You take Water Street over the creek, and then you’re only a few blocks away. You cut through the Brenners’ woods and hop over Willie Parlow’s fence, slinking and ducking all the way. There’s no need to whisper, and there’s no need to sneak, but you’re doing something secret, and it feels right and good and fun to whisper and sneak and carry on like bandits. Finally, you turn onto Shenk Lane, and almost immediately Jacqueline leads you down the alleyway between two houses.
“He said to come in the back,” she tells you. “And he said to come at eleven. What time is it now?”
“I don’t know.” You look up at the sun, but you’ve never been good at that, not like Papa. “It must be eleven,” you say, trying to sound sure of yourself. “Maybe a little later.”
Jacob’s house is small and white, two stories, taller than it is wide. Hardly the kind of house where royalty would live. It’s a city house, as your father calls it, one that’s likely only two bedrooms, much different from the broad, welcoming farmhouses that stand on the outskirts of town, where you live. The backyard is a narrow patch of overgrown grass, pocked in the center with the charred oval of a firepit. You can tell that it’s been used recently. Blackened cans and warped glass bottles spill out from it, and among the trash there’s a single scorched glove splayed out on the grass as if it’s crawling away.
“Well, come on,” Jacqueline says, waving one hand at you. She’s standing at the top of the back stoop.
You bound up the steps and join her. She knocks on the door’s little window, and the two of you wait. The house is dark and quiet, and beyond the glass pane you can see a kitchen. The ghostly white curves of an icebox. The intimidating darkness of a stove. Your sister knocks again, and you wait, but no one comes. She turns the knob and opens the door an inch.
“Hello?” she calls.
“Jacky—”
“Hush.” Now she pushes the door wider, and she leans inside. “Hello?” she calls again. “It’s Jacqueline.” And after a few seconds of silence she opens the door completely and steps inside.
“Wait,” you say.
“It’s fine, Elisabeth. He’s expecting us.” From her place inside the house, your sister stares down at you, but her face isn’t scornful. It’s not the “Oh, be quiet” glower looking back at you. Instead, she smiles—warm, motherly—and she offers you her hand. “This will be fun,” she says. “Aren’t you excited?”
And you have to admit: yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. This is exciting. You are having fun. How could you not be? You smile back, and you take her hand, stepping inside. The door closes heavily behind you.
The house is very quiet, very dark, and despite its appearance on the outside, it now seems strangely massive. Without light or the presence of lives being lived, the house feels positively cavernous. For a time, holding hands, you and Jacqueline stand by the doorway and take it all in. The kitchen is to your left, and to your right is a hallway. A closed door stands in front of you. The basement, you guess. Faintly, you can smell the scent of something rich and smoky—bacon, perhaps, or breakfast sausage—but mostly the house smells stale. Shafts of sunlight lean into the kitchen, and they sparkle with galaxies of dust.
“Hello?” Jacqueline calls again. She lets go of your hand and starts down the hallway.
No voices call back. You follow your sister, but you move much more slowly than she does, walking as if you’re moving through water. You lift your hand, trailing your fingers along the walls as you walk. They’re plain white plaster pimpled with bumps, and the texture tickles your skin.
The hallway ends at the front door, and to the right it opens up into a living room. Your sister goes left, still searching, but you’re content to explore the house on your own. In all its quiet, the house feels frozen in time. It’s gloomy, but it’s peaceful, too, and you feel the odd desire to lie down on the floor, close your eyes, and go to sleep.
But you keep moving. You turn the corner—a chunk is missing from the plaster where the hallway comes to an end—and you step into the living room. It’s sparsely furnished. In front of the fireplace, two upholstered armchairs sit on either side of a table, and a matching couch stands against the opposite wall. An enormous oak footlocker looms in one corner, and a wooden chair is set beside it. The room is small, but its sparseness makes it feel large and lonely. Only one decoration hangs on the walls: a calligraphic illustration nailed into the plaster above the fireplace.
