Wunderland(9)

“I can support my country in any way that I wish,” Ilse snaps.

Renate lays a hand on her friend’s arm. She normally loves Ilse’s Unversch?mtheit, the way so little ever seems to truly scare her. But she doesn’t always know when to stop.

Uneasy now, she looks over the two men in their tall boots. The standard-issue SA dagger each wears strapped to his belt is, she knows, supposedly just for show. But the black-handled billy club each one carries isn’t. A few weeks earlier she’d been having a coffee and cake with her grandmother on Potsdamer Stra?e when a group of SA troopers trundled past their window, bawling a song about Führer, nation, and pride. “It might help if they took voice lessons,” her Oma quipped (she is an amateur opera singer; it’s become her standard joke).

But what had shocked Renate was what happened next: as the troop paused at an intersection, one of its members leapt apart to grab a passing pedestrian by the collar. Bellowing something in the man’s face, the trooper shook him several times, hard enough that the man’s head flopped atop his neck like Renate’s rag doll Alice. Then—so quickly that at first Renate thought she’d imagined it—the militiaman cracked the pedestrian on the head with his club. The blow was hard enough that the latter, when finally released, slumped to the ground, his head was bleeding profusely.

His task accomplished, the trooper had returned to formation, falling back into line as the victim’s female companion frantically screamed for help.

Renate tugs on Ilse’s cardigan. “I think we’ve cake at home anyway. And besides. It’s getting late.”

But Ilse remains where she is, chewing on her lip.

“Ilse.”

“Listen to her,” says the first trooper. “You seem like nice girls. Go home and have cake with your Mutti.”

Oh no, thinks Renate, as Ilse’s jaw tightens.

“I’m going in,” her friend announces. “Herr Schloss is a good baker. I don’t really care if he’s Jewish.” She turns back to Renate, her hand extended. “If you want to wait for me here, you are welcome. But can I have the cake money?”

Renate hesitates for just a moment, torn: if she hands over the money she’s also challenging the boycott. But if she doesn’t, she’s challenging her best friend.

For a moment she stands motionless, her hand in her pocket, her eye on her friend’s upturned palm, the underside of the friendship ring glimmering. She starts to withdraw her little handful of coins. Then she stops.

“No,” she says. “I’ll go too.”



* * *





“One of these days,” Renate tells Ilse later, “you’re really going to get into trouble.” She rolls onto her stomach. “Or worse, get me into trouble.”

“One of these days you’ll learn to stand up for yourself,” retorts Ilse, and picks a poppyseed from her teeth.

Renate sighs. “What I don’t understand is that I thought you and your parents liked the NSDAP. I thought you thought they were doing good things.” Renate’s own parents loathe Hitler and his National Socialist cohorts, seeing them as brutish bigots and oafs. Ilse’s parents—who suffered far more after the Defeat and the Inflation—fully believe Hitler’s promise to return Germany to greatness and credit him personally with their improving fortunes.

“I like the Party,” says Ilse. “That doesn’t mean I like Brownshirts. They’re overgrown thugs half the time. And all this stuff about Jews…pfft.” She waves a hand dismissively. “You get extremists with every movement. My grandfather says they’ll grow past it.”

“Hmm,” says Renate, wondering whether her parents are in agreement. Somehow she doubts it. She’s heard them talking tensely in their bedroom, their exchanges peppered with words like laws and retirement and Juden—many of their friends and colleagues are Jewish.

“And actually,” Ilse continues, “I think I’m going to join the BDM.”

“Really?” Renate turns to look at her. They ridiculed the new group in the past: the mindless marching, the silly songs. “Is that your mother’s suggestion?”

“Mine, actually. Mama wants me to join the League of Louise. She believes it’s got more class. Or something.”

“Ugh.” Renate pulls a sour face. The Louise Leaguers are even worse than the Bund Deutscher M?del. They dress in cornflower blue—supposedly Queen Louise’s favorite color—and gather weekly, supposedly in memory of her reign. But from what Ilse and Renate have discerned after spying on the group for several days, the members do little more than discuss French fashion and American swing dance steps. “Pampered daughters of bankers and lawyers,” she sniffs now.

Ilse shakes her head. “Can you imagine spending six whole hours a week with them?”

“Not even for one second.”

“But the BDM might be all right. I hear the camping and sports meets and the crafts part are all supposed to be great fun. And they do loads of joint activities with the Hitlerjugend.” She folds her arms behind her head. “Besides. I’m curious.”

“What about?”

“About what it would be like to be part of something…bigger.”

“Bigger than what?”