Wunderland(55)

“Fr?ulein von Fischer?”

Looking up, Ava saw the mannish woman walking briskly back toward them, a thin file in her hand. “You’re in luck,” she said. “He still had the material out on his desk. Another ten minutes or so and it would have gone back to the stacks.”

Ava felt her breath lodge in her throat. “You mean…you mean you found him?”

“Your father?” Setting the files down before them, the administrator nodded. “Which is itself remarkable, given that you didn’t give a birth date for him.”

“I didn’t know one,” Ava mumbled.

“And your mother?”

“She didn’t either,” Ava lied.

The woman studied her for a moment, her gaze lingering on the ridiculous haircut, the overcompensating red lips. “Nevertheless,” she pronounced coldly. “Against the odds, he was able to narrow it down based on name and city of birth.”

Reaching out, Ava touched the cardboard with the tip of her finger. Her mouth suddenly felt as though she’d swallowed ash. “It doesn’t look like there’s very much there.” It came out sounding like a question.

“In general, all we have access to here at the notification service are the basics: drafting dates, dog tag numbers, training units, and war units. And of course, whether he was taken captive or injured. If you want more information, you might find it at the Bundesarchiv in Potsdam. They keep records on SA, SS, and Waffen-SS officers.”

Ava looked up quickly. “Was he in one of those?”

“I don’t know,” said the woman curtly. “I haven’t read the file.”

She waved her free hand in the direction of one of the small wooden tables by the door. “You are welcome to take notes of this if you like. We also offer mimeograph services and a limited research facility downstairs.”

And without another word, she reseated herself in her work chair and turned back to whatever it was that she’d been typing, the keys striking the canister with the force and impact of rapid gunshots.

Swallowing, Ava picked up the file. It was smooth and cool against her fingers. Across the top tab, someone had written in purple block letters the three words that had composed her constant inner mantra these past weeks: Hellewege, Nikolaus Gunther.

Clutching it to her chest with both hands, Ava made her way to one of the desks, Ulrich in tow. As they sat down together she felt his hand rest on her knee.

“Whatever it is,” he told her quietly, “it will be fine. You know that, right?”

“I don’t know anything,” she said. “Nothing at all.” Yet even as she said it, there came the slightly dizzying sense that some undefined stage of her life was ending. And with that came a strange grief, a kind of mourning for a self she somehow already knew would cease to exist, once she’d seen what lay between these two smooth, stiff covers.

Part of her wanted to stop then: to leave the file unopened and return it to the mannish, disapproving woman. To save that simple, na?ve Ava before it was too late. Then she thought about all the years of silence that had led to this moment: silence on Ava’s part, when asked about her father. Silence on Ilse’s part when Ava asked the same. She thought about the empty ache of their two-person household: the sense that no matter how placid and content Ilse seemed within it, there was always that sense of something missing, something hidden. Something wrong. She heard it again: her mother’s calm, cool voice: We will discuss it when you are ready. When you’re older.

Nein, Ava thought. No. We will discuss it tonight.

She lifted the cover.



* * *





It was after midnight, but lights blazed in every window of the little house: Ilse lying in wait.

As quietly as she could, Ava shut the car door and gave Ulrich a grim wave. Then she hooked her purse over her forearm and started making her way down the darkened street.

Behind her, she heard the Opel’s window rolling creakily down.

“Ava,” Ulrich called out softly.

Glancing back, she saw him leaning out, one elbow on the driver’s-side door, the streetlight glinting off his glasses.

“I meant what I said in the car,” he said. “He may have been your father. That doesn’t make it your fault.”

It was, in fact, essentially the only thing he’d said in the car, on the strained and interminable drive back to Bremen. Climbing back into the passenger seat, Ava had felt both numb and searingly hollow, as though the truth they’d uncovered were a bomb ripping through her, destroying everything she’d ever known of herself. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she’d replied curtly. “I don’t want to talk at all.” And so he’d sat stiffly at the wheel while Ava curled herself toward the window, alternately smoking and weeping in silence.

Now she nodded, not in agreement but to show that she’d heard him.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he added. Again she nodded, though for the first time in her life she found she didn’t want to see him. Or rather, didn’t want him to see her as she was now: shamed and shattered, indelibly tainted by the toxic secret they both suddenly shared.

When she reached the front doorstep she opened her purse for her usual tobacco-masking spritz, before remembering that her remaining stock of Guerlain L’Heure Bleue had long since evaporated along the East German border. Pushing past the empty bottle, she fumbled instead for her keys. The movement was all but noiseless (another habit formed by her frequent late-night escapes), but before she even had them in her hand the door was swinging almost violently open.