Wunderland Read online

  “Welcome, girls.” The woman’s mouth is painted the exact same blood-red shade as the flags behind her. Renate finds herself at first admiring it, then wondering at it: everyone knows that the BDM discourages cosmetics. Perhaps the rule gets waived for patriotically hued lips.

  From the neck down, at least, the Mädelschaftsführerin is in strict compliance with Bundestracht uniform regulations. Her white short-sleeved blouse is embellished with the black-and-white district insignia; her black kerchief neatly secured by a leather lanyard. Her navy skirt is knee-length and modest, her shoes sensible lace-up pumps. Each item of clothing is meticulously creased and ironed and polished, spotless enough to have been purchased that very morning. “You’re here to register?”

  “Yes,” says Renate.

  “She is,” Ilse clarifies. “I’m here to get an identification card for Das Deutsche Mädel.”

  “That would be in room 210 upstairs.” The woman indicates the stairwell with her chin, then turns to face Renate. “Your name?”

  “Renate Bauer. I’m fifteen,” Renate offers, though no one has asked her age yet.

  The woman frowns and jots something in her notebook. “You have your identity papers?”

  “Of course.” Renate’s fingers tremble slightly as she fishes into her bag again. She knows she has them. She always has them, because it’s the law to always have them. Lately, though, she’s been strangely terrified of inadvertently breaking the law. She has had dreams where she finds herself in a white-walled room that she knows is a cell. And last Saturday, when her mother took her to Wertheim to buy new gloves, she spent the entire hour convinced the sales lady thought she’d stolen something.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” her mother said, when Renate confided her concern. “It’s a classic response to the dilemma of adolescence. You’re being robbed of your childhood. Your innocence is being threatened. It’s only natural that your thoughts would turn to theft and guilt.”

  To her relief, Renate spies the green corner of her Ausweiskarte poking out from beneath her history textbook. “Thank you,” says the woman as Renate hands it to her. “You have an appointment, correct? Good. We’ll start with the physical examination.” The Führerin indicates the stairwell with her chin. “Up the stairs, first room on the right-hand side. Dr. Braun’s office. He has someone else in with him right now, but you may wait on the bench outside until she’s done.”

  “Thank you,” says Renate, and forces what she hopes is a confident smile (they’re not recruiting nervous wrecks!) before following Ilse up the stairs. On the top landing she pauses, patting her hair and pinching her cheeks to make them pink.

  “You’re not going dancing with Rudi,” Ilse tells her, rolling her eyes.

  “I just want to look healthy.” Glancing at her reflection in another glass-covered image of their dashing leader inspecting a Bund Deutscher Mädel unit, Renate suppresses a sigh. She doesn’t look healthy. She looks peaked and tired. Not at all like the wholesome, smiling girls in the photograph (or like Ilse, who might have sprung directly from it). Uniformly blond, white-toothed, and smiling, the BDM maidens salute their Chancellor from several meters away, lithe arms outstretched like the pale fronds of an anemone. The Führer smiles back at them but keeps his own arms clasped behind his back. The effect is an odd mix of approachability and remove.

  To her right, Ilse has settled onto the bench and is pulling out her homework. Renate settles in next to her, but she’s too nervous to study. She takes in the literary offerings on the table by her elbow: a newly minted copy of Mein Kampf on a stand, behind a neatly fanned selection of Wille und Macht, Das Deutsche Mädel, and Die Mädelschaft, the BDM newsletter. There are also two editions of the HJ yearbook, Jungen-eure Welt.

  Eschewing the Chancellor’s tract (she’s heard almost all of it from Rudi anyway), Renate leafs through last year’s yearbook. It seems to be composed largely of maps of Germany and its borders, odes to the Sturmtruppen martyr Horst Wessel, and assorted images of other sincere-faced, stiff-armed youth, though toward the back she discovers a busy graph comparing Germany’s current birth rate to the (much higher) rates of Poland and Russia. Beneath it appears yet another smiling blond girl, this one holding a cherubic-looking baby boy. “Mädel!” reads the caption. “It is your Sacred Duty to propagate, and be the Future Mothers of the Fatherland!”

