Wunderland

by Jennifer Cody Epstein

  “I don’t want to leave,” she repeats (18, she prints fiercely; Sanitary pad belt, 1). And bites her lip to keep it from trembling. “I don’t want to leave you.”

  “You’ll have Franz. And your Tante and Onkel.”

  “It’s not that. It’s about not knowing what’s going to happen to you and Vati. You always said we would all stay together.”

  “I said that before knowing how impossible it would be,” her mother says. “And nothing will happen to us. What more could happen to us?”

  It’s such a drastic departure from her mother’s prior, dire warnings that Renate snaps her gaze up in disbelief. “Do you really want me to answer that?”

  “It was rhetorical,” her mother says curtly. Pulling her cigarettes from her pocket, she starts to shake one out before frowning and returning it to the pack. Since tobacco rationing was implemented she’s restricted herself to two a day, a sacrifice that has made her on-edge and snappish enough that Franz has taken to calling her Frau Havisham. Needless to say, the days of Renate pinching the odd smoke from her mother’s purse are long gone.

  “You know they’re banning Jews from Aryan buildings next?” Renate continues. “They’re going to crowd us—meaning you—into specific houses. Judenhäuser. They’re making Aryan spouses go too. They’re already doing it in other cities, supposedly. And in Poland they’re making Jews wear a yellow star.”

  “They couldn’t do it here.” Her mother waves dismissively. “It’d be a logistical nightmare. On both fronts.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, they are rather good at logistics,” Renate retorts. “Unlike you two.”

  Her mother frowns. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Just that for all your degrees, for all your books, for all your ‘understanding’ of history and human psychology, you weren’t prepared for any of this.”

  Her mother tightens her lips. “Not many of us were, Renate.”

  “But if you had been, even a little more, we might be able to stay together.” Renate blinks, hard, before adding: “And maybe we’d even still have Sigi.”

  Her mother flinches. A month earlier she’d announced abruptly that she was having the dog put down. Her reasons were multifold: veterinary care for the aging Schnauzer was expensive and increasingly hard to find, and their reduced rations made it hard to even feed themselves. “It’s also better we do it kindly,” she’d added, “rather than risk someone else doing it cruelly.” It was an oblique reference to Jewish neighbors who over the summer had found their cat stone-cold on their doorstep, a bloody J carved into its matted pelt.

  Renate and Franz protested vehemently; she with tears, he with brittle fury. Each argument was gently but firmly countered: Yes, Sigi was only nine, but he was already limping with arthritis and struggling to digest the cheaper, coarser food they were forced to feed him these days. Yes, she’d thought about giving him away—but to whom? All the Jews they knew were leaving the country, and those who weren’t were facing the same harsh decisions they were facing. No one from their shrinking circle of Aryan friends had expressed any willingness to take an ailing, elderly dog from a Jewish home. And when Renate, desperate, offered to eat less herself, her mother turned on her with her old imperiousness. “You’re suffering enough because of the animals in charge now,” she’d snapped. “I won’t let you starve to death over one as well.”

  In the end Lisbet Bauer had her way, as she almost always had her way: Sigi had a last meal of cheese and blood sausage laced with poison, and the family doctor gave him an injection so that he slept through his own death. They buried him outside by the rose garden that was now a vegetable garden, where Franz and Renate gave him a short (Lutheran) funeral service.

  But in the days since, Renate has felt her pet’s absence keenly: in the barkless silence following a ringing phone or a rapping knock on the door. In the empty hallway when she comes home from class or tutoring students in English at the Jüdischer Kulturbund, or at her former school until it was shut down by the government in September. She still shifts her feet at night seeking the warm furry weight that had graced the bottom of her bed since she was ten; still reaches out whenever she wakes up, at night or in the morning, for a quick pat and rough-tongued kiss. And she still finds herself battling jagged and grief-stricken sobs when her toes and fingers find only empty, silent air.

  She knows she’s being unfair now. But arguing with her mother seems to have become one of the few ways she can lessen the leaden ache of loss and worry.

