Wunderland(50)
She’d been gassed almost immediately upon reaching Auschwitz.
“Oh, Uli.” Ava covered her mouth with both hands. “I didn’t mean that. I just…I just wasn’t thinking…”
“It’s fine,” he said quietly. Taking the certificate back from her, he’d folded it into the application papers and set them between them on the bed. Leaning his head back against the wall, his eyes opaque behind his thick lenses, he’d fixed his gaze on his Die Gefahr von Superman movie poster: George Reeves with his dimpled muscles stuffed into his silly sausage suit. Mortified, Ava pulled her knees up under her chin and rested her forehead against the scratchy twill of her skirt.
“I’m a monster,” she’d murmured.
“You’re not,” he’d said, covering her knee with his hand. “You’re the most beautiful girl I know.”
She just shook her head, feeling as unworthy of the compliment as she was the offer of comfort. “At least you have her name,” she said finally. “At least you know both your parents’ names.”
Even to her own ears her voice sounded defensive, almost petulant. But when Ulrich spoke again, he didn’t sound angry. He sounded thoughtful, alert. The way he sounded when he was shaping a particularly interesting political argument, or offering suggestions on one of Ava’s art projects.
“Actually,” he said, “you might too.”
“What are you talking about? I might what?”
“Have both your parents’ names.”
She blinked back at him, baffled. He knew she knew nothing about her father. That as a child she’d been told—first by her grandparents, and then by nuns in the orphanage to which she’d been sent when they died—only that he’d been “a brave German soldier.” She hadn’t even known for sure that he was dead, though a few years ago Ilse—in a fleeting moment of approachability on the topic—had implied that he might not be. In general, though, she’d only say that she would tell Ava more details “when the time was right.” Which, of course, it never had been.
“Your father’s name would be on your birth certificate,” Ulrich said now, retrieving his own certificate and pointing to his own father’s name. “If she knew who he was, there’d have been no reason not to put it down.”
Ava bit the inside of her cheek. On the one hand, it seemed impossible. And yet it also made sense, if only in the way fantastical things—bulky, square-jawed men flying through the air without wings, or the idea that she might actually have a father—did. Thoughts racing, she tugged at a lock of hair that still felt startlingly short following an impulsive session with Ilse’s sewing shears (she’d been trying for a Hepburn-style pixie but ended up with something more resembling a poorly executed military cut).
“Even if she has it,” she said slowly, “there’s no way she’d hand it over to me. Especially if his name is actually on it.”
“But she could order another one for you.”
“She’d never do that either.”
“She wouldn’t have to.” Setting the application materials aside, he gave her a quick kiss (See? Forgiven!) before sliding off the bed and padding over to his desk. “All you need is her signature. And you can dash that off in your sleep.” Excited, he yanked open one drawer, then another. “Actually, I think I have an extra request form somewhere in here.”
* * *
Sure enough, eight weeks later the official-looking envelope Ilse had unknowingly sent in for arrived at the Martinistra?e post box she’d unknowingly subscribed to. Opening it with shaking hands, Ava first saw the Reich’s fading black eagle, hovering with ghostly authority over the Charité Hospital’s official letterhead. Below the faded stamp was Ava’s name, weight, and time of birth, and below that was Ilse’s name and city of residence.
And directly below that was the name of Ava’s father.
* * *
Nikolaus Hellewege, she thought again now, as the Opel sped along the Autobahnzubringer Hemelingen. City of residence: Berlin. She’d promised herself not to waste her time daydreaming about a man who in all likelihood was not only dead, but dead in service of a cause she now knew to be unspeakably evil. And yet, as usual, her imagination refused to sit quietly and behave itself: like the chatty girl in a classroom, it continued to spin stories and trot out scenarios in which her newfound parent played various heroic and villainous roles. Perhaps they’d been classmates, Ilse and Nikolaus! Or neighbors! Maybe they’d met in a bomb shelter, and made passionate love as the walls shook and trembled around them (and perhaps this was the real reason Ava had never fully escaped the nightmarish grip of the bombing she herself had survived)! Or perhaps he’d been a rakish rebel, like James Dean or the boys who’d dumped Ava before Ulrich, seducing Ilse with a few roars of his motorcycle engine. But couldn’t he also have been an artist (Ava had to get her talent from somewhere, after all), or even a bookish outsider like Ulrich?
Of all the possible options, this last one somehow seemed the least likely—if only because Ava couldn’t fathom her mother with someone as good and kind as Ulrich was. Then again (she reflected), it would explain Ilse’s aversion to Ava and Ulrich being involved. Perhaps he reminded her too much of the man who’d left her pregnant and alone.