Wunderland(70)
“It—it seems very busy today,” Ilse said brightly.
“Ach, ja.” Without looking up, the girl rubbed at a spot, licked the eraser, and rubbed a bit more. “Since the year started the Reich’s moved twenty new families from other areas near the border and settled them all right here in Dam-Gro?er. Twenty! You can’t imagine the paperwork!”
“A lot?”
The secretary rolled her eyes. “Housing permits. Building permits. Farming permits. Not to mention registering the children with the appropriate schools. And Mother above, there are so many children! Four of the women have the gold Mothers’ Cross, and eight of them the silver. The rest all have bronze or are working on getting it. Honestly, I don’t know how some of them are still walking…oh no.”
Dropping the pencil to the desk, the girl yanked the form from the typewriter’s canister and held it to the light. “Ripped again,” she pronounced in annoyance, tugging her shirt up once more from the back. “I don’t know why they insist on using such cheap paper.”
Tossing the disgraced sheet aside, she pulled a fresh one from a drawer and set about inserting it into the machine, her puckered brow and pursed lips making it clear that she had neither time nor patience for small talk.
Sighing again, Ilse settled back in her armchair, aware that her stomach was growling. Dinner was at six, a good quarter hour away by bike. Unless this was a very short meeting with the Hauptsturmführer she’d have to come up with a good excuse for her absence. Shutting her eyes, she tried to summon one, but what came instead was an image of all those gleaming maternal medals: four gold, eight silver, she’d said! It was like an exam question from Herr Kohler’s math class last year: If the Gold Cross is awarded to women who’ve had eight children or more, the Silver for six or seven, and the Bronze for four or five, what is the largest number of children the settler families might have between them?
Shuddering, Ilse pushed the thought from her mind. The three Michalski offspring were more than enough for her.
* * *
Twenty minutes, two ruined forms, and a curt intercom exchange later, the secretary stretched and stood up. “He’ll see you now,” she told Ilse, shrouding the typewriter with a boxy black cover and herself in a sumptuous-looking fur-trimmed jacket. “Just knock before going in.” Checking her face in a compact mirror, she added casually: “How old did you say you were?”
Ilse hadn’t. “Seventeen,” she said.
The secretary looked her over assessingly. Then she snapped her compact shut and nodded.
“You’ll be fine,” she said reassuringly.
It was a comment Ilse would look back on later and ponder, wondering how it was meant to have been taken. Was it merely an assurance to an obviously nervous young girl, one who’d been waiting for this meeting for over an hour? Or was she trying to reassure herself that it was sufficiently proper to leave that young girl alone, in that office?
Either way, the worker left. And gathering her courage and her satchel, Ilse stood and made her way to the heavy wooden door, upon which—after a deep breath—she knocked.
“Herein,” came the response, both authoritative and graveled.
Opening the door, she slipped in.
* * *
Inside, the Hauptsturmführer sat at an enormous desk, directly below a portrait of the Führer that was quite unlike any Ilse had ever seen. It showed Hitler in full Party attire, which in itself was not unusual. What was unusual was the fact that on top of his crisp uniform was an unexpectedly rumpled tan trench coat. Even stranger was the background, composed of the sort of luminous landscape sometimes found in Italian Renaissance paintings: rolling hills and shining rivers. A breathlessly blue sky filled with puffy white clouds. The Führer stood, hand on hip, beneath a pink flowering tree that seemed somehow at odds with his stern and solemn expression.
“I see you like my painting.”
Ilse dropped her gaze, realizing that while she’d been taking in the odd portrait, Hauptsturmführer Wainer had been taking in his young visitor. Fighting back a wave of shyness, she studied him in return. A large man in his forties, he had the sort of face she associated with Party posters and Hollywood stars: bright blue eyes, square jaw divided by just the faintest hint of a cleft. A little like an older Rudi, in fact. Reni would swoon, she found herself thinking reflexively.
“Yes,” she replied. “I’ve—I’ve never seen our Führer portrayed that way before.”
The Hauptsturmführer nodded, as though this were the answer he both expected and wanted. “Very few have. I like it that way. Too many people simply stick up the standard photograph and then forget about it. I like to make things more…personal.”
Lifting one large hand, he beckoned Ilse over. She obeyed hesitantly, noting that the ring on his middle finger might or might not have been a wedding band. As she drew nearer his features seemed to soften the way bread swells in humidity, weakening the initial impact of his handsomeness. She noticed, too, that one cheek bore the silvery mark of a Schmisse, one of those university dueling scars that her parents’ generation considered high-status for some reason. There was a heavy layer of cigarette smoke in the room, and beneath it the distinct scent of some sort of Schnapps.
“I understand,” he said, “that you are here with a complaint.”