He takes a final drag of his cigarette, then uses it to light a second before dropping the spent stub after its ash. “He managed to survive the first few rounds of firings because of his wartime decorations. The word now, though, is that with the new law about civil positions he’ll be out of a job by December.” Grimacing, he hefts his bad leg up with both hands to shift it. When it stays still for too long—which it often does, since he forgets to move it—it’s susceptible to pins and needles.

  Renate presses both temples with the heels of her hands. She imagines cracking her own skull like a walnut, if only to stop the sickening spinning in her head. But her mind keeps whirling and swirling, pausing sporadically and only briefly on things she’s seen every day without really registering them: the troops of Brownshirts who swagger their way down the streets. Der Stürmer’s announcement boards, with their lewd cartoons and vehement headlines: The Jews Are Our Misfortune! Women and Girls, the Jews Are Your Doom! When You Recognize a Jew, You Recognize the Devil!

  “It makes no sense,” she whispers, or at least she thinks she whispers it. The blood roar in her ears is deafening.

  “They wanted to tell you when it became more…relevant. I think they knew they’d have to break it to you soon.” Seeing her face, he leans forward. “Look. At least for the moment, it doesn’t really change anything for you.”