by Andie Newton
‘They’re sending all the Jews east, Ella. Against their will.’ She stared at me while I thought about what she’d been doing. I wasn’t that naïve; I knew that, with all of her disguises, she was doing something that could get her arrested. From the beginning, she only told me things I needed to know. It was safer that way. I just didn’t realize she was actively hiding them.
‘Will you be all right?’ she said, and I nodded. ‘If it’s too much—’
I thought of that little boy I ran into earlier. He looked about ten years old or so. Brown hair and eyes, chubby cheeks, innocent. Scared.
‘I’ll do it,’ I said. ‘Deliver a key and an address. I’ll go before I head to the shop. But where will you be?’ I knew not to ask, but it slipped out. At the very least, I thought she could tell me how she kept her activities from her parents. ‘What do you tell your parents?’
‘My father’s regularly in Frankfurt on business and my mother has her liquor. I’m not missed.’
Claudia let go of my arm and fitted her elbows back into the crook of her knees, leaving a swirl of gritty dust on the floor where she had spun back around.
‘And you’ll need a scarf,’ she said, ‘something with a lot of yellow in it. Otherwise you’ll blend in with everyone else. He’ll be looking for it.’
‘In that drawer,’ I said, pointing with my head.
She sifted through a mound of scarves and ribbons until she found the solid yellow one my uncle gave me before the Party transferred him to Berlin to develop ciphers.
She bit the tag off with her teeth and tossed the scarf into my lap. ‘Don’t forget it, and stay until Wilhelm arrives. Don’t leave the square with the key still in your pocket.’
I peeked over my bed, reaching for the hooks she had brought with a searching hand. ‘I won’t,’ I said, and the bag flopped to the ground like a fat bottomed sack of flour with metal barbs sticking from it.
Following Claudia’s firm request, I anchored the hooks into the base of each curl. ‘You didn’t have me do this last time.’ I used my grip on her hair to move her head around to look at me.
‘Pull my hair nice and tight on the top,’ she said, and I did, drawing her temples back with a fine pull. After a few minutes she clawed her way around her scalp, silently memorizing the location of each hook.
An hour of silence passed before I noticed the tips of my fingers were as raw and red as fleshy little tomatoes. They burned with each thread of her hair, but the backs of my hands felt like my knees, cold and numb. As the clock ticked, my shadow on the wall withered smaller and smaller next to hers, like a grape left on the vine, but then I noticed it wasn’t me changing.
It was Claudia.
Gone was the anxious girl that slumped between my legs and in her place a stoic, complacent young woman, whose arrow-straight shadow on the wall loomed over mine like a steel beam. Her arms stretched out to feel the warmth of the candle’s flame just as I tied the last of her hair up. I broke the silence with a breathy sigh.
‘I’ve never seen a wig made out of real hair before, Claudia.’ I sat back, and let my limbs fall where they may. ‘This poor woman must be bald!’
A pin fell from my lips. ‘She’s dead,’ Claudia said.
It landed, clear as a bell, and rolled but neither of us moved to stop it.
2
Wagner blared from the front room and my eyes popped open from my bed. A steadfast nationalist, Aunt Bridget only played German composers in the morning, with a nod to the English late in the afternoon, but only when she thought she was by herself.
I lay still, sliding my eyes toward the door, following the sound of Auntie’s footsteps as she walked down the corridor. Shadows wrestled with the breaking sunlight under my door as she made one last pass before knocking.
‘Good morning,’ she said, slightly elevated, careful not to offend the pomp of Valkyrie in the background. I pulled the blanket up around my neck, mentally telling her to walk away, but then she called me by my nickname, Sascha, and I knew I’d have to answer.
‘I’m up.’
My feet met the floor again, as they had earlier, but this time they were more aware. A pang of loneliness hit me as I looked at the spot where, just hours ago, a crime had been committed. The imprint of my body still pressed into the sheets tried to lure me back, but it was too late. The day had begun.
My door flew open with a bang.
‘Ah!’ I jumped to a stand, only to slump in place when I saw Auntie’s smiling face. ‘Auntie, you scared me.’
