The Best Contemporary Women's Fiction: Six Novels

by Jenna Blum

  Max props himself against the icebox as Anna secures the lock and begins whisking the curtains shut.

  So you know, he says. About the Aktion this morning.

  Anna turns to examine him. He is covered in mud, his hair plastered to one side of his head as if he has just awakened, and there is a shallow scratch on one cheek. Other than this, he appears unharmed.

  I was in the Quarter and I ran across Herr Nussbaum, she says. And when I went to your house, I found the animals—

  They killed them, Max says.

  Yes.

  Max frowns at the floor, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat.

  I was afraid of that, he says. I wanted to do it myself, the humane way, but there wasn't time.

  Anna begins rummaging through the pockets of her skirt.

  I have your glasses here somewhere, she says. I know you're hopeless without them—

  Then, without warning, she begins to weep.

  Max comes to Anna and takes her in his arms. This is the first time he has held her properly, and Anna relishes it, damp and filthy as he is. She sways against him, closing her eyes, but Max stares at the wall over her shoulder, distracted.

  How long will your father be gone? he asks, detaching her.

  How did you know he's not here?

  I've been in the bushes much of the afternoon. I saw him leave a half hour ago, off to dine with his friends, am I right? Top brass, all of them.

  Max rubs his eyes. Dear God, of all the places I could have come, he groans. I'm so sorry, Anna...

  He runs a hand down the side of his face, which rasps with stubble. I just need a bite to eat, he says. Then I'll be on my way.

  Of course I'll fix you something, Anna says, collecting herself. But first we must get you out of those wet rags.

  Anna—

  Ignoring his protests, Anna leads Max from the kitchen and into the house, beneath the twisting, exaggerated shadows cast by the chandelier in the entrance hall, up the main staircase.

  Here, she says, once she has shown him to the WC. Clean yourself up. I'll be back in a moment.

  Then she ransacks Gerhard's bedroom closet for clothes he will not miss, keenly attuned all the while to the small splashes Max makes as he bathes and shaves, the noises she would hear each morning if they lived here together. It is ridiculous, given the circumstances, but there it is: the fierce joy that Max is in her house. Anna shakes her head at herself and returns to the WC with a pair of old tweed trousers and a shirt.

  Thank you, Max says, accepting them. I'll be quick.

  Anna ignores this, exiting to let him change but leaving the door open a few centimeters. From behind it, she says, So you left before the SS began the Aktion. How did you know they were coming?

  Silence from the WC. Stealing closer, Anna watches Max remove his shirt. His skin is very white, blotched here and there with a fair man's spreading freckles; because he is so thin, his body looks much older than that of a man in his mid-thirties. His chest, however, is furred with a surprisingly healthy crop of reddish hair. He slides his trousers and briefs from his hips.

  Please, Max, Anna says, touching her burning face. Tell me what happened.

  Max dresses in Gerhard's clothes, which, Gerhard being a portly fellow, bag comically on his narrow frame. Then he opens the door all the way. Anna slides past him into the narrow room and perches on the lip of the tub.

  I'm sorry about your father's dog, Max says. Jews aren't allowed to own pets. The animals were killed because they're considered contaminated by Jewish blood—

  Anna makes a dismissive gesture.

  Herr Nussbaum said the SS were turning the entire Quarter inside out, she says. You can't expect me to believe they were only looking for who might still have a dog or two.

  Max contemplates Anna for some time, stroking his razor-reddened chin. Then he says, My being here is placing you in terrible danger. The less you know, the better.

  Anna leaps to her feet.

  You listen, she says, giving Max a small shove. Do I mean so little to you that you can't trust me? Were all those nights we spent talking and playing chess nothing more than that, only games?

  Max sighs.

  Of course not, he says. All right. Since I've already involved you by coming here—

  Yes, tell me.

  I did know about the Aktion before it happened. More than that, I'm afraid I was its cause.

  I don't understand. How—

  Max looks sternly at her. Quiet, young lady. Let me explain in my own way.

  He sits beside Anna on the tub.

