by Jenna Blum
Nor is food the only thing in short supply. gasoline and cigarettes are used in lieu of money. Thread, so necessary for mending clothes already worn for three years or more, is nowhere to be found. And the Reich has decreed that all Germans may bathe only on Saturdays, as any type of fuel for hot water, be it coal or wood, has been declared a national resource.
So it is no surprise to Anna, who has gone to the city's remaining and octogenarian doctor for medicine for Trudie's cough, that she returns to the bakery empty-handed. We have reentered the age of leeches, she remarks acidly to Mathilde; if only I could find some! The child's croup worsens, and the baker employs an equally archaic if more violent method: Anna will never forget the sight of Mathilde reaching into Trudie's flour crate cradle in the cellar, her nightgown ripping with a flatulent sound as she hefts the choking toddler by the heels and thumps her on the back. This proves an effective temporary cure, but within a few days Trudie can no longer draw a full breath, so Anna decides to disobey one of the Reich's edicts. After securing the blackout curtains, she feeds the porcelain stove in the upstairs WC with coal, ingot upon ingot, more precious than gold. enough to produce a full bath and a roomful of steam.
It is late at night. Anna sits on the side of the tub with Trudie in her lap, rubbing the child's back. The humidity seems to be helping; Trudie is finally dozing when Mathilde pushes the door open. She is spattered with mud that fills the room with the reek of sulfur.
How is she? the baker whispers.
A little better, thank God. But she can't go on this way. Do you think you could get some stronger medicine on the black market?
No need, says Mathilde, wheezing from her charge up the stairs. She pats her voluminous coat pockets, finds a bottle from one of them, and she hands it to Anna.
This will take care of it, she says.
Craning over her dozing daughter, Anna squints at the label but doesn't recognize the name.
You got this on the black market? she asks. From Pfeffer?
No, not that crook, he'd sell you sugarwater as soon as look at you. I bought it off Ilse, Herr Doktor Ellenbeck's maid, when I made the Eickestrasse deliveries this afternoon. it cost me a fortune in cigarettes, I can tell you, but she swore it would work. She has four little ones of her own.
This is an SS doctor's medicine? Anna says, aghast. It's probably cyanide!
They don't keep cyanide in their houses, Mathilde says, missing Anna's irony. only in the hospital block.
The baker hangs her coat over the robe on the back of the door and plunges her forearms into the tub. Anna waits for her to comment on the fact that the water is a good eight inches higher than the black line painted on the porcelain.
But Mathilde only sighs.
Ach, that feels good, she says. It's a filthy night. Snowing. I almost went off the road three times.
I take it you made a Special Delivery, Anna says, nodding at the now-brown water, on which pine needles float. How did it go?
Fine. Fine. Last week's bread was gone. And I got a new message from the prisoners.
Good, says Anna.
She rouses Trudie to give her some of the medicine, which the sleepy child accepts without her usual protest. Every woman who visits the bakery comments that she has never seen a sturdier toddler, and Anna has to agree. But her pride in her daughter is somewhat tempered by a bewildered exasperation. When she is well, there is little of either her mother or her father in Trudie. She is solid and round, built like a small truck with legs sturdy as pistons, and her rages when she is thwarted, her charm when she has worn down her opponent and gotten her way, her general bullish constitution: they are exactly like Gerhard's. In a quirk of genetic hopscotch, the traits have skipped a generation.
In fact, the only similarity Anna can draw between her daughter and Max, aside from the blue of her eyes, is the light hair that grows in whorls, uncowed by any amount of brushing. Now, because of the steam, it curls in damp corkscrews that Anna smoothes from the child's flushed forehead.
Mathilde smiles as she lowers her bulk onto the closed lid of the toilet. As if catching the run of Anna's thoughts, she observes, Her hair is so like her father's.
Anna puts her hand on the small chest. The constriction within it has eased, she thinks.
Don't you want to know? the baker asks.
Know what?
Whether there's any news of your Max. You haven't asked in ages.
Anna shifts Trudie into a more comfortable position on her lap and murmurs to her.
