by Andie Newton
I smiled and shook his hand with a small curtsy.
‘And I’m originally from Berlin,’ he said, ‘but grew up in a small town northeast of Munich.’
‘I’m Ella Strauss,’ I said, giggling. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
We headed outside where a Mercedes G-4 Wagen spewed grey haze into the street; its windows were fogged, and it rocked from the bodies moving around inside. The sound of laughter seeped from a cracked window along with billows of smoke that smelled of filtered cigarettes.
I couldn’t help but remember the last time I had ridden in such a car. The hum of the Mercedes’ grooved tyres against the pavement and the sway of its chassis when I visited Hinzert. The bitter memory of that prison clung to the corners of my mind and could crack open like a bad egg if I let it. I took a breath. I’m on holiday now.
A driver with worn leather boots and a tattered green flap hat hurled my bag onto the roof and tethered it next to some other cases. I tightened my gloves at the wrist, glancing at the ground. Underneath the frosty imprint of my shoes was the dirty stain of Christophe’s blood. A sickened roil bubbled inside me, and I grimaced with one hand lightly pressed against my stomach.
Holiday. I’m on holiday. Holiday.
‘Are you coming?’ Erik said, holding the door open.
The dark upholstered seats looked velvety and warm as he stood there waiting for me to climb in. I dropped my hand. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘let’s get out of here.’
I stepped over an empty beer bottle rolling near the door and slid into the backseat. When I looked up, I heard my name.
‘Hello, Cousin!’ It was Alex, and at nine o’clock in the morning he was nearly drunk. He slouched in his seat and bowed his legs, one hand gripping a bottle of beer and the other gripping a girl. I guessed she was no more than eighteen with her lollipop lips and auburn hair, some of it pinned into ringlets near her face. She bore a striking and refreshing resemblance to Claudia. I smiled and she smiled back. Next to them both was a dark-headed man I recognized as Erik’s friend Paul, and another girl with a plain face.
Alex knew a lot of people around the Königsplatz. He had become a master networker and developed a knack for exchanging favours for relationships in order to get ahead in the Party. So, it didn’t surprise me that Alex had been able to weasel an invitation out of Paul. I just couldn’t help but wonder if what he had promised Paul in return was the plain-faced girl sitting next to him.
‘Alex!’ I said. ‘You’re up early.’
‘So,’ he said, smug-faced. ‘You’re the girl Erik enjoys.’
‘Enjoys?’ Only Alex would use such a word. ‘He’s my boss.’
Alex laughed me off and pointed the neck of his bottle around the car. ‘This is Ingrid, her gal Hannah and my buddy Paul, Koch’s friend.’ Beer spilled from his bottle onto his knee and shoes.
We said our hellos and Erik slid in next to me, shutting the door. His eyes darted around the car as if he’d missed some incredible joke. Paul counted up the empty bottles on the floor, then smiled at Alex as if expecting him to say something ridiculous. Alex belched into the crook of his arm and flashed me a bright, white smile.
‘There it is,’ Paul said, pointing at Alex. ‘That’s what happens when you challenge me.’
Erik scooted to the edge of his seat. ‘Did I miss something?’
I shook my head no, but Alex spoke up. ‘She’s my cousin!’ He burped again. This time he took his arm off Ingrid and waved the fumes away with his hand. Ingrid giggled and covered her nose.
‘You’re related?’ Erik said.
I picked up an empty bottle and hid my face behind it. ‘Please, don’t hold it against me.’
Alex chugged the rest of his beer while Ingrid and Paul cheered him on. When he finished, he growled like a bear and pounded on his chest with his fists.
‘Nein.’ Erik laughed. ‘I wouldn’t do that.’
Ingrid offered me a cigarette. I reached out without even thinking and then paused, my gloved fingers stuck in mid-air. Although it seemed everyone was smoking, I glanced at Erik as if I had to ask permission; new rules, just two days old, didn’t allow for secretaries to smoke. Even when I wasn’t working, I had to hide it.
‘Relax, we’re on holiday,’ he said, ‘and I’m not your boss this weekend.’ He smiled. ‘Just Erik, clear?’
The windows had frosted with breathy perspiration and blocked all views of the city. My back unbuttoned along with my coat and my feet warmed with the company. ‘Clear.’