  You know of the concentration camp?

  Chastened, Anna nods.

  There's been some talk, she says. It's up on the Ettersberg, yes?

  Yes. In the forest on the mountain. Established for political prisoners and criminals and Jews and anyone else who offends the Nazis. They're put into this Buchenwald for re-education, which means they are used for slave labor. They are starved and beaten and then, when they're half-dead, they are considered dispensable.

  What happens then? Anna whispers.

  Why, they're dispensed with. But since it's a crime to waste ammunition nowadays, it's done by lethal injection. The SS kill them in batches, with needles to the heart. Evipan sodium, I believe. Or air. Afterwards, the bodies are cremated.

  Anna tries to digest this and fails. It is too insane to be comprehended. She looks resentfully at the cold, skillful fingers on hers, then up at Max's dear, tired face, strangely exposed without his glasses, poised and watchful as that of a fox. The deep lines hashmarked about his eyes, the violet shadows beneath them. How can he inflict this on her? How can he come here, to her home, and dump this repugnant story in her lap?

  That can't be true, she tells him.

  Max attempts an ironic smile, but a muscle flutters near his jaw.

  Oh, it's true, he says. I know it seems impossible. But it's happening as we speak.

  How do you know? How do you know it's not just a rumor?

  It's not a rumor, Max says wearily. I've been there. I've seen it.

  He withdraws his hands from hers and fumbles in the pocket of Gerhard's trousers, producing a small cylindrical parcel.

  What's that?

  Film of the camp. There's a photography studio the SS use for identification shots of the inmates. Some of the prisoners have managed to take pictures of what goes on up there, don't ask me how. I have to make sure that this film gets to a safe place.

  Where?

  Somewhere in Switzerland. Exactly where, I don't know. It's safer that way.

  So the SS found out you were working for this—Resistance network.

  Yes.

  And they were looking for the film.

  Yes.

  Max drops the little canister into Anna's palm. The waxed paper it is wrapped in is greasy to the touch. It will repel water.

  Such a small thing, says Max. You'd never suspect it was worth so much blood.

  Anna returns it to him, trying to parse this new Max with the man she knows, the good doctor to whom she has confessed secrets she never knew she had. All along, while she has been thinking only of beguiling him, he has been engaged in an infinitely more complicated and important game. She looks at the braided rug beneath her feet, suddenly shy.

  Who else is involved? she asks.

  Max slips the film back into his borrowed trousers.

  I don't know the extent of the network. A handful in Weimar. Most beyond. Frau Staudt, for one—

  Frau Staudt?

  Anna pictures the baker trampling through the forest on the Ettersberg and begins to laugh helplessly.

  I would have gone to her tonight, but I saw the SS outside the bakery, says Max. I couldn't think where else to go.

  Anna gets up and kisses him on the forehead, inhaling, for a moment, the smell of his hair.

  I'm glad you came to me, she says. So glad. Now come, time for bed.

  Anna, are you mad? I can't stay here!

&nb
sp; You'd rather go back to the bushes?

  Max frowns, but he allows Anna to help him stand. He is shaking with fatigue.

  In the morning, he says, as soon as things settle down, I'll find a safer place.

  He follows Anna to her bedroom, where she bustles about, folding back the eiderdown and plumping the pillows. She turns to see him looking at the shelves of Dresden figurines and trophies from the League of German Girls, the embroidered samplers, the canopied bed in which Anna has slept since girlhood.

  No, he says. It's too risky.

  You couldn't be safer in heaven. My father never comes in here. I'll bring you some food.

  Max glances at the doorway as if considering flight, and then at the high lace-curtained window, through which even he, skinny as he is, couldn't fit.

  All right, he says. For one night, since there's no feasible alternative. But Anna, please don't trouble yourself with food. I'm so tired I can barely see.

  As Anna starts to object, Max climbs into her bed without removing Gerhard's trousers.

  Shhh, he says. He settles into the pillow.

