Read Online Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jenna Blum
Tags: Fiction, Literary, General, Historical, Historical - General, Fiction - Historical, Bildungsromans, Sagas, World War, 1939-1945, War & Military, Germany, War stories, Holocaust, Young Women, Jewish (1939-1945), Underground Movements, Germany - History - 1933-1945, German American women, 1939-1945 - Underground movements, 1939-1945 - Germany
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fears she has stained her dress.
I couldn’t—eat—another bite—says von Schoener. My—compliments, Fräulein—Again, from behind the wall, there is a bump.
What is that? Wagner asks.
Mice, perhaps, suggests Gerhard. I suppose this house has its share of them, like all old houses. This one was built in 1767, you know, as a summer home for the Kaiser.
Anna closes her eyes. Even she hasn’t heard this tale before.
Wagner chews mechanically, his fat lips bunching.
That’s impressive, he says. But you really do need an exterminator, even so. To get rid of the vermin.
7
BY JULY 1940, CONVERSATION AMONG THE CITIZENS OF Weimar is limited to one topic: the phenomenal success of the Blitzkrieg on London. No more whispered complaints of how hard it is to find a decent leg of lamb, a pair of real stockings, a good cognac; no mourning once-voluptuous figures or lamenting husbands absent at the front. Instead, the Volk go about with their chests thrust forward, heads high, greeting one another with smiles: Did you hear? Four thousand killed in a single air raid! Those Messerschmitts are a miracle, a marvel. That fat sausage Churchill must be cowering in his bunker. Our boys will be home by Christmas yet!
Yes, it’s wonderful, murmurs Anna, shouldering her way through the cheerful throng in Frau Staudt’s bakery. Yes, yes, I couldn’t agree more; it’s splendid news.
Once outside, she takes a deep breath, relieved to be free of the pungent stink caused by the rationing of bathwater and her own hypocrisy. Anna has always been impatient with the gloating over Reich triumphs, and never more so than today, when she has quite different news to impart to Max. She sets off for home at a trot, ignoring the Rathaus bells tolling yet another Luftwaffe victory behind her. How will she tell him? Not an hour ago, Anna will say, Frau Staudt informed me that the new identity cards and passes are ready—two sets, not one. You and I, my dear Max, will cease to exist, but Stefan and Emilie Mitter-hauser will be traveling to Switzerland, where they can make their paper marriage real in a quiet ceremony.
No warm beach or fried seafood, then: instead and more appealing at the moment, the breezes of Interlaken. A simple suite of rooms, perhaps overlooking the deep quiet lake, the mountains ringing it with their snowcapped peaks. Cool and sweet and quite a contrast with the afternoon through which Anna walks, more slowly now. To move through this air is like fighting one’s way through a dream: all Weimar gasps for breath in heat heavy as cotton wadding, the motionless atmosphere that precedes a thunderstorm.
Gerhard’s car is not in the drive when Anna reaches the Elternhaus, so she goes straight to the Christmas closet.
Hello, Herr Mitterhauser, she calls, shutting the outer door behind her. How do you feel about a holiday in the mountains?
Her attempt at gaiety is muffled in the cramped space, as though the stagnant air has swallowed it. Without warning, the dizziness and attendant nausea attacks her. Anna puts a hand on the wall and waits.
When it has passed, she flicks sweat from her forehead and opens the inner door. You’d better start packing, she says. We leave tonight—Then the feeble light from the high window penetrates the stairwell, and the strength runs from her legs like water.
For there are no sheets, with which Anna has replaced Max’s blankets when the days grew hot. There are no scraps of verse pinned to the walls. No empty plates. No chamber pot. There is nothing, in fact, to indicate that anyone has ever been in the hiding space at all, except for the olfactory ghost of Max’s perspiration and their lovemaking, a salty smell curiously reminiscent of onions.
WHEN ANNA HEARS THE SCRATCH OF GERHARD’S KEY IN the front door, it is nearly eight o’clock. She sits in his study, in his chair behind his desk, a position forbidden to her. She toys with Gerhard’s letter opener as she waits for him, turning it
I couldn’t—eat—another bite—says von Schoener. My—compliments, Fräulein—Again, from behind the wall, there is a bump.
What is that? Wagner asks.
Mice, perhaps, suggests Gerhard. I suppose this house has its share of them, like all old houses. This one was built in 1767, you know, as a summer home for the Kaiser.
Anna closes her eyes. Even she hasn’t heard this tale before.
Wagner chews mechanically, his fat lips bunching.
That’s impressive, he says. But you really do need an exterminator, even so. To get rid of the vermin.
7
BY JULY 1940, CONVERSATION AMONG THE CITIZENS OF Weimar is limited to one topic: the phenomenal success of the Blitzkrieg on London. No more whispered complaints of how hard it is to find a decent leg of lamb, a pair of real stockings, a good cognac; no mourning once-voluptuous figures or lamenting husbands absent at the front. Instead, the Volk go about with their chests thrust forward, heads high, greeting one another with smiles: Did you hear? Four thousand killed in a single air raid! Those Messerschmitts are a miracle, a marvel. That fat sausage Churchill must be cowering in his bunker. Our boys will be home by Christmas yet!
Yes, it’s wonderful, murmurs Anna, shouldering her way through the cheerful throng in Frau Staudt’s bakery. Yes, yes, I couldn’t agree more; it’s splendid news.
Once outside, she takes a deep breath, relieved to be free of the pungent stink caused by the rationing of bathwater and her own hypocrisy. Anna has always been impatient with the gloating over Reich triumphs, and never more so than today, when she has quite different news to impart to Max. She sets off for home at a trot, ignoring the Rathaus bells tolling yet another Luftwaffe victory behind her. How will she tell him? Not an hour ago, Anna will say, Frau Staudt informed me that the new identity cards and passes are ready—two sets, not one. You and I, my dear Max, will cease to exist, but Stefan and Emilie Mitter-hauser will be traveling to Switzerland, where they can make their paper marriage real in a quiet ceremony.
No warm beach or fried seafood, then: instead and more appealing at the moment, the breezes of Interlaken. A simple suite of rooms, perhaps overlooking the deep quiet lake, the mountains ringing it with their snowcapped peaks. Cool and sweet and quite a contrast with the afternoon through which Anna walks, more slowly now. To move through this air is like fighting one’s way through a dream: all Weimar gasps for breath in heat heavy as cotton wadding, the motionless atmosphere that precedes a thunderstorm.
Gerhard’s car is not in the drive when Anna reaches the Elternhaus, so she goes straight to the Christmas closet.
Hello, Herr Mitterhauser, she calls, shutting the outer door behind her. How do you feel about a holiday in the mountains?
Her attempt at gaiety is muffled in the cramped space, as though the stagnant air has swallowed it. Without warning, the dizziness and attendant nausea attacks her. Anna puts a hand on the wall and waits.
When it has passed, she flicks sweat from her forehead and opens the inner door. You’d better start packing, she says. We leave tonight—Then the feeble light from the high window penetrates the stairwell, and the strength runs from her legs like water.
For there are no sheets, with which Anna has replaced Max’s blankets when the days grew hot. There are no scraps of verse pinned to the walls. No empty plates. No chamber pot. There is nothing, in fact, to indicate that anyone has ever been in the hiding space at all, except for the olfactory ghost of Max’s perspiration and their lovemaking, a salty smell curiously reminiscent of onions.
WHEN ANNA HEARS THE SCRATCH OF GERHARD’S KEY IN the front door, it is nearly eight o’clock. She sits in his study, in his chair behind his desk, a position forbidden to her. She toys with Gerhard’s letter opener as she waits for him, turning it
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