Those Who Save Us (11 page)

13

GINGER.

Yes, ginger, Anna. Fresh if you can get it, but I’ve found candied ginger to be effective too.

Why are you giving the poor child such useless advice? Ginger is for morning sickness, and Fräulein Brandt is obviously well past that stage.

But it also eases heartburn, Hilde—

Besides, where do you expect her to find ginger nowadays? It’s hard enough to get the essentials, what with the rations they allow us!

Shhhhh, Hilde, watch yourself. You’ve always been too outspoken for your own good—

Pssht.

Garlic, then. Or onions. Those you can still get, and they’ll clean your blood, increase your stamina—Which you’ll need for the birth, Fräulein Brandt, especially with the first child—hoo hoo!

(Ssst! No need to frighten her more than she already must be, poor thing.) Yes, onions, Anna—

Onions, yes—

Onions. And raspberry leaf tea, to increase and sweeten your milk.

Yes, raspberry leaf tea.

Anna, wrapping and ringing up purchases at the register, smiles politely. These fragments of advice sound to her much like the endless propaganda from the bakery’s radio, which Mathilde calls the Goebbels’ Snout; the women’s solicitude seems as ersatz as the coffee they must all drink now, brewed from beechnuts and tasting to Anna of pencil shavings.

She hands a loaf of black bread to Monika Allendorf, who takes it without letting her fingertips touch Anna’s own. As girls, Anna and Monika were particular friends, arms slung around each other’s waists in the schoolyard. They were merciless, Anna recalls, in their pursuit of a boy named Geoff, with whom they were both infatuated; they circled the poor thing on their bicycles, chanting, Chicken Legs,
yoo-hoo,
Chicken Legs! Now Monika has a skinny boy of her own. She flashes Anna an over-bright smile.

Can I get anyone something else? Anna asks, sliding her hands to the small of her back. Because if not, I think we’re going to close a little early.

No, no, we’re all settled. Thank you.

You get some rest. That’s the most important thing.

Yes, rest, Anna. It shouldn’t be long now?

Another month, Anna says.

That long! I’d expect it to be tomorrow. Not that you don’t look the picture of health—

Yes, you’re positively glowing with it. You’ll have no trouble, no trouble at all, a young healthy girl like you.

As the women leave, Anna follows them to the door to lock up. She is indeed exhausted; the fantasies that once featured Max now center around sleep, endless sleep on a soft bed. But at night, rest eludes her. She hoists her nightgown to stare in horrified fascination at her belly, which seems an entity quite separate from herself, as round and hard as a moon. By day, dressed and draped in an apron, she is as large as Mathilde.

Anna throws the bolt and draws the lace curtains across the bakery’s storefront window; the blackout shade will be pulled later. Thus concealed from view, she lingers in the chilly zone of air near the pane. As she suspected they would, the women have congregated in a loose knot on the street. Their faint voices reach her through the glass.

I always thought Mathilde Staudt a kind woman, but to work that poor girl so hard in her eighth month—

Come now, don’t bad-mouth Mathilde. Who else would take her in? Would you, Bettina?

I don’t care what you say, I never saw a pregnant woman look more peaked. Anyone can see she’s inches away from collapse.

She wouldn’t be if she’d get the proper rest. The way Mathilde works her is a sin.

Sin, ha! That’s an appropriate word, isn’t it, considering the way this baby was conceived!

For shame, Monika. I’m surprised at you. I thought you were her friend.

Well, I was, but— That was a long time ago, when I was just a girl. How could I have known what kind of person she is?

But it’s not Anna’s fault, you know that. She couldn’t help what happened to her.

Don’t tell me you believe that fish story Frau Staudt fed us.

Well, I . . . Not really.

Nor I.

I certainly don’t.

However you want to look at it, it’s broken her father’s heart, I can tell you that much. Did you know he’s left town?

No!

No.

Yes, I did hear something along those lines—

It’s true. The last time Grete Hortschaft went out there to clean his house, she found it locked up and dark. And have you seen him going into his office lately?

Well, no, now that you mention it . . .

I heard he’s gone to Berlin, to act as legal counsel to the Reich. Drowning his sorrows in his work, I’ll wager.

Pah! Herr Brandt’s not that sentimental a fellow. He’s escaping the scandal, that’s all.

Well, whatever way you want to look at it, it’s destroyed him in Weimar.

Poor man.

Poor fellow...

The flock moves off down the street, dawdling, heads together.