  Propagate, thinks Renate, blinking. She thinks of her and Rudi’s outing last week to the Volkspark Friedrichshain. They’d been lying together, postpicnic, off one of the less-traveled pathways, half obscured by flower banks and well-manicured shrubs. She’d found herself beneath Rudi on the blanket, his mouth moving on her neck in a way that sent almost unbearably lovely shivers through her; his hips pressing against hers and between them both, the thing she can’t name aloud feeling hard and warm and urgent between them. And while the idea of it had long frightened her (for what to do if he wanted to bare it for her; or—even less thinkably—for her to touch it?), the reality felt entirely, dreamily different. As though her skin—so taut and tingling beneath his featherlight touch—somehow expected and even wanted this odd, firm pressure; wanted to meet and surround it and become part of it. And so even as she was pushing his chest away with her palms, her hips—despite Renate’s best intentions—had wanted to rise to meet his of their own accord. Not trusting herself, she had finally rolled away, flushed and giggling, and lied about her mother wanting her home early.

  At the Babylon last week there had been the same bodily mutiny: her torso squirming and writhing as Rudi licked and nibbled at her earlobe, his fingers creeping beneath her skirt’s hemline and over her bloomers before settling directly over the very spot where she most felt that strange new ache to be touched. It had all seemed to happen with breathless speed. And yet in retrospect, what had frightened her wasn’t even that they’d gotten that far so quickly. It was that it had been so hard to keep herself from going further. In fact, if the midfilm newsreel hadn’t come on showing the Führer celebrating his forty-sixth birthday, Renate honestly has no idea what might have happened.

  But it did come on, and of course Rudi released her like a hot plate and all but leapt to attention in his seat.

  Thinking back on it now, Renate realizes that she actually almost can understand it, how those nine hundred BDM girls Ilse told her about came back from last year’s Nuremberg Rally pregnant. Nine hundred girls, who simply did with their bodies what her own body seems to be begging her to do.

  And those were just the ones who got in trouble from it. The ones who actually did end up propagating.

  “What?” asks Ilse, looking up from her history book.

  “Nothing,” says Renate, flushing slightly (had she said it aloud?). “Just—this notice. It’s telling us that we have to have babies. I don’t know if they mean when we’re married or not.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “What?”

  “Well, a baby is a baby.” Ilse shrugs. “If the point of having them is to boost the population, it doesn’t really matter what their parents do or don’t do, does it? Just so long as the silly things get born.”

  “I feel like I’m talking to Ida Fuchs.” Renate laughs. And then stops, struck by a sudden, stunning possibility. “Hold on,” she says. “You haven’t actually…”

  Ilse stares back at her, at first looking confused. Then she laughs. “Oh, good God. Of course not.”

  Renate lets her breath out in relief. After the Book Lady incident they’d sworn to share any and all details of their love lives with each other. And to date Renate faithfully has, whispering and giggling and blushing. Ilse, however, has had nothing to report (and for that matter, seems more annoyed than impressed by Renate’s breathless recountings).

  Tossing the yearbook back onto the table, Renate flips quickly through a small book of blood purity poetry (Keep your blood pure / it is not yours alone) before aban
doning it for the April issue of Das Deutsche Mädel, the magazine that published Ilse’s first poem, and for which her friend will now be writing regularly. “Your Duty to Be Healthy!” reads the title article, which turns out to list the steps every Deutsches Mädel should take to ensure that her body and mind are primed for patriotic motherhood. Get ten hours of sleep a night. Exercise your body daily. Be domestically capable. Avoid stuffy cinemas and overcrowded smoky bars.