  “You know that’s not true,” her mother is saying. She pulls her Lords out again, her hand trembling slightly. “You know New York was a long shot. The only reason we were able to afford it for you is that Oma died and we—I—was able to sell her flat. And even then it barely covers everything.”

  “I still don’t understand why we can’t find a place cheap enough for us to all go.”

  “Are you saying you’d prefer Aleppo?” Her mother lights her cigarette, inhaling deeply and slowly before finally letting the precious smoke out in a slow stream. “Or Cochabamba? Because those are the sorts of places that might possibly take us at this point—and that’s if we could manage to get visas, paperwork, and passage for all of us. Which is becoming increasingly unlikely.”

  “Shanghai doesn’t require visas,” Renate points out. “And it’s supposed to be very glamorous.”

  “Not the neighborhoods we could afford,” says her mother tartly. “And passage there for the four of us would be nearly three times as expensive as the cost of sending you both to New York on your own.” She stabs the ski-slope ashtray with the ashen tip of her Lord, and Renate sees that her hand is shaking slightly. “Besides,” she adds. “I honestly don’t think that your father would survive that kind of a transition. Not given his current state.”

  “You don’t know that,” says Renate, though now it’s her turn to look away. Over the past year Otto Bauer’s condition has gone from poor to worse. He has all but stopped eating, has to be cajoled into bathing and shaving, and refuses to even go into his former home office, instead spending hours in bed or in an armchair in his bedroom. Renate’s mother still speaks of his “condition” as something temporary, remediable. But Renate has noticed that she keeps a keen eye on him when he’s out of bed and has quietly removed the ties, sashes, and belts from his drawers.

  Now she leans back in her chair, looking tiny, defeated. “What do you want me to do, Reni?” she asks wearily. “If you are truly telling me you want to stay here, in this suffocating nightmare, then I—” She shakes her head. As she inhales, her already hollow cheeks hollow further, making her look almost skull-like.

  “It breaks my heart, too,” she says finally, exhaling as she speaks. “It’s not as if I want to send my children across the world. My God. But I know if I don’t, if we let this opportunity pass us by…”

  She breaks off as a sharp rap sounds at the front door.

  Mother and daughter stare at each other, eyes wide. Friendly drop-bys these days are rare, especially since it’s now illegal for Aryans to enter Jewish households. When heralded by the kind of forceful knocking they are now hearing, visits are almost invariably dangerous: they’ve twice preceded random searches by the Gestapo. On their last visit the agents took Renate’s father’s Prussian officer’s sword from its decorative post above the dining room cabinet, then fined him forty Reichsmarks for illegally harboring a weapon. “You’re lucky,” the officer who issued the ticket told them. “Jews are sent away for less these days.” He hadn’t needed to elaborate on what away meant.

  Renate rises tensely. “I’ll get it.”

  She hurries to the door, still bracing for Sigi’s bouncing, barking show of territorial supremacy before remembering he isn’t on her heels. Hand on knob, she shuts her eyes and forces a deep breath before opening both her eyes and the door with a silent prayer.

&nbs
p; There, on the doorstep, is Ilse.

  She looks the same as when Renate last saw her, if perhaps a little thinner, a little more tired. On her face is an anxious smile. In her hands is a bouquet of purple-and-blue delphiniums.

  “Hallo,” she says.

  Renate stares at her, her mouth half open.

  Ilse gives an uncomfortable-sounding laugh. “You look surprised.”

  Renate licks her lips. Her face feels odd—stiff and tight, as though her mouth has recovered from the shock before the rest of her features.

  “I am,” she manages.

  “I suppose that’s fair,” says Ilse, shrugging. “Can I—may I come in?”

  Renate hesitates. Five years ago she would have simply laughed off the question. She would have grabbed Ilse’s wrist—What are you waiting for, you idiot—and dragged her over the threshold. Four years ago she would have felt a glittering wash of relief that her most heartfelt prayer had been answered. Now, though, she can barely process the fact of Ilse’s expectant face less than a meter from her own.