I unpinned my hair and let it relax over my shoulders. Ingrid pulled one of her ribbons from her hair. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘I have too many of these. And you don’t have any.’
The ribbon was pink. Not the bright kind little girls wear, but soft and whimsically delicate. ‘Thank you.’ I didn’t want to admit how long it had been since I’d worn a ribbon in my hair.
I sank into the seat of the G-4 Wagen; it was cosier and more comfortable than it looked. Erik unfolded a fluffy blue blanket and threw it over both our legs. He held my hand momentarily, giving me a smile. I smiled back.
I needed this trip.
*
We arrived in Schliersee just after ten in the morning. The twelve-room pension we lodged in overlooked the town’s main street. Our room was on the second floor and had a light green canopy bed, big enough for all of us, centred in the middle of the room, with two smaller trundle beds nestled against the walls. The boys lodged down the corridor from us about six doors down, Erik in a private suite. The Hensels, the old couple that ran the place, lived on the first floor just at the bottom of the stairs where the parlour, kitchen and dining room were.
The French doors in our room opened onto a small balcony overlooking a rushing creek. ‘It’s so beautiful,’ I said to myself. The creek meandered its way through a meadow of untouched snow and whooshed against drifts of ice. It was hard to believe a hollow place like Munich even existed.
Ingrid brought out two flutes filled with bubbling champagne onto the balcony. She’d already changed into black ski pants and wore a knitted snow cap with a fuzzy pink ball sewn on top. ‘Too early for a drink?’
Champagne bubbles popped against my nose, and even though I’d had my share of champagne toasts in the Reich, it looked more delicious than anything I’d ever tasted. I sipped it slow with my eyes closed. The champagne slid down my throat and filled my belly with a tingled, warm energy.
‘You ready to ski?’ she said.
‘I’m afraid I’m not much of a skier.’ I took another drink and gazed at the winterscape. Icicles hung from pitched eaves and fat, powdery snowflakes fell from a thin, clouded sky.
‘Hannah and I have never skied.’ Laughter bumped in her voice. Her hand brushed the ringlets from her face, but they sprung back and bounced off her shoulders. ‘Oh, I don’t care if anyone knows. Truth is we weren’t going to turn down a free holiday all because we didn’t know how to ski.’
I smiled. ‘Me either.’
She smoothed her snow pants against her thighs and angled her boots as if they were heels. ‘But I do enjoy the gear. The trunk inside is full of things to wear.’
The stem of our flutes clinked together, and we washed our confessions down with more champagne.
‘You’re Erik’s secretary?’ Ingrid said.
‘Mm-hmm.’ Work was the last thing I wanted to talk about.
‘You must be awfully busy working for the Reich. Do you get enough holidays?’
I pulled the flute from my lips. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I work all the time.’
‘Ugh,’ she said. ‘I can’t imagine. I’m not sure what I’d do without time with my friends.’ I looked at her from the side of my glass as I tipped the champagne into my mouth. ‘I’m glad you were able to come with us. Sounds like you needed a break.’
I set the flute down with a long sigh. I thought about the files, how the walls inside my flat and in my office seemed more like a coffin, and Christophe. ‘You have no idea.’
; Hannah put her suitcase on one of the trundle beds and unpacked her things, delicately folding five pieces of clothing and carefully putting them into drawers.
‘Don’t mind her,’ Ingrid said in a wet, champagne-coated voice. ‘She thinks she’s a maid. In fact, if we stay out here long enough I bet she’ll put our things away.’ I laughed and we clinked our flutes together for a second time.
‘I can hear you girls,’ Hannah said, smiling. ‘And yes, sometimes I think I am the maid.’ She kicked her empty suitcase under her bed and joked with her face. ‘Can’t help it some days.’
All three of us laughed. A pain pulled at my side and I whimpered with an embarrassing cringe. I dug my fingers into it, bending over, but still kept laughing.
‘You need to laugh more often.’ Ingrid took the champagne bottle and filled my glass up while I was doubled over.
‘Or get drunk,’ I said.
‘That too.’ Ingrid laughed. ‘That too.’
