Wunderland(39)

“I wish I were coming with you,” she said impulsively.

“As in making Aliyah? Is there something you haven’t been telling me?”

She shrugged. “I just know how much I’ll miss you.”

She knew how foolish it sounded. Yet at that moment it was almost panic-inducing, the idea of an Ulrich-free world. She was suddenly uncertain if she could even survive it.

“I’ll miss you,” she repeated softly. Thinking, once more: I love you.

He held her gaze for a long moment. And though at this point she knew his gold-flecked eyes better than she knew her own, she saw something new and unexpected in them: a statement. A question. She caught her breath, instinctively summoning the nervous giggle, the offhand joke, the invisible gate she always slammed between them at these instances. For once, though, nothing came. She was aware only of his nearness; the scent of his English soap and aftershave. The faint spice on his breath left from the bite of sausage. That, and her pulse pounding in her throat.

It was he who looked away first, but only to stub out his cigarette and set his spectacles with careful deliberation on the table.

“What…” she managed.

But he was already pushing the table out of the way, and pulling his body over hers, and cupping her face in the warm, strong hands she’d never drawn. Ava found herself not pulling away but pushing forward, pushing back. Obeying an impulse long buried all these years, not just from him but from herself, she wrapped her arms around his neck; twined her scraped, still-bleeding legs around his hips. As she started unbuttoning her blouse, though, it was he who paused.

“You’re sure,” he said, “that this is all right?”

For what felt like the first time in her life with him, she didn’t have a flip answer. What she had were questions—hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, each one as cool and sharp as it was strangely weightless, swirling through her stunned mind like downy snowflakes: why and why now and what is happening and what has changed. But most of all: what does this mean?

But beneath the soft beat of their descent the answer lay already: that this wasn’t romance restarting, but friendship ending.

That what they were saying was good-bye.

For a moment her ears rang faintly: the old panic threatening to overtake her. Pushing it aside, she clung to him even more tightly, squeezing her suddenly wet eyes shut, burying her damp face in his prickly neck.

“It is,” she whispered. “It’s everything.”





7.


    Renate


1936

“Take it. It’s for you.” Sophia Sitz holds the envelope out, her eyes as hard and sharp as broken shards of blue glass.

“What is it?” Renate asks warily.

Sofi shrugs. “I meant to give it to you last week. I forgot.”

Which isn’t an answer, but Renate extends her hand anyway, trying to look nonplussed even as her pulse skips a beat. Last week Sofi handed out invitations to her sixteenth birthday party. It’s to be held in the ballroom of the fancy Hotel am Steinplatz, with a buffet table and a band and dancing. The whole class is buzzing about it. Renate had told herself she didn’t care that she hadn’t been included, but the thrill coursing through her now says otherwise.

Sliding the card into her skirt pocket, she darts a quick glance toward the front of the classroom, where Ilse sits scribbling furiously in a notebook.

“Na, aren’t you going to open it?” Sofi is still waiting, her arms crossed over her chest.

Renate wavers, wondering whether she can extract the envelope’s contents without her face giving away her relief and gratitude. She hears the singsong tenor of their geography teacher in the hallway, cheerily greeting some other staff member or instructor. (Heil Hitler!)

“I’ll open it later,” she says, relieved. “Class is starting.”

As she sinks into her wooden chair she senses rather than sees Karolin Beidryzcki’s hazel gaze. “What was it?”

Is it Renate’s imagination, or is there a hint of jealousy in her voice? Feigning nonchalance, she pulls out her notebook. “I don’t know.”

“You were probably smart not to open it then.” Karolin pulls out her own book and a pencil, then holds up the latter and frowns. “Ach.”

“What?”

“Broken. Have you got an extra?”

Renate darts a quick glance at the metal sharpener screwed to the wall up front. A year earlier, Karolin might have risked a trip to it. These days, though, both she and Renate know better than to leave their seats unless summoned. The less attention they draw to themselves the better.

“I’ll look.” Renate rummages in her bag again. “And what do you mean, ‘smart’? Do you know what it is?”

“I might. A few others got them last week.” Her friend’s freckled face is sober.

Poor girl, thinks Renate. Of course, she wouldn’t have been invited. None of the full Jews were. “I’m sure it won’t be much fun, anyways,” she lies consolingly.

Karolin frowns. She looks as though she’s about to say something more. But before she can answer, the room fills with thunks and screeches of chairs being hurriedly pushed back and girls springing from their seats. As Herr Hartmann strides through the doorway, pointer in hand, Renate reluctantly pulls herself to her own feet. Striding to the lectern, the teacher yanks down the retracting map they’d been studying yesterday: Karte des Deutschen Volks—und Kulturbodens, the title reads, over a darkly shaded area that includes large swathes of Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary.