Wunderland(69)
Hail to the offspring of night
With hair of sunrise yellow and cheeks of peach hue
They dance in eternal Spring’s light!
But as she’d walked back from the mimeographer’s yesterday she became aware of a group of Polish boys walking far too closely behind her. She ignored them for as long as she could, but when one of them called out with a shrill, mocking Sieg Heil her indignation came slamming back.
Ducking into a nearby meat shop, Ilse pointed at the rude gang through the window and asked the butcher to write down the names of its members. When he claimed not to understand German she fetched the tailor next door, a bespectacled little man who initially offered his assistance with an indulgent smile, though it faded slightly upon hearing her request.
“They’re gone now,” he pointed out, indicating the empty street.
“He saw them,” she insisted, pointing her chin at the worried-looking meat vendor. “He knows who they are.”
After a whispered conference with the butcher, the tailor turned back to Ilse: “He’d like a promise that none of them will be hurt,” he said, his smile now one of apology.
Why shouldn’t they be hurt? Ilse wanted to snap back. Why not, when Marita cried for the whole night after they set upon her, and Lies had to be sent home like a delinquent in disgrace?
Instead, she pulled herself up to her full one-hundred-and-fifty-eight-centimeter height. “I want to make it quite clear,” she said stiffly, “that I’m a representative of the Reich, and that the Reich doesn’t negotiate when it comes to justice. If you fail to comply with my request, then I’ll be forced to report you—both of you—to the Hauptsturmführer’s office.”
Hauptsturmführer Wainer was the highest-ranking Party representative in the village. Ilse had never met him, but from the mixture of apprehension and deference that usually accompanied mention of his name she assumed he was someone to be reckoned with—an assumption further confirmed by the way the tailor’s smile now evaporated completely.
“Report us for what?” he asked, blinking rapidly behind his spectacles.
“For—for aiding and abetting anti-Reich activities,” Ilse improvised. “It’s a very serious charge. People are sent to the camps for less in Berlin.”
She actually had no idea if this was true, but it had its desired effect: still blinking furiously, the tailor launched into another rapid-fire, whispered consultation with the butcher, this one accompanied by equally terse shrugs and head shakes.
Finally, he turned back. “You have paper?” he asked.
She handed over the little notebook she carried with her. “Do you have a telephone?”
* * *
A half hour later she was pedaling down Dam-Gro?er’s Hauptstra?e, the damning notebook page carefully folded in her pocket and her heart beating somewhere near her throat. To her amazement, after being put through to the Hauptsturmführer’s office by the village operator and briefly explaining her mission, Ilse had been offered a meeting with the commander that very afternoon. “He had a four-thirty cancellation,” the secretary explained. “I’d take it, if I were you. The next opening isn’t for over a week. Do you have our address?”
* * *
The Hauptsturmführer’s office was in a large villa in the town’s center, which up until recently had been Burgermeister Szczepański’s home. The first-floor parlor has been converted into a reception/secretarial area, in which a dark-haired young woman was typing so painstakingly it made Ilse wince just to watch it. Ilse couldn’t help noticing that the girl also wore an exceptionally low-cut blouse, a rare sight in a town where many dressed with turn-of-the-century modesty. She appeared both aware of her exposed cleavage and blithely unconcerned by it: as she hunted, squinted, and pecked at her keyboard she’d periodically reach a hand around her back to yank the neckline back into place. Watching her, Ilse was reminded of the way Trude Baumgarten would hike up her skirt in school and pretend to be adjusting her stockings, when everyone knew she was showing the boys her legs. And they’re not even very nice legs, Ilse remembered Renate hooting. Don’t they remind you of two skinny, hairy, white turnips?
The memory triggered a snort of laughter, followed by an almost painful stab of loneliness and longing of the sort that Ilse thought she’d fully immunized herself against. You have nothing in common, she reminded herself, sternly. She is a Jew. Your real friends are your colleagues in the movement.
Which, while true enough, didn’t address her mind’s persistent habit of squirreling away thoughts and observations for later recitation to her former confidante. Nor did it change the fact that amid all of Ilse’s BDM and Landjahr companions there’s no one she can imagine whispering and laughing with for hours, sharing secret hopes and deepest fears and the occasional all-out pillow battle.
Sighing, she looked up at the office clock: it was already five fifteen. What was taking so long? If she didn’t get in soon she’d risk missing dinner at the Lager—a fairly serious infraction, especially given the Lagerführerin’s dual obsession with food and punctuality.
Clearing her throat pointedly, Ilse looked back at the secretary, now angling her barely covered bosom over the typewriter keyboard while angling a pencil’s eraser at the paper above it.