Berni crossed her arms and pursed her lips.
“What do people say?” Anita had opened the door to the alley. The music surged and fell away. Grete shrank back. Now she could see that Anita’s face powder did not match the olive skin of her throat. There was something else, too: her neck and chin were oddly grayish.
“Well, go on,” Berni said.
“They say—” Frau Eisler’s voice came in and out of Grete’s mind. Whore-lids. Greedy, idle women. “A girl’s virtue is the most important possession she has—”
“You hear this from his wife, eh?” Berni spat. “Fascinating. What else does she say?”
“The German family is—is the basis of our economy, and the family is centered on virtue.” If Klaus could see her now; she was pronouncing everything wrong. She thought of their letter games. “You know this, Berni. You know from Sister Josephine.”
Berni’s face faltered. Anita took a step closer to Grete, who continued. “Without virtue, a girl is nichts aber der Müll. To be thrown away like—” Grete stopped.
Anita’s breastbone gave it away. There were blemishes, a delta of shorn hairs in the middle of her taut chest. Grete put her hand to her mouth. When Anita caught her looking, she covered her sternum. “Don’t stare at me. Why are you staring like that?” She glanced toward Berni. “I understand now, Berni. She thinks she’s too good for us. And so do you.”
“Anita—” Berni started coughing, the unhealthy bark that Grete had heard many a late night in the orphanage. Without thinking Grete put a hand on her back, finding ribs closer to the surface than she’d expected. “She didn’t mean to insult you,” Berni croaked to Anita, but it was too late. Anita’s arm was quick. She had encircled Grete’s wrist in her big palm. Berni, still coughing, tried to stop her but doubled over, hands on her knees.
What came next seemed to happen very slowly. Anita took Grete’s hand down and then up, under her hem, toward the tops of her legs. She guided Grete’s fingers into her crotch, where Grete felt something she had never touched before: a naked penis and a pair of warm testicles.
To her horror, something twinged between her own legs.
Then Berni was between them, pushing them apart. She had Anita up against the wall of the Silver Star. “You’re crazy! You’re crazy! She’s an innocent!”
Anita was laughing, a bit too loudly, as if she knew she’d done wrong. Grete sobbed into the crook of her arm. Her fingers tingled. Her head pounded. “I’m no innocent. I’m no innocent anymore.” She heard Anita’s heels clicking away, toward the street.
“I’m sorry,” Berni whispered. When she came close she smelled like Anita, like liquor. “She was showing off, can you see? Showing off! She doesn’t know how to make a joke.”
“She?” Grete cried. “A joke?” She took off running. Behind her she thought she heard Berni sob. The afternoon had grown dark; the department stores in Mitte were igniting their fluorescent towers. Taxi headlights flickered in the mist. She ran toward Charlottenburg and safety, Berni’s money in her pocket, in the opposite direction from the way Anita had gone.
• • •
That Sunday, Grete prepared a feast for the Eislers. She woke before dawn to complete her chores so that she could spend all day cooking. She was meticulous. She did everything perfectly. She had never seen a meal like it before in her life, not even on the sisters’ table. But she had imagined eating one like it so many times that she knew she could create it. The dinner came straight from her dreams.
The sausage itself came from Rachel. Grete had given her the money with an order: pork links, butter, rosemary, which Rachel fulfilled. Grete cooked while the Eislers were at church. Zarah Leander’s voice trumpeted from the radio. She could not help but dance in the kitchen as she fried the sausage with sliced potatoes and a purple onion. She’d woken in the middle of the night with a pain; her right breast had begun to bud. Not everything about her would be lopsided.
To sweeten the evening further, Herr Eisler came home to eat. Just before dinner, when his wife asked nervously if there would be enough food for him, Grete could reassure her. Oh yes, she had plenty of sausage, split down the middle, the insides caramelized brown, the skins perfectly seared. She had intended to eat one herself, but by the time Sunday arrived she decided to give the extra to Klaus.
He initially refused. “Are you sure you just want potatoes for your dinner?”
“Yes, yes.” She gave him a long look, all her gratitude for what he’d done for her speech, she hoped, written across her face. He raised his eyebrows.
