Wunderland

by Jennifer Cody Epstein

  At the landing, though, she pauses. For the second time today something feels off. It takes a moment to realize that it’s the door to her parents’ bedroom. Her mother generally leaves doors open during the day (“closed doors lead to closed minds,” she explains). Now, though, it is shut.

  Perplexed, Renate reaches for the doorknob. Then she freezes, hearing voices inside. One of them is her mother’s. The other, however, is unfamiliar: low and heavy. Unfamiliar.

  And definitely male.

  Barely allowing herself to breathe, she edges closer.

  “I don’t have anything else,” her mother is saying. Her voice is taut and high; she sounds close to tears.

  “Well, then, I’m afraid the case will close.”

  “But you can’t do that. If you close it, my husband…”

  “Your husband?” The man gives a short laugh. “May I remind you, Frau Bauer, that your husband is the reason you’re in this situation. If you’d simply comply with our request, then this could all go away.” A pause. “Even I would. I dare say you’d even miss me.”

  This last assertion, delivered mockingly, is followed by another pause, this one longer. Then her mother’s voice again, barely audible: “I can’t do that.”

  “Then we have nothing more to discuss today.” The creak of bedsprings (Renate’s stomach curls into itself, hard as rock). A heavy tread as he moves toward the door. Trembling, Renate takes a step backward at the same time her mother speaks again: “Wait. Wait. Perhaps…”

  “Yes?” And a moment later:

  “Not today. I’m not in the mood for a Jew’s leftovers.”

  Renate registers the comment at the same moment her mother cries out furiously: “You Schwein!”

  The sound of scuffling; of skin sharp against skin. Then the doorknob turns abruptly. Leaping back, Renate trips and nearly falls on top of Sigi, who has somehow materialized behind her without her knowing. They both yelp as the door flies open, revealing her mother’s wiry, disheveled form.

  “Reni?” Elisabeth Bauer’s chest is heaving beneath her heavily pilled cardigan. Her neck and chest are flushed a damp pink. “What are you doing home? I thought you were going to the Neues today with your class.”

  Renate opens her mouth to answer, but nothing comes out. Her mouth is as dry as a cup of sand.

  “Who is there?” she finally manages to say, but her mother just shakes her head.

  “Take the dog downstairs,” she orders tightly.

  “But…”

  “Now, Renate.”

  Renate stares at her. A Jew’s leftovers.

  For a moment she thinks she might vomit.

  “Who is—” she asks again, but before she can finish her mother has slammed the door in her face. As she stands there, quivering, she hears the man laughing, hears her mother murmuring something in a low voice. Then the door opens and her mother appears again. “Take him downstairs.”

  Feeling strangely outside herself, Renate forces her limbs into action, yanking the stiff-legged dog back toward the stairwell. Picking him up when he refuses. Swallowing back the taste of bile on her tongue. As she descends slowly, pet in arms, the words still circle her mind, inexplicably mixing with the Snark: There was one who was famed for the number of things / He forgot when he entered the ship (a Jew’s leftovers) / His umbrella, his watch, all his jewels and rings (a Jew’s leftovers) / And the clothes he had brought for the trip…

  After what seems an eon she reaches the foyer. Stumbling slightly, she carries Sigi through the dining room, shoving him through the swinging door into the kitchen, then leaning against the dining room table.

  Upstairs, the door opens yet again. There comes the sound of the man’s tread, slow and deliberate, on the stairwell. Still clutching her stomach, Renate tiptoes back to the dining room doorway, positioning herself just far enough behind the door frame to keep the stairwell in sight.

  When he comes into view she gasps.

  He is short, dark, and stocky, with skin that looks sallow and loose, and heavy eyebrows that almost meet in the middle. He is buttoning his trench coat and carrying a fedora beneath his arm, and the sight of this sends her pounding heart into her throat. For this, of course, is the informal uniform of the Gestapo, in its own way far more sinister than the Waffen-SS’s blatant skull and bones.