She threw a fluffy white robe on top of my bed, the warm smell of morning eggs trailing in behind her. ‘I thought you heard me.’ Her hair was wound up into a braided bun behind her head, and it looked very tight, which made me wonder how long she’d been up. ‘You’re awake now, that’s what matters.’ She smiled, patting my shoulder.
I put the robe on, listening to her as she moved about my room and picked magazine clippings off the floor. ‘I don’t understand today’s fashion,’ she said, holding up an advertisement for women’s trousers. ‘What are you going to do with these?’ She bundled the clippings into her hands.
‘Paste them to my wall. All the girls do it, Auntie.’
‘Hmm,’ she said, stuffing the clippings into a drawer. ‘Girls these days. Well, can you at least keep your room a little cleaner? I feel like I’m always straightening it up.’ The pink in her cheeks reddened and lightly blackened lashes fanned out from her eyes as she smoothed her white apron against her waist.
I yawned, nodding. ‘Sorry, Auntie. I’m still so tired.’
‘Are you? Your eyes look very bright to me.’ She swept a lock of hair behind my shoulder, and her hand briefly touched the nape of my neck. Then she paused, and looked into my eyes, deeply, as if she had lost something. ‘You know, your mother was my favourite sister, and although she gave birth to you—’
‘She was your only sister, Auntie.’
‘Be that as it may…’
‘Yes, yes, I know the whole story. You were the midwife who delivered me, and your blue eyes were the first I ever saw.’
She moved to the dresser, rearranging my things to look more orderly, and picked up a photograph of my cousins, Joseph and Alex. She got lost for a moment staring at their faces. Both had left for Munich last summer, one for medical school and the other for the Reich, which left only me and Auntie to run her antiques shop. She wrote them every Tuesday, but only Joseph wrote back, and I felt sorry for her, which is why I didn’t mind when she made references about me being more like a daughter to her than a niece.
‘Everyone is gone now,’ she said, wiping a little tear from her eye. ‘Your uncle, on business with the Party, and now my children.’ She took a deep breath and then smiled, looking at me. ‘Except you, my sweet. I’m glad you are here.’ She set the frame down. ‘Now, come into the kitchen. Breakfast is ready.’ Her dampened gaze slid to the ground, noticing the swirl of dust Claudia and I had made on the floor with our bodies. Auntie didn’t like Claudia, said a mother who drank more often than she cooked wasn’t a true German. I’d get punished for sneaking friends into my bedroom, but it would be double if she knew that friend was Claudia.
My heart sped up the longer she stared at the floor. ‘Something wrong?’ I moved toward the door, trying to coax her out of my room, smiling nervously, hoping she wouldn’t read anything into it.
Auntie swiped the wood planks with her foot. ‘No, no. Everything is fine.’ And she walked out of my room, only to stop in the corridor and adjust Hitler’s portrait hanging on the wall. ‘Everything is perfectly fine.’
*
My stomach was already upset, thinking about Claudia’s key, and then as soon as I saw the slivers of meat and yellow cheese Auntie had out for us in the kitchen, my insides twisted into a cluster of mushy knots. I forked a piece of salami, lifting it in the air, examining the multi-coloured sheen glistening on top.
Auntie turned to see her hind-end reflecting in the windows, unaware I was m
aking faces at the meat. A tiny frown questioned the sag in her apron tie, which she tightened with two quick pulls, before running her thumbs in between the apron and her waist. I set the meat down just as she reached for a silver tray that had two hardboiled eggs on top and the decorative egg cups she rarely used.
‘Sorry, Sascha. I forgot the eggs and they cooked a little longer than usual,’ Auntie said, wincing. The shells had split and bits of white burst from the cracks. When I didn’t reach for an egg, she set one on my plate.
‘What’s this?’ I asked. ‘Your special egg cups?’ Auntie kept them in a locked glass cabinet with her silver-plated flatware, china and a few crystal goblets.
‘I have my reasons. These were your grandmother’s.’ Her voice lifted as she studied the design on the cup—dull red roses, rimmed in a band of burnished gold. ‘Aren’t they exquisite?’ she said as I gave the top of my egg a good crack with my spoon.
