Read Online Home Leave: A Novel by Brittani Sonnenberg - Free Book Online

is strange. She is—how do you say it—suspicious? No: superstitious. Believing in spirits, connections. Ever since Frau Kriegstein dies, she is getting crazier, the way old people do—my aunt was the same. Talking to the plants, talking to her dead daughter, telling the little boy ghost stories. He believes her, of course. Such people should be in an Altenheim , not out on the street, giving letters to strangers. But she is not from around here,” she finishes, and shrugs, as though that explains everything.
    The woman returns to the letter. “Ah, wait—this is beautiful. Großartig. Listen,” she commands, as though Elise were her student. “Liesel’s mother quotes here a poem by Rilke: ‘ Sei allem Abschied voran, als wäre er hinter Dir, wie der Winter, der eben geht— ’”
    Elise is unwilling to admit that not a word of this makes sense to her, but the woman is already translating, in her pedantic tone. “It means something like ‘Be in front of all separating, as if it is already behind you.’” She pauses, searching for the English words. “Like the winter, which is leaving.”
    Elise nods politely and the woman continues reading. “ Denn unter Wintern ist einer so endlos Winter, daß überwinternd, dein Herz überhaupt übersteht. ” She frowns, struggling with the translation: “For under winter—is a winter so long lasting—that…” She sighs and gives up. “I don’t know. Too complicated. Something with winter and überstehen …surviving.”
    “A good poem for a greenhouse,” Elise interrupts, feeling witty.
    “Where are you from?” the woman asks abruptly.
    “America,” Elise says.
    “Ha! Hollywood!” the woman shrills.
    As Elise is trying to find a subtle way out of the conversation, the woman removes scissors from her pocket and heads to a trellis smothered in honeysuckle vine, which Elise has not seen until now. The woman clips a short piece of the vine, with six pale, buttery blossoms, and hands it to Elise. “From your Heimat , oder ?” she asks, smiling unnervingly. “I can smell it on you.”
    “Thank you,” Elise says, frightened now, but clutching the honeysuckle (a shade lighter than the one that grows in Vidalia, in the Eberts’ backyard, close to the ravine) as though it were her plane ticket home. She holds out her other hand. “Can I have the letter to Liesel, please, so I can give it back to them?”
    “Oh no,” the woman says, nonchalantly. “I keep it.”
    “But—”
    “It is none of your business!” the woman cries, in a sudden rage, waving the letter. “Like you said, you are a mistake!” She calms herself and looks away. “I am sorry. But I loved her too, you understand? In your country, you are quick to love, oder ? It is easier to talk about love in English than in German.”
    For a moment, in the wake of this awkward outburst, both women are silent, and then Elise clears her throat, preparing to go. But the woman speaks first, in a low tone, almost to herself. “Frau Kriegstein, before she falls sick, has the same hair like you. Locken. ” And suddenly, as quick as a garden snake, the woman’s hand is reaching out towards Elise’s face, fingering one of her curls. Despite the heat of the greenhouse, the woman’s dirty gardening glove, which glances Elise’s cheek, is cold, and Elise shivers before startling to movement, drawing back violently. Unperturbed, the woman smiles, a bullying grin that Elise remembers from the older girls in high school, taunting her in the cafeteria. Her cheeks hot, Elise snatches the envelope from the woman’s grasp. The second it leaves her fingers, the woman cries out but does not protest further. They stare at each other for a second, and then the woman lets out a bitter cackle.
    “You Americans. Always having to win, always hungry for the happy ending. The liberators.”
    “The letter was delivered to me,” Elise says evenly.
    “ Ein Fehler. It does not belong to you. But that has not stopped you