Wunderland(95)

As she tied off the first braid and started on the other, a brief somberness clouded Greta’s Delft shepherdess features. Ava knew she was thinking about her own parents. After Greta’s father was called to the war, her mother had taken Greta and her younger brother to the East to escape the Berlin bombings. But then the war ended, and the Russians came, and all the Germans had to run away. Greta’s mother led them on the long, hard trip back to Düsseldorf, sometimes in crowded, smelly trains that stopped for hours and had no toilets or seats. Sometimes simply walking. It was while they were walking, Greta said, that the Russians had raped her mother and made her so sick that she finally died. Meanwhile, her father had been shot at the Russian front.

“You still have hope,” she said now, finishing the second braid with a gentle tug. “She doesn’t.”

“Someone might still adopt her.”

“No one will.”

“How do you know?”

“The same way I know your mother’s alive. I just do.”

Turning Ava to face her, the older girl surveyed the younger for a moment. Pulling out a tattered handkerchief from her skirt pocket, she licked a corner and rubbed a spot above Ava’s mouth, and Ava kept herself statue still. She knew it made more sense to try to look as unkempt as possible for Presentation, since she certainly didn’t want to be picked for adoption. But having Greta fuss over her—having anyone fuss over her—made Ava’s insides glow in a way that was nearly as nice as actually having a full stomach.

“There,” her friend said at last, tucking the handkerchief away. “You look beautiful.”

“No, I don’t.” Ava looked at herself quickly in the mirror, taking in her pale, pinched face, her sunken eyes, her arms and legs that looked like white toothpicks. “But you do. You always do.”

Greta laughed. “Now that’s a lie. Let’s go.”

It wasn’t a lie. But as Ava trailed after the older girl to the barracks she wished with all her heart that it was. The only reason she could think of that Greta was even still here was that she refused to be separated from her brother, who lived in the boys’ barracks on the other side of the chapel. And as of yet, no one had wanted to adopt two orphans instead of one.

But for someone as lovely as Greta, it was only a matter of time.



* * *





Back in the bunkroom, Ava felt Sister Agnes’s wooden ruler prod against her sternum. “Stand up straight, child,” the nun chided. “Don’t slouch!”

Ava pulled her shoulders back, trying to ignore the way Hanne was scowling at her from across the aisle, and the way that Maja, standing next to her, was sticking her tongue out. But both were quickly obscured by the woman who had just come to a stop directly in front of Ava’s bed.

The woman looked Ava up and down, holding her chin in thought. “Humbert,” she called.

“Ja, B?rchen.” The stooped man chatting by the door with Kapit?n Ron and Leutnant Tommy looked up.

“Doesn’t she remind you of Ina?”

Separating himself from the bored-looking Americans, the man made his way toward them. He walked haltingly, with a cane and a limp that made his body jerk back and then forward with each step, as though he were doing a funny kind of dance. Ava dropped her gaze to the floor, studying first the woman’s worn brown work shoes, then the nun’s low-heeled oxfords, and finally the man’s heavily scuffed brown-and-white wingtips as they drew up beside them.

“In what way?” he asked.

“Around the nose,” said the woman. “And the eyes too.”

“Hard to tell when she’s got them stuck on the ground.” The man gave a quiet laugh.

Go away, Ava thought.

“What’s your name, Süsse Maus?” the man asked.

She felt Sister Agnes’s ruler again, this time under her chin. “Look up, child. Tell them your name.”

Ava lifted her head. The couple standing before her were younger than her grandparents had been but probably older than her mother, though it was hard to know for sure. The woman had kind hazel eyes and black hair streaked with white, and she was gazing at Ava with a kind of dreamy wistfulness. The man was almost bald and had a huge silver-pink scar that ran from his left ear to the corner of his mouth. It pulled his top lip a little, making it look as though he was always smiling just the tiniest bit.

“Well?” said Sister Agnes. “What’s your name?”

Ava swallowed. “Ava.” She said it in the smallest voice she could manage while still technically not whispering.

“And how old are you, Ava?” the woman asked.

“I’m six,” she muttered.

“Six! My, what a big girl,” said the man, though Ava knew full well that she was small for her age. “And what do you like to do?”

“Do?”

“With your free time. What games do you like to play?”

Ava looked uncertainly from him to Sister Agnes. She really didn’t know any games. Her Opi had started to instruct her in chess, but the bombing happened before he’d taught her how all the pieces moved.

“Ava,” said Sister Agnes, “is our little resident artist.”

“Isn’t that lovely!” exclaimed the woman. “Our Ina loved to draw too. She especially liked drawing flowers and kittens. We still have some of them up on our walls.” Kneeling next to Ava, she looked directly into her eyes. “What do you like to draw?”