I have to tell you, Anna, it doesn't look good. Ilse says they've finished building the crematorium. Even in this shitty weather the SS have had the poor bastards working on it night and day.
This doesn't surprise Anna. She has overheard the women discussing it in the bakery. They say that the SS have been bringing corpses in vans to Reinhard's funeral parlor in central Weimar for cremation, but that on occasion something goes wrong and the dead spill out into the street. The SS can't have this; it is bad for morale. Naturally they would devise their own methods for disposing of their victims.
Well? says Mathilde.
Well what?
Don't you have any reaction?
Anna shakes her head. A needle to the heart, dysentery, hanging, malnutrition, the murderous whims of Hinkelmann and Blank, simple overwork in the mud and snow: what good is it pretending that Max will survive? There are so many ways for him to die. When Anna thinks of him at all, which she does only when her guard is down before sleep, it is of his knowing smile over the chessboard, the narrow triangle of his freckled torso in the room behind the stairs. There have been no messages from Max since August.
He may still be all right, Mathilde says.
Angrily, Anna wipes her eyes with the back of a wrist.
Don't lie to me, she says to the baker. And please, don't be kind. I can stand anything but that.
Mathilde gets up to feed the last of the coal into the stove. Did you love him very much? she asks shyly, her back to Anna.
Anna ducks her head. The tears Mathilde has unwittingly unleashed darken her shirtwaist in blotches and further dampen Trudie's hair.
Yes, she says. I did.
Well, at least you've had that, Mathilde says, sitting down again with a whistling sigh. At least you've got that to hold on to.
Anna looks up at the forlorn note in the baker's voice.
Why, so do you, she says. You have the memory of your Fritzi.
Oh, Fritzi, says Mathilde, shrugging. That was different.
What do you mean?
Ach, Anna, you wouldn't understand. A pretty girl like you, you must have had ten proposals before you were sixteen. But a woman who looks like me, she has to take what she can get. My Fritzi married me for the bakery, nobody ever pretended otherwise. He came from such a poor family. He never loved me, not really, not like your Max loved you.
How do you know? Anna says loyally. People who marry for convenience often grow to love one another. It happens all the time.
Mathilde gives a small rasping laugh that turns into a cough.
Not with Fritzi. He was different, she repeats.
Different how?
You know, Anna, queer! He didn't like women. He would go to Berlin on weekends and—Well, we had an understanding. He did as he pleased and I didn't end up a spinster.
The baker reaches over to take hold of Trudie's foot, which she cradles as gently as she might an egg.
The only thing I regret, she adds, aside from him getting himself blown to bits in the last war, was that because of our arrangement he never gave me a child.
Anna looks down at Mathilde's pudgy hand, thinking of the bashful young man with the pink-tinted cheeks in Mathilde's bedroom portrait. She now understands why Mathilde stares so hungrily at Trudie when she thinks Anna isn't looking, why the baker only laughs when she finds that the toddler has poked holes in the crusts of the valuable loaves to dig out and eat the soft insides.
Is that why you started feedin
g the prisoners? Anna asks. I've often wondered why you take the risk when everyone else turns a blind eye. Is it because some of them are ... different, like Fritzi?
Mathilde blinks at Anna, startled.
I never thought of that, she says slowly. I just feel so sorry for those poor men. But ... yes, I guess that could have had something to do with it.
She runs a thumb over Trudie's small foot. A silence falls between the two women, broken only by the hiss of water on the stove.
Oh, Anna, Mathilde says abruptly. Her little voice wavers. What will become of us? After the war, maybe you'll marry. The child will need a father. And me, I guess I'll go on running the bakery. But it'll never be the same, you know? The world has gone crazy. To burn people in ovens ... That we talk about this the same way we used to talk about—about—whether Irene Schultz's husband was going to leave her, or the price of turnips, or the weather—
I know, says Anna, alarmed. Shhhh.
For now it is the baker who cries, her body quivering with the force of it, her small black eyes, fixed imploringly on Anna, awash with tears.
There's no use in getting yourself so upset, Anna tells her. We do what we can and that's all we can do.