*
After we finished the bottle of champagne, Ingrid cracked open another. Hannah lit the fireplace with the matches left on the mantel, and with the air from a waved book, she fanned flames big enough to warm the palms of our hands. We pushed a few chairs against the hearth and divided up the rest of the ski clothes from the trunk.
Ingrid handed out some cigarettes that seemed unusually thick. I leaned forward, lighting it from her lighter. ‘What are these?’ As soon as I asked the question, I tasted a sharp tang in the back of my throat. ‘Cloves?’
Ingrid smiled. ‘All the girls are doing it. Well, not all. But some!’
Hannah sniffed hers before lighting it. ‘I’ll just have a few puffs.’
‘Drink the champagne with it, Hannah.’
Hannah gulped down her champagne, taking puffs in between until her cigarette was nearly gone. ‘Or, maybe I’ll smoke the whole thing.’
We laughed. ‘I used to smoke these back home. My friend, Claudia—she loved them. I haven’t seen her in so long.’ It was strange to say her name out loud, like a foreign word. I said it again just to hear it. ‘Claudia.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Ingrid said. ‘You miss her. I didn’t mean to—’
‘It’s all right.’ I grabbed the champagne bottle by its neck and filled Hannah’s glass before taking a swig directly from the bottle. ‘You’d like her—she knew how to have fun, and we laughed a lot growing up…’
The girls listened to me go on about Claudia. The more I talked about her the more stories I remembered, like how she rolled her own cigarettes and how she could drink a beer faster than anyone else at the table. Keeping her locked up in my mind had hurt more than I realized.
Someone mentioned the boys, and when our glasses went dry we set out to find them. From the second floor we saw Frau Hensel folding a large quilt near the linen closet at the base of the stairs. It was in the same yellow pattern her dirndl was made from and her body blended right into it. Her eyes bulged from their sockets when she saw us traipsing down the stairs with our arms locked together, fumbling our footsteps and catching ourselves on the railing.
Ingrid hiccupped then said, ‘Good morning, Frau Hensel.’ And we giggled.
Frau Hensel gasped, hand to her chest, and then stuffed the quilt into a drawer. ‘It’s noon, girls.’ A thin finger against her lips tried to shush us, but we giggled even more. She took a sharp look down the corridor that led to her husband’s office. I saw his feet propped up on some pillows piled high on the divan as if he were taking a nap. She paused, and then pressed her finger even harder against her lips.
‘This way,’ she said, guiding us into the sitting room in a way similar to how a sheep herder gathers strays on a farm. ‘Now, come over here. Your men have already left for the lifts!’ I looked around the parlour. Except for us, there were no other guests around.
Our giggles quieted into a murmur. She pointed to a rack of skis on the wall and sized our feet with her eyes. ‘Here, these will fit you,’ she said, handing me a pair of skis.
I waved at her to stop. ‘I don’t ski.’
She tried to give them to Ingrid, who stuck her hands in her pockets. ‘Me either.’
When she tried to give the skis to Hannah, laughter shot from our mouths.
Frau Hensel gripped the skis in opposing hands, knuckles whitening, and pounded them on the ground like gavels. Boom! A puff of air blew from her lip to her forehead. ‘What are you girls doing at a ski pension when you don’t know how to ski?’
Hannah hummed her answer—the champagne must have tied up her tongue. I laughed at the sound of her garbled voice, covering my own mouth. But something about trying not to laugh made me laugh even more. Frau Hensel scowled at us and a deep-set scar on her chin bent into a crescent-shaped gash.
‘What kind of skills are they teaching girls these days? To get drunk? When I was your age…’
Our faces went blank. Her voice pushed us onto an oversized chair under the ski rack, and we sat and listened to her with wide, attentive eyes while she scolded us with a pointed finger. The fire behind her glowed dark orange and smelled of brimstone, which made her seem madder than she really was.
She talked about how she skied before she learned to walk, and about her days in the women’s ski corps during the first war. Said getting drunk was for the lazy and the prostitutes. ‘Some nights I had to camp in the snow, alone. I didn’t know if I would live or die, and not because of the cold. Because of…’ She stopped short of finishing and waved her hand in the air. ‘Young people these days. Think war is a picnic. A party.’
