Motherland (16 page)

Her anxiety skyrocketed when the doorbell rang, and she had to ball her hands in Susi’s pockets to hide their shaking. Dr. Becker was right on time; he was professional and polite, with a clean soap smell. She could imagine Frank inviting a fellow like him over for dinner, and he would be a tidy eater, and, after the meal, sing folk songs with them in his clear tenor. She told herself there was nothing the matter with Dr. Becker, but she still found herself staring with disgust at the little curling hairs at the back of his head as he walked up the stairs before her.

“His baby brother just got over a fever,” she said.

“But Anselm’s temperature is normal?” He glanced back at her.

She flushed at his scrutiny. “Mostly normal.”

His eyelids dipped slightly.

“I haven’t taken it today,” she said, and they proceeded in silence down the cluttered hall to Ani’s room.

Dr. Becker had the same headlamp as Frank, and before he even sat down to examine Ani, he pulled it dramatically from his bag and let the boy switch it on and off. When Ani stuck it on his own head and peered up, Dr. Becker gave a tiny smile, though he must have seen hundreds of children do the same trick. Liesl smiled, too.

“Ani,” she said. “Tell the doctor what’s bothering you.”

“My stomach hurts sometimes,” said the boy, handing back the headlamp.

“He took a dislike to my friend’s cooking,” she said.

“Anything else?” the doctor said to Ani.

“No,” said Ani. Then he added in a smaller voice, “I just keep falling down, but most of the time it’s when I’m sleeping.”

“You keep falling down,” the doctor repeated, his voice rising slightly.

The boy was sitting in a square of light from the window. It made his hair shine, but his skin looked bruised and pale. “I have bad dreams all the time,” said Ani. “I fall on people who are falling on other people in
a big hole, and no one can get out because the soldiers have guns and the houses are burning behind us.”

“You didn’t tell me that,” said Liesl. Was he dreaming about the refugees?

He raised his face to her, his brow pinched. “Hans says I’m a baby if I cry about bad dreams.”

Her collar felt tight on her throat.
“Ach
, Ani, don’t listen to your brother. You come to me if you’re scared.”

Something went dark in Ani’s eyes.

“And sometimes when you’re awake, you also fall?” persisted Dr. Becker.

The boy shrugged.

“What else is wrong, Anselm?” said the doctor.

The boy shrugged again, his gaze on his knees. He wouldn’t say anything more, so Liesl had to supply the answers to Dr. Becker’s questions about food and bowel movements and how many hours Ani slept, but the boy’s bowed head made it seem as if she had silenced him. That there was another truth lurking, waiting to be found. She ground her fingernails into her palms while the doctor’s stethoscope roved Ani’s chest and back, as he checked the boy’s eyes and ears. One part of her was certain the man would find nothing, and another expected the worst: some terrible cancer or blood problem that would devastate them all.

The room was bare except for the boys’ beds, the deceased Frau Geiss’s paintings of the sailing boys on the wall. The floor looked scratched and dull, and she wondered when she’d find the time to polish it smooth. Tomorrow it would become their living room.

Finally the doctor nodded and packed his tools back in his black leather bag. He motioned for Liesl to follow him into the hall and closed the door. He was going to tell her something awful. She could see it in his shoulders, the way they humped in his gray coat.

“His brother’s fever only lasted a few days,” she said to his back. “But he didn’t have any appetite, either.”

Dr. Becker halted. “You keep mentioning the baby. Do you need me to examine him, too?”

“No. No, he’s better now.”

The doctor regarded her with his keen brown eyes.

“Truthfully,” she said. “You can see him if you want.”

Dr. Becker did not let his gaze falter. “Anselm looks malnourished,” he said.

Heat surged up Liesl’s neck. “I feed them good, hearty meals,” she retorted.

“Maybe he’s not eating them.”

“He eats! They all eat! They’d eat the plates and silver if I let them,” she snapped. The doctor didn’t respond. She put her hand to her eyes, pressing her tear ducts with her forefinger and thumb. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I don’t sleep well.”

From upstairs came a clang, then a grating sound. The man from the housing office was trying to install a stove in her and Frank’s old bedroom. She opened her eyes and tried to smile. “You can see how difficult it is,” she said. Clang, grate, clang. Her skull rang with the sound. “Sometimes it’s too much,” she added, and her voice sounded frightened.

Dr. Becker’s eyes narrowed. “Of course.”

“But then I always tell myself, tomorrow will be better!” she said.

“Sometimes children . . .” he paused. “I see all kinds of things these days. Have you ever caught him eating something other than food?”

“Of course not.” She tried to joke, “Unless you count my friend’s cooking.”

“How long has your friend been cooking?”

“Just a week.”

Jürgen’s cry echoed from downstairs. He was in their old living room with Uta and Hans and eleven pieces of furniture. They couldn’t move it all upstairs, but she couldn’t decide what to keep.

“Anselm has been hungry longer than a week, by looks of it,” said Dr. Becker. She staggered as he pulled her by the shoulder away from the bedroom door. “I’d have a good look around.” His voice wormed into her ear. “See if you find anything in the house that’s open. Soaps or paints. If you find something, let me know immediately. I think he’s hiding something.”

She stepped away, her mouth twisting into a smile. Imagine Ani hiding something!

“But couldn’t he have what the baby had?” she said. “Just worse because he’s older?”

“Their symptoms don’t match,” Dr. Becker said. He reached for his black bag.

Clang, clang, and then something heavy grinding in the grit of the floor.

“Maybe it’s another illness,” she said, faltering at his gaze.

He shook his head. “I find that a doctor’s visit is quite a curative in situations like this,” he added cheerfully. “Visit me again Friday if he doesn’t improve.” He began walking toward the stairs.

“But—” she said.