  As he reaches the bottom stair, the man turns his head in her direction, and Renate holds her breath. But he is only checking the time on the grandfather clock that stands against the dining room wall.

  “How long, then?” her mother is asking, trailing after him in her bedroom slippers. Her eyes are swollen and red; there is a bright pink mark on her left cheek.

  “Perhaps the next week or two,” he says.

  “Only that?” Her mother stops, her hand at her throat. “But the ring—the ring at least must be worth another month, no?”

  Very slowly, the Gestapo agent turns around to face her. “Frau Bauer,” he says coldly. “As I’ve now explained more than once, the value of your donation is not something I alone can determine. It will be assessed in the proper venues. Once I have that assessment I will be better able to calculate its worth toward your case.”

  Renate’s mother gives a laugh that is so high and uncontained that it sends a shiver down Renate’s spine.

  “You speak as though this were something other than sheer extortion,” she says, her voice brittle.

  “Of course,” he says, his tone suddenly both lower and more menacing, “I can return it to you. And recommend that the office close the inquiry today.”

  For a moment they just eye one another. And while neither makes a sound—neither (so far as Renate can tell) even breathes—the room fills with such taut and vibrating tension that she is struck by the wild urge to shriek, simply to break it.

  At last, her mother gives a barely discernible nod. “Keep it.”

  “Smart lady.” The agent flashes a nicotine-stained smile. “Even if you did marry a kike.”

  And to Renate’s utter astonishment, he reaches a hand up and lays it against her mother’s cheek, directly on the spot that is inflamed and angry.

  It is not a gesture of affection. It is a statement of ownership. Even more shockingly, Lisbet Bauer, the outspoken, irrepressible Doktor Bauer, does nothing whatsoever to discourage it. She simply stands there, erect and frozen, her dark eyes snapping with fury as the Becker ticks ponderously into the silence.

  “It’s a pleasure, as always,” the agent says at last.

  He turns toward the door, setting the fedora on his head at a rakish angle. Lisbet Bauer stands where she is. She remains there as he unbolts the door with a deftness suggesting he’s done it often, as he says “Auf Wiedersehen” and touches the rim of his hat mockingly. As he jogs down the front steps, she still doesn’t move, though he has, seemingly deliberately, left the door open. It isn’t until the sound of his footsteps, and his cheerful whistling of “Ich hatt’ einen Kameraden” has faded that she finally seems to waken again.

  Taking the last few steps slowly, she moves to the door and shuts it. She turns the bolt with deliberation: click.

  Then she turns to face the dining room.

  “Renate,” she says wearily. “You can come out.”

  Renate steps from her hiding place, a small voice in her head wondering, as always, How does she know?

  But of course, this isn’t the real question.

  She parts her lips, then closes them. Her mouth is bone dry again.

  “How much did you hear?” her mother is asking.

  A Jew’s leftovers.

  She can only shake her head.

  “Who was that?” she finally manages.

  Her mother opens her mouth, then frowns. “Was someone smoking in here?”

  “For God’s sake! Answer the question!”

 
It comes out a shout. Outside a horse-drawn omnibus passes, a midday medley of horse hooves and brass bells. In the kitchen, Sigi whimpers slightly; then there’s a furry thump as he settles onto his rug by the pantry.

  Rubbing her eyes with her hand, her mother leans against the door.

  “That,” she says quietly, “was Agent Schultz. From the local Staatspolizei office.”

  “But why was he…why was he upstairs?” Renate can’t bring herself to say the word bedroom; it feels obscene. Even thinking the word makes her want to retch again.

  “We had a business appointment.”

  “Your hair is mussed. Your shoes are off.”

  “He was—he was early,” says her mother, as though this actually explains anything. “He was supposed to come at eleven. I wasn’t ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  “Reni,” her mother says softly. She steps toward her, reaching out.

  “No.” Renate steps back quickly. “No. Don’t touch me.”

