Anna hoists Trudie on her hip. What do you say to Frau Buchholtz? Anna prompts her.
Thank you, says the child, uncharacteristically dutiful.
Frau Buchholtz smiles and sticks out her tongue. Leaning from Anna’s arms, Trudie touches it with the tip of her own.
I hope she’s been no trouble, Anna says.
No, not at all, says Frau Buchholtz. As she guides Anna back through the hallway, the widow’s hands are again drawn to her decoration, caressing it.
And did you have a good journey? she asks.
Oh, yes, says Anna, brightly reeling out the tale she has rehearsed all the way from Berchtesgaden. My Tante Hilde was in fine spirits, though she complained about the lack of food. I thought in Leipzig one might be able to procure more rations, but apparently it’s the same as here. Too much to die, too little to live, as they say.
Frau Buchholtz shakes her head in commiseration.
Anna, knowing she is embroidering too much but helpless to stop, continues, And the train! A hellish journey. Though I was lucky to get a spot at all, since it’s all Wehrmacht these days. It would have been impossible with the child. I stood the entire time, crammed in with the others like sardines . . .
She trails off. It is peculiar: in the Obersturmführer ’s presence Anna lies with impunity; yet in front of this woman, she flushes. Does Frau Buchholtz, who has provided meat to Anna’s family for years, know that Anna has no Tante Hilde? Anna wonders how many others have seen the Obersturm-führer ’s car idling in front of the bakery. Frau Buchholtz continues to finger the Mother’s Cross. Her fidgeting suddenly irritates Anna beyond endurance. She stands as tall as she can and squares her jaw.
But when Frau Buchholtz, perhaps perplexed by Anna’s silence, looks directly at Anna for the first time, Anna understands that not only does the woman know, she is terrified. There is no condemnation in Frau Buchholtz’s glance, only the fear that Anna might have spied some infraction that she will certainly report, well connected as she is. Apparently disdain is a luxury, like sugar or real coffee, that one cannot afford in wartime.
Anna wonders what small crimes this good mother might have committed: trading on the black market, perhaps, to feed that multitude of hungry mouths, or listening to the BBC broadcasts. She puts a hand on the other woman’s arm. Frau Buchholtz’s flesh wobbles loosely from the bone, like chicken skin.
Thank you for watching Trudie, Anna says. There will be extra bread for you this week.
My pleasure, truly, Frau Buchholtz replies. She is again looking anywhere but at Anna. She opens the door, her relief at Anna’s imminent exit as palpable as sweat.
As Anna, feeling much the same, steps over the jamb, Trudie uncorks her thumb from her mouth.
Mama, she pipes, did you see Saint Nikolaus? What did he bring for us?
Shush, says Anna. If you’re a good quiet girl, you’ll get a story before bed.
I don’t want a story, insists the child. I want a rabbit. Saint Nikolaus said I could have a rabbit.
Quiet now, Anna says. Shhh.
She glances back at Frau Buchholtz, who has withdrawn into the shadowy interior of her shop. Though she can no longer see the butcher’s widow, Anna can feel her watching, listening.
Mama, let go, you’re hurting me, Trudie says, pushing against Anna. She drums her feet on Anna’s thighs.
I want Saint Nikolaus, she wails.
Anna presses the child’s face into her shoulder. She has often told herself that she is not so badly off, really. Men of power have had mistresses since time out of mind, and it doesn’t matter that none of the gaunt women who visit the bakery will look directly at Anna. At least she and Trudie are safe in a warm place with access to food, and she is earning her keep in ways both legal and illicit while at this very moment others are dead, dying, starving, having their eyeballs lanced and toenails pulled by the Gestapo, laboring with heavy machinery that crushes their fingers to nubs, standing naked in the rain, their children wrenched shrieking from their arms, being shorn, shot, tumbling into pits. It is really very enviable, Anna’s prosaic little arrangement with the Obersturmführer.
But Anna has overlooked something. She has not foreseen that his contamination of her would spread to the child.
Saint Nikolaus won’t come if you’re bad, she whispers to Trudie. Remember?
