Wunderland(46)

She’d just been contemplating trying to sneak unnoticed into the library when she heard—first, footsteps, approaching rapidly behind her.

And then the familiar voice: “Reni.”

Renate looked over her shoulder, not daring to hope it was real. But it was; there she was. Ilse stood by a window, her blond hair lit by a shaft of afternoon sunlight.

In a single instant, months of built-up misery and solitude dropped away. A jumble of joyous greetings vied for vocalization: I knew it and I’ve missed you and Why did you wait so long and I’ve so much, so much to tell you…though only two materialized: “You came.”

The old Ilse would have laughed dismissively and said, Of course I came. I couldn’t just let you leave, you idiot!

This Ilse, however, merely shrugged.

“Herr Hartmann sent me. He said you’re to stop this nonsense and come back.”

She spoke looking not directly at Renate but behind her, vaguely, coolly. And just like that, the bolt of joy that had caused Renate’s heart to jump became a leaden weight against her lungs. Of course, she thought. Of course Ilse was here not as Renate’s best friend but as Herr Hartmann’s most trusted and favored pupil. His kleine Journalistin.

“Are you coming?” Ilse prompted. “He says if you don’t come back he’ll have you dismissed.”

“Why?”

Ilse rolled her eyes. “Why do you think? You left the room without permission.”

“Not that. Why did you leave?” Renate licked her lips. “Me. Why did you leave me?”

The question seemed to catch Ilse off-guard. A look flashed across her face: a look of anguish and something more (guilt? uncertainty?). But then she tightened her lips and it was gone.

“This isn’t the time to discuss that,” she said.

“It is. It is exactly the time.” Renate wanted to clench Ilse’s shoulders, hard. To shake her until her enviably even teeth rattled. “If we don’t, I won’t go with you. And I’ll—I’ll scream. I’ll scream and say you attacked me.”

Renate had no idea where the threat came from, and even less of an idea if she’d have been able to put it into action. Happily, though, she didn’t have to find out, because Ilse sighed and leaned against the wall. “I don’t know if I can make you understand. Especially given your Jewish blood and everything.”

Ilse had her eyes shut, so she missed Renate’s flinch. Her pale face looked slightly pained, her lips pursed in thought. Finally she sighed.

“Did I ever tell you,” she said, opening her eyes again, “about my ninth birthday?”

Renate shook her head.

“It was during the Inflation,” Ilse continued. “My mother had promised me a cake. But we didn’t have the money for ingredients. So she took an old cigar box of my father’s, covered it with clean paper, and then spread shortening over it as though it were frosting. We sat with that on the table throughout whatever dinner was. Then, after she’d lit the Geburtstagskranz, and she and Vati had sung to me and had me blow out the candles, she scraped the shortening back into a jar and threw the box out.”

Renate blinked. “Threw it out? Just like that?”

Ilse nodded. “She said it had just been there to make things look ‘festive.’ When I asked if there wasn’t anything sweet at all—at least a biscuit or some fruit—she paddled me and sent me to my room. She said I was ungrateful; that I didn’t understand how hard it was for them to even get bread on the table.” She hesitated. “It was, I think, the worst day of my life.”

“You never told me.” Renate felt her throat tighten in sympathy. “Ilsi. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not telling you because I need pity,” Ilse said curtly. “I’m trying to make you understand. I don’t ever want to experience anything like that moment again. I don’t ever want my children to experience it.”

“But why do you think I can’t understand that?”

Ilse rolled her eyes the way she always did when Renate was being (as she’d put it) as dense as cement. “I don’t think you understand what it’s going to take to change things. The kinds of sacrifices that will have to be made. Anything that gets in the way of what we are trying to do has to go. It has to be eliminated. Even if…even if it’s you.”

“But how am I ‘getting in the way’?” Renate asked, truly baffled. “I want a stronger Germany too. I know I can’t join the BDM, but…”

“But that’s just it, don’t you see?” Ilse’s cheeks were flushed, her voice hard in the way it hardened when she was trying to hide the fact that she was close to tears. “You can’t join because you’re not part of the new Germany. You can’t be. I know that’s not your fault, but it’s the truth. We can’t just pretend that it’s not.”

Renate stared at her, stunned. Not part of the new Germany? She knew other people believed this. But she’d never expected to hear it from Ilse. Not Ilse, who until last year showed every poem she ever wrote to Renate before anyone else. Not Ilse, with whom Renate had worked her way through Kant and Heine and Schiller and had just started Goethe when their friendship started to crumble. Not Ilse, who’d once predicted that Renate would be the first female German minister of culture.