The German Wife(48)

“I’ll speculate all I want, Sofie,” Adele said, looking down her nose at me. “What are they going to do—arrest me for pointing out the blindingly obvious?”

“You really do need to keep your voice down,” Mayim whispered, her tone slightly panicked. Adele sighed, then nodded.

“Yes, okay. Thank you, Mayim.”

“Every night before I go to bed, I review every interaction from that day and ask myself—did I do anything that might be perceived as disloyal?” Mayim said softly, startling me. “Some nights I can’t sleep because I worry that I might have accidentally said something to draw attention to myself—to cause trouble for us all.”

“I hate that you have to live like that,” I whispered, throat tight.

“The calculus is different for you, Mayim,” Adele said gently. “And you have your whole life ahead of you. This is no way to live. Have you thought about that? What your future will look like?”

“I think about it every day.”

Adele took a deep sip of her wine. “I don’t say this lightly, but you need to leave Germany. I think of you as I think of our Sofie, as the granddaughter God forgot to give me—albeit a rather less aggravating version.”

“Thanks, Aunt Adele,” I said wryly. She winked to let me know she was joking, but quickly sobered, as did I. “But...where would the Nussbaums even go?”

Adele looked at Mayim, her gaze intense.

“Can you and your parents not simply go to Krakow with Moshe?”

“It is not simple, Miss Adele,” Mayim replied. “My passport says I’m Polish, but I have never lived anywhere but here. Besides, my father can’t just go to Poland. Even if he could secure a visa, he couldn’t handle the train ride with his back. Things in Berlin are uncomfortable, but I am fortunate that I have you and Jürgen and Sofie and the children.”

“And you,” Adele said, turning her attention to me. “Have you thought about what will happen if they insist that you ask Mayim to leave?”

“It is not illegal to have a Jewish best friend,” I said stiffly.

“Sofie.” She sighed impatiently. “The time may come when it is indeed illegal.”

“I hate that we’re even discussing this,” I whispered.

“Not discussing it would be worse,” Adele said abruptly. “We need to face the facts.” She turned to Mayim. “You know I am not wealthy, but between all of us, we could find the money for your father’s visa.”

“Truly, thank you,” Mayim said miserably. “But that’s really not the problem at all.”

“Please, Mayim,” Adele urged. “Please try to think of a way. It feels like the danger comes closer to this house every single sunrise. I can barely sleep at night worrying for you all.”

Later, Adele excused herself to retire, and after she’d closed the little gate in the fence between our courtyards, Mayim asked me, “Is she right?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. After a pause, I blurted, “Mayim, I’m so scared for you. And your parents. Germany doesn’t feel safe anymore.”

Mayim looked away from me, toward the fading red-gold sunlight that framed the apartment building behind us. I heard the sniffles she tried to hide, and I reached to squeeze her forearm. She turned back to me, her cheeks wet with tears.

“How much worse is this going to get before it gets better?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I just don’t know.”

After a few months at school, Georg was proud to bring home his first satchel of readers to practice at home.

“Shall I read them with you?” I offered, as I finished dressing Laura after her bath. Georg gasped in horror.

“These are special home readers. Only for me and Mayim.”

I kissed him good-night and watched as he walked to his bedroom, holding Mayim’s hand. I tucked Laura into her bed, and then went downstairs to make tea for me and Mayim. When she joined me in the sitting room a few minutes later, the color was gone from her face. She sat opposite me and rested Georg’s satchel on the coffee table between us.

“Open it,” she said. Her voice was hoarse.

I opened the satchel and withdrew the books. On the cover of the first was an image of a street parade. Most of the adults and children were giving the salute, and no less than eight swastika banners and flags were displayed in the scene. I made a sound of surprise, and Mayim reached forward, her movements jerky as she withdrew the rest of the books to spread them side by side.

I reached to pick the next one up, Children, What Do You Know about the Führer? I leafed through the pages, watching a fiction unfold about a benevolent Hitler who was restoring the Fatherland to glory. The second book was called The Crossbreed, and while the cover was of a cute puppy, I only had to skim the first few pages to realize it was a simplistic parable discouraging relationships between Aryans and Jews.

By the time I picked up the third picture book, my hands were shaking.

It was called Never Trust a Fox on the Green Heath and Never Trust a Jew by His Oath. On the first page, a handsome Aryan man was depicted beside a rotund, coarse man ostensibly representing the Jews.

When I looked up, Mayim was weeping.

“Please tell me you didn’t read these to him, Mayim,” I whispered sickly.