You walk to it. About the size of an open newspaper and drawn in plain black ink, it’s an illustration of two birds perched on a branch, their bodies entwined like a pair of hooking fingers. The illustration’s lines are long and sweepingly elegant; the birds are one continuous stroke, looping and curling into form. Hundreds of quick, patterned embellishments surround them, lines as thin as the single barbs of a feather. Flowers bloom at the birds’ feet, and butterflies alight on their beaks. Near the bottom is a single line of inscription: Brüder in der Blüte. Like the note with the money, the inscription is in cursive, but these letters are shaky and uncertain of themselves. They quiver. They’re still learning to take shape. You step closer to the illustration, reaching out—you want to touch those quivering lines, to feel them if they’re able to be felt—but then your sister is standing beside you, and you draw back your hand.
“He’s not here,” she says. Her eyes are glassy, not even looking at you, and her voice sounds weary and defeated. “I can’t believe he’s not here. He said he would be.”
“Where could he be?”
“I don’t know.” She looks up at the illustration, but her eyes are still lost in thought. “He said he’d be here.”
“Maybe he’ll be back in a minute.” You sit down on one of the armchairs. “Maybe we should wait. Let’s wait.”
“But Papa thinks we’re at the market. We’re already going to be late making lunch. He’s already going to give us the dickens for dawdling.”
“That’s true.” You fold your hands in your lap. “Yes, maybe.”
But then Jacqueline’s despair disappears, and she smiles at you. “Want to see the money?”
* * *
—
It’s a dirt basement. You can tell that from the moment Jacqueline opens the door. It washes over you—the thick, rank smell of sheltered dirt—and the air on your face feels cool and damp.
“Just you wait,” Jacqueline says, starting down the steps. “Just you wait to see this. You won’t believe your eyes.”
And there it is again: that churn of excitement in your belly, a spark that Jacqueline can light like no one else. But as you move down the steps, you feel a stir of dread, too, as if you’re descending not into a basement but into a tomb. An open grave.
“Aren’t there any lights?” you say.
“No, but there are windows. Half windows. You can see well enough.” And as your sister plunges ahead, undaunted, you can’t help but follow her.
She’s right: The basement isn’t entirely dark, but it still takes your eyes a moment to adjust. When they do, what you see at first is rather ordinary. The walls are piled stone veined with condensation, and half a dozen vertical beams buttress the house above. The floor isn’t wet, but it’s been wet in the recent past, and it’s rutted with footprints. The soil is absolutely trampled, as if many feet have worked many hours in this small, dark space.
You and Jacqueline pause at the bottom of the steps, letting your eyes adjust, getting your bearings, and then you see what you’ve come for: In the basement’s farthest corner, dozens of cardboard boxes are stacked tall and deep. Wooden pallets raise them several inches off the ground. Jacqueline strides to the corner without hesitation.
“Well, come on,” she says. “See for yourself.”
The dried footprints are so numerous that the floor is uneven, and twice the toes of your shoes catch in the darkness and you nearly stumble. But then you’re beside your sister,
and she’s lowering one of the boxes to the ground. Kneeling, she opens it wide, and sure enough: The box is filled to its top with row upon row of paper money.
But it’s not American money: It’s German. The bills are all the same. Reichsbanknote, they read across the top, and then centered beneath that, 50 Mark. The left side of each bill depicts a farmer sharpening a scythe, and the right depicts a factory man with a hammer against his shoulder. You reach down and lift a block of the bills, which are loose but surprisingly crisp in the dankness of the basement.
“This is German money,” you say.
“Yes. Jacob is German. I told you that.”
“But I thought it was United States money. Like the money in the hatbox.”
“It doesn’t make a difference,” Jacqueline says. “Money is money. It’s all the same. This is a fortune. Look.” She stands and takes down another box. More bills, only these are 100 Mark. “Money is money,” she says again. “People trade German money for American money all the time. It’s still a fortune.”
