Wunderland(63)

She tosses the paper onto the floor and balances her cigarette on the edge of the ashtray. She needs better reading material, she decides. In particular, the plight of Lady Edwina Esketh and her forbidden love for a Brahmin doctor in colonial Ranchipur. Hauling herself up, she sets up the stairs in her stockinged feet to fetch The Rains Came from beneath her unmade bed.

At the landing, though, she pauses. For the second time today something feels off. It takes a moment to realize that it’s the door to her parents’ bedroom. Her mother generally leaves doors open during the day (“closed doors lead to closed minds,” she explains). Now, though, it is shut.

Perplexed, Renate reaches for the doorknob. Then she freezes, hearing voices inside. One of them is her mother’s. The other, however, is unfamiliar: low and heavy. Unfamiliar.

And definitely male.

Barely allowing herself to breathe, she edges closer.

“I don’t have anything else,” her mother is saying. Her voice is taut and high; she sounds close to tears.

“Well, then, I’m afraid the case will close.”

“But you can’t do that. If you close it, my husband…”

“Your husband?” The man gives a short laugh. “May I remind you, Frau Bauer, that your husband is the reason you’re in this situation. If you’d simply comply with our request, then this could all go away.” A pause. “Even I would. I dare say you’d even miss me.”

This last assertion, delivered mockingly, is followed by another pause, this one longer. Then her mother’s voice again, barely audible: “I can’t do that.”

“Then we have nothing more to discuss today.” The creak of bedsprings (Renate’s stomach curls into itself, hard as rock). A heavy tread as he moves toward the door. Trembling, Renate takes a step backward at the same time her mother speaks again: “Wait. Wait. Perhaps…”

“Yes?” And a moment later:

“Not today. I’m not in the mood for a Jew’s leftovers.”

Renate registers the comment at the same moment her mother cries out furiously: “You Schwein!”

The sound of scuffling; of skin sharp against skin. Then the doorknob turns abruptly. Leaping back, Renate trips and nearly falls on top of Sigi, who has somehow materialized behind her without her knowing. They both yelp as the door flies open, revealing her mother’s wiry, disheveled form.

“Reni?” Elisabeth Bauer’s chest is heaving beneath her heavily pilled cardigan. Her neck and chest are flushed a damp pink. “What are you doing home? I thought you were going to the Neues today with your class.”

Renate opens her mouth to answer, but nothing comes out. Her mouth is as dry as a cup of sand.

“Who is there?” she finally manages to say, but her mother just shakes her head.

“Take the dog downstairs,” she orders tightly.

“But…”

“Now, Renate.”

Renate stares at her. A Jew’s leftovers.

For a moment she thinks she might vomit.

“Who is—” she asks again, but before she can finish her mother has slammed the door in her face. As she stands there, quivering, she hears the man laughing, hears her mother murmuring something in a low voice. Then the door opens and her mother appears again. “Take him downstairs.”

Feeling strangely outside herself, Renate forces her limbs into action, yanking the stiff-legged dog back toward the stairwell. Picking him up when he refuses. Swallowing back the taste of bile on her tongue. As she descends slowly, pet in arms, the words still circle her mind, inexplicably mixing with the Snark: There was one who was famed for the number of things He forgot when he entered the ship (a Jew’s leftovers) His umbrella, his watch, all his jewels and rings (a Jew’s leftovers) / And the clothes he had brought for the trip…

After what seems an eon she reaches the foyer. Stumbling slightly, she carries Sigi through the dining room, shoving him through the swinging door into the kitchen, then leaning against the dining room table.

Upstairs, the door opens yet again. There comes the sound of the man’s tread, slow and deliberate, on the stairwell. Still clutching her stomach, Renate tiptoes back to the dining room doorway, positioning herself just far enough behind the door frame to keep the stairwell in sight.

When he comes into view she gasps.

He is short, dark, and stocky, with skin that looks sallow and loose, and heavy eyebrows that almost meet in the middle. He is buttoning his trench coat and carrying a fedora beneath his arm, and the sight of this sends her pounding heart into her throat. For this, of course, is the informal uniform of the Gestapo, in its own way far more sinister than the Waffen-SS’s blatant skull and bones.

As he reaches the bottom stair, the man turns his head in her direction, and Renate holds her breath. But he is only checking the time on the grandfather clock that stands against the dining room wall.

“How long, then?” her mother is asking, trailing after him in her bedroom slippers. Her eyes are swollen and red; there is a bright pink mark on her left cheek.

“Perhaps the next week or two,” he says.

“Only that?” Her mother stops, her hand at her throat. “But the ring—the ring at least must be worth another month, no?”

Very slowly, the Gestapo agent turns around to face her. “Frau Bauer,” he says coldly. “As I’ve now explained more than once, the value of your donation is not something I alone can determine. It will be assessed in the proper venues. Once I have that assessment I will be better able to calculate its worth toward your case.”