Wunderland(91)

Ilse ignores him, coming to a panting stop as she reaches the circle’s center.

It’s not just the blood, though that is shocking enough: Otto Bauer’s white cotton shirt and shorts are soaked with it. A thick, paintlike streak drips down one arm; there is even blood smeared in his tangled hair.

But since Ilse last saw him, Renate’s father has transformed into a man she no longer recognizes. His once-dark and rich hair is now thin and almost white. His lank form seems to have shrunk several sizes, not just in girth but in height. His face, which had exuded intelligence and perpetual bemusement, now looks heavily lined and confused, as well as startlingly vulnerable without his habitual horn-rimmed spectacles. At the sound of Ilse’s voice he, like everyone else in the small group, has turned his blue eyes upon her. But they reflect no recognition; only a vague puzzlement. His wife stands a couple of meters away, struggling in the grip of two large, leering men. Coatless despite the cold, she is wearing only a thin blouse, one of the sleeves of which has been ripped from her shoulder. She, too, has changed: always bird-thin, she is now almost skeletal, her pale skin stretched so tautly over her exposed shoulder blade that it appears the bone might tear through at any moment. Slightly behind her is Franz, disheveled and pale and being held by another, much younger thug in Hitlerjugend attire. Behind him, the front door to the Bauers’ home has been left open, displaying a front hall in complete disarray: the rug is rumpled and thoroughly muddied, the banister broken. The grandfather clock Ilse has always loved has been smashed and turned on its side. She wonders vaguely where Sigi is.

She tears her gaze away from the destruction, only to meet Franz’s one good eye. The look in it is unreadable. But the gaze itself still lands like a punch to her gut.

Taking a deep breath, Ilse squares off with his father’s attacker. He is easily twice her weight, with the burly frame of a day laborer and biceps that she likely couldn’t fit both hands around. As he registers her presence his eyes—wide-set and beer-bleary—seem to have trouble focusing correctly. She wonders how long he’s been drinking.

“You don’t want to do this,” she tells him.

“Who the hell are you?” He holds the dagger high and slightly behind him, as though preparing to attack her next. Its tip is crimson with the professor’s drying blood. Ilse forces herself to look away from it as she tries to catch her breath.

“I asked you a question, bitch,” he repeats, spraying spit as he speaks. “What’s your name?”

“Ida,” she says, trying to keep her voice from shaking. “Ida Fuchs. You need to leave this family alone.”

He throws his head back and laughs contemptuously, the sound like that of a bull lowing. The jeer is quickly picked up by his cohorts. “Ooooh,” one of them mocks. “Are you going to fight her next, Jock?”

“She looks like she’d like a fight,” says another insinuatingly. “I’ll fight her if you don’t.”

“I’m the regional district leader of the Bund Deutscher M?del.” Ilse tries to state it as authoritatively as she can, though her blood is roaring so loudly in her ears that she can barely hear herself speaking. She forces herself to maintain his gaze as she reaches into her satchel and pulls out her Untergau Führerin badge. She flashes its distinctive yellow crest at him, hoping her hand isn’t visibly shaking and praying that in his alcohol-fueled haze he won’t grasp more than the capital letters U and F.

He shrugs. “Na und?”

“This man isn’t Jewish. No one in the family is. You’re about to make a very big mistake.”

As she slides the badge back she sees Elisabeth Bauer staring at her, her brown gaze hard and angry but also blazing with comprehension. “It’s true,” she says, in the I mean business voice that Ilse still remembers so well. “What she’s saying is true. My husband isn’t Jewish. Neither am I.”

“I know you’re not, you kike-fucking bitch,” says the one they’d called Jock.

The men holding her shake her violently in emphasis, so that her head seems to snap on the thin white stalk of her neck.

Ilse fights back a flinch. “You are only getting yourselves into a lot of very bad trouble. This man has powerful connections to the Party.”

“Then why was his name given to us by Party headquarters?” asks Jock. Pulling a crumpled ball of paper from his pocket, he smooths it awkwardly against his thigh and squints at it, holding it up to the light. “Otto Bauer,” he reads, with exaggerated care. “Number 265. Wife is Gentile.” He looks at Renate’s mother, spits contemptuously.

“Some of those lists have the wrong names and addresses on them. It happened several times last night.”

The lies hang there like desperate darts thrown into the chill fall air, Ilse holding her breath, praying that they’ll land.

“The Party doesn’t make mistakes,” says Jock, staunchly.

“I’m sure it wasn’t a Party leader. They have secretaries, you know,” she retorts, in a tone she hopes is both confident and contemptuous.

“Ida? What in God’s name are you talking about?”

Turning, she sees Max staring at her, his dark eyes wide.

“These people aren’t Jews.”

“Not that. What are you saying about the lists?”

Swallowing, she tries to keep her expression matter-of-fact. “You didn’t hear? Kai told me at the Windhund earlier. He had to call in with his list before we went out because we were told some of the addresses on it were off.” She pauses before improvising: “It’s why we were so late.”