  Anna closes the door and moves about the room, shedding her clothes. She exchanges her slip for her shortest nightgown and eases in beside Max, who is lying with his back to her.

  I forgot to give you socks, Anna whispers. Your feet are cold.

  She rubs them with her toes. Max shifts his legs away.

  Anna presses against him and rests her lips on the nape of his neck.

  Max rolls over. No, Anna, he says.

  Why not?

  Anna senses that he is smiling.

  I've already told you, you're far too young for me, Max says, and they both start to laugh, shaking with it and trying to muffle the noise against each other's shoulders.

  It is then that Anna hears her father's unsteady progress up the stairs, the risers complaining under his weight. There is a soft thud as part of Gerhard, a shoulder or knee, hits the wall in the hallway. His labored breathing stops outside her room.

  The door swings open. A slice of light falls across the bed.

  Anna, Gerhard says.

  Anna forces herself up on one elbow, though every instinct screams that she curl into a fetal position.

  Yes, Vati, she says, mimicking a voice soft with sleep.

  Gerhard braces himself against the doorframe. The medicinal odor of schnapps wafts to the bed.

  Is there any bicarbonate of soda? he asks.

  Yes, Vati.

  I'd like some right away. And perhaps a digestive biscuit or two.

  Of course, Vati.

  They serve such rich food at the officers' club, Gerhard complains. Never a simple hearty meal. Tonight it was goose. You know how goose affects me. I had to leave early.

  I'm sorry, Anna says.

  Gerhard belches, releasing vapors of drink.

  I'm feeling rather liverish, he confesses.

  He turns with great care, then pokes his head back into the room.

  What are you doing asleep at nine o'clock? he asks.

  I'm not feeling myself either, Vati. A touch of influenza, don't you remember?

  Ah, yes. Poor Anchen.

  Gerhard sways, then waves a hand.

  Bicarbonate, and quickly, he says.

  Right away, Vati.

  Gerhard shuts the door and lurches off down the hall.

  When she hears Die Walküre from his study, Anna climbs from the bed and gropes for her wrapper. Her father will have to wait a bit longer for his medicine. She desperately needs to visit the bathroom. Before she leaves, however, she pats the quilt to determine where Max is and finds his arm. His muscles are so rigid that even through the goosedown they feel like bunched wire.

  Impossible, Max breathes. This is impossible—

  Anna bends to put her lips against his ear.

  No, it's not, she whispers. I know where to hide you. I have the perfect place.

  5

  A WEEK LATER, HAVING FINISHED HER ERRANDS, ANNA IS standing in her coat in the upstairs hallway, before a small door. Behind it is what Anna has always thought of as the Christmas closet, since her mother used to store gifts for the holiday in this crawlspace. As a child, Anna was often unable to resist stealing the key from her mother's sewing kit and taking it to this door, which she would eye with a curiosity matched only by fear of the consequences should she be caught opening it. She waits in front of it now gripped by much the same emotions, the key clutched in her slippery hand.

  She is counting slowly to five hundred, Gerhard's car having left the drive a few minutes earlier. Anna cannot be too cautious, although there is little chance that he will return and even less that he would find her if he does, once she has entered the closet. Anna is fairly certain that Gerhard doesn't even know of its existence. The Elternhaus is full of architectural oddities that its current owner has forgotten. Initially conceived of as a hunting lodge, it was never intended to be more than a seasonal outpost from which its builder, Gerhard's great-grandfather, could ride to hounds. But with each successive male Brandt the wheel of the family's fortune has spun further downward, and subsequent generations, camped full-time in the Elternhaus, have added their personal touches to its original sprawling floorplan.

  And Anna, during her tenure as housekeeper, has cleaned every inch of it, often on stepladders or on her hands and knees. In the days following her mother's death, she sometimes had help in doing so: a series of maids hired by Gerhard—all named, oddly, either Grete or Hilde. But every Grete-Hilde departed within a month of arrival, perhaps owing as much to Gerhard's fickle attitude toward payment as to his tempers: when he was in pocket, he would dole out wages with the air of conferring a great favor; when not, promises. And by the time his financial situation became more stable—his legal practice bolstered by new friends he had made among the ranks of the Reich—Anna had fulfilled the positions of maid, cook, and laundress so nicely that Gerhard apparently never considered it necessary to seek more staff.

