Wunderland(29)

I love you, Renate thinks, but she doesn’t say it. Instead, swallowing hard, she retucks her blouse and runs her hands over her braids before stepping toward the door.

Child’s play, she tells herself. Nothing more than a straightforward checkup.

She raps her knuckles against the glass and then drops her hand to the brass doorknob.

“Come in,” calls a friendly male voice.

But as she pushes the door open another voice—this one female—sounds from the other end of the hall, punctuated by the sharp clip of heels on hardwood.

“Fr?ulein—wait a moment.”

She and Ilse turn around together to see the red-lipped Führerin walking briskly toward them, a manila file in her hands. “I mean Fr?ulein Bauer.”

Stopping short, the Führerin draws herself up formally. She looks down at Renate over her pinched nose. Renate looks back up, offering a small smile (not a nervous wreck!). The red lips don’t return it.

Behind them, she hears the door to the exam room open further; she glances over her shoulder to see an older man in a white coat. “Is there a problem?”

“Not a big one,” says Red Lips. “But you won’t need to see this girl today, Doktor Braun.”

“No?”

“No. As it turns out, she’s not eligible for BDM membership.”

The prognosis is so completely what Renate most feared hearing today that her protest is almost reflexive: “But he hasn’t even examined me yet!”

“I’m afraid an examination would be pointless,” the Führerin says crisply. She nods at the physician; the exam room door quietly closes. The Führerin licks a finger, flicks open her folder.

“I don’t understand,” Renate falters.

“I can see that. I’m also not sure you fully understood our requirements when you completed this.” The woman taps a page with an unpainted fingernail.

“Yes, I did.”

“I mean our racial requirements.”

Renate glances at Ilse. Her friend’s face reflects the same bafflement she is feeling.

The woman is now running her finger down the page. “You see, you neglected to include your full family history.”

“Yes.” Renate exhales in relief; if that’s the problem, it’s easily resolved. “My parents have misplaced their ancestry tables. But as I wrote in the margin, I was told that you’d have access to the city’s census records.”

The Führerin nods. “As we do. We had had them sent over before your arrival today. But I didn’t get a chance to pull them up until now.” Leafing through the folder, she removes another piece of paper—an older one, slightly yellowed at the edges, with the Berlin City official stamp on the top. “Surely you are aware that you’re not German.”

Renate blinks. “I’m sorry?”

“Sie sind keine Deutsche,” the woman repeats, slowly.

For a moment the entire hallway seems to flicker slightly, like a flame in the pathway of a small breeze.

Renate shakes her head. “Of course I am. My mother’s family goes back five generations in Berlin.”

“Yes. But we require both parents of our appellants to be of sound German stock.”

“I-I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

The woman clears her throat. “I see,” she says crisply, “that this will be news to you. I am sorry to have to be the one delivering it. But our records indicate that your father is a Jew.”

Ein Jude. The words land like short blows to Renate’s lower abdomen. Behind her, Ilse and the brown-haired girl gasp.

“That’s—that’s impossible,” Renate stammers.

“I’m afraid it’s not. Your father is Otto Andreas Bauer, correct?”

She nods.

“He was born of two fully Jewish parents. That makes you—in the best-case scenario—a Mischling. And hence ineligible for any aspect of our organization.”

She holds something out; Renate recognizes the dull green cover of her Ausweiskarte. Dazed, she takes it. “It’s impossible,” she repeats. “No one in my family is Jewish.”

“She’s right, Fr?ulein.” Ilse has made her way over. “I can vouch for her.”

As Renate throws her a grateful look, an image flashes past her mind’s eye: the two of them baking stollen with Maria this past December. The girls making a joke out of sneaking pieces of the raw, sweet dough into their mouths whenever the housekeeper wasn’t looking. And later, lying prone and groaning on Renate’s bed, arguing over whose stomach hurt the most. She sees them perusing the Christkindlmarkt arm in arm a few days later, advising one another on gifts for their family members, and then parting ways just long enough to buy for one another. Ilse gave Renate a cloth-bound copy of Hoffmann’s Die Elixiere des Teufels from a book dealer who swore it was a real second edition. Renate gave Ilse a jade-embellished fountain pen with a carry chain and a fancy holder.

“There was an error in the records,” she repeats now, as firmly as she can manage.

The woman smiles tightly. “Frankly, I believe this is an error on your parents’ part. They should have informed you about your heritage.”

“Heritage?” Renate repeats numbly. Something in the air—a new density, as though the oxygen has somehow jellied like aspic—makes the Führerin’s meaning lag slightly behind her words.