Wunderland(42)

The only downside is that Rudi will likely be there, doing his best to pretend Renate is invisible—just as he has since the news about her racial makeup came out.

The note had shown up in her notebook on Renate’s second day back. Terse and neat, it had comprised two lines: Due to incompatibilities of the blood, I regret that any future association between yourself and myself is out of the question. Please do not talk to me.

Stunned, Renate had ventured upstairs to the boys’ floor, wandering alone down a hallway full of whispers and half smirks and bemused gazes that didn’t quite meet her own. She’d finally found him in the library, not at their usual study table but in a small corner table half hidden in the stacks. Note in hand, she’d walked toward him hesitantly, the girls and boys at the other tables monitoring her approach with the electric thrill of an execution-day crowd. When he looked up his face was so familiarly perfect, so perfectly familiar that she couldn’t believe it wouldn’t break into its usual bright smile.

But of course, it did not. “What is it?” he snapped. “What do you want?”

“I just—I got your letter.”

“Then why are you here? I made everything quite clear.” He looked angry—no, more than angry. Furious. He was, she saw in wonderment, actually shaking.

“I just thought…” She swallowed, aware that every eye in the room was trained on them. “I thought we could talk.”

“Talk?” His voice rose sharply, cracking in a way that in the past they would have laughed at together. “About what? About how you tricked me into falling for you, with your Yid lies and spells?”

Renate gaped at him. “Rudi. You know I didn’t know.”

“Does it matter if a typhus carrier knows they have typhus, when they infect everyone in their path?”

The mercilessness of the attack left her breathless. “You can’t really think…”

“It’s not my ‘thinking.’ It’s the Führer’s word. The discovery of the Jewish virus is one of the greatest revolutions that has taken place in the world. How many diseases have their origin in the Jewish virus!” His ability to remember and quote passages from books after a single reading had become a sort of joke between them. Now the words felt like a weapon. Her heart pounding, she found herself unable to respond, to even move. She simply stood there, a willing, trembling target.

“Here’s another one for you.” He was blinking rapidly—not in anger, she suddenly saw, but on the verge of tears. Despite everything, her first instinct was to comfort him. “The black-haired Jewish girl lies in wait for hours on end. Satanically glaring at and spying on the unsuspicious boy whom she plans to seduce…”

And though Renate’s hair is not black but brown, she found her own eyes welling up, her own heart shredding. And while all she wanted to do was hurl herself into his arms she’d instead hurled herself from the room, her satchel slapping against her thighs, whispered laughter spreading slickly in her wake.

The memory makes her throat tighten. Don’t think about it, she orders herself. Think about good things. Think about the party. Think about dancing.

She flips the envelope over, casting a quick glance at Herr Hartmann. “As you all now know,” he is noting, stabbing his pointer at the map, “our borders to the east should include this part of West Prussia, as well as Silesia starting here.”

Holding her breath, Renate peels the envelope lip open and eases the oblong rectangle from it. Her first thought is that it’s smaller than she’d expected. And more businesslike-looking: rather than the soft-curving letters of a typical invitation the words are printed in heavily blocked-out font.

Frowning, Renate holds the cardboard square higher, above the desk’s shadow, and squints:

    Einfache Fahrkarte nach Jerusalem.

Bitte kehre nicht zurück!

One-Way Ticket to Jerusalem.

Please don’t bother returning!



The words circle a crude sketch of a somber-looking and faintly familiar face: bulbous nose, piggish eyes, stubble-covered double chin. It takes a moment to remember where she has seen it before. It’s a typical Juden face, similar to those that in past months have festooned front pages and posters across the city.

Furiously, she turns the card over, hiding the hateful words and image from herself. It’s only then that she realizes something is written on the back. Three words scrawled in blue:

    Bon Voyage!

Rudi.



Quivering with shock, she shoves the thing into her skirt pocket again and forces her gaze back to the teacher. Out of the corner of her eye she glimpses Karolin watching her. But there’s a vague sense that if she doesn’t allow her gaze to touch anyone else’s, then perhaps her shame and her hurt won’t be registered by them. Or even by herself. So she fixes her eyes on Herr Hartmann’s well-muscled back and manages to keep it there for several fleeting seconds. But then, somehow, she is looking directly at Sofia Sitz, twisted back in her front-row seat, her pink lips split in a triumphant grin.

Very slowly, the other girl lifts her hand. Auf Wiedersehen, she mouths.

Face flushing, Renate stiffly looks away, her gaze coming to rest on Ilse’s back again. Turn around, she thinks again. Look at me. She wills it with as visceral a force as she can summon, a silent howl hurled across the rustling room. But Ilse’s face remains turned toward the geographic display before her, the crosshatched shadows of German culture across the lands.