Wood scraped the landing below. It was Hans, pushing a cherry nightstand. “What are you doing?” she said.

“I’m taking it to the cellar.”

“The damp will rot it,” she said.

“Where else am I supposed to put it?” said Hans, blinking his too-long hair from his eyes.

Bang, thump.

“Good day, then,” said Dr. Becker, reaching the stairs.

She heard her high voice expressing how grateful she was that he’d made a house visit. She rushed to the banister and held on to his coat, with just her thumb and fingertip, the way staff guided guests at the spa who got too drunk and rowdy. It was the kind of touch that signalled
deference and respect, and she wished he would respond to it, would understand that he’d gotten it all wrong, the hunger was not
in
the house, the hunger had come from outside, from the plane-filled skies, from the burning
Rathäuser
, from the widows and orphans crawling all over Germany with their carts and rags.

“Ani wouldn’t lie to me,” she said over the banging.

Dr. Becker looked at her hand and gently shook it off. “I’m afraid we don’t know that,” he said.

Ani was sitting in the pool of light, holding one of his planes. She sat down next to him, suddenly terrified of the crook in his spine, of the bones that popped from his wrists.

“I’m not sick, am I?” he said.

She drew him to her, her skin shrinking the slightest bit when they touched.

“Not really sick,” she said. “But the doctor asked you some important questions.”

He nodded into her elbow.

“Did you tell him the truth?”

There was a pause and he nodded again.

“You haven’t put anything funny in your mouth?”

“No.”

“Have you been hungry?” Her voice shook.

He was silent.

“Ani.”

“I’m not hungry.” He sounded patient, as though he was spelling out a word for her.

She ran her hands over his shoulders. His warm breath gusted through her sleeve.

“Soap doesn’t taste very good, does it?” she said in a light voice. “It looks good sometimes, but it doesn’t taste good at all.”

Ani pulled away from her. “I don’t eat soap.”

“What about anything . . . different? Something you picked up outside?”

He shook his head.

“Are you having bad dreams about the refugees?”

“I’m tired of questions,” Ani said.

There was a loud crash upstairs. Liesl ducked. Ani covered his ears.

“They’re coming,” he whispered, his eyes focused on empty space. “Watch out.
Hide.”

“Ani,” she said.

“Hide,”
he said again, and made the noise of an explosion.

She pried his right hand from the side of his head.

“Ani. I want you to wake me if you have any more bad dreams.”

He rolled away from her, his palms cupped back to his skull. “Shhh. Stop crying. They’ll hear us,” he pleaded in a desolate voice.

Above his head, the children in the paintings sailed on blue water. She smoothed her skirt over her knees and stood, her joints groaning. She felt suddenly old, older than the sleepless night of her first air raid, older than the night Frank left for Weimar. She would have to tell Frank, but how? How could she explain what was happening to Ani? The tendons in her fingers throbbed as she turned the doorknob and let herself silently out.

The next day Liesl sent Hans to the spa to beg one of her old friends on the kitchen staff for some special treats for Ani. Hans came back with a package wrapped in newsprint and a cake box.

“What’s in here?” Liesl asked, taking the box from Hans. It felt light, as if there was hardly more than a single slice of cake inside.

“That’s
Rouladen,”
Hans said, thunking the package on the table. The juice from the beef and bacon rolls had leaked through the newspaper onto his fingers and he licked them slowly, attentive as a cat, as Liesl cut the string on the cake box. The rising scents of the meat made her woozy. Malnourished! Ani would soon be eating the richest meal in Hannesburg.

She lifted the box lid and cried aloud. Inside sat a golden ring, dusted with sugar: a miniature
Gugelhopf
cake. It looked almost too perfect to eat, and it was so small, barely enough for each of them to have a couple bites.

Uta leaned in, inhaling. “It’s positively 1939,” she said. “Remember how we lived on cake and cream that summer?”

Liesl blushed as the boys’ eyes turned on her. She had spent most of that summer alternating between homesickness and euphoria, grateful for her job at the
Kinderhaus
and certain she would mess it up.

“All those cherry tortes?” said Uta. “The almond fingers?”

Liesl shook her head, perplexed by her friend’s nostalgia. That morning, Uta had wanted to go to the spa with Hans, to visit her old friends.

I though you were hiding
, Liesl had said.

Uta had frowned.
No, you’re right. You’re right
. But the decision had put her in a blue mood all day, as if Liesl had imprisoned her. Lately Uta had stopped talking altogether about staying or going.

“I don’t remember,” Liesl said aloud.

“I suppose you were too busy knitting scarves for soldiers,” Uta said now. She turned to the boys. “Your stepmother must have saved the frostbitten chins of an entire panzer regiment.”

“Let’s cut some slices,” Liesl said, and doled out the tiny pieces.

She watched Ani’s long-lashed lids tremble at the surprising richness. He set his fork down after half a bite. His slice had a curved gouge in its middle.

“Look, a smile,” he said, showing it to Liesl.

“Eat the smile, too,” she said, watching the sugar glisten in the light.

He frowned. “If I eat it, it will be gone.”

“Actually, it will be inside you,” said Liesl, her voice falsely bright. “Please eat it.”

Hans shoved his last bite in his mouth and chewed.

“Just eat it, Ani,” he said, spewing crumbs.

“I can’t,” Ani said. He pushed the plate away. His chin dropped to his chest, and his shoulders pinched inward, as if he were trying to make himself smaller. “I’m full.”

“I’m not.” Hans reached across the table, fork lifted. Ani kept his head bowed.

“Not quite 1939, but close,” Uta said, pushing her own plate away. “It used to be sweeter.”

The older boy’s fork kept descending.

“Hans,” Liesl said in a warning tone. “That’s your brother’s slice. You had yours.”