Mathilde lowers her head and wipes her cheeks with her filthy skirt.
You're right, she says after a time. She heaves an enormous sigh. You're right. We won't talk of such things anymore. It's no use. I don't know what's wrong with me, bringing it up tonight of all nights.
Getting to her feet with a grunt, she bends and gives Anna a clumsy kiss on the hair.
Happy Christmas, she says.
Anna smiles at Mathilde, unable to return the gesture for fear of joggling and waking the child. War makes for strange bedfellows, it is said; apparently it makes for strange friendships as well. The brave, unlucky baker is the only true friend Anna has ever had.
Happy Christmas to you too, she replies, and doesn't tell Mathilde that she had completely forgotten.
17
ONE MORNING IN EARLY MARCH 1942, ANNA TUCKS THE blanket around her sleeping daughter and climbs from the cellar to find Mathilde on her hands and knees in the kitchen, digging in one of the long, low cupboards that line the south wall.
Nice of you to interrupt your beauty rest, she tells Anna from within the cabinet, her voice muffled and hollow. I thought you were planning to lie in bed until noon.
Despite Mathilde's tart tone, Anna smiles in relief. Since Christmas the baker has been increasingly gloomy, falling into spells of despondency from which not even Trudie, running to her beloved Tante on fat little feet, can rouse her. Admittedly, the baker's behavior this morning is a bit bizarre, but it is better than her sitting in her rocking chair in her chamber above the bakery, staring at nothing.
What are you doing? Anna asks.
Receiving no reply, she goes to the sink, where she splashes her face with icy water. The window is a glowing sheet of gold, the frost on it lit by the first rays of the sun. It is going to be a fine day.
Her toilette complete, Anna fastens her apron around her waist and turns to watch Mathilde crawl backward from the cupboard with her fists full of pistols. Collapsing onto her haunches, the baker begins packing them in a flour sack which, by the looks of it, she has already stuffed with rolls.
Where did you get the pistols? Anna asks.
Mathilde uses the edge of the worktable to haul herself up.
Ask me no questions, she says, and I'll tell you no lies.
She buttons her tattered coat and carries the sack through the back door. Bracing herself against the cold slipstream that enters, Anna lifts the rack of loaves baked the previous night and follows Mathilde outside.
I assume you're not delivering those weapons to the SS, Anna persists, her breath coming short and smoky as she stacks the bread in the rear of the bakery van.
Mathilde snorts. She is cramming the sack into the false floor beneath the passenger's seat; once this is secured, she lets the rubber mat fall over it. Anna watches with approval. Without the most thorough search of the vehicle, nobody would ever suspect the guns were there.
Mathilde comes over and puts her mouth directly to Anna's ear.
They're for the Red Triangles, she whispers.
The Red—?
The political prisoners. They're planning a revolt.
Anna steps back, surreptitiously wiping flecks of the baker's spittle from her cheek.
Well, God bless, she says.
Mathilde hoists herself into the high driver's seat, where she rolls and lights a cigarette before starting the engine. Then she turns and looks at Anna over one shoulder, squinting through the smoke.
For shame, Anna, she calls. You're still so naive as to think there's a God?
Without waiting for an answer, she wrenches the van's stick shift into gear and drives off, the cigarette clenched between her teeth.
Anna stands coughing in blue billows of exhaust until the flatulence of the van's muffler has diminished in the distance. Then she shrugs off Mathilde's question and hurries shivering into the kitchen. Although the pickings will be slim for the bakery's patrons today, since the SS have requisitioned their bread, there is still much to do.
In fact, the morning is so busy, the customers squabbling like pigeons over stale rolls and rock-hard rye, that Anna doesn't have a moment to herself until midafternoon, when everything has been sold. Apologizing to the last disgruntled women, she ushers them out, locks the door, and goes to tend her daughter. Thankfully, Trudie has resisted the lure of climbing the stairs, her new favorite pastime; she is still in the kitchen, from which Anna has forbidden her to move. But instead of playing with her doll, a sorry creature Mathilde has fashioned from a sock, Trudie has overturned her lunch and is happily smacking her hands in a puddle of parsnip soup.
