Wunderland

by Jennifer Cody Epstein

  Upstairs her father is asleep in his bedroom armchair, a dog-eared copy of The Last Days of Pompeii lying unopened in his lap. Tiptoeing in, Renate covers him with the Persian throw from the bed, then tiptoes out again with a finger to her lips. Ilse on her heels, she makes her way silently through the now-carpetless hallway.

  “How is he?” Ilse asks, once they’re inside Renate’s room with the door shut.

  “Not well.” Renate props her pillow against the wall and leans back, while Ilse settles at the bed’s opposite end—right above (she can’t help noting) the Shabbat candle shoebox. Seeing her there feels surreal, like a visitation by a ghost. Renate suppresses an urge to reach her hand out, to make sure it doesn’t go right through.

  “He’s taken everything very hard,” she continues. “Especially since the Jewish Affairs Office turned down his appeal for pension resumption. Mama calls it ‘acute depression.’ She says he’ll be better once all of this is over.”

  “I’m sure that’s true.” Ilse leans back against the wall as well, pulling Ragdoll Alice into her lap in a movement so natural and reflexive it’s as though the past four Ilse-less years have been a dream. “Can he teach in New York?”

  “He’s not going to New York. Neither of them are. Did Maria say they were?”

  “We didn’t talk much,” says Ilse quickly. “The film was about to start.”

  Renate can’t resist asking, a little wistfully: “Which film?”

  “The Wizard of Oz. Have you seen it?”

  “I can’t see it.”

  “Oh.” Ilse flushes slightly. “Is the ban really that strict? I mean, do they actually check your Kennkarte and everything?”

  “It doesn’t exactly seem worth finding out, does it?” says Renate, more sharply than she intends to. “Not when they’ll arrest me for sitting on the wrong bench.”

  “I suppose not.” Coloring slightly, Ilse fiddles with the doll’s padded foot. “Well, anyway. The Technicolor thing was impressive. I thought the film itself was overrated. But you know me. I always like book versions more.” Stroking Alice’s woolly hair, she adds, consolingly: “I heard Gone with the Wind is coming out in color. And you’ll be able to see that before anyone here.”

  “That’s true,” says Renate dubiously. She hadn’t thought of this. Given everything, it seems small compensation.

  “I’m sure there are lots of perks to moving to America. I wish I could.” Ilse’s smile turns wistful. “Maybe I’ll come live with you in New York. Do you remember how we planned all those trips together?”

  Renate nods, though the memory feels celluloid and oddly inauthentic, like a film montage filled with fake champagne bubbles.

  “Why aren’t your parents going along?” Ilse continues.

  Going along. The phrase is so breezily divorced from the tortuous reality of emigration that Renate almost snorts, though she checks herself. It amazes her, how little non-Jews comprehend about what life has become like for her. When a former schoolmate she met on the street recently asked her whether the eight o’clock curfew was “restricting” her social life very much, Renate had been tempted to laugh in his face. The truth was that given how little Jews are allowed to do in the first place now, it barely makes a difference what time they aren’t allowed to do it.

  “It’s too expensive, for one thing,” she says. “And Vati will never pass the exams.”

  “The physical?”

  “There’s a written one now too. They’re apparently looking for excuses to shut people out.” In fact, the new exam was added just as Renate and Franz submitted their novella-length stacks of forms and papers to the U.S. consulate on Pariser Platz.

  “That’s ridiculous! Was it hard?”

  “Absurdly. Do you know how tall the Bunker Hill Monument is, in feet?”

  “So much for welcoming the huddled masses.” Ilse shakes her head. “But you passed?”

  “We both did.” She doesn’t mention that here again Elisabeth Bauer had come through, somehow obtaining a list of the written test’s more esoteric questions that might otherwise have torpedoed her children’s chances. Or that, waiting in her slip and panties for the consulate physical, Renate had suddenly found herself having trouble breathing, half-expecting as she did a red-lipped Führerin to appear and ban her from emigrating.

  “Ugh.” Ilse shakes her head sympathetically. “How is Franz, by the way? Is he here?”