Grete had borrowed a fourth chair from Rachel as well; fortunately, nobody asked where it came from. She poured herself a glass of weak tea from the pot at the center of the table, and beer for the others. “Eat,” she said as though she were the host, adding neither “sir” nor “please.” And they did. Even Gudrun professed it delicious. For once there was no talk of politics, not a single frightening news story or reiteration of the priest’s homily. Nobody asked Herr Eisler how his search for work in the East had gone this week, though he hadn’t been home since Wednesday. A happy hush fell over the table until the plates were clear.
“This must have cost us dearly.” Frau Eisler wiped grease from her lips. “Are you sure we can afford to dine this way?”
“Please don’t concern yourself,” Grete said. “The cost should not worry you.”
Frau Eisler beamed and lightly pinched the soft part of Gudrun’s arm, as though the child would already have plumpened. Nobody else asked how she’d purchased the food, not even Herr Eisler. He and his son shoveled it into their mouths as though they’d never eaten before.
“After dinner,” Frau Eisler asked Grete, “won’t you join us in some parlor games?” Her usually wan face had taken on a glow, especially when she looked at her husband.
“Oh, yes, after I finish washing the dishes,” Grete replied.
“I’ll help you,” said Herr Eisler. He and his wife both smiled benevolently at Grete, and she felt she could not be happier.
After the dishes were cleared, Frau Eisler called them into the parlor. She lay on the floor, her crooked body stretched out on the thin woven rug. She had unpacked half of a box of dominoes. Gudrun, her legs and arms slung across a chair, had begun to whine. “I don’t want to play Chicken Foot. I hate that game.”
Nobody listened to her. Herr Eisler worked a newspaper puzzle with his bad leg crossed underneath the good one and a pipe in his mouth. Frau Eisler constructed a foot of dominoes in the center of the carpet and invited Grete to join her when it was ready. Klaus drew in his sketchbook, and Grete, face flushed, perched on the edge of his chair to look over his shoulder. Between his charcoal-smudged fingers she watched a mountain emerge, dark pines, a deer in the foreground with eight-point antlers.
“That’s beautiful,” she said, her voice loud and clear. His parents looked up to see her sprawled across the back of his chair, and Herr Eisler smiled.
“Come play with me over here, Grete,” said Frau Eisler.
Grete’s ear remained silent through the domino game. The Eislers, for once, weren’t even indulging Gudrun. The little girl’s face bloomed red with sweat, and the short blond ringlets around her face were stuck to her skin. Finally, at about nine o’clock, the child began moaning and clutching her stomach. Grete watched Frau Eisler’s eyes flicker toward her daughter, and her heart began to beat quickly. She would have done anything to draw her mistress’s attention away. She would have said anything they wanted to hear about Berni.
“It was the sausage,” Frau Eisler concluded after she pressed a palm to Gudrun’s forehead, and Grete knew the fantasy evening had come to an end.
“How well did you cook it?” Herr Eisler asked kindly.
“I—I . . .” Grete stuttered, struggling to speak correctly with Klaus at her shoulder. “Didn’t it seem well cooked? I’m sorry, sir, I should have tried the meat.”
“Fleisch,” Klaus whispered. His mother gave him a puzzled look.
>
“I feel perfectly well,” Herr Eisler said.
“Well, Gudrun does not,” his wife replied. “Grete, take her and give her a cool bath.”
That night Herr Eisler, Frau Eisler, and Klaus turned in at the normal hour, while Grete sat with Gudrun as she retched into an old chamber pot. Every time she was sick, Grete cleaned her face with a cool, wet towel and then carried it down to the alley, gagging. Each time she returned she found Gudrun calling out, loud enough to wake her family.
“Grete, Grete,” she moaned, curled on the kitchen floor. “Why did you leave me?”
“Hush,” Grete said, exhausted, emboldened by their isolation. “You’re going to wake the others. Shut your mouth and try to sleep.”
This was punishment, Grete knew. She never should have gone into a place like the Silver Star expecting that she wouldn’t run into trouble. God knew she was unclean now. What did He think of Berni? Her thoughts roiled late into the night as Gudrun continued to heave, long after her stomach was empty.
