Wunderland(60)
Over the last year, therefore, she’s made a point of reaching her desk early enough to be reading (or pretending to) when other students arrive. She also reads in the school courtyard, in darkened corners of the library, and on the toilet when she goes to the WC. She even reads on the walk to and from school on some days, stepping slowly and very carefully.
She reads anything and everything, barring the books that have been banned. Lately she’s even found herself doubling or even trebling up, as though one fictional storyline alone is no longer enough to distract herself from the troubling narrative of her own life. Before The Rains Came she reread every Pearl Buck book in the Charlottenburg library, followed by Baring’s Daphne Adeane at the same time she was reading Shakespeare’s Henry the Eighth. She read The Wind in the Willows for a third time and then read it again, between readings of Rilke and Heine and Tennyson. She read Winnie the Pooh twice as well, the first time to herself, the second aloud to her father, who clearly needed a laugh. In addition to Through the Looking-Glass she has read the new translation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and took Franz up on his challenge to memorize The Hunting of the Snark, Carroll’s Jabberwocky-inspiring nonsense poem, in English. Initially she did this only to prove she could. But she came to find the poem strangely soothing in its absurdity, and now often recites it to herself when she feels bored or upset—which, despite all of her reading—is increasingly often.
For a brief period, she had dared to hope that in the wake of Karolin’s ouster she might be able to let her guard down; that stripped of its final target, the vicious anti-Juden spotlight that had shone so hotly on her friend would dim a little, or perhaps a lot. Or maybe just shut off altogether. Instead, its loathsome focus simply shifted to the school’s remaining Halbjuden, its new targets for mockery and scapegoating. Already this month, Renate’s books have been knocked from her arms or off her desk four times. Notes that read Dirty Jewess and Half-blood Abomination have been slipped into her bookbag and coat pocket. The Racial Hygiene instructor makes her and the other Mischlinge wipe down their seats after his class, “to minimize the reach of Jewish contagion.” Last Monday, he even called Renate up to the blackboard so he could measure her face with his caliper, cheerfully inviting the class to call out Juden or Deutsch as he went over her features. “The nose,” he’d noted, “is arguably Aryan in its overall size, though the sharp angle suggests some Hebrew influence. On the other hand, look here! These lips are all Jew.”
As her classmates snickered and scribbled, it had taken all Renate’s willpower (and six verses of Snark) to remain something resembling impassive. But when the instructor asked for a show of hands on her “dominant” half and Jude won overwhelmingly, she barely managed to excuse herself and run to the lavatory before bursting into hot tears yet again.
But today will be different, she thinks, as she rummages for a clean pair of socks. For one thing, there are strict rules regarding field-trip deportment: no whispering, giggling, or other “disrespectful” behavior is permitted, which effectively strips her classmates of their main source of weaponry. Moreover, the only book she will have to carry is her little blue-covered sketchbook. After toting around two novels at a time in addition to all her regular textbooks, the prospect seems hugely liberating.
She even finds herself humming as she goes through her morning routine; splashing her face and armpits, braiding her newly brushed hair. And she actually has an appetite for breakfast, finishing off her poached egg and wiping up the leftover yolk with her toast. After kissing her father on his cheek, she hugs her mother by the sink and wishes her a pleasant day.
“Not likely,” Lisbet Bauer retorts dryly. Still barred from her clinic for remaining married to her husband, she’s been volunteering instead at the Jewish Hospital in Spandau, which has been inundated by mental breakdowns and suicide attempts.
But even this bleak response does little to dampen Renate’s mood. As she steps out onto Unter den Linden, for once bookless beneath the lemon-white sun, the street strikes her as almost surreally detailed and lovely. And when the first butterfly of the season flutters its golden-winged way before her eyes, it erases the last bit of leaden sadness left over from her dream.
When she reaches her classroom, though, almost immediately she senses that something is off.
For one thing, even though she’s here even earlier than usual (ten to eight, according to the delicate wristwatch that her grandmother gave her for her sixteenth birthday last year) the rest of the class is already there. Coats are off, bags are down, hands are clasped expectantly on their desks. It’s a sight unsettling enough that for a moment she wonders whether she’d written down the departure time incorrectly.
Moreover, although it’s not a BDM meeting day, every girl in the room is in uniform. To get to her desk, she has to navigate row upon row of blue serge skirts and crisp white shirts, to swim a bobbing sea of jauntily angled black berets.
As she sets her bag down, the class teacher, Herr Bachmann, unfolds his long-limbed form from behind his desk. “Ah, Fr?ulein Bauer,” he says. “A word, if you don’t mind.”
He is speaking in a normal voice. But against the sudden silence that falls he might as well have shouted at her from across the room.
Sweat prickling her palms, Renate shrugs off her coat and makes her way toward the front of the room, spine-tinglingly aware of the twenty-two sets of eyes that are locked on each hesitant step.