  Renate shakes her head.

  “Schiller discussion group?” asks Ilse, making quotation-mark gestures with both forefingers. “Is that still going on these days?”

  Renate opts not to answer. “He’s at Alberti’s with some friends,” she says. “They’ve supposedly got some new discs in from New York.”

  “Jazz?”

  “What else.” Renate rolls her eyes. Officially, at least, the fremdländische “alien” music form is prohibited by the Ministry of Propaganda. For those in the know, however, the latest hits by Glenn Miller and Louis Armstrong can be clandestinely appreciated in the locked basement of the little music shop on Rankestraße. So it is there that her brother can often be found.

  Ilse’s face falls, and for a moment Renate worries whether she should have shared even this hardly incriminating information. Then again, she remembers, Ilse always did act a little oddly when it came to Franz.

  “So tell me more about it,” she says, changing the subject. “What made you change your mind? And what are you thinking about doing about it?”

  “I suppose it’s been building for a while.” Ilse smoothes Alice’s blue dress. “But last year was really when my thinking changed direction. I was supposed to cover the Kristallnacht story. But so much of what I saw sickened me. It was…it was just wrong. No matter what you think about Jewish influence in Germany, it didn’t—doesn’t—justify that.” She frowns, picking a nonexistent speck from the doll’s shoulder. “I couldn’t get it out of my head. The image of your father. What those…buffoons were doing to him. What they’d already done. And then I had to write it up for Der Angriff as though it were this spontaneous and heroic revolution. Germany’s storming of the Bastille!” She pauses, blinking rapidly. “I’ve always wanted to be a newswoman. But what we are writing isn’t news. It’s lies.”

  “Did you ever get in trouble for the other lies?” Renate hugs her knees to her chest. “The ones you told for us?”

  “No.” Ilse twirls the doll’s hair around her index finger. “Believe it or not, those thugs were actually more stupid than they looked. And more drunk.” She pauses, staring down at the worn paisley duvet cover, biting her lower lip. She really does look sick: drawn and pale, the purple shadows beneath her eyes deepening their oceanic grayness.

  “So will you leave the Party?” Renate asks her.

  “I’m thinking about it.” Ilse leans back again. “I’ve actually applied to go to the Wartheland, to help with the Volk resettlement and with press and publicity in Lodz. But I’m thinking perhaps I’ll apply to university as well.”

  Renate nods, dropping her gaze. University had always been a delicate subject between them. Until Jews were banned from higher schooling it had been considered a given that Renate would go. Ilse’s mother, though, had discouraged it as impractical: in her mind university was wasted on girls, since their main destination was marriage. “Your parents are all right with university now?” she asks.

  Ilse nods, tightening her jaw.

  “And after?”

  “I’m hoping this madness will be over.” Sliding off the bed, she stands and stretches. Turning, she treats Renate to one of her old, rare, cheek-dimpling grins.

  “I’m so glad I’m back,” she says. The words seem to issue forth in a rush of breathy relief.

  “Me too,” says Renate, cautiously.

  “May I use the toilet?”

  “Of course.”

&nbs
p; * * *

  After Ilse is gone, Renate picks up Ragdoll Alice from her facedown position on the bed.

  What do you think? she asks her in silence.

  The button eyes look back dispassionately.

  It might be real, Renate tells her. Think about it. It might.

  And for the first time since Ilse’s forceful knock on the door, Renate actually almost believes this: that the change of heart for which she’d so desperately yearned might actually be possible, even imminent. And yet for some reason, her emotional response to this idea feels almost as muted as the rag doll’s. There is no melting sense of relief. No flooding rush of joy. Merely a cool, almost clinical curiosity. It’s as though her friend, like Lawrence Selden in The House of Mirth, has arrived with her flowery proposal too late.