Finally Grete awoke, a sour taste in her mouth, unaware until now that she’d drifted off. Gudrun was gone. Grete sat up so quickly that she collided with the dark shape in front of her, and found her damp head pressed into Herr Eisler’s chest.
“Let’s put you to bed, sweetie.” He let her stay close to him for a moment. “Gudrun went to bed on her own.” His voice was gravelly, deep; she could feel it resonating against her.
He carried Grete into the bedroom. Through the fog of her ear she thought she heard him thank her for cooking them such wonderful food. He climbed the ladder to her loft and placed her head on the pillow. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“For what?” Herr Eisler said. “Children are sick all the time.”
She shook her head. “I did something wrong. I ordered the sausage from Rachel, across the hall. She must have poisoned us.” A tear slipped down her cheek.
Herr Eisler paused for a moment. “Rachel did not poison us, Grete. You were right to ask her to buy groceries for you. It is what neighbors do for one another. Who told you to be suspicious of the Jews? Klaus?”
Grete couldn’t answer. She began to weep silently, so hard her shoulders shook. He touched her head, then crept out of the room. After he’d gone she could still feel his arms underneath her shoulders and knees.
• • •
In Monday’s mail a letter arrived from Berni. Another came Thursday, and then the following week, two more. There was no use hiding them from Frau Eisler, who opened the first one and read it aloud, looking to Grete for her reaction.
“She’s asking you to run away with her. Look here: ‘Meet me at the Charlottenburg station, and bring everything you own. I can explain everything, and we can be together.’ What’s the meaning of this, Grete? Have you always intended to abandon us?”
Grete took the envelope without a word. The return address was still Sonje’s, in Schöneberg. Slowly she tore the letter, envelope and all, in half. “I will never live with that creature,” she said quietly, knowing Frau Eisler would think she meant Berni. After that Frau Eisler handed her the envelopes unopened, as though she could tell there was no risk of Grete running off with her sister, or even writing back.
Klaus kept the radio in the parlor on all the time now, making the apartment feel busier than usual and connected to something bigger. It helped distract Grete. While she canned fruit or ran a brush over the floors, she would forget Berni and Anita, but a minute-long break brought everything back.
Weeks went by, becoming a month and more since she’d seen Berni, and the letters slowed to a trickle. One afternoon in November, Grete stood at the table teasing pie crust out of a half a scoop of flour and a bit of butter. Klaus sulked in his bedroom; the Party had lost votes in the election. Grete felt relieved, though she didn’t entirely know why and didn’t tell Klaus. Apple pie would cheer him. She had four apples peeled and cored when children began shouting in the Hof. Frau Eisler came in, dusting off her hands, and followed Grete to the window. They looked down on the top of a shiny scarlet head. Grete clapped her hand over her mouth.
Frau Eisler sprang back, eyes wide. “Is that Bernadette?”
Grete shook her head.
“Someone needs to shoo that whore away from the children. I’ll get Klaus.”
“No, no, gnädige Frau. I’ll go talk to hi—her.” Grete could hardly hear her own voice over the thud of blood in her earlobes. “No need for anyone else to come.”
Grete took a trash bag with her to act as a sort of shield. When she got down to the courtyard it was empty, except for Anita. Empty chairs and cups sat on the ground. Everyone had gone inside to watch. Grete made a wide circle on wobbling ankles. Anita stood still, a red pillar.
“Listen, mouse. I’m here to tell you that I’m sorry.” Anita looked away and took a few deep breaths. “All right? Now will you stop ignoring Berni’s notes?”
Grete winced. An apology was not what she wanted; for once in her life she wanted silence, oblivion. “Please, be quiet. I’m begging you.” She looked around. The building stayed troublingly quiet, its incessant radios turned down. Laundry flapped overhead, spraying bleach-smelling drops.
“I’ve offered you an apology. For Berni’s sake, I admit.” Anita took a step closer, and Grete shrank down. Up close, Grete could see makeup caked solid pink on his sunken cheeks. “You don’t know how lucky you are, to have such a sister.”
“I knew my sister once. I don’t know her now.”
“You don’t know her? Let me offer you some knowledge.”
