Wunderland(113)

“Really?” She glances up, unexpectedly touched and thrilled that her presence was a cause for concern. “Why would you think that?”

“You always seemed so much more…proper than we were. I felt like we were constantly shocking you.”

“But I liked it,” she says, truthfully. “I loved being shocked. It made my life so much more interesting.” She hesitates, then adds, carefully: “I loved how brave you were, too. That you kept going to your secret Socialist meetings even after they became illegal.”

“Brave or stupid,” he says dryly. “I’m still trying to decide.”

“Are you still going, then?” She pretends to examine a split hair. When he doesn’t answer right away she looks up and sees that he is studying her again, his expression unreadable.

“I’m sorry,” she says quickly. “You don’t have to tell me.”

He runs a hand through his hair. “Reni said you’re leaving the BDM.”

She feigns a yawn. “It’s so time-consuming. And there’s more and more about it I don’t believe in. I’d prefer to put my efforts into other things.” (True and true. Hop, hop.)

“I don’t suppose it matters, then.” He shrugs. “Yes, I still go. Not that it accomplishes much. It’s always been mostly about talk.”

“Any revolutionary romance, at least?”

“At the meetings?” He snorts. “They’re all bluestockings. Bookish harpies, every last one.”

“What’s wrong with bluestockings? Your sister is one. So am I.”

“No, you aren’t.”

The quickness of the denial catches her off-guard a second time. “How do you know?”

He shrugs. “Various clues throughout the years, I suppose.”

“Such as?”

“For one thing, bluestockings don’t like swing.”

“I’m sure some do.”

“No.” He shakes his head somberly. “They like classical music only. Bach. Schubert.”

“Mozart?”

“Only the less dangerous works. And the candies, of course.”

She finds herself giggling again. Crossing her legs, she realizes how little opportunity there is in her life for laughter and banter. With Kai—to whose attentions she finally wearily succumbed once he made it clear her job security depended on it—Ilse rarely even cracks a smile. And when she does, it is never over something clever on his part. Usually it’s the opposite: that he behaves with such insufferable self-importance that Ilse has to stifle her derision.

“Also,” he’s continuing, “bluestockings don’t devour romance novels the way you and Reni did. They prefer dry, academic works that they can then use to bully any poor male unfortunate enough to start a conversation with them.”

“That sounds like experience speaking.”

“It is.” He rolls his eyes. “At the last meeting I was cornered by the lovely Karina Hafner and treated to a thirty-minute disquisition on Gramsci’s views on economic determinism.”

Karina Hafner, Ilse thinks, stowing the name away. “Is she pretty, at least?”

“Karina? Picture a face like a potato on top of a neck like a pencil.” He grimaces. “Add a voice like a squeaking clarinet.”

She can’t help laughing again. “You’re cruel.”

“I have taste.” He rolls his eyes, folds his arms behind his head. His physique has changed somewhat, she realizes; not only is he taller but his shoulders are broader, his arms more solid-looking, despite the obvious toll taken by his reduced Jewish rations.

“So no Duke Ellington. No Vicki Baum. What else?”

“Well.” Reaching behind his stack of books, he retrieves a pack of Monas. “No smoking or drinking, obviously.” Shaking out a cigarette, he offers her the pack, and after a moment’s hesitation she takes it, aware of his eyes still trained on her face.

“And no postcards,” he adds.

“Postcards?” Ilse frowns, rolling the slim white stick between her thumb and fingertip.

“Yes. A bluestocking would never have her friend steal a lewd postcard and be brazen enough to bring it to school.” He puts the pack back on the bedstand, his dark eyes still trained on hers. “Though I suppose if they had to, they’d have chosen the same one you two did.”

The Book Lady. For a heartbeat she simply stares at him, Mona motionless in her hand. He flicks the lighter on and off, smiling his small, bemused smile.

Ilse forces a laugh. “How did you know?”

“How did I know it had been taken? Or how did I know where it went?”

“Both, I guess.”

Lighting his cigarette, he inhales, then exhales a stream of smoke. “You don’t think I’d let my little sister go through Gymnasium without having one or two people there to look out for her, do you?”

“But why did you never say anything?”

He shrugs. “You put it back, didn’t you? Or rather, that insufferable little stormtrooper my sister was seeing finally gave it back.”

Ilse blinked: so he knew about Rudi too. “Yes,” she says. “But surely…”

“Surely what?”

“Surely you thought it was…wrong. For us to have been looking at them.”