Yes, it certainly is. You step back, trying to get a better measure of the piled boxes. There must be a hundred of them, maybe more. You’ve never seen such a thing, not even at the big bank downtown. Boxes and boxes of money, Jacqueline had said, and she was telling the truth. Years from now, you’ll know that this money is almost worthless—you’ll see the photographs of German people papering their walls with this money, hauling wheelbarrows of it to the market—but today, in this basement, you think that Jacob must be the richest person in town. You feel like a princess who’s found the dragon’s gold. It’s stunning, and for a time you just stand there, motionless, your mouth hanging open very slightly.
“And that’s not all,” Jacqueline says. She stands on her toes, opening another box. More money, 100 Mark bills again, but that’s not what she’s looking for. She moves on to another box, then another after that. And finally she makes a little noise—ah!—and she takes down a box and places it at your feet.
“Remember what I said about the war?”
This box is smaller than the others, but it’s brimming with medals and ribbons and sterling tokens. You kneel and remove one, a chocolate-colored medal depicting a helmet and two crossed daggers. In the box, another catches your eye: a bronze, angled cross anchored by a jewel-studded crown.
“They’re like treasure, aren’t they?” Jacqueline says. She turns away from you and roots around in the boxes again. “I told you this is incredible, didn’t I? Didn’t I say that?”
“Yes.”
Gently, you shift aside the medals on top. And beneath them, another bronze cross, and another pair of daggers intersecting a helmet. There seem to be multiples of everything. Awards in abundance. You reach for an angled cross, but then your hand slides to something else: a slim, silver case with etchings of ivy and leaves crawling around its edges. It’s a cigarette case, and among the medals and ribbons, it seems misplaced.
Misplaced, though beautiful in its own right. It’s heavy—real silver—and even in the dimness of the basement, it shines like captured sunlight. For a moment, you simply hold it. Feel its cool weight digging softly at your palm. Then you press the dimpled button on its side, and the case clicks open.
It’s filled with pictures of the marvelous woman. A dozen of them are held together by a hinged clasp, each portrait about the size of the one that Jacqueline has. The woman is posing with flowers. She’s seated in a garden. She’s overlooking a picturesque mountain range. She’s holding an umbrella at a beach. She’s turning her eyes bashfully away from the camera. In one portrait, she holds a baby on her lap. In another, she sets one hand on a carriage.
And as you look at her, a wave of spite shivers through you. She’s wonderful. She truly is. She’s marvelous, as much a treasure as the money or the medals. It’s absurd for one person to have so much. Wealth. Renown. A marvelous woman captured in a cigarette case. And what does he do with it all? Shovel it away in a dank cellar and stick his tongue out. At whom? At you and your sister—and at your father.
We’re poor, Else. That’s what Jacob said.
Thinking of that makes the hair on your neck stand stiff, and you squeeze the cigarette case as if you’re trying to crush it like a coin on railroad tracks. Its edges bite into your skin. We’re poor, Else. We’re poor. You’re hearing those words, and you’re looking at the marvelous woman, and you feel like hurling the cigarette case against the wall. But instead you relax, and without really thinking about it, you snap the case shut and drop it into the pocket at your hip. Jacqueline doesn’t notice.
“We’re really late,” you say, lifting the box of ribbons and medals. You put it back with the other boxes.
“But do you see?” Jacqueline says. “I was telling you the truth.”
“Yes, you were.”
“There’s a fortune down here. A hundred dollars is nothing to him.”
You can’t argue with that, but it’s all still strange. If anything, Jacob seems like even more of a mystery now—Jacob and his basement bank vault.
But you don’t want to think about that now. You want to leave this place. You want to run. You’re sweating, and you want to be back home.
“It’s a fortune,” you say. “You were telling the truth,” and your sister seems content with that.
The whole way home, you can feel the cigarette case in your pocket. It bounces heavily as you move. It tugs at you. Taps against your thigh.
But you feel no shame in having taken it. That night, after Jacqueline and Papa have both gone to bed, you hold it in the darkness of your bedroom, and you feel strong and wicked and good.
