Wunderland(123)

And yet the first time I sat down to read Alice in English—mere months after arriving in the wondrous new land of America—it felt like a different work altogether. For the first time, I realized how these gloriously absurd English phrases had been crammed into ill-fitting German idioms: Carroll’s “little bat” who is “like a tea-tray in the sky” is twisted into a “little parrot” whose “feathers are so green.” The fantastically funny Lobster Quadrille had been cruelly sedated into a far less hilarious “dance of aquatic beings.” And the delightful play of “whitings” and shoe polish had been left out altogether.

But what was most stunning for me was my own response to Carroll’s words, a kind of amazement that surpassed even what I’d felt as a child. In part, this was because Carroll’s Alice seemed so much more wondrously bewitched by his strange world, in a way that Zimmerman’s Alice somehow did not. I came to realize that this was because Zimmerman altered or removed most of the comments that reflect the little girl’s ongoing astonishment: “how very strange” becomes a demurely appreciative “how wonderful.” And “curiouser and curiouser,” that old favorite, is not to be found at all.

The effect is that Alice, like any Little Red Riding Hood being chased by a talking wolf, or a Dancing Princess attending nightly balls beneath her bedroom, merely accepts the unexpected without apparent note or comment….

“Here we are.”

As her hostess bustles back into the room, Ava quickly re-covers the little volume with the paper, just in time for Renate to briskly set down a plate of Fig Newtons and a glass of ice water before her. “Eat a biscuit, please,” the older woman instructs, with all the authority of a certified medical doctor. “It will help get your blood sugar back up.”

“Thank you,” says Ava, dutifully picking up one of the soft, jam-filled squares.

“You’re still quite pale, you know,” the older woman observes. “Does this happen to you often? Fainting?”

Embarrassed, Ava shakes her head. “Not for years.” The last time she recalls truly fainting was at Holy Mother, and then it was probably from hunger. Children had always been fainting from hunger there. It was just how things were.

“I just…this day has been difficult,” she says. “On so many levels.” She tries to laugh; it comes out more like a hiccup. “It started with my mother’s ashes being delivered to me in a box.”

“You mean Resl?” The older woman’s whitened brows jerk toward her hairline. “You can’t mean Resl, surely. I just saw her at Freda Goldblum’s shiva. She seemed fine.”

Ava hesitates, cookie halfway to her mouth. Resl? She thinks. Freda? Shiva? Like the deity?

“Actually,” Renate Bauer goes on, “I’m ashamed to ask this, but whose daughter are you? I thought I knew all of Adam’s relatives. Granted, there are quite a few of you.” She smiles ruefully, a gentle tilt to her lips that somehow conveys as much sadness as mirth. “And of course my memory isn’t quite what it was.”

“Adam?” Ava repeats blankly.

“My husband, dear.” Her voice is patient; as though Ava might have hit her head, or is perhaps just a little bit slow. “Adam Cooperman. Though I suppose I should start saying late husband.”

She pauses, seeming to briefly fall into herself before briskly returning to the moment. “But that’s neither here nor there, is it. The question is, how are you related to Adam?”

Renate Bauer places one mottled hand atop the other in her lap, waiting. She doesn’t know, Ava realizes, stunned. She doesn’t know who I am.

The air feels dense and pressing; as though she’s entrapped in a solid glass cube. She sets the biscuit down on the plate slowly, deliberately.

“I’m not Adam’s niece,” she says carefully.

“But you said…” Renate frowns, her expression gently baffled. Then she shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I understand.”

Ava takes a deep breath. “My name,” she says, switching to German, “my full name, is Ava Fischer. Von Fischer, originally. My mother was Ilse von Fischer.”

At the utterance of von Fischer the old woman’s demeanor changes. Nothing about her actually moves. But there is a sudden sense of her pulling inward; a sense of a subtle tightening.

“I’m sorry if this is a surprise,” Ava continues, tightening her clasp on her bag. “But you see, she passed away only a few weeks ago. Today I received her ashes. But also these…”

But before she even finishes the sentence, Renate Bauer, with surprising agility, is already back on her feet.

“You have to leave,” she says. She says it in English, her voice suddenly high and shrill. “I’m sorry you aren’t feeling well. But you must leave.”

Ava swallows. “Please,” she says. “I know—I know my mother hurt you. She hurt me as well.”

“I’m sorry,” Renate repeats crisply. “But that isn’t my problem.”

“But you see, she wrote you. She wrote you for years. I brought them all here. All her letters…” She starts rummaging in her bag.

“I don’t care about the blasted letters,” Renate Bauer interrupts. “I didn’t want them when she brought them here, and I certainly don’t now.”