Wunderland(68)
So shrugging into a cardigan and woolen socks, she’d scooped her notepad from her wall cubby and noiselessly lowered herself to the cold wood floor, pausing just long enough to ensure that no one else was awake before carefully tiptoeing into the hallway and down the back stairway. Shifting again in her seat, she wonders whether she should have entertained her farm family’s offer of putting her up with them, rather than remaining here with the camp.
The Michalskis are good people, after all. But like most villagers here they are quite simple—not to mention lamentably ignorant of their Nordic heritage. When Ilse first saw their modest farmhouse she’d actually thought the Service Board had matched her with a Polish family by mistake. The décor was cheap and tawdry, the tables groaning with false flowers. There were horrid little knickknacks everywhere—a google-eyed duo of ceramic frogs watched over by a gaudily colored shepherdess; a bisque “piano baby” with its dimpled rear end in full view. The parlor had even sported one of those eyeball clocks Ilse and Renate used to laugh about together, this one shaped like a little Negro genie whose white eyes rolled around to show you the time—enough, Ilse had written Renate in her head, to give you nightmares!
She’d found the house physically sanitary enough at least, as the Michalskis do well enough to keep a maid. Unfortunately, said maid—Marzia—also happens to be Polish, which means that her idea of cleaning doesn’t even approach the rigorous German standard the Service Maidens have been charged to impress upon their respective Volksdeutsche households. As she’s since discovered, having Marzia around also makes it that much harder to maintain a German-speaking environment, as the housekeeper speaks next to no German and Frau Michalski and the children prefer Polish to begin with.
Still, Ilse has done her best given the circumstances; when she’s not farming with Herr Michalski or helping his wife awaken her long-dormant Hausfrau instincts, she sings the children German songs or reads to them in their mother tongue, usually from the Grimms or Struwwelpeter. It’s clear they don’t understand everything. But they at least seem engaged, laughing at Ilse’s impressions of thumb-sucking Conrad and fidgety Phil. They also leap at the chance to put on puppet shows together, especially if they involve Punch-and-Judy-style head-whacking. They’re particularly enamored with one of their own invention called The Villagers Chase the Jew Out, based on the popular board game Juden Raus!
Unfortunately, though, not all the chasing in Ilse’s life here is make-believe. The Dam-Gro?er Labor Service outpost is still fairly new, and some of the villagers—particularly the Poles—are clearly resentful of its presence. Just last week, two Service Maidens were unceremoniously knocked from their bicycles on their way back from their respective assignments in German households. Neither was seriously injured, but both were badly shaken up—one to the point that she was sent home to Munich to recuperate.
According to Lagerführerin Kass, such assaults stem from a belief on the part of some of the villagers that the Reich Service League is both “meddlesome” and “anti-Polish,” though of course nothing could be farther from reality. (Our hard work benefits everyone, Ilse wrote Renate mentally, Polish and German alike.) What’s more, to Ilse’s mind these were not mere “boyish pranks,” as Lagerführerin Kass seemed inclined to write them off. Rather, they struck her as deliberate, targeted assaults on the Reich itself, and she found it unfathomable that their perpetually harried-looking camp leader didn’t seem more perturbed by them. “If we as the Reich’s emissaries can be attacked like this, with impunity, what’s to stop it from happening again?” Ilse had asked her. “And what sort of a message would that send? Not just to the villagers, but to Warsaw?” Everyone knew the Polish government—long angling for war with Germany—was actively seeking chinks in Germany’s national defense system, particularly in these smaller border towns.
Despite its obvious logic, however, this line of reasoning got Ilse precisely nowhere with Lagerführerin Kass, who seemed more intent on protecting her camp’s relations with the villagers than protecting the girls entrusted to her.
“Marita and Lies were ultimately unharmed,” she told Ilse, “and the Burgermeister assures me that the boys’ families have been spoken to.”
“The mayor?” Ilse sputtered. “Do you really think that someone with a name like Szczepański is going to come down hard on the Polish thugs who knocked our sisters to the ground?”
“Fr?ulein von Fischer,” the Lagerführerin said, her jaw tightening slightly. “I understand your concerns. But I must request that you trust my judgment on this matter, and that it is being handled responsibly and properly.”
Then, more gently (if inevitably): “You really must learn to let these things go.”
* * *
And she had tried—Ilse truly had tried. In addition to her daily farm and farmhouse duties she threw herself into preparing for the bonfire her group was planning for the spring solstice, modeled on an ancient Norse ritual of Orasta. The other girls contented themselves with weaving ivy candleholders and wreaths, but Ilse composed a special verse for the event, and received permission from Lagerführerin Kass to not only read it aloud but to make copies to pass out to other attendants:
Hail to the offerings of coldest winter