PART
2
CHAPTER 12
September 1941
The day that the first letter arrived was bright but brisk. Though the sky was clear and the sun was strong, a frigid chill consumed every slanting stretch of shade, winter creeping closer one shadow at a time.
Elisabeth and John were out back cutting wood. John was still dressed in the clothes he wore to teach—brown brogue wing tips, high-waisted trousers, and a blue button-up shirt, though he’d taken off his tie. It was strange to see him cutting wood in his dress clothes, clothes that he usually pampered with the care and attention of a man preparing for his wedding. He believed that teaching was as much about appearance as it was instruction, as much about the semblance of authority as it was the skills that actually created it. And although Elisabeth wouldn’t disagree in that regard, at times John’s fastidiousness seemed to verge on obsession.
All the more reason why it had been so strange to watch him march straight to the back, straight for the woodpile. Strange, but not especially surprising. John was working off some tension. Today was the third day of school, and already things had begun to sour. On Monday, during dinner, he had mentioned that two of his students had been pulled out of class at the last minute. Then, yesterday, two more students had followed: a second-grader and a third-grader, two sisters. Then, today, just minutes before John finished teaching, Elisabeth had found a note from Gladys Thomas on the floor beside the front door.
Mr. Fautz, it had said, I am writing to withdrawn Little Joe from your class. Thank you for your instruction, but we will no longer need it. Good afternoon.
It had said nothing more—no explanation, no elaboration—though John insisted that her reason was clear enough.
“You know why,” he told Elisabeth now, setting a log in place on the chopping block. “It’s the same old thing. It’s not difficult to figure out, is it?”
It wasn’t, or at least it wasn’t difficult to guess what John was assuming. In the six weeks that had passed since Mack’s murder, Tanacross had changed. People joked with them less. Talked with them less. They were invited to fewer lunches and dinners, and fewer children came knocking on their door in search of Margaret. The air itself felt heavier, as if all the gravity in
town had grown more intense. People still greeted them, still nodded or waved as they passed in the street, but there was distance in everyone’s eyes, leeriness in every smile.
“But people don’t blame you for anything,” Teddy had reassured Elisabeth just the week before. “It isn’t like that, Else. What happened to Mack was a thing someone else did, and you had no part to play in it. Everyone knows that.” But the softness in his voice and the sweetness in his eyes betrayed his own words, and Elisabeth knew that he was only being polite.
Still, she wanted to believe him. And, naïvely, or perhaps just stubbornly, she tried to.
John, on the other hand, was not so optimistic. In fact, he was quick to assume one additional reason for the shift in the Tanacross air.
“Let’s just say this,” he had told Elisabeth one night as they were lying in bed, oceans of inches between their resting bodies. “I’d bet dollars to doughnuts no one would bat an eye at us if our last name was Martin or Bennett or Anderson.”
That, she knew, was what he was talking about now. But again Elisabeth tried to be optimistic. Again she tried to keep a good face, despite her own nagging doubts.
“I really don’t think it’s that,” she said.
“Oh, it isn’t?”
John lifted the ax and brought it down in a clean arc. The log seemed to burst more than split, its two crescent halves flying off in either direction.
“It’s happening all over the country,” he said, standing straight again. “I read they’ve been burning German furniture stores in Cleveland.” With the back of one hand, he wiped a skim of sweat from his forehead. “I’m sure everyone in town is expecting us to start goose-stepping any second now. Heil, Tom,” he mimicked, waving one hand and grinning vapidly. “Heil, Mary. How you doing today? Heil there.”
“Stop it,” Elisabeth said. “Just stop.”
“Watch,” John said. “The second that the bombs start falling on New York, we’ll be run out of town. We’ll be lucky if we’re not lynched. Forget the fact that I’ll be shipping off to Berlin with all the others. We’re the enemy, Else, or people think we are.”
How Quickly She Disappears Page 9