She embraces the girl more tightly. The door to the butcher shop slams behind them.
Trudy, February 1997
35
ONE MORNING IN MID-FEBRUARY TRUDY JERKS AWAKE TO FIND the reek of meat and something more acrid filling her room. Anna, she thinks. Anna is at it again, up since dawn, cooking and cleaning. Today, from the smell of it, Anna has fried sausages and is now wiping down the windows with vinegar, which she insists is more effective on glass than store-bought solutions. Trudy pulls the sheets over her face and lies quietly, waiting for her dream to release her. It is dissolving now in the matter-of-fact light of day, but a shard remains: Anna standing in the bakery storefront, polishing—how strange, Trudy thinks—a boot sitting atop the display case, her eyes dark as they always are when she is wary or sorrowful.
After a time Trudy swings her legs over the side of the mattress and sits up, blinking dully at nothing, stomach roiling from the smell wafting up the stairs. To the outside observer, it might seem that this arrangement of having Anna in the house isn’t so bad. Anna has taken great pains to stay out of Trudy’s way. She goes for walks each afternoon, trudging a determined circuit around Lake Harriet even in the most dismal weather. Sometimes she makes longer trips and returns with groceries for dinner, purchased with her widow’s pension checks. And she keeps to herself when Trudy is home, sequestered in her room most of the time, reading or looking out the window or listening to the small radio Trudy has bought her. Passing with an armful of laundry or en route to her own bedroom, Trudy hears nothing from behind Anna’s door but the constant, mellifluous murmur of the announcers on MPR.
Yet if Anna has rendered herself largely invisible, her presence is felt in other ways. The odors of the cooking and cleaning she does when Trudy is out, for instance: they pervade the house like a contagion, subtle and stealthy as gas, and Trudy is often mortified to find, once in the open air, that they have contaminated her hair and clothes too. She now reflects with weary resignation that, given how Anna has infiltrated her home, it is little surprise she should have invaded Trudy’s dreams as well.
But there is nothing to be done about it, since the local nursing homes are all still full—which puzzles Trudy; aren’t the elderly more prone to going to their Great Reward during this dreary winter season? She gets up, makes the bed, dresses, and washes her face in a bathroom so strongly redolent of bleach that she succumbs to a sneezing fit. She has no time for a shower, much as she longs for one; she is running late, slated to meet Thomas in half an hour for an interview. And she has a class to teach after that. But Trudy is in dire need of coffee, so she runs down to the kitchen and starts rummaging through the cupboards. Of course, the canister is not in its usual place on the shelf. Anna, of the firm opinion that too much caffeine erodes the intestines, has hidden it somewhere and replaced it, rather pointedly, with a box of chamomile tea.
Trudy searches the lower cabinets—this being where Anna concealed the coffee last week—and bangs her head in the process. Ow, she mutters, standing and casting a baleful eye at the sausages, which lie fatly in congealed grease on the stove.
Mama, she yells. Where did you put the coffee?
When there is no answer, Trudy bangs through the swinging door into the dining room. No Anna there. Nor in the living room. Has she already gone for her walk? But Anna’s boots are neatly aligned on a rectangle of newspaper near the coat closet, toes facing the wall.
Trudy checks the pantry, the downstairs bathroom. Where is she?
Mama? she calls.
She cocks her head, listening. There are voices, but they are coming from the wrong direction. Trudy marches down the hall to her s
tudy.
Ah ha, she says, flinging open the door.
Anna jumps, flustered and guilty. She is holding a can of Pledge and a rag—one of Trudy’s favorite T-shirts, Trudy sees, scissored into a square—with which she has been ostensibly dusting Trudy’s desk. And perhaps Anna did start out doing this, for Trudy’s books have been piled on the carpet, and the leather blotter is streaked with cleaning fluid, and the air is syrupy with synthetic lemon. But somewhere along the way Anna has gotten distracted, and then curious enough to brave the complicated mechanism of the VCR, for behind her on the television RoseGrete is reciting the tale of her encounter with the Einsatzgruppen.
Trudy is astonished.