Anna turns from the window, her mouth crimped in a wry smile. She has known all along that there must be some reason why Gerhard hasn’t come in search of her; how could he relinquish his handmaid, his valet and laundress, his personal chef ? So he has gone away, has he? Whether he has fled to Berlin or some other city, Anna knows that Bettina Borschert has come closest to the truth: Gerhard is hardly heartbroken. Either his sycophancy has finally secured him a better position or he is escaping arrest on charges of abetting race defilement. In any case, he is saving his own skin.

But there is one thing Anna doesn’t know. She carries the trays from the display case into the kitchen, where Mathilde is wrapping unsold goods in brown paper and marking reduced prices on them for the next day. Anna drops the sheets of metal in the sink with a resounding clang, but the baker doesn’t look up.

Anna scrubs the trays and stacks them in their racks, then rinses her mouth with water. Recently she has been plagued by a bad taste, like rancid butter coating the tongue, although she hasn’t had any real butter, spoiled or otherwise, for over a year. She clears her throat, but the fatty flavor persists. Nothing will get rid of it.

Mathilde, she says, bracing her tired back against the sink. What have you told people about this baby?

The baker scribbles more busily than ever.

What do you mean? she asks, glancing at Anna with eyes so wide that Anna can see the whites all around the pupils.

Anna can’t help snorting.

You’d better hope the SS never catch you and interrogate you, she says. You’re a poor liar. You know what I mean. Who do they think the father is?

You shouldn’t be listening to idle gossip, Mathilde tells her primly. It’ll poison your milk.

She packs the markdowns in the icebox, then looks at Anna over one shoulder.

All right, you want the story?

Given that crafty expression on your face, I’m not so sure—

Mathilde lumbers over and grasps Anna’s arm.

Poor Anna, she says, in a hoarse stage-whisper. Raped by a drifter, an a-social, during her morning walk! Dragged into the bushes behind the church! But thank God for the SS. They caught the bastard double-quick and put him in the camp, where they—
zzzzsht!

Mathilde draws a finger across her throat.

And too good for him, too, she finishes, slapping her hands together.

The baby aims a kick at Anna’s navel, as if in protest at this absurd tale. Anna silently agrees. She doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Couldn’t you have come up with something a little more seemly? she asks. A soldier, for instance, killed in battle?

Mathilde turns away, her jowls quivering with obvious affront.

It’s good enough, she snaps. It distracts them from the truth, doesn’t it? All right, back to work. We need a big batch of dough, enough for fifty loaves. I’m making a run to the camp tomorrow. You take care of that and I’ll start on the pastries.

Why must I always make bread while you decorate cakes?

Mathilde scowls.

Because you’re not yet experienced enough, she retorts.

Recognizing the futility of resistance, Anna gathers the ingredients for bread: flour, yeast, water in massive quantities. She bangs an enormous mixing bowl on the worktable. Inexperienced! As if she were incapable of laying a lattice for
Linzertorte,
something any child could do! But Mathilde is right, in a fashion; nothing in Anna’s years of tending to Gerhard have prepared her for this sort of labor. She rises before dawn to feed the mammoth oven its coal briquettes, dragging each pail up the steps, encumbered by her own distended body. She stokes the fire throughout the day, stocks the display case, waits on the customers, washes the trays and pans and mops the floor. She has kneaded enough bread, lifted enough loaves from the oven, to feed the entire
Wehrmacht.
Her fingertips have cracked and split from the dryness of flour. The drudgery is endless, endless.

Too much flour, Mathilde says from behind her.

Anna dips her hands in the water bowl and flings droplets onto the dough.

Shit! Not so much!

I know how to make bread, Anna mutters.

What did you say?

Anna bites the inside of her cheek to keep from replying. Because of her stomach, she must stand a meter away from the table; her outstretched arms throb as she slaps the dough into shape. Tonight, she knows, they will thrum as if the tendons in them have been electrified. The baby drums its heels against her ribs.

How long are you going to knead that? For God’s sake, you stupid girl, it’ll be tough as leather.

Without forethought, Anna whirls and heaves the dough at Mathilde. The heavy mass catches the baker squarely in the chest, and she emits a startled
Uff!
The bread thuds to the floor, and Anna thinks glumly that Mathilde was right again: from the sound of it, the finished product would have been much too dense.

