Wunderland(104)

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.”