What are you doing, Mama? she asks, so flabbergasted that she can think of nothing else to say.
Anna fumbles for the remote control, pointing it toward the set and pressing buttons and shaking it when nothing happens.
Here, let me, says Trudy, and takes it from her. She hits Pause, and Rose-Grete freezes in the midst of saying, And the officer turned to Rebecca and shot her, and some other women too.
Anna gives Trudy a sheepish look.
I am sorry, Trudy, she says. I know I am not meant to be in here. I was just—
Cleaning? says Trudy.
Anna tucks the rag into a pocket with trembling little jabs. Trudy watches her, heart pounding, her mind suddenly crystal sharp. She would never in a million years have anticipated this opportunity, and now that it is here she is not going to let it pass. But she must be very careful; she must approach Anna with as much caution as any hunter who has sighted unexpected prize prey at a watering hole.
She kneels and makes a show of going through the books on the floor for her portfolio.
So you’ve seen one of my subjects, she says. What do you think?
Subjects? Anna repeats.
Trudy extracts the binder from the middle of the stack.
For my Project, she explains. I’m interviewing Germans of your generation as to what they did during the war. And how they feel about it now. Here are the questions—you see?
She opens the portfolio and holds it out to show Anna the list penned on the legal pad.
Anna takes a step backward and bumps up against the desk.
This Project is for your class? she asks.
No, it was my own idea. I put up flyers and ran newspaper ads, and all these people came forth to tell their stories. It’s amazing, how many of them want to talk about it.
She smiles at Anna and slides the binder into her briefcase.
You know, she adds, as if the thought had just occurred to her, maybe you’d like to do it too.
Anna glances at Rose-Grete and lifts a hand to her throat.
Me? she says. Oh, no. I could never.
Why, sure you could, Mama, Trudy says, standing. It would be good for you. So many people tell me what a relief it is to finally talk about what happened back then. It’s cleansing, they say, like confession.
This is not strictly the case; in fact, Trudy can only guess as to her subjects’ motives. Yet she suspects that for some of them—Rose-Grete, for one—this may be true.
But Anna is shaking her head.
Such a thing is not for me, Trudy, she says. I have nothing to say.
Oh, but I think you do, Mama, says Trudy. I think you have a lot to say.
She takes a small breath.
About the officer, for instance, she adds softly.
Anna is dead quiet. Trudy steals a glance at her. She has gone bright pink but for the white area around her flaring nostrils, which stands out like a rash.
I do not know what you mean, she says.
Trudy fights to appear neutral, but she feels her eyebrows rising.
Don’t you? she asks.
Nein. I have not the slightest idea.
The two women lock stares. Trudy’s eyes narrow. Anna is kneading the belt of the apron, but her chin is high. Neither will look away.
Then Trudy’s watch beeps, signaling the turn of the hour. She swears silently.
She makes one last effort.
Please, Mama, she says. I know you know what I’m talking about. Please tell me about him. It would mean the world to me.
But the opportunity has passed, if ever there was one, for Anna turns to run a hand over the blotter, then frowns at her palm as if it had come up black with grime.
There is nothing to tell, she says.
Trudy bites her lip and bends to pick up her briefcase.
All right, Mama, she says. You win for now. I have to go. But please. Think about what I’ve said.
She leaves Anna in the study and hurries through the house to the front closet, where she pulls on quilted vest and coat and hat and scarf and gloves. It will be such a relief—though it is impossible to believe that such a day will ever come—when Trudy can venture outside without feeling as though she is girding up for battle. And these preparations are doubly uncomfortable at the moment, since Trudy is as hot as if with fever. She has some difficulty with her boots. She is shaking all over.
A noise—the crack of a floorboard—makes her look toward the study.
Mama? Trudy calls, abruptly and absurdly hopeful: maybe Anna has changed her mind.
But of course she has not. Trudy yanks savagely on her laces, snapping one. She thinks of Anna creeping about the house in her absence and feels the burn of angry tears behind her eyes. Yet she is really more irritated with herself than Anna, for she has wasted this chance given to her. She has tried to crack her most important subject, and she has failed.
