Wunderland(26)

“I have an idea.” He smiled a sleepy Cheshire Cat kind of smile, and for one dreadful moment she thought he was about to suggest something Book Lady–level filthy. But he simply said: “Let me walk you home from school. You can tell me more about your Chinese American lady writer, and I’ll tell you about my favorite German writer.” He winked. “That at least will be a start.”

And he did, that afternoon and then nearly every afternoon thereafter when he didn’t have Hitlerjugend affairs. He carried her satchel and held the door for her, and even though he wasn’t particularly interested in the books Renate loved, he listened indulgently as she’d rattle on about them, just as she did when he’d quote from Mein Kampf and other writings of the Chancellor, for which he clearly felt an equal level of passion. By the second month he held her hand as they walked, and the month after that he put his arm around her in the Babylon, even as they both kept their eyes carefully trained on Tarzan and His Mate. After several more months of secret courtship (for Renate knew better than to introduce him to her parents; they’d forbid the romance in a heartbeat) they’d ceased to watch the movie at all. Instead, they spent the time twined together over the wooden armrest that separated their seats, their lips and tongues and limbs and fingers in various heated combinations, their breaths damp and quick in that darkened, flickering space. The way he looked at her in such moments—with vulnerability and pain, almost with a kind of reverence—made her think: This is it—this is what real love feels like.

But last night, when she had tried to distract herself from her nerves by summoning those deliciously disorienting feelings, her brain had other ideas. Remaining rebelliously fixed on the next day’s application, it presented one calamitous scenario upon another: not just the Obergau Führerin seeing right through Renate’s application, but the letter slipping from her satchel like the Book Lady did in the library that day, landing face up at her mother’s or father’s feet. Or somehow ending up in her trigonometry homework bin, leading to expulsion. Possibly even imprisonment. Or what if rumors of the Book Lady incident–even though it happened nearly two years ago now—have somehow made their way to the Obergau Führerin? Rudi had scoffed at this idea, citing Renate’s “overactive imagination” (which he also called “adorable”). Overactive or not, Renate can still picture it all too easily: the woman in charge of her very future looking down at her with scorn and disgust. Ah. So you’re the one.

Then there’s Renate’s terror of the physical examination itself. Both Rudi and Ilse have assured her that it’s nothing arduous; that the Party doctors just want to make certain she is of sound German stock. But Renate is still worried they’ll see how frail and weak she is and easily intuit that at school, she’s always picked last for games of football or Capture the Flag.

Ilse, on the other hand, is always among the first. Strong and stocky, she can climb a rope and perform a cartwheel and then pinwheel around a metal bar in rapid sequence. When she flexes her biceps, its muscles rise like milky hills beneath her skin. When Renate flexes her biceps, nothing happens. There is just her arm, thin and floppy, as useless as an overcooked piece of spaetzle.

If her muscles are soft, though, her resolve is firm: she will go through with this. No matter what. Everyone but her parents says it’s the right thing to do. The Chancellor himself would approve. After all, the very pledge of the Hitlerjugend (which Rudi had her memorize and recite to him until she got it completely perfect) states this fact: Leader and country before family. I swear to devote all my energies and my strength to the savior of our country, Adolf Hitler. I am willing and ready to give up my life for him, so help me God.

Help me, God, Renate pleads silently now, nearly colliding into Ilse, who has come to a sudden stop.

“This is it?” Renate asks. Ilse nods.

Before them is a stern gray Volksschule whose thick walls and deep-set windows might have once housed Prussian warlords. Its modern-day purpose, however, is clearly marked: billowing between the roof and the first floor is the now-familiar scarlet banner, centered by a spidery black Hakencreuz. As they pass beneath it Renate finds herself glancing up at the arching doorway, half expecting steel spikes to trundle down in their wake. But the only thing moving is the red-white-and-black fabric, shivering in a breeze she cannot feel.

Inside, the lobby is just as dark and ancient-looking. As her eyes adjust to the dimness she makes out two more banners on the walls, on either side of an enormous portrait of Adolf Hitler himself. The Chancellor holds a riding crop and glares balefully over her head, as though he’d been expecting someone far more important.

Directly below the portrait is a curving center staircase, flanked on either side by a heavy oaken desk. The man sitting on the left side looks up and smiles briefly before going back to his paperwork. The woman on the right, however, stands up smartly and gives the Führer’s salute. The girls respond in unison—Heil Hitler!—and as always Renate thinks of Franz’s interpretation of the gesture (that it is only so stiff and upright because the men who invented it were compensating for less-erect parts of their bodies).

“Welcome, girls.” The woman’s mouth is painted the exact same blood-red shade as the flags behind her. Renate finds herself at first admiring it, then wondering at it: everyone knows that the BDM discourages cosmetics. Perhaps the rule gets waived for patriotically hued lips.