She sinks onto a stool, waiting for the inevitable scolding. The dough, of course, is now useless, and in a time when they must cobble together even the smallest scraps of pastry to form crusts for tortes, the wasting of any ingredient whatsoever is the blackest of sins. But the baker remains as uncharacteristically silent as the child, who stops moving and drags at Anna’s belly like a stone.

The consensus of the Weimarian women, from the way Anna is carrying, is that the child will be a boy. But Anna already knows this without the old wives’ tales, without the wedding rings dangled on strings in front of her belly. She has so often envisioned Max’s son. At night, Anna holds the baby’s image before her in the cellar, adding and subtracting features, discussing them with its absent father. What a sad specimen we’ve created, Max, she tells him; with our blue eyes and pale skin, he’ll look anemic, poor thing, especially in winter. And he’ll probably have your skinny ankles to boot. I’ll have to give him a strong name, then, something sturdy to compensate: Wolfgang, Hans, Günter—yes, Günter. Wishing she could shift on her back, her stomach, to entice sleep, Anna thinks that Max was wrong. Loneliness isn’t corrosive. It is eviscerating.

Now, bending with difficulty, Anna retrieves the dough from the floor and sets it on the worktable. She begins working at it, punishing it, pummeling it. Then Mathilde catches her arms, trapping them at her sides.

Shhh, the baker says. Shhh. Stop. That’s enough now. It’s all right.

She enfolds Anna in a floury embrace. At first Anna pushes against her, weary of pity, but after a minute she droops against Mathilde’s bosom, which is so large that she seems to have only one breast rather than two, like a bedroll. The baker smells of yeast, cigarettes, perspiration, and, faintly, of unwashed feet.

When Mathilde releases her, Anna reaches for her sleeve.

I’m frightened, she tries to say; so frightened that I can’t sleep, so angry I could kill—

But all she can manage is, I’m— I’m—

Mathilde gazes at the floor, as if ashamed of her spontaneous show of affection and, perhaps, her inexperience in the business of comfort. Then she settles a tentative hand on Anna’s hair.

I know, she says.

14

ONE NIGHT IN NOVEMBER, ANNA HAS A VIVID DREAM. Unlike Mathilde, who recounts each of her own in relentless detail, Anna is not given to dreams. She can’t remember a single one from all her twenty years. She doesn’t know whether she is unusual in this respect; she has simply never given it any thought, and therefore this unexpected vision etches itself in her mind with remarkable clarity, so that, when she recalls it later, it is as if she is reliving something that actually happened.

In the dream, she is standing in the vestibule of the Catholic church she attended as a child, waiting to be married. The women of Weimar brush her cheeks with their own, murmuring compliments and blessings before passing through the arched doorway to be seated, but none of them looks straight at Anna. Anna knows that this skittishness stems from the fact that her dress is pink, as garish a color as the frosting on the petits fours delivered to the camp for the SS Comradeship Evenings. She is also hugely pregnant, a giant ripe strawberry in satin and tulle.

Edging behind the doorway, Anna peers into the church. She is late; she has been standing here for some time, her entrance delayed for no fathomable reason, and the vaulted space echoes with whispered speculations as to where she is. Every pew is full. People Anna has known since childhood are scattered among SS officers and the Buchenwald prisoners in their striped rags, their shaved heads gleaming dully in the light of the tapers. Ignoring them all, remaining half-concealed, Anna cranes until she spots Max, standing by the altar.

He waits calmly in a dark suit, his profile turned to her, his hands clasped behind him like a headwaiter or a diplomat. His hair has grown too long and it curls over his high collar. The congregation’s agitation increases, but nobody thinks to turn in Anna’s direction except Max, who does, and suddenly, as if Anna has called to him. He quirks his eyebrows over the rims of his spectacles and sends her a small half-smile. Anna makes no move to go to him, nor he to her; they are content merely to look at one another, and she feels across the rows of rustling people his serene, wordless reassurance that all will be well.

In the world of real things, their child, a girl, is born the following day, the eleventh of November 1940, after fifteen hours of labor. Anna, unequipped with female names, seizes on the first that comes to mind, one that, like those she has chosen for a son, is serviceable rather than pleasing to the ear, selected for strength rather than grace. She bestows upon the squalling infant the name Gertrud Charlotte Brandt, but within days of her daughter’s birth, Anna adopts Mathilde’s habit of calling the child Trudie. Despite Mathilde’s fears about the baby’s immortal soul, Anna refuses to bring her to church to be baptized. She is done with churches. The two women perform the rite themselves, in an impromptu ceremony in the bakery’s kitchen sink.