For a moment Trudy considers abandoning her interview and returning to the study and making another attempt. But her work ethic won’t permit it. And she is so very late. Trying to remember the subject’s name—Ralph? Rolf? Rudolph? something along those lines—Trudy steps out onto the porch and has to grab the railing to keep from falling on her tailbone. The world has been transformed overnight into an ice rink. The sidewalks are sheeted with it; stalactites hang from branches and dangerously low telephone wires; the road is a blinding plane. Shielding her eyes against the glare, Trudy skates down the walk to her car only to find that its doors are frozen shut. She will have to force the trunk and climb in through the hatchback. Which means another fifteen minutes lost, at least.
Trudy kicks the solid chunk of snow in the rear tire well and yelps in pain. Then, clutching at the hedge as she pulls herself along, she scuffs back toward the house for a screwdriver with which to break into her own car. The morning has gotten off to a fine start.
36
THE SUBJECT’S HOUSE IS IN TANGLEWOOD, A NEIGHBORhood about fifteen blocks from Trudy’s own, and by the time Trudy pulls up in front of it, her car has thawed enough that she is spared the embarrassment of exiting the same way she got in. Trudy glances at the dashboard clock as she cuts the engine: twenty minutes late. Not good, but it could be worse. Indeed, considering how treacherous the roads are—radio announcers imploring people to stay home if they don’t have to drive, accidents at nearly every intersection—it is something of a miracle, Trudy thinks, that she is here at all.
Thomas’s white van is at the curb, and Trudy sees that he has already loaded his equipment and is waiting for her. She makes her way toward him as quickly as she can, which isn’t very fast given the ice and the fact that her snapped lace forces her to do a clumsy shuffle just to keep the wretched boot on her foot. Trudy rolls her eyes and throws out her arms in a pantomime of haplessness, mistaking Thomas’s grimace for a suppressed grin at the sorry picture she presents.
But when she reaches him, slipping a little, Thomas grips her elbow both to stabilize her and to draw her behind the truck where they can’t be seen from the subject’s house. His round face is set in lines of uncharacteristic anxiety.
Whoa, he says, steady there. You all right?
Well, it’s been a hectic morning, as you can tell, but I’m fine. What’s the matter?
Maybe nothing, Thomas says, adjusting his bandanna.
Maybe it’s just me. Still . . .
What?
Thomas lowers his voice, although the subject cannot possibly hear him from here.
I think you might have some trouble handling this guy, he says. He seems a bit . . . angry.
Trudy glances automatically over her shoulder and sees only the truck blocking the house from view. This will not be her first male subject; there was a Mr. Pohl, a butcher exempted from fighting in the Wehrmacht because of a hand lost to a cleaver. And some of her subjects, of course, have been difficult. But . . .
Angry? she asks. Angry how? Because I’m late?
Thomas nods.
He’s come out four times to ask where you were. Look, I’ll show you.
The pair edge around the truck. Sure enough, the subject pops out onto his porch and stands with his arms crossed, breath chuffing in the frosty air.
See? says Thomas from the side of his mouth.
He points to Trudy.
She made it, he yells. She had trouble with the ice. We’ll be right in.
Trudy waves and smiles at the man, then turns and rubs her eyes.
Wunderbar, she mutters. This is all I need.
Thomas glances down at her with concern.
Are you sure you’re up to this? You look a little . . .
He trails off tactfully, and Trudy laughs.
I know how I look, Thomas. Thank you for being too polite to say it. No, let’s do it. If— Oh God, what’s this guy’s name again?
Goldmann, says Thomas.
That’s it, Goldmann. It completely slipped my mind...Well, we’ve kept Mr. Goldmann waiting long enough, don’t you think? Let’s get started.
Yes ma’am, Thomas says.
The two of them pick their way up the icy path to the house. Mr. Goldmann has disappeared inside but left the door open a crack, which Trudy interprets as an invitation to enter. She walks tentatively into the foyer and stops there, disoriented; after the glitter outside, she is blind as a mole.