  And what would it mean now, anyway, she wonders, leaning back against the pillows again. How could they resume their friendship, when literally everything they once did together is either explicitly or implicitly forbidden? Their trips to the Concordia are kaputt. She is no longer welcome at the Deutsche Oper Berlin or the Odeon theater, so opera and drama are out too. So is the museum, the restaurants and cafés they used to visit. The Tiergarten is now out entirely, though last year they could have gone so long as Renate only sat on the Jewish benches. They can’t listen to music or take bike rides together, since Jews no longer own phonographs, radios, or bicycles. And with the new ration restrictions, Renate isn’t even allowed the sorts of sweets she and Ilse had once so loved eating together.

  In short, any resurrected friendship would have to be limited to short, careful walks during daylight hours, or else sitting and talking here at home. And even then they’d still risk censure, since someone could report Ilse to the Gestapo for merely being seen in Renate’s presence.

  Down the hall, Renate hears the gurgling flush of the toilet, the rusty sink faucet squeaking in protest at being twisted. I’m so glad I’m back, she had said.

  Restless, Renate picks up the little book of poems, flipping through the first few pages, reading a few passages aloud to herself. But she feels too confused, too tightly wound to be able to focus; after a few minutes she throws the book back on the bed, stands, stretches. Glancing at the bedside clock, she realizes that Ilse has been in the bathroom for a long time. What’s keeping her?

  Thinking perhaps she needs more newspaper (they’ve gone back to the old-fashioned, hand-cut squares of Renate’s early childhood, Toilettenpapier being now an unnecessary expense) she makes her way down the hallway. But to her surprise the bathroom is empty. Hearing a rustling noise in the direction of Franz’s room, she takes three stocking-footed steps to his doorway, where she sees Ilse standing over his desk, a look of concentration on her face.

  “What are you doing?” Renate asks.

  “Oh!” Clearly caught off-guard, Ilse starts. “I’m sorry. I suppose I should have asked. I’d just remembered Franz had a lot of Kafka. There’s a quote I’ve been trying to recall for the past few days.”

  “Which book?”

  “I can’t remember. It’s something about…” She cocks her head in thought, in that gesture Renate remembers so clearly. “It’s about using one hand to wave off life’s miseries and the other to write about them. But of course, put much more eloquently than that. Do you know it?”

  Renate shakes her head. “I don’t. I think he got rid of all his Kafka. Along with all the other books on the list.” Though she actually knows that this isn’t the case. Franz has a system of storing his forbidden books inside larger, permitted volumes, the pages of which he’s hollowed out with his (also forbidden) jackknife.

  “Right. I forgot about that.” Sighing, Ilse makes her way to the hallway. “That’s another thing I hate about the Party. Why should they be able to tell us what to read?” Something in her tone strikes Renate as a little too bright, just a shade too enthused. But then her mother is calling from the dining room.

  “Reni? We’re eating in half an hour. Can you wake your father?”

  “Klar,” Renate calls, faintly relieved for the excuse to end the conversation. Turning to Ilse, she says: “I’d invite you to stay. But you know my mother’s cooking.”

  Ilse laughs. “I do. The boiled Leberkäse episode still haunts me.” Faced with liver cheese that had been left out overnight, Renate’s mother had had the bright idea of heating it in a pan of water, “just to soften it up.” After leaving it on the stove for too long (she always forgets to set her timer) she’d ended up with a tasteless pink sludge that she salvaged by serving as “stew.”

  “I’d forgotten that one.” Renate grimaces as they start down the stairs. “It’s only gotten worse since rationing started. Though luckily, she works late a lot at the Jewish Hospital, so I have an excuse to take over.”

  Reaching the bottom of the stairs her friend pulls on her coat and shoes and ties her scarf. She turns to face Renate with another smile. “Can I come back?”

  “Of course,” says Renate, trying to toss off the response as casually as the question. “I’m out for a class on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. But otherwise”—she shrugs—“I’m generally here.”

  “What class?”

  “Hairdressing. At the Jewish Community Center. They want us all to learn an ‘internationally viable’ trade.”

  “So the next time I need a permanent I come to you?”

  “I didn’t say I was good at it.”

  They laugh together again, and once more, for just a moment it is almost like the old days. Then Ilse frowns. “Now I know what I was missing. Where’s Sig?”

  Renate swallows, hard. “He—he died.”