A photo of a woman with blonde hair, braided at the sides, tilted on the wall behind her. She wore a Red Cross cuff around her right arm and a patch of criss-crossed ski poles. A leather pack tied around her waist balanced off her hip while she faced the snow-capped mountains with dead-set, razor-cutting eyes.
I realized she thought we were a few stupid girls from the city, who probably slept around and drank more than we ought too. I didn’t know Ingrid or Hannah’s story, but I knew mine.
‘Frau Hensel,’ I said slowly, trying to control my fat, drunken tongue. ‘I’m sorry I’m a little… you know…’ I stood up, and placed a hand on her shoulder, which I think surprised her. ‘I really needed to get out of Munich. It’s grey there… not beautiful like it is here. I got carried away.’
She stared at me, and then looked at my hands when I held onto hers and all the tension in her body seemed to disappear. Perhaps she knew what I meant about the grey, how depressing it was, and how coming to a place like Schliersee could make you do things you normally wouldn’t.
‘Girls,’ she said, sighing. ‘My husband will have words if he finds you drunk.’ She paused, put a finger to her chin and rubbed the scar. ‘What about the rodel?’ Her voice lifted as much as her face. ‘You can sled, can’t you?’
26
We came back to the pension several hours later, icy-numb yet still laughing. As soon as Frau Hensel saw us she wrapped us up in quilted blankets and sat us on the divan near the fireplace to warm up. Erik and the boys walked through the front doors shortly after.
‘Where did you go?’ he asked, sitting down next to me. ‘I looked for you on the slopes.’
‘We went sledding!’ I rubbed my hands together and then held them palm side to the fire, giving him a smile.
‘I thought you girls wanted to ski?’ Erik said.
‘We did,’ Ingrid said, ‘but the skis didn’t fit so Frau Hensel suggested the rodels.’
‘Oh,’ he said, though Paul and Alex didn’t seem to care where we’d been or what we did. ‘I wish I had known. I would have found some skis for you… somewhere.’
‘You would have?’ It didn’t occur to me he cared what we did since they left for the lifts well before we even came out of our room. But the yielding tone in his voice made me question my initial thoughts, and I felt a little bad about not joining him.
Erik sank into the seat cushion, cosying up next to me. ‘I’m glad you had a good time tho
ugh.’ He smiled gently, and it reminded me of a boy in Nuremberg, someone whose name I didn’t know, but remembered coming into the antiques shop every once and a while. I smiled back.
The salon filled up with skiers returning from the slopes and the hooks near the door got overloaded with wet coats and hats. Scarves fell to the ground and swirled in between clumsy, boot-heavy feet. We scooted closer to the fireplace and made room for the incoming crowd; some sat on the back of the divans, others sat on the padded part of the arms.
Paul leaned into the fireplace to spit on the flames. Frau Hensel walked by with a snarl and mumbled to herself when she heard him laughing. Erik told stories about their day, but Alex kept butting in with his own version. Either way, the events were the same: the boys out-skied everyone else on the biggest hill with the most snow. I gazed deep into the fire’s flames as they talked—my mind still on the rodels.
The door to the kitchen flapped open, and a waft of fresh bread and broiling sausages filled every corner of the room. For the first time since I can remember, the thought of a plate piled high with wet, sloppy food sounded fantastic. I didn’t know why I suddenly felt hungry—really hungry as if I could eat my arm and not care. I only wanted to eat.
‘I’m starving!’ I announced, throwing the blanket off my legs and heading toward the dining room, but then Frau Hensel announced supper and everyone got up. Three deep-set roasting pans full of cooked onions, potatoes and browned meat had been placed on the buffet next to a black soup-pot stewing with carrots in beer. The cook, who looked just like Frau Hensel only much older, scooped it all onto plates.
I slid into an overly large medieval-looking wooden table with my plate. Platters of blistering pork hocks followed, and the room heated up like a sauna. I pulled a clump of meat from the bone and stuffed it into my full mouth. A spoonful of hot carrots came next. I closed my eyes; suddenly I knew what it meant to indulge, what it felt like to take care of myself, and I was satisfied. When I opened my eyes, everyone was looking at me. Erik nudged a glass of water toward me with his finger; it clinked against my plate and he motioned with his chin for me to take a drink.