Wunderland(58)

“So that,” she said, “was his classified work. Finding innocent men, women, and children for his special forces to murder.” She laughed huskily. “A real hero, my father.”

Ilse didn’t answer at first. When she finally spoke she seemed to be addressing not Ava but her own strong hands. They were clutched together so tightly that the knuckles looked bluish.

“He told me he was just going to be taking dictation and writing more propaganda.”

“And you expect me to believe that.”

“It’s the truth.” When Ilse lifted her gaze, her eyes were unflinching. “I swear it. I had no idea at all.”

“How is that possible?” Ava set the notebook down with a thud. “You went to see him.”

“Never.” Ilse shook her head. “He posted to Lodz first, that October. I never saw him again.”

Ava stared at her. “October,” she said. “He went in October?”

“October 1939.” Ilse nodded. “Two weeks after the Polish victory. I remember it clearly.”

“But I was born the next August,” Ava said slowly. “You must have seen him at least once after he left, and you would have known what he was doing.”

Ilse’s face was so white and still that she looked less like Ilse than a marble sculpture of herself. “I won’t discuss this any longer,” she said.

She stared back at her daughter with eyes the color of a river in winter. Ava stared back. And then it dawned on her, another sickening truth: that despite everything that had happened today—the endless drive, the horrific file, the harsh, dark shadow now cast between Ava and her best friend in the world—nothing with her mother had altered in the slightest.

The realization loosed within her a shock wave of sheer rage. She wanted to leap up, to scream out: Tell me! Just tell me you went back there, to the Front. You went back and helped him kill innocent people! But it suddenly felt as though her throat, mouth, and lips were coated in the same plaster dust that had filled them when they’d dragged her from the wreckage of her grandparents’ house. And just as it had hit her that day, it hit her again now: the fact that everything had changed in that world, but nothing in this one. That no notebook, no grainy image, no certificate forged or genuine, would be strong enough to pry open Ilse’s locked chest of secrets. That when confronted with the proof of her lies and half truths, her mother would simply continue cleaving to the same, icy wall of silence she’d erected the first day of their joyless reunion.

Slumping forward, Ava covered her face with her hands, struggling to catch a full breath. She felt terrified and abandoned and shockingly alone. Yet when she heard Ilse stand up, a childish part of her leapt up too, in hope: She’s going to take my hand, and say she is sorry. She’s going to tell me everything, at last.

But when she looked up she saw that Ilse wasn’t coming around the table to her. She wasn’t even looking in Ava’s direction. Instead, she was slowly making her way toward the kitchen door.

“Where…where are you going?”

Hand on doorknob, Ilse turned to face her. “It’s late,” she said. “I am going to bed, and I suggest you do the same. You are going to school tomorrow if I have to walk you myself. And you are staying there. Am I understood?”

Ava licked her lips. No, she thought. No, not at all.

But what she said, in a voice that felt thick and gravelly and strange to her, was “You are.”

“Gut,” said Ilse. “Turn out the light when you go to bed.”

And with that, she was gone.





9.


    Renate


1937

Ilse walks quickly, her eyes locked on the huffing train, valise swinging from her hand like a carpet-toned pendulum. It is raining. A half step behind her Renate half skips and half jogs, struggling as always to keep pace.

“What time does it leave?” she asks, breathless.

“Fourteen hours sharp,” her friend replies. “But I want to make sure we get seats together.”

“Wait—you mean I’m coming with you?” Renate’s heart leaps: she’d thought she was here merely to see Ilse off on her journey. But she hasn’t packed anything she would need for an eight-month posting to the Eastern border. In fact, she hadn’t even applied for one. Only BDM members are eligible.

Ilse just rolls her eyes. “Of course you are, Dummkopf. You don’t think I’d just leave you here, do you?”

“But I don’t have my suitcase.”

“So?” Ilse shrugs. “We’ll share.”

“And I don’t have a ticket.”

“I have one for you, silly.” Grinning, Ilse holds it up in her right hand. The ticket is white with elaborate, embossed Gothic lettering that is as bright as the friendship ring on her best friend’s finger. Seeing it fills Renate with a sudden sense of liquid lightness. She didn’t mean it, she thinks jubilantly. She didn’t mean any of it. She wants to throw her arms around the other girl: to cry and laugh in relief.

But Ilse has already resumed walking. “Hurry,” she calls over her shoulder, as the train looses a long, sharp whistle. “They won’t wait for us. Look—they’ve already started closing the door.”

“Yes, I’m coming.” Renate tries to run to catch up, but something is wrong with her shoes; the soles are slipping and scuffling against the wet asphalt as though seeking traction on ice. It’s like Alice running with the Red Queen in Wonderland: no matter how fast her legs move she remains in the same place.