Erkenntnis. It was a word Grete and Klaus had practiced, with its troublesome final s. She shook her head, but Anita continued. He gave a tiny poking scratch under the side of his wig. “How did Berni learn your address, the Eislers’ names? How did I find my way here?”
“Sister Josephine told her.” Grete turned her back. With Anita behind her she could understand fewer words. She looked up at the gray sky crisscrossed with clothing. Klaus’s flag hung limp beneath the Eislers’ balcony. Their windows were open.
Anita was saying something about the sacrifices Grete had made for the Eisler family. His waxy-scented lips came close to Grete’s good ear. “They should be grateful to Berni, too.”
When she shut her eyes and covered her ears, she could pretend Anita wasn’t there.
“Are they? Do you praise Berni’s name together?”
Perhaps nobody else could hear him, either.
“Does Frau Eisler know it was Berni who got you this position?”
Grete spun around. “That’s not true.” Herr Eisler had chosen her over anybody else, the day the sun and rain appeared at the same time. A miracle. The devil is having a parish fair.
Anita had his large hand on Grete’s shoulder, in the manner of someone offering help. “Why do you think the man singled you out? How else would he have known you?”
“Because . . .” Because I was special, they loved me, they saved me from hardship.
Anita moved his hand to Grete’s upper arm, gentler now, his touch lighter than Sister Maria’s had been that day. “He came in and asked for you by name.” His tone was finally almost kind, his voice low. “Because he is Berni’s lover.”
Grete did not have to have heard that term before to understand what it meant.
“She wanted to see you break free from that orphanage. She did the best thing that anyone has ever done for you. Now do you see why you should respect your sister? Grete?”
Grete heard roaring now, in her ears and in her brain. Her fingers went to Anita’s hand and picked it off her arm. This was Grete’s own fault. She’d lied about Berni to entertain Frau Eisler and Klaus. And God had made it true to punish her. She squatted down, hugging her knees. Anita hovered above her and said things she could not hear. She squeezed her eyes shut.
Herr Eisler, a man near forty, had touched her teenaged sister. Hands that had helped her carry groceries, that had smoothed her hair, hands that had lifted her to bed had also—
She sobbed quietly. It seemed a secret league existed between men and girls like her sister, one to which Gisela Eisler and herself would never belong. That was what had Anita and Berni laughing in the nightclub. Picking her head up a little, Grete looked at Anita’s stubbly legs, bony chest, painted face. Twitching, insecure eyes. Why, look at this poor cross-dresser. Look at this pitiful boy. The Herr Eislers of the world had made them all fools.
Their eyes met and held each other for a long while. “Grete . . .” Anita finally whispered.
Grete sprang upward like a cornered animal. “Trash, trash! Müll!” she cried, shaking the garbage bag at the intruder, and Anita cowered backward, stumbling on his high shoes. “Leave! Go away, and tell my sister I will never see her again! Go away, dirty trash!”
“Trash?” When Anita recovered, he spat on the ground. “Is that the Eislers’ swastika flag up there? They’re the ones with blood on their hands. Mine are clean.” He held up his pale palm, the fingers long and skinny.
“Go away!” Grete sobbed. She ran for the alley, the leaking trash bag leaving sweet-smelling liquid on her skirt, and stumbled on a slab of slate. Her knees smacked the ground. When Anita tried to help her up she said, “Go to hell.”
Anita laughed. “You think you’re noble, begging Berni so that you can take care of your precious Eislers. But all you’ve done is give that lech some of his money back.”
Grete took another lunge, tears streaming. They tussled, but Anita overtook her quickly, and Grete ended up flat on her back. “Listen to me. Listen!” Anita cried, struggling to keep Grete still. “It is Helmut Eisler’s fault!” he shouted. “He’s the grown man, he should know better than to love your sister—”
Your sister—
Your sister—
His shrill voice bounced from wall to wall as a breeze entered the Hof. The swastika flag flapped a feeble acknowledgment. The Eislers’ thin curtains rolled in soft waves.
Something seemed to have gone out of Anita. He let go of her arms, then made a sober assessment of the trash bag and Grete’s skinned knees. “I suppose I . . .” He caught his breath. “I suppose I’ve done nothing more than make a mess for Berni.”
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