  Her mother’s expression doesn’t change. But something about her seems to deflate; her thin shoulders weaken. Her chin lowers, just barely. For a moment she looks as though she might dissolve into tears. Instead, she steps past Renate to the stairwell and sinks onto the third stair in a movement that would have seemed more natural on a far older woman.

  “All right,” she says, seemingly to herself. She takes a deep breath. “You know that the Gestapo has been after me to divorce Vati, yes? The same way they’re pressuring all intermarried couples.”

  Renate nods.

  “Last month, Agent Schultz came by with some information he said might have a bearing on our case.”

  “What sort of bearing?”

  “It seems that someone did some digging in my family’s records in Silesia. Most of them are quite clear, of course—the Church records go back for nearly two centuries. But the office has apparently found a weak spot in my grandmother’s parental lineage.”

  “Weak? As in, sick?” Renate knows next to nothing about her mother’s grandparents, other than that her grandfather was a visiting professor of politics at a famous Polish university, who died relatively young of angina.

  Her mother shakes her head. “Not physically weak. Genetically.”

  And when Renate still stares at her, uncomprehending: “They say that there is insufficient evidence that she was fully Aryan.”

  Renate gapes at her. “How is that possible?”

  Her mother shrugs. “It happens. Particularly with Germans living abroad. People move houses, change countries. Records get damaged, lost. Even stolen.”

  “But…” Renate shuts her eyes, struggling to think clearly. “Even if your grandmother was Jewish, that would only make you one quarter. That hardly means anything at all.”

  “The problem isn’t about what it means for me.”

  “What, then?”

  “This is about you. And Franz.”

  Renate’s legs feel suddenly weak; she sinks slowly to sit on the carpet.

  “If you calculate it,” her mother continues, “it comes to one extra eighth. An extra eighth of Jewish for each of you.”

  Renate shakes her head. “I still don’t…”

  Her mother sighs. “According to Herr Schultz, it means that you are now both five eighths Jewish. In other words, in their terms, fully Jewish.”

  Vollständig jüdisch. For a moment the words are merely sound, the way words repeated over and over become merely sound. Then, slowly, it starts to sink in. Vollständig jüdisch. The horrible pictures in Der Stürmer. The stories about killing babies, drinking their blood.

  Jüdisch.

  “If he’s right,” her mother goes on, “and there is really no way to challenge him, it changes virtually everything for you both. All the regulations you weren’t subject to as Mischlinge they can apply to you as Jews. Franz would have to leave the university. You’d have to leave Gymnasium. But that’s not even the part I’m worried about.”

  “It isn’t?”

  Her mother shakes her head. “I’m worried about what happens when things get worse.”

  “Worse?” Renate almost laughs. “How could they get any worse?”

  Her mother uncrosses her legs, revealing a stocking ladder that runs directly over her left knee. “Mandatory factory work,” she says. “Tighter curfews. Arrests for even more ridiculous excuses they use now. There are other rumors too.” She rakes a hand through her hair. “I’m hearing horrible rumors.”

  Renate rubs her aching temples, trying to translate. She knows that Jews are being arrested now for infringements as minor as jaywalking. That a man was jailed for merely being in a department store elevator alone with an Aryan woman. People are sent off to work camps for such things—her friend Abi Feingold’s father, for instance. He was sentenced to two months at the new Buchenwald facility after a traffic altercation with an SS Staffelführer. Shackled on his feet day and night during his imprisonment, he now can only sleep standing up in his own bedroom.

  Numbly, she licks her lips. “Why was he upstairs?”

  “He had,” her mother says, carefully, “said that he could negotiate on our behalf. But he said it would require ‘expenses.’ ” And seeing Renate’s face: “Money, Liebchen. He wanted money. That’s all.” She sighs, rubbing her cheek in the same place the agent’s fingers had lingered. “The problem was that we don’t have it. Our savings are all but gone through. He offered to take the dining silver, but as that belonged to your father’s mother I would have had to tell Vati everything.”

