Wunderland(96)

Ava bit her lip.

“Go on,” said Sister Agnes, laughing in a way that sounded amused but which Ava knew actually signaled annoyance. “Don’t be shy, for goodness’ sake. Tell Frau Dunkel all about your pictures.”

Ava licked her lips with her still-smarting tongue. “I draw food,” she said, still in her lowest voice. “Cakes and chickens and banana splits, especially.”

“That sounds delicious,” the woman said warmly. “I don’t know about banana splits. But Humbert and I live on a big farm outside Norf, and we have chickens and baby chicks and a cow.”

“A cow?” Despite herself Ava looked up again. Greta had lived on a farm during their time in the East, and still waxed rhapsodic about the food: real milk and eggs and fresh bread and fruit and honey. Sometimes there was even meat. At night, she’d tell Ava stories about the meals she’d had, the way Ava’s grandmother had told her bedtime stories in the life that, looking back, now felt like a fairy tale itself.

Frau Dunkel winked. “She is a very skinny cow at the moment. Still, she gives us a little milk. And someday soon we might even manage to pull together a cake or two, if we have something nice to celebrate.”

Her voice was gentle and low, and beyond her obvious interest in cake Ava found herself wondering whether Frau Dunkel ever sang lullabies. Her Oma had sung sometimes, at night: “Sleep Child Sleep” and “The Moon Is Risen.”…

An image drifted past, her grandmother’s white hair and little diamond drop earrings. Her quavering voice, a room papered with Ava’s pictures of princesses and castles. A wave of homesickness and longing washed over her so powerfully that for a moment she was unable to speak.

“Our Ina,” Frau Dunkel was continuing, “was a little older than you when she was taken from us last December.” From the corner of her eye, Ava saw the husband’s hand settle on his wife’s shoulder.

“For a long time we were very sad,” the woman went on. “But then we realized that there are so many wonderful children who have no parents now. And…”

“I also draw pictures of my mama,” Ava blurted.

Frau Dunkel blinked. “Your mama?”

“Yes,” said Ava. “And I’m not an orphan, because she isn’t dead. She’s going to come back for me soon.”

Frau Dunkel raised her brows, looking up at Sister Agnes, and Ava saw the nun’s chin set in annoyance. “Ava’s mother was in the Wartheland at the end of the war,” she said, as though in apology.

Frau Dunkel gave a nod. “Oh dear. I see.”

“But she’s coming back,” Ava insisted.

“Now, Ava. We’ve discussed this.” Sister Agnes’s voice was a tad too bright. “Given how much time has passed, it seems safe to assume…”

“She’s not dead!” It came out a shout, so shrilly and abruptly that the entire barracks fell silent at the sound.

“She’s not dead,” Ava repeated, her voice only slightly lowered. “And she wasn’t raped and left like a slab of meat in the snow.”

Behind her, she heard Sister Agnes gasp, while Frau Dunkel, still kneeling, flinched. As the nun’s hand clamped on her shoulder Ava’s heartbeat thrummed in her eardrums, so loudly that it almost drowned out the clunk-clunk-clunk of Kapit?n Ron’s big black boots marching toward them down the aisle.

“What is happening here, ladies?” he asked, in his slow, cowboy-sounding German. “Why the shouting, squirt?” Squirt was what he called Ava and the other, younger orphans. He said it meant little in English.

“It’s my fault.” Frau Dunkel climbed awkwardly to her feet, smoothing her floral skirt with two hands. “I upset her, I think.”

“Oh no.” Sister Agnes’s voice was as light and as calm as always, but her fingers conveyed another message, gripping Ava’s shoulder with steely strength. “Not at all. Ava knows better than to speak like that. In fact, I think Frau and Herr Dunkel deserve an apology.” She shook Ava lightly. “Don’t you agree, Ava?”

Ava stared at the floor, mute. She hated apologies, especially when she’d done nothing wrong. Her stomach felt like a clenched fist.

“Well?” said Kapit?n Ron. He sounded cross now, and when Ava hazarded a glimpse at him his hazel eyes were narrowed. “Say you’re sorry, squirt. These good people are just trying to help you.”

“Entschuldigung,” Ava muttered.

Sister Agnes shook her slightly. “Louder, please. And look up.”

Swallowing, Ava tilted her head back and looked up at Frau Dunkel’s thin face. The expression on it now fell somewhere between horror and pity, as though she’d just discovered that Ava had horns, or a hidden third leg. From behind her, Ava heard Maja snicker.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.



* * *





A half hour later she sat quietly, her hands folded in her lap and her eyes fixed on the Mother Mary statue perched just above Mother Superior’s white-winged head. Apart from the requisite Evening Devotion, Ava didn’t generally pray outside of Mass. It was clear to her by this point that if God existed, he was either deaf to or uninterested in her requests: that her grandparents and their house would return miraculously. That her mother would return from whatever mysterious, silent place she was now. That Maja would, like the cruel stepsisters in Aschensputtel, have her black eyes pecked out of her face by vengeful pigeons.