Bad girl, Anna says, hauling Trudie to her feet and swatting her rump.
She marches the child to the corner and instructs her to stand with her face to the wall. Trudie complies until her mother is swabbing up the mess; then she whirls and scowls at Anna and slides to the floor in a heap. She kicks her wooden heels against it. She manufactures an indignant sob. Anna, trying to ignore her, wonders how it is that such an angelic-looking child should prove so intractable. She wrings her rag in the sink and starts in on the dishes.
The view from the window, so promising this morning, has turned ugly. The field is piebald with mud and snow, the dark trees beyond it lashed by wind. The sky hangs low and threatening. There will be more snow. Already the light is dimming as the sun sinks somewhere above those dense clouds. A bad after noon for making deliveries, particularly in a temperamental van along a road treacherous even in better conditions.
So, when the last pan has been dried and put away, Anna turns to Trudie and says, Time for a nap.
Trudie, who has been digging loose plaster from a hole in the wall, shakes her head so vigorously that her fine hair escapes its braids.
No, she says. No nap.
Yes, nap, says Anna. And as a special treat, you can sleep in Tante's bed. Won't that be nice?
No, says the toddler.
But she allows herself to be persuaded upstairs, though she insists on walking up the steps instead of being carried. She breathes heavily in concentration as she lifts one small foot, then the next; to Anna, it seems to take Trudie a good half hour to reach the second-floor landing.
Once she has settled Trudie in Mathilde's bed, Anna fetches the last of the cough elixir from the WC.
Noooooooo, Trudie cries when she sees the dreaded bottle.
Anna sighs, wishing there were a neighbor she could trust to watch Trudie without asking questions.
Come now, she says, nudging the spoon against her daughter's lips. Be a good girl.
Trudie screws her mouth shut.
Mama drink it, she suggests craftily.
Despite her impatience, Anna has to laugh: Trudie is definitely Gerhard's grandchild. Anna pretends to sip from the bottle.
; Mmmmm, she says, miming ecstasy with a roll of the eyes. Delicious. Now your turn.
Mollified, Trudie accepts the medicine. Anna doesn't dare give the child more than two teaspoons, but this should be enough to put Trudie out for a few hours. The elixir has a codeine base.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, Anna waits, stroking the child's slippery hair, until she is sure Trudie is fast asleep. Then Anna layers a sweater over her dress, wraps a dark shawl around her head, bundles herself into her coat, and leaves the bakery through the back door. She crosses the field to the Ettersberg.
The woods are not welcoming this time of year. As the birds have fled in search of kinder climes and the deer and rabbits have become stew, the only sound Anna hears is the ice crunching like thin glass beneath her boots. It begins to snow. Anna catches a few flakes and rubs her fingertips beneath her nostrils to test whether it is precipitation or ash from the crematorium, but she is not really conscious of doing so. She creeps alongside the road, closer to it than is advisable, but she is straining for any sign that something bad has happened to the delivery van: the black swerve of tires marks on the tar, for instance, or broken branches that would indicate the vehicle's plunge into a gully.
This is foolishness, really. The baker has handled deliveries in far worse weather than this. And Anna is going the wrong way now, following the road as it branches toward the quarry, which Mathilde would not take unless she were making a Special Delivery, which in turn she would never attempt in daylight. Yet Anna's unease has reached such a pitch that she is shocked but not surprised when her suspicions of disaster are confirmed by the sight of the van canted off the roadside, not a quarter kilometer from the quarry. A hot filament, like that in an electric bulb, glows for a moment in Anna's stomach, then is extinguished. That is all.
She wends through the underbrush, branches snapping back across her face, until she is almost to the pavement. Then she sees the foot lying on it, shod in a sturdy black boot laced to the ankle. Anna has often poked fun at these boots, teasing Mathilde that they are for old ladies. A meter to the right and the rest of the baker comes into view. She is splayed half-on, half-off the road like a big pallid doll, her eyes staring at the sky. There is a neat hole in her forehead, its edges charred black with gun powder, and all around her the blood has turned the snow into a slushy red soup.