The egg cups were a family heirloom that had been passed down from mother to youngest daughter for the last seventy years. I remembered the day my grandmother gave them to my mother. It was a spring day because roses had started budding in the flower boxes. I was twirling in the parlour, giggling, getting dizzy when someone said that someday they would be mine. The egg cups passed to my aunt after my mother died.
Auntie set a place for herself opposite me, tailings of grease-slicked salami hanging over her plate, and poured herself a cup of hot black tea. ‘I’m trying to remember the last time we used these cups. Was it at Easter?’ Her eyes drifted to the ceiling, her head tilted in thought. ‘Humph!’ She shrugged her shoulders and then tucked into her food.
A piece of meat grazed her chin as she manoeuvred it into her mouth, leaving a slimy mark on her skin, which she later wiped off with the back of her thumb.
I smirked sourly, watching her eat. ‘Auntie…’
‘What? A good German always eats her food.’ Despite what she ate, Aunt Bridget had the physique and grace of a Grecian statue—a true goddess and a real German beauty with rounded hips and a tiny waist. ‘Well, do you remember, Sascha? The last time we used your grandmother’s egg cups?’
‘I don’t know, Christmas, Easter, the Führer’s birthday…’
‘Oh yes, all the wonderful holidays.’ She smiled while chewing. ‘Well, one day they will be yours.’
I imagined the cups spending an eternity on a dusty attic shelf, wrapped in crinkled newspaper next to the blue chalice she’d bought while on subsidized holiday in the Adriatic. ‘Perhaps one of the boys would like them?’ As soon as I said the words I wished I hadn’t because her eyes crossed.
‘You don’t want the egg cups? But they’re a family heirloom.’
I put my hand on hers. I didn’t want to tell her outright that I didn’t care about the egg cups, she’d be too hurt by it. ‘Egg cups aren’t something a girl my age gets excited about, Auntie. Ask me when I’m older.’
Her mouth hung open for a second or two. ‘Well, if that’s your choice,’ she said, reaching for her tea. ‘It’s all about choices now, isn’t it?’ She blew steam from her cup, testing the temperature with her tongue, when a squadron of bombers flew over the house, rattling the windows and jingling the empty fruit jars on the shelves. Both of us looked up at the ceiling. ‘Must be a clear day out,’ she said, finally taking a drink of her tea. ‘A good time to fight the enemy. Nice and early.’
‘What time is it?’
She looked at her watch. ‘Almost eight,’ she said, and I thrust my chair backward into the wall.
Wilhelm! My spoon catapulted off the table and careened to the ground, clinging and clanging its way under the buffet as I grappled with my robe tie. ‘I have to go! I have to get dressed.’
‘Relax,’ she said as she chewed. ‘There’s no shop today.’
My face jumped. ‘What?’ Auntie only closed the shop for funerals and birthdays.
‘It’s just for the day.’ She fluttered her fingers in the air, then coughed and fiddled with the table setting. Her walnut-shaped eyes sank into tiny round doughnut holes, firm cheeks turned flabby, and her lower lip drooped below her gum line.
‘Aren’t I… aren’t I doing a good job?’ I had to wonder if I’d made an error in her ledger and she needed a day to sort it out, but I’d been careful. Being a good shop girl seemed to be one of the only things Auntie thought I did well.
‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘I thought we could use a break.’
‘Oh, all right,’ I said, but then I had to think up a lie that was plausible enough to get me out of the house. ‘I’m not going to the shop anyway.’ My right eye twitched when I lied, but she was too busy making a mess of the table to notice. Forks changed positions with the saucers and glasses made room for relocating egg cups. ‘I’m seeing a friend, Greta. We’re spending the day together before she leaves for Berlin tonight on the train.’
Auntie stopped. ‘Oh! Greta. That nice girl from the League?’ A smile streaked across her face and she nestled her body tightly into the cleft of her high-backed chair. The wood spindles cracked against her spine as she pressed her weight against them, using the points of her laced napkin to blot the corners of her mouth.
‘Yes, Auntie. From the League.’
‘Greta is a sweet girl, a good German. Not like that Claudia you befriended.’