  Since that brutal morning last November, she has neither seen nor heard from the other girl. She briefly contemplated dropping by Ilse’s house, or at least sending a note of thanks for her inexplicable but vital act of kindness. It was Franz who’d talked her out of it.

  “She put herself in enough danger, lying like that in front of people who could easily figure out the truth, if they wanted,” he said. “Don’t add to the risk. And definitely don’t put anything in writing. If she wants to see us she’ll find a way on her own terms.”

  After which he’d smiled in the half-admiring, half-incredulous way he’d been smiling whenever Ilse’s miraculous reappearance came up in conversation. “That girl,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Who would ever have thought.”

  Renate slowly steps back from the door, allowing her former friend to pass.

  “Reni?” her mother calls from the dining room. “Who is it?”

  “It’s Ilse,” calls Renate. And then adds, inanely: “Ilse von Fischer.”

  The silence that follows is more telling than anything Elisabeth Bauer might have put to words. Then there’s the sound of the dining room chair screeching against the hardwood floor, a few short, clipped steps before her mother herself appears in the dining room doorway. Her expression mirrors Renate’s: it is one of the few times Renate has ever seen her at a loss for something to say.

  “Hello, Doktor Bauer,” says Ilse, filling the vacuum. “I brought these for you.” She extends the bouquet. “I remembered that you liked them because of the poem.”

  “Poem?” The doctor accepts the flowers as she might a ticking bomb.

  “By the man who wrote Pooh,” Ilse explains.

  “A. A. Milne,” supplies Renate, reflexively. “ ‘The Dormouse and the Doctor.’ ” Sent by the same Onkel with whom she and Franz will soon live, the book had lived on her bookcase for years, initially undisturbed because it was in English and was supposed to be only for babies. One day, though, Ilse happened to take it down, and the girls discovered the rhythmic, nonsensical little verses with delight. They’d especially loved the Dormouse, since one girl could chant the narrative while the other supplied the colors in a shout:

  There once was a Dormouse who lived in a bed

  Of delphiniums (“BLUE!”) and geraniums (“RED!”)

  And all the day long he’d a wonderful view

  Of geraniums (“RED!”) and delphiniums (“BLUUUUUUUUE!!”).

  They’d learned of Renate’s mother’s fondness for the dusky blossoms after asking her what they were called in German (“Delphiniums,” she’d told them).

  “Where on earth did you find these?” Lisbet Bauer asks now.

  “My mother’s become friends with a Kurfürstendamm florist.”

  As Ilse unslings her satchel from her shoulder, Renate watches her mother waver between delight and distrust. Though relieved and grateful for her husband’s reprieve last year, she’d counseled caution as far as Ilse was concerned. “One of the few certainties of human psychology,” she’d told Renate, “is that while people sometimes defy expectation, they rarely change.”

  Her nose pressed into the bouquet, Elisabeth Bauer closes her eyes now, inhales. She suddenly looks close to tears, and as the light sweetness of the blossoms fills the air Renate almost wants to cry again herself. There haven’t been real flowers in the house for months. She can’t help wondering how much they’d cost.

  “I hardly know what to say,” her mother says at last, looking up with a chagrined smile.

  “You don’t need to say anything,” Ilse says. “I’m the one who should say something. I should say…” For a moment she seems to be fighting for composure. “I should say that I’m sorry. I’m sorry for disappearing.”

  “So why have you rematerialized?” asks Renate’s mother.

  Ilse colors, clearly thrown by the question’s bluntness. “I have done a lot of thinking since…especially since last year,” she says, after a moment. “I’ve come to realize just how wrong I was.”

  “About what?”

  Ilse drops her gaze to the floor, touching the toe of her shoe to a dark knot in one of the floorboards. Renate wonders if she notices the absence of the Oriental carpet, which was sold last month along with all other household items deemed nonessential.

  “Everything, really,” Ilse says. “The Party. The Führer. The…” She glances at Renate. “The Jews. I hate what’s happening to them. I can’t stand it.”