  Frowning, Renate rereads the list. She’d expected to have to catch up in things like running and gymnastics. But sleeping? Ten entire hours? For better or worse she is constitutionally a night owl, regularly reading until three a.m. and deeming every moment of exhaustion over it well worth it if the book was a good one. Domestic prowess is equally dubious. She can bake a little—but is only allowed to do so under the careful guidance of their housekeeper, since the one time she and Ilse attempted a Linzer torte they somehow set the oven rack on fire. (“You’re marvels,” Franz told them, with genuine-sounding admiration. “I didn’t even know that was possible.”) But even this skill seems of dubious value given the last “warning” on the list: Be mindful of what you put in your body: too many sweets will make you lazy and plump!

  She thinks of Ilse, joyously stuffing her mouth with Herr Schloss’s poppyseed cake. She thinks of their long-lost, quiet moments after school, now so much rarer since Ilse has the BDM and Renate has Rudi (when he doesn’t have Hitlerjugend). Once she’s accepted into the ranks of the BDM she and Ilse will spend more time together. But based on what Ilse’s told her, that time will center on things like flag-toting and hiking…sighing, she slips her blue composition notebook out of her satchel and begins carefully copying down the magazine’s mandates. She might as well begin getting used to them.

  After what seems an hour, the examination room door opens and a squat, spotty-faced girl with brown hair steps out, straightening her skirt.

  “How was it?” Renate asks her eagerly.

  The girl shrugs. “Fine.” She doesn’t look at all like the BDM ideal—the strong, long-limbed, sylphlike Aryan. But it also doesn’t look like that matters—from her sanguine expression, it’s clear that she, at least, has passed the physical exam.

  “Did he check how strong you were?” asks Renate. “Ask how fast you can run?”

  “Yes,” interjects Ilse. “And he made her climb to the very top of a big rope that hangs from the ceiling—just like the one you couldn’t climb in Athletics.”

  The brown-haired girl looks puzzled. “No, he didn’t. Why would a doctor’s office have a climbing rope?”

  Ilse bursts into laughter. “Your face!” she says, giving Renate’s narrow shoulder a push. “You really believed it.”

  “No, I didn’t,” says Renate, blushing.

  “There was nothing like that.” The brown-haired girl is still looking confused. “He checked my height and weight, listened to my heart. Had me cough.”

  “That was it?”

  The girl nods.

  “See? Like I told you,” says Ilse. “Child’s play.”

  Renate lets her breath out, relieved. “So I should just go in?”

  “I’d knock first,” says the girl, sitting down on the bench by Ilse and pulling her satchel into her lap. “But he’s expecting you.”

  Renate turns to Ilse. “You’ll wait?”

  Her friend lifts an eyebrow. “For the millionth time: yes!”

  I love you, Renate thinks, but she doesn’t say it. Instead, swallowing hard, she retucks her blouse and runs her hands over her braids before stepping toward the door.

  Child’s play, she tells herself. Nothing more than a straightforward checkup.

  She raps her knuckles against the glass and then drops her hand to the brass doorknob.

  “Come in,” calls a friendly male voice.

  But as she pushes the door open another voice—this one female—sounds from the other end of the hall, punctuated by the sharp clip of heels on hardwood.

  “Fräulein—wait a moment.”

  She and Ilse turn around together to see the red-lipped Führerin walking briskly toward them, a manila file in her hands. “I mean Fräulein Bauer.”

  Stopping short, the Führerin draws herself up formally. She looks down at Renate over her pinched nose. Renate looks back up, offering a small smile (not a nervous wreck!). The red lips don’t return it.

  Behind them, she hears the door to the exam room open further; she glances over her shoulder to see an older man in a white coat. “Is there a problem?”

  “Not a big one,” says Red Lips. “But you won’t need to see this girl today, Doktor Braun.”

  “No?”

  “No. As it turns out, she’s not eligible for BDM membership.”

  The prognosis is so completely what Renate most feared hearing today that her protest is almost reflexive: “But he hasn’t even examined me yet!”

  “I’m afraid an examination would be pointless,” the Führerin says crisply. She nods at the physician; the exam room door quietly closes. The Führerin licks a finger, flicks open her folder.

