Wunderland(25)

“But what if they do? And what if they can tell?”

Ilse heaves an exasperated sigh. “All right. Let’s see it, then.”

Renate pulls the envelope from her satchel, then pulls the thrice-folded sheet of paper from the envelope. She hands it over, swallowing her anxiety as Ilse runs a well-chewed fingertip down each carefully typed line:


Dear Fr?ulein von Schmidt:

Please allow my daughter Renate to register as a Hitlerjugend Jungm?del and provide her with the appropriate physical exam: she has our full approval on both counts. I apologize that neither my wife nor I could accompany her today, but we’ve had a death in the family and must leave town immediately. Thank you for your consideration.


Heil Hitler!

Otto Bauer



“Completely fine,” pronounces Ilse. “The signature is spot-on.” Folding it back up, she winks. “Next you’ll be pointing guns at bank tellers. You and Raina.”

“Don’t say that!” Renate smacks her on the shoulder. “I already feel like a criminal.”

Ilse laughs as her friend snatches the page back, carefully refolding it and stowing it in her skirt pocket. “Like I said,” she adds. “You probably won’t even need it. Ursula Koch said they didn’t even ask for hers. It’s just better to be safe.”

She is in a good mood. In fact, she’s in the best mood Renate’s seen her in for weeks—probably because she’s just been offered a position as a junior reporter for the BDM monthly. Though her main job will be to write about BDM track events and charity drives, she is hoping to be promoted to more ambitious assignments—covering the lifestyles of German nationals living in the Sudetenland or Silesia, for instance. Or the Berlin Olympics next year. Or interviewing Triumph des Willens director and filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl—or (who knows?) even Propaganda Minister Goebbels himself. Renate sees her as a kind of uniformed Bette Davis in Front Page Woman, fighting to prove that girls can report the news too.

Ilse’s face is bright, her hair tidy for once: two sleek Gretchen braids wrap her head, like a textured golden crown. The late-afternoon sunlight gives her pink skin a golden sheen and turns the loose white-blond tendrils of her hair silver. She is so brilliant, Renate thinks. And so pretty. And I’m so lucky to be with her. I’m so lucky that she has chosen me.

“What is it?” Ilse is looking at her oddly.

“Nothing.” Renate ducks her head. “I’m stupid today.”

“You look nervous.”

“I am.” Renate yawns. “Being tired always makes me anxious.”

“Well, try to calm down. They’re not recruiting nervous wrecks.”

“You’ll still wait for me during the exam, though, right?”

“I’ve told you three times now—yes!” Ilse resumes walking, humming “Deutschland Erwache” under her breath and pulling Renate along like a mother towing a sluggish child. Renate finds herself almost stumbling to keep up. For an instant she imagines falling and simply staying there where she lands. And maybe going to sleep.

For as usual, Ilse is right: Renate is a wreck. Her hands are clammy, her mouth dry, her stomach clenched in hungry resentment. She’d known it would be this way almost from the moment she switched her light off last night; had known the next eight hours would be filled with limb-tossing and sheet-thrashing. Her teeth and jaws ached from unconsciously grinding them, and her legs felt taut and jumpy, as though ready to run a race.

Even more disrupting were her thoughts, though she’d tried to think of only good things—The House of Dora Green, which she and Rudi are going to see on Sunday. The special meal Maria’s promised her for her birthday next week. Rudi’s sea-glass eyes when he sees her in the navy skirt, the crisp white shirt. For in the end, of course, she is really doing this for him: her statue-perfect, beautiful boy.

He’d come for her the day after the library incident. Renate had been waiting for Ilse in the Gymnasium courtyard, so buried in her novel that she didn’t even notice his approach. It was only when the page she’d been reading was suddenly obstructed by the Book Lady’s now-familiar depravity that she registered he was there, right behind her shoulder, smiling smugly.

“So you apparently like books too,” he said, lifting a fine blond brow as she snapped the book—with its incriminating new content—quickly shut.

“I do,” she’d managed, feeling like a deer in the limned spell of a hunter’s lamp.

“I hope that one’s more decent than what I just put inside it.”

“Oh, no.” Starting, she turned breathlessly to face him. “I mean, of course. It’s—” Lamely, she turned the cover to show him. “It’s about a Chinese family that goes from being very poor to being rich. She grew up in China, you know. The author, I mean.”

“You should be careful,” he said sagely, “of American authors. A lot of them are Jews. But I do applaud that you’re interested in world events.” He smirked. “Among other things.”

Renate felt her cheeks heat like small suns. “The card wasn’t mine,” she said quickly.

“Oh? My mistake, then.” He held out his hand.

“I mean,” she corrected herself quickly, “it was from my house, obviously. Well, not obviously. I mean, I did bring it in. But that was a mistake. Well, a kind of dare. And it really belongs to my brother.” She sounded, she realized, fully insane. She forced herself to take a deep breath. “Either way,” she went on, carefully, “you completely saved my life. I don’t know how to thank you.”