  The wound is still too raw for her to go into more detail; she tightens her lips and shakes her head.

  “Oh, Reni,” says Ilse softly. “I’m so sorry.” She hesitates for a moment, her face stricken.

  Then, wordlessly, she enfolds Renate in a hug.

  Caught off-guard again, Renate lifts her arms and squeezes back, until the warm, familiar scent of her friend threatens to undo her composure for good.

  Laughing self-consciously, she pulls back. Ilse laughs as well, though her eyes are suspiciously damp again.

  “I’m sorry, too, for just showing up like this,” she says, dashing at them with the back of her hand.

  “It’s all right,” says Renate. “It broke up the afternoon.”

  “So I’ll come back soon. Before you leave?”

  Renate nods. “I’ll look forward to it.”

  It comes out automatically: more politeness than assertion. But as she leans against the door frame she decides she does mean it. That despite the pain and the betrayal, despite the months of solitude, there is a part of her that is cautiously, sheepishly thrilled as she watches Ilse stride briskly away down Bismarckstraße, the early-evening light glinting silver in her gold hair. A verse from one of the poems she read upstairs comes back to her:

  We are framed by stars

  And take flight from the world

  I believe we are angels.

  17.

  Ilse

  1939

  She sits windowside at Die Arabische Tasse with her notebook before her, though in reality she’s engaged in surveillance. The coffee shop—a former favorite of hers and Renate’s—is positioned on Bismarckstraße and Leibnizstraße, within convenient viewing distance of the Bauers’ arched doorway. Nursing her Milchkaffee, Ilse divides her attention between the familiar black door and her latest article: Jews and Ritual Sacrifice: A History.

  Thanks to an introduction from Kai before his posting to the East, she’s been taking on more Propaganda Ministry writing for various pamphlets and newsletters. There have also been two more Der Stürmer pieces written under her male pseudonym of Isador Frank: “Jew Alert! Ten Ways to Spot a Sex Predator,” and “The Secret, Bloody Truth about Passover.” Kai calls these
“investigative pieces,” though all Ilse really does is interview sources he assigns her, using questions he writes for her, then more or less transcribes their answers to be published. “It isn’t bad journalism,” her editor had said last week when she questioned him about this system. “It’s just an alternative way of presenting the facts.”

  “But some of these ‘facts’ are laughable!” Ilse had been typing up quotes from a Talmudic ‘expert,’ a jaundiced-looking man with a monocle that kept dropping into his lap, who had punctuated his claims with hand movements so bizarre that Ilse at first suspected some sort of palsy. It was only later that she realized that he was trying to imitate the distinctive hand gestures of some Ostjuden, Eastern European Jews.

  “Does anyone believe that matzo is made with blood from Gentile infants?” she asked now. “If that were true, wouldn’t it at least be red? Or pink?”

  The editor just waved dismissively. “If you write it often enough it becomes its own version of the truth.”

  “But surely there’s enough real evidence of the Jewish problem that we don’t have to fall back on such nonsense?”

  “Of course there is,” he’d retorted. “But which makes for the better story: Jews murdering babies or Jews cheating the banking system? And in the end, don’t they amount to the same thing?”

  She’d had to think about that one. But under certain circumstances, Ilse decided now, they very likely could.

  Chewing on her pen tip, she reworks her second paragraph, periodically glancing back at the Bauers’ flat. In a secret companion volume to the Jewish Talmud can be found the command to “slaughter foreigners…(No sign of Renate, though if her class is at three then she should be leaving now) who are the same as beasts.” Jews are ordered to do this in a “lawfully valid manner.” According to Talmudic experts, this “manner” (She had said Thursdays, hadn’t she? Or had Ilse misremembered?) is the very same manner in which Jewish butchers so cruelly slaughter and bleed animals, which is why throughout the ages the bloodless corpses of Christians, especially Christian children (Ilse checks her watch again: it is now two twenty, and the U-Bahn trip takes well over forty minutes), have been discovered in areas where Jews live, usually on or approaching the Jewish holidays of Passover and Purim…