  She looks from mother to daughter again, her cheeks pink, her gray-blue eyes wide. Elisabeth Bauer stares back, her gaze level but wary. Renate can all but see the flickering equation being tested in her mind: Abandoned Reni. Rescued Otto. Old friend. Young Nazi.

  “I’m going to go put these in some water,” she says at last, her expression impenetrable.

  She turns and begins to make her way toward the kitchen.

  The two girls stand awkwardly: Renate nervously wringing her hands, Ilse shifting from one booted foot to the other. At last she clears her throat.

  “I’m sorry,” she says again, a tremor in her voice. “I truly am. There were so many times before now when I wanted to come. Especially after…what happened.”

  “So why didn’t you?” Renate meant her tone to be casual. But even she can hear the hurt in her voice.

  “It never seemed the right time. No. That’s not true.” Ilse clears her throat. “The truth is, I was afraid.”

  Renate almost wants to laugh. “You were afraid of visiting us but not of lying to protect us?”

  The other girl smiles ruefully. “I know. It makes no sense.”

  “But you came.”

  Ilse nods. “I heard you’re finally leaving. I realized I might never get another chance.”

  Renate thinks of Ilse’s command on Kristallnacht: Leave. She frowns. “Who told you?” She hadn’t thought their social circles intersected anywhere any longer.

  “I ran into Maria at the Concordia.”

  The names land like a double blow: the first the Bauers’ beloved housekeeper, forced by the race laws to quit. The second Renate’s favorite cinema and ice-cream counter before Jews were banned from the movies.

  “And I brought you this,” Ilse goes on. “I thought of you when I first read it.”

  She pulls a slim, dark volume from her satchel and extends it. Renate takes it and runs a forefinger over the gold-embossed title—Meine Wunder.

  “Isn’t she on the banned list now?” she asks, pointing to the name: Else Lasker-Schüler.

  Ilse arches her brows. “So what?”

  So are you trying to get us arrested?

  It’s the first response that comes into Renate’s mind. She quickly discards it. Because despite herself, despite everything, a tender sprig of hope is vining its way
through her anger, her shock.

  “So is your mother friends with a book importer now as well?” she asks instead.

  Ilse tips her head back and laughs. It is the first genuine-sounding sound she’s uttered since Renate opened the door: loud and clear and almost startling in its heartiness. It is also so intuitively familiar—like hearing Sigi’s distinctive, raspy bark after resigning herself to never hearing it again—that at least for the moment it breaks through some of Renate’s icy reservation, and she finds herself laughing along. For a blissful moment it’s as if they’ve traveled back in time together.

  “I found it in Zürich,” Ilse says at last, after the giggles have ceded way to a new, slightly warmer level of discomfort. “I took a Mädelschaft group on a ski trip there. It’s not hard to smuggle things in if you’ve got the right uniform and stamps on your passport.”

  “So you’re still with the BDM?”

  “For the time being.” Ilse tugs on a braid. “It’s easier to know what to fight against if you’re working on the inside.”

  “Fight?”

  Ilse parts her lips, then presses them together again, throwing a quick glance toward the kitchen. The chink and splash of dishwashing drifts toward them, underscored by the rare sound of Elisabeth Bauer humming under her breath: the melody to “Stardust.”

  “Can we go to your room?” Ilse asks quietly. “Not because I don’t trust your mother. It’s just…” She drops her gaze. “I’m still working through all this. I need you to help.”

  “My room’s a mess,” Renate says, shrugging to disguise the sudden leap her pulse takes at the words I need you.

  “Fantastic.” Stripping off her coat and boots every bit as naturally as she’d done when they both were still German, Ilse tosses the former onto the coatrack by the door and the latter next to Renate’s battered black-and-white saddle shoes.

  People don’t change, Renate reminds herself, as she turns toward the staircase. But it’s hard to ignore the rush of happiness she feels as, glancing downstairs, she sees the new-looking woolen swing coat covering her own threadbare trench.