Wunderland(125)

Trembling, Ava drops her gaze to her hands. She can see it so clearly: her mother likely sitting right where she is sitting now, after years of convincing herself that she hadn’t done that much harm. That there was a chance, still, for redemption. She sees Renate Bauer’s expression transition from cautious to shocked, and then horrified. Feels her mother’s heart tighten and plummet within the black well of her chest. Just as her own is doing now.

“And then what happened?” she whispers.

Renate shakes her head again. “I don’t remember it all very clearly. I was so upset. I know I shouted. I think I might have become faint myself. That was when Adam told her she had to leave.”

Ava shuts her eyes, and her mother’s face that night comes back: the utter desolation and weariness. I think I should not have come. A wave of nausea descends, along with a profound sadness. So in two days, her mother had been ejected from the lives of the three people she truly cared for in the world—after learning she’d effectively killed the only man she’d ever loved.

It takes tremendous effort to force her eyes open, and even more effort to force them to meet Renate’s. “She didn’t want to spy on you,” she says. “The Gestapo made her. As punishment for having helped your father on Kristallnacht.”

The older woman just looks at her blankly.

“It’s in the letters,” Ava continues, her heart thudding again in her ears. “The Gestapo made her betray you. She thought she’d stalled them—that she hadn’t given them enough information to act on. She thought she’d bought you both time to leave the country.”

Renate just continues staring, so utterly nonresponsive that Ava wonders whether she’s actually even heard her. Then the other woman squeezes her eyes shut again. For a moment she seems not the hard-willed persona Ava had observed in the lift, but someone much older and frailer. When she reopens her eyes Ava sees that they are damp. But still, Renate Bauer says nothing. Wordlessly, she shuts the door. Wordlessly she leans against it, her face the color of talc.

Then, slowly, she makes her way back to where Ava is still sitting on the sofa. When she reaches the armchair she lowers herself into it, still very slowly, as though not fully sure of its solidity.

“I know it probably doesn’t change anything,” Ava says, in a small voice.

Renate just shakes her head. After what feels like an interminable silence she starts to speak again; dully, heavily. In German.

“We’d been packing. We’d been up to nearly midnight together, going over all the paperwork. The forms. Approvals. The lists. There were so many lists.” She shakes her head. “We’d been arguing about something. Something stupid. I think he’d run out of room for a book he wanted to bring, and wanted me to put it in my hand baggage. At that point, my books were my only friends, and I already was leaving so many of my favorite ones behind. I told him no. I accused him of thinking his books were more important because he was a boy and I was a girl.” Reaching into her skirt pocket, she pulls out a handkerchief, her thin hand with its hot-pink manicure trembling. The spots on the backs of them are the color of light coffee. But as Ava studies her face, for the first time she thinks she glimpses the young girl described in her mother’s letters: hopeful, thoughtful. Almost unbearably vulnerable.

“That was nonsense, of course,” Renate continues. “Franz was remarkably progressive for the times. He could be condescending, but I always knew that was over our age difference, not my gender.” Her eyes are distant and dark, gazing not at Ava but vaguely over her left shoulder, toward her wall of books. “But you see, I was just so tired. We both were. You can’t imagine what things had been like for us at that point. We’d been eating poorly, sleeping poorly. I was so worried about my parents. I hadn’t wanted to leave them, but my mother insisted that they would follow us.” She pauses to lift her glasses, pressing the white cloth against first one eye, then the other.

“I was always the hot-tempered one,” she continues. “Franz was generally so calm. When I picked fights he’d find a way to make me laugh—and that would be that. But that night he snapped. For the first time I could remember ever since we were both small, he actually shouted back at me. He told me I was spoiled, a child. That I thought the world revolved around me. That I was in for a rude awakening in America. I told him—” She breaks off, swallows. “I told him it would be less rude if I didn’t have to go with him. I told him I wished he were staying in Germany.” She shuts her eyes. “It was the last thing I ever said to him.”

When she looks back up at Ava her eyes are welling again.

“I’m sorry,” Ava whispers again, sickened by how useless a response it is, how completely vacuous.

“They came for him the next morning,” the old woman continues, again as if Ava hasn’t spoken. “Just before sunrise. That’s when they usually came for people.” Tears are rolling down her withered cheeks now, but she makes no effort to try to dry them. “There was a horrible pounding on the front door, and when my mother opened it they pushed past her and went straight upstairs to his room. They seemed to know exactly where it was.” With thin, pale fingers she wrings the handkerchief in her lap, then smooths it out again over her knee. Dampness traces her jawline, her chin; drops plop unnoticed on her gray skirt, darkening the fabric. “They dragged him out without even giving him a chance to change out of his bedclothes. Or to get the cane he needed to walk. He had had polio, you see….” She chokes slightly, swallows. “They dragged him down the stairs backward. When my father tried to stop them, one of the agents hit him in the face with his pistol so hard his nose broke. My mother tried to block the door, but they shoved her to the ground. Outside—I don’t know why, he must have said something—they started beating him…”