Wunderland(6)

“For God’s sake.” Her best friend’s brother stood in the door frame, his dark hair rumpled, his expression aggrieved. “Can’t you read?”

“Oh—sorry.” Ilse took a step back, her bravado briefly flagging. Sigi took the opportunity to dart between them and launch himself onto the bed.

“Sorry,” she said again, collecting herself slightly. “We just need your help for a moment.”

“Help? With what? Sigi, raus.” Franz threw an exasperated look back at the pet. “These aren’t visiting hours,” he added pointedly.

“An insect,” said Ilse, improvising quickly. “There’s a big insect on the wall in Reni’s room. We need someone to kill it.”

“An insect.” Leaning against the door frame, her best friend’s brother looked down at her in bemusement. “Fr?ulein von Fischer—who famously beat a would-be purse-snatcher off the U-Bahn—is now asking a cripple to kill her an insect.”

“You know I didn’t beat him.” Ilse’s cheeks were flushed again, though whether at the mention of the word cripple or the anecdote (which she loathes) it was hard to tell. “I lost my balance and fell into him and he…he simply ran off. And—” She darted a gaze past him to the book-strewn desk, against which Franz’s silver-handled cane leaned in its usual spot. “And we actually need you because of your cane. The thing is high up enough that neither of us can reach it.”

Franz just gazed at her a moment, then back at his sister standing mutely behind Ilse’s left shoulder. Sigi, still lying defiantly on the bed (and in theory just above the titillating material that had sparked the interruption), began chewing noisily on his left hind leg.

“Sehr gut,” Franz sighed finally.

Turning on his good heel, he limped back to the desk and picked up his cane, while Ilse flashed a victorious grin back at Renate. When Franz returned, however, he did not continue past to Renate’s room. Stopping short of the threshold, he extended the glossy walking stick. “Your weapon,” he announced, pointing at the raven-shaped handle, a tribute to his passion for Poe. “Use that big end. Just clean the guts off after. You can leave it in the hallway when you’re done. Sigi, raus!”

And waiting only long enough for Sigi to thump off the bed and trot dutifully back into the hallway, he shut the door.



* * *





“I told you,” Renate said, once they were safely back in her room, Ilse sulking, Renate disappointed if vindicated. “Just come tomorrow. He’s gone until dinner.”

“Can’t. We’re driving to Oma’s.” Ilse’s paternal grandparents have a house in Wiesbaden; the maternal set’s in Spandau. That she has four living grandparents is one of the few things Renate envies her. Her own, lone surviving grandparent (her mother’s powder-pale, fussy mother) lives in a stuffy apartment just outside the Hirschgarten. After visiting, the smell of the place—like lavender oil gone rancid—stays with Renate for days.

“Come Monday, then,” she said.

“Piano.”

“Tuesday?”

“Seeing Dr. Stein for my checkup.”

Renate groaned: Wednesday seemed years and years away. Then Ilse brightened. “Bring it to school.”

Renate stared at her. “Are you crazy?”

“Why not? If you’re caught you can just say you found it somewhere.” Ilse smiled craftily. “Or tell the truth. It’s about time Franz caught grief for something.”

Renate still wasn’t convinced. “You’ll back me up if I do get caught?”

“Of course.”

“I mean, really back me up?”

“Natürlich,” Ilse sniffed, and held up her right hand. On its middle finger twinkled the ring Renate had given her eighteen months earlier, in exchange for one Ilse gave to her: simple silvery bands both, with small outstretched hands in the place where stones usually were. Each had a single letter etched on the inside: an I on Renate’s, an R on Ilse’s. When lined up, the little hands fit together like a shining knot.



* * *





And now here they are three days later, at two in the afternoon, in the low-ceilinged library of Bismarck Gymnasium, where Renate’s short, unkissed life is about to end.

“I’m waiting,” booms Herr Steinberg.

He leans closer; close enough that Renate inhales the dank smell of old cigarettes and stale coffee. Renate squeezes her eyes shut in a last-ditch effort to faint so that he’ll at least feel a little sorry for her. When her body won’t comply (it never does, certainly not at useful moments like this one) she swallows, hard.

“I…”

“Herr Steinberg?”

The teacher spins on his heel toward the interruption. “Yes, Gerhardt?”

(Gerhardt? Renate’s eyes fly open.)

“The card is mine.”

It takes Renate a moment to confirm it, and when she does she really does almost faint.

For it’s true. It’s him—Rudolph Gerhardt. The boy with the perfect mole and the perfect cleft chin and the perfect eyes of shifting sea glass. She has no idea at all how he got here without her knowing; her awareness of his presence is so hyper-attuned she can practically pick out his tread from one floor down. And yet here he is, a table back, with all eyes on him as though he were Gary Cooper in A Farewell to Arms.