‘I really must go…’
I said the words, but hesitation weighed heavy in my legs, and I couldn’t move until she gave me her blessing. Once she gave me permission to leave the table I felt—in some back-handed sort of way—she was giving me permission to commit treason.
Auntie refolded her napkin, smoothed its creases with a flat hand and gave me a hard wink. ‘Sounds like a lovely idea, Sascha. Just don’t forget your League meeting tonight at Frau Dankwart’s house. Better wear your uniform.’ She waved me out of the room like an elegant cat, and I left her in the kitchen sipping her tea, staring contently at the blank space where I had sat.
*
I slipped on a pair of old stockings under my skirt and tucked in my white shirt, which hadn’t been cleaned or starched. Auntie must have sensed I wasn’t put together as well as she would have liked since she stopped me at the door. A dribble of tea stained her apron from jumping out of her chair.
‘Halt!’ Auntie shuffled toward me, her arms reaching for my neck.
‘I have my Youth League uniform on.’ I flipped back the lapels on my faded black trench.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but your tie is all wrong.’ She tucked the tie under my collar, reaching behind my neck. ‘If your tie is sloppy your League leader will think you are sloppy.’ She finished tightening my tie, slowly constricting the knot against my throat.
‘Auntie, it’s too tight.’
She loosened my tie just a hair so I could breathe.
‘I can’t wait until New Year’s Eve when I turn eighteen and can put this uniform in a drawer.’
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous!’ She felt the fabric between her fingers. ‘This is good quality German wool. What’s not to like?’
‘It’s not that, well, it is partly that, but Auntie, you know my parents weren’t National Socialists. They didn’t raise me to—’
Auntie closed her eyes. ‘Your parents were misguided. We’ve talked about this a hundred times, really, Sascha.’ Her eyes popped open and she finished adjusting my uniform with a pull to my collar. ‘And what’s this?’ She turned my wrist over, revealing the yellow scarf tied there. ‘Your uncle would be pleased to know you’re wearing the scarf he bought you.’
‘Don’t worry, Auntie. I’ll take it off before the League meeting.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Frau Dankwart isn’t one for flashiness.’ She examined a pulled thread where the tag had been. ‘Be careful with it, won’t you, Sascha? Your uncle doesn’t buy cheap things.’
‘I will.’
She centred the tie on my neck. ‘There. All fixed.’
Auntie took a step back to admire her work, but then
frowned at the sight of my dingy white shirt. I pulled the lapels of my coat closed before she could examine it too closely.
‘Auntie, I’m going to be late.’
‘Yes, of course.’ She kissed both my cheeks. ‘Have a big time, Sascha.’
I shut the door behind me, feeling the key in my pocket and the stiff, childlike awkwardness of my uniform. I had compromised by adding a silver hairclip behind my right ear and a pair of heels I had been dying to wear. Had Auntie noticed those things instead of my uniform, she might have asked me to take them off.
I went over the details Claudia had given me—the scarf, the key and the location—and then set out for the square, walking through town. The sun was out, and so were the Wehrmacht—new recruits testing out their uniforms, taking their last cigarettes before saying goodbye to their sweethearts. Behind them, work crews were refitting a Jewish school with Nazi emblems and flags. I squeezed the key in my pocket.
My pace quickened when I got to the Pegnitz River and started over the crowded foot bridge, knowing the Hauptmarkt was just on the other side, but then noticed the sputter of white exhaust pooling out of an empty four-door Mercedes 260D. I stopped abruptly.
Only the Gestapo left their engines running when parked.
I knew somewhere up ahead two—possibly even three—Gestapo were looking for someone. I thought about turning around, but people might think that was suspicious after I’d seen the car. So, I walked on, brow furrowed low and eyes heavy to the ground, a jab here, a jab there, poking some in the stomach and others in the back, quickening my pace, almost to the other side. A hand grabbed my shoulder, and I flew forward onto the ground with a yelp. My cheek hit the cold cobblestones, and I lay stunned and unmoving with commuters walking around my head and toes.
A man chuckled over me. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you!’
I said nothing, nose to the cobblestones, feeling the burn of fresh scrapes on my knees and the coolness of one bare foot without a shoe.