  Therefore the unexpected breezes in the Elternhaus corridors, the ominous gurgles of its plumbing, are as familiar to Anna as the workings of her own body. She would be able to describe each idiosyncrasy of the house if marched through it blindfolded: the windowseats where there are no windows, the halls that lead nowhere, the hearts carved in the banisters by a fey great-uncle. And Anna knows about something else that she believes Gerhard, given his general neglect of his property, does not. She shifts from foot to foot; she has reached four hundred now, and she bounces the key in her palm. It is true that once Gerhard has left for his office in the city, he usually does not return until evening—and then accompanied by supposed clients, drunken fellows wearing the Nazi armband who shout and sing until all hours of the night. But better to be safe than sorry.

  Finally, when two more minutes have passed and the only sound is that of water pattering from the eaves, Anna unlocks the door to the Christmas closet and steps inside. To her left is a wall with a high window that allows a dusty shaft of light to fall on another little door to her right. This conceals a maids' staircase connecting the upper stories of the Elternhaus to the kitchen, once enabling servants to scurry behind the wall to answer their masters' demands while remaining out of sight. Now, of course, Anna is using it for a different purpose. She knocks on the interior door, three soft raps, and pushes it open.

  A few meters down, on the landing, Max shields his eyes with a hand. Even such indirect light is painful to him after hours in the dark. His upturned face is a pallid circle, and Anna pityingly thinks, as she gropes her way along the steps, of creatures living in caves so deep beneath the sea that they have never seen the sun and are white and blind in consequence.

  Max rearranges his nest of blankets to make room for Anna.

  You have brought spring with you, he says. I can smell the wind in your hair.

  The landing is barely big enough for two. Anna wedges herself in beside Max, feeling the bony jut of his hip against her own, and removes her coat with
some difficulty. Max buries his face in the cloth.

  The past few days have been warmer, she tells him. The gutters are rushing like waterfalls.

  I know, says Max. I listen to them at night.

  Are you hungry?

  Max laughs. Perpetually. But please, don't run off to the kitchen just yet. I'm more starved for company than food.

  He puts an arm around her, and Anna imagines that, were he unclothed, she would be able to see his bones through his skin. He eats next to nothing of what she brings him. His stomach, he has apologetically explained, roils with nerves.

  They sit in comfortable silence, Max rubbing a thumb over Anna's collarbone. It amazes Anna: she spends much of her time in this dim, elongated box, fusty with years of disuse and the unlovely exhalations of Max's chamber pot, and so, on a physical level, Anna's life has shrunk to its confined proportions. Yet here, in the dark, she feels herself expanding. For years Anna has trudged through her days like an automaton with only her daydreams to occupy her, paying no mind to what happens around her unless it hinders her routine in some way. Now, as she walks beneath dripping trees and visits shops, she observes her surroundings with as much keen interest as if she were a visitor to a foreign land. She embroiders and rehearses overheard conversations for Max, hoping to be rewarded by his barking laugh; she lays anecdotes at his feet like treasure. Her personal landscape has never been brighter nor her mental horizons wider.

  I went back to the bakery today, Anna tells Max now. Frau Staudt has a terrible hacking cough. You should see the black looks the customers give her as she handles their bread.

  Any news? Max asks, smiling at Anna's scowling imitation.

  We didn't have much time alone. Only a few minutes. But new papers are being drawn up for you so you can be moved to Switzerland. Frau Staudt says to be patient; these things take time, she said. And money. They are trying to raise the money.

  Max takes his arm from Anna's shoulders and stretches, wincing.

  And the film?

  She hasn't mentioned it since I passed it to her on Thursday. But I'm sure she would have told me if something had gone wrong.

  Max sighs.

  Dear Anna, he says. My sole regret about what I've done is having to involve you.