  “I don’t understand,” Renate falters.

  “I can see that. I’m also not sure you fully understood our requirements when you completed this.” The woman taps a page with an unpainted fingernail.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “I mean our racial requirements.”

  Renate glances at Ilse. Her friend’s face reflects the same bafflement she is feeling.

  The woman is now running her finger down the page. “You see, you neglected to include your full family history.”

  “Yes.” Renate exhales in relief; if that’s the problem, it’s easily resolved. “My parents have misplaced their ancestry tables. But as I wrote in the margin, I was told that you’d have access to the city’s census records.”

  The Führerin nods. “As we do. We had had them sent over before your arrival today. But I didn’t get a chance to pull them up until now.” Leafing through the folder, she removes another piece of paper—an older one, slightly yellowed at the edges, with the Berlin City official stamp on the top. “Surely you are aware that you’re not German.”

  Renate blinks. “I’m sorry?”

  “Sie sind keine Deutsche,” the woman repeats, slowly.

  For a moment the entire hallway seems to flicker slightly, like a flame in the pathway of a small breeze.

  Renate shakes her head. “Of course I am. My mother’s family goes back five generations in Berlin.”

  “Yes. But we require both parents of our appellants to be of sound German stock.”

  “I-I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  The woman clears her throat. “I see,” she says crisply, “that this will be news to you. I am sorry to have to be the one delivering it. But our records indicate that your father is a Jew.”

  Ein Jude. The words land like short blows to Renate’s lower abdomen. Behind her, Ilse and the brown-haired girl gasp.

  “That’s—that’s impossible,” Renate stammers.

  “I’m afraid it’s not. Your father is Otto Andreas Bauer, correct?”

  She nods.

  “He was born of two fully Jewish parents. That makes you—in the best-case scenario—a Mischling. And hence ineligible for any aspect of our organization.”

  She holds something out; Renate recognizes the dull green cover of her Ausweiskarte. Dazed, she takes it. “It’s impossible,” she repeats. “No one in my family is Jewish.”

  “She’s right, Fräulein.” Ilse has made her way over. “I can vouch for her.”

  As Renate throws her a grateful look, an image flashes past her mind’s eye: the two of them baking stollen with Maria this past December. The girls making a joke out of sneaking pieces of the raw, sweet dough into their mouths whenever the housekeeper wasn’t looking. And late
r, lying prone and groaning on Renate’s bed, arguing over whose stomach hurt the most. She sees them perusing the Christkindlmarkt arm in arm a few days later, advising one another on gifts for their family members, and then parting ways just long enough to buy for one another. Ilse gave Renate a cloth-bound copy of Hoffmann’s Die Elixiere des Teufels from a book dealer who swore it was a real second edition. Renate gave Ilse a jade-embellished fountain pen with a carry chain and a fancy holder.

  “There was an error in the records,” she repeats now, as firmly as she can manage.

  The woman smiles tightly. “Frankly, I believe this is an error on your parents’ part. They should have informed you about your heritage.”

  “Heritage?” Renate repeats numbly. Something in the air—a new density, as though the oxygen has somehow jellied like aspic—makes the Führerin’s meaning lag slightly behind her words.

  “I’m sorry to say that I’ve seen it before, too,” the woman is continuing. “I honestly don’t know what these Juden are thinking, sending girls like you here. It’s quite inconsiderate. To all involved.”

  That word again: Juden. Renate fights the urge to flinch. “I’ll—I’ll just talk to them. Tonight. After we sort it out I can come back tomorrow.”

  The woman gives her a long, cool look. Her round face reflects disapproval, distaste, and just the faintest touch of—could it be pity? “At any rate,” she says to the brown-haired girl, “your papers are all in order. We should go finish your registration and talk about getting you your uniform. Come with me. And you, Fräulein von Fischer—I can show you to room 210.”

  “Wait!” Renate feels her throat constrict in panic. “Can’t I—can’t I just register too? As long as I’m here?”