Wunderland(90)

“Prove it,” he says again.

Behind them, the mob begins to shift and mutter restlessly. Boycott, she hears. Jew lover. Bitch. The rough red block in her hand feels far heavier than it looks; her arm and shoulder ache with its weight.

“Well?” says Kai. He is sounding impatient now. “There’s a good spot. Right there.” He is pointing at the one glass expanse that hasn’t yet been shattered: the door.

“Ilse, bitte,” the baker stammers.

Ilse looks at him. His eyes are wide. His small pink mouth is pursed and trembling. “Please,” he repeats. “You were always such a nice girl.”

Nice girl, she thinks, numbly.

And suddenly, she is filled with a searing rage. At Kai, for putting her in this position as casually as he puts his hands on her body. At Max, for bringing her here, and for locking his dark eyes on her as though her next move will determine her fate.

But most of all, at Herr Schloss. For in the end this is all his fault. He was the one stupid enough to hold on to his business, rather than selling it and remaining safe. He was the one bringing up the boycott, getting her into trouble with her superiors, when all she’d ever tried to do was be kind to him, to help him.

Traitor, she thinks. Coward. Liar.

Greedy kike.

And then the brick is in flight, with all the velocity and accuracy of an arrow released from a bowstring. Ilse stares in amazement as it speeds through the air, heading not for the glass but the man: Herr Schloss himself. She watches, mouth agape, as the baker tries to duck and the men holding him hold him firm. The missile hits its target, striking the terrified Jew in the chest, just above the six-pointed star. And though she has never in her life done anything remotely this violent, never been aware of even harboring such an urge, the sight of his startled face and the sound of his pained cry spark a crystalline jolt of exhilaration that makes her want to do it again.

The crowd feels it too. It lunges forward, piling onto the tradesman, pounding and kicking, until he lies as motionless on the ground as the hat merchant. Shouting and cheering, the mob surges past him and into the shop through the window, toppling the cash register, tearing down oven racks and shelves, throwing the goods out onto the street. Sacks of flour land and split in clouds of dusty mist. Raw eggs crack, bleeding sunny yellow yolks onto the street. Two baking sheets come flying through the empty window, nearly hitting Ilse in the head. But by now she doesn’t care; it’s as though with that one action a spell has been cast: she’s invincible. Invisible. Omnipotent. She could leap into one of the surrounding fires and emerge not just unscathed, but reborn.

Electrified, she takes the other brick from Max, marveling that it hardly feels heavy at all now.

“I thought your name was Ida,” he shouts, as he picks up another for himself.

“It is,” she shouts back. “The filthy Jew was lying.”



* * *





An hour later, Max curses the traffic for moving at a snail’s pace as drivers and riders gawk at the ominous vista. Still, despite its coating of dust and rubble, the sidecar is significantly more comfortable than the back of the bike had been, and Ilse is almost tempted to close her eyes. It would be easy to simply fall asleep like that. But just as she’s found a comfortable, slumped position Max is stopping again.

“Hallo,” he shouts. “Looks like the fun’s still going on over here.”

Lifting her head, Ilse sees with a start that they are idling on Renate’s street. As she follows his gaze to the now-familiar sight of half-drunk men and boys jeering and shouting Jude and Yid and Kike, Max cuts the engine. And it’s then that Ilse hears a woman’s voice as well, high and shrill: Let go of him! You animal! You swine!

As Max swings his leg over the seat, she watches him groggily before clambering out of the sidecar and trailing after him toward the activity.

At first she can’t make out what it’s about. Then the group parts, and she sees the object of their derision: a tall, gray-haired man with a beard wearing only his underthings. One of the men has his dagger out; he appears to be lunging fencing-style, pricking his victim each time just enough to make him cringe. Two others hold a shrieking, struggling woman back from the cruel tableau. “Cowards!” the woman screams. “Swine!”

The voice makes the hairs on the nape of Ilse’s neck stand up. A split second later her eyes make the same, devastating connection:

The man in the bloody shirt and drawers is Renate’s father.

The woman is her mother.

This time, Ilse doesn’t give herself time to think about what she’s doing. She simply breaks into a run.





14.


    Renate and Ilse


1938

“Stop. Stop it!”

Ilse hurls herself at the group, pushing past a surprised Max and the taunting semicircle that has formed around Renate’s father and his torturer. For the second time in two hours she is surprising herself: just as her arm and fist made the decision to hurl the brick at Herr Schloss, her legs are carrying her toward the Bauers’ familiar front door as her brain struggles to catch up.

“Let him go!” she shouts, knocking head-on into one of the men and in the process knocking him into the much younger boy beside him.

“What the hell,” says the man.

The boy staggers and nearly falls, cursing before hauling himself back up and pointing an unsteady finger in Ilse’s direction. “Who’sh that,” he slurs.