  “Why haven’t you told him? Surely he has the right….”

  “Nein,” her mother says, so sharply Renate starts. “You have to promise me, Reni. You cannot tell him. Not what you saw today, or what I’m telling you. Not any of it.”

  Renate feels the color draining from her face. It’s one thing to keep something from both parents, as a unit. It feels strange—transgressive, even unclean—to keep this secret with one, against the other.

  Especially after what she’s just heard.

  “Why not?” she asks, tonelessly.

  “He’ll tell me to give in to them—to divorce him,” her mother says. “He’ll see it as the only way. He might even try to divorce me himself. And once he did that…” She stops for a moment and swallows, seeming to lose her voice. “Once he did that they’d arrest him immediately. I’m sure of it. We might never see him again.” She covers her face with her hands. “I couldn’t stand that. I couldn’t live.”

  “But…” Inevitably, Renate’s own eyes fill, and squeezing them shut does nothing but push the tears over her lashes and down her cheeks. Keeping them closed, she wraps her arms around her belly and hugs herself, trying to counteract the hollow feeling that’s still growing there: the bleakness that feels like a physical ache.

  “Reni.”

  When she opens her eyes, her mother is gazing at her in a way that’s almost physical in its intensity, as though she could somehow wring the answer from her with her reddening eyes.

  “Promise me,” she says.

  Helplessly, Renate nods.

  “So what did you pay them with?” she manages.

  A Jew’s leftovers.

  “All I have…had.” She takes a deep breath. “Oma Hildegard’s pieces.”

  “The emeralds?” The four-piece set has been passed down from family matriarch to family matriarch on her mother’s side for at least five generations. It had never occurred to Renate that this pattern wouldn’t continue; that after her mother received them from her mother the jewels, in their lovely Oriental box, would one day reside in Renate’s own stocking drawer and—on very special occasions—lie against her own pale skin.

  Her mother nods. “The necklace bought us four months. The earrings two. The brooch just one.” Breaking off, she dashes at her eyes with
her sleeve. “Today he took the ring. But he said that it wasn’t going to be enough.”

  Renate stares at the floor, at a dark, whorling knot that is about the same size as Sigi’s pawprint, and as the brooch she will now never wear.

  “I was hoping by this time that we’d have some sort of a plan in place,” her mother says. “That Onkel Felix—that wretch—would have finally agreed to sponsor you and Franz from New York. Or that our Cuban or Harbin visas might have come through. But it’s all just taking too long. The man at the Japanese consulate said it could be another year before we get permission to even go to Manchuria.”

  “So…so they get all the jewelry, and you…” Renate swallows, still unable to say the words. “And they still are going to make us full Jews in the end?”

  “Ja, if the agent has his way. Unless I divorce Vati.” Her mother nods slowly, as though just reaching the conclusion herself. “Yes. They will.”

  It’s suddenly too much: Renate covers her face with her hands. “It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make any sense.” By this point she’s not even trying to hold them back; the tears simply stream down her cheeks. She tries to imagine their life without her father: no hat tossed upon homecoming, no tickling beard or sweet pipe smell when he hugs her. No rhythmic and reassuring clack-clack-clack from his office, when he’s working on his books that no one will ever publish now.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” she whispers. And then despite everything, she is crawling forward toward her mother; she is laying her head in her lap as though she were again three.

  “Oh, Liebchen.” Her mother makes a small, tight sound; she strokes Renate’s hair, her wet cheek.

  “Why did he touch you?” Renate whispers.

  At first her mother doesn’t answer. When she does, her voice is low and dull. “He touched me because he could.”

  “Only because of that?”

  Her eyes are closed, but she can sense her mother hesitating, debating. “Sometimes,” she starts, then shakes her head and falls silent.

  A moment later she starts again. “Some men—very weak men—feel stronger and bigger when they can do that.”