“The what?” I frowned, pretending I didn’t know the unusual word. “I’m sorry. My German is still improving.”
“Your German’s pretty good,” said the young man, smiling at me. I couldn’t make myself return the smile, though he couldn’t have been much older than Kai. He was thin, almost sickly looking, with light-brown hair and a sharp nose. “Zerberus. It’s our parent organization. They oversee all magic balloon operations around the world. For the most part, they just make sure we’re not breaking rules and keep track of all our research. They allow most sites free rein beyond that.”
“Decentralized,” said the woman. “When everything these days is so centralized, they felt that they needed to be the opposite of that.”
That made sense, in a strange sort of way. I look around at all the shelves. “So everything here?”
“Is everything the Zerberus have on how the magic works, how the magic might work—theories and experiments—and laws. Some of the magic’s been outlawed.” She gestured behind her. “We’re not allowed to even look through it unless Ashasher or Aurora gives us permission.”
“Other Schöpfers are,” the young man corrected her. “We aren’t fully certified yet. We’re still learning.”
“I understand.” I labeled and sorted the next map, glancing up at all the shelves. That was decades and decades of history around me, filling this room, and suddenly the quiet didn’t feel so quiet. Soft voices, like ghosts, filled the space and air around me, whispering. The Zerberus and all of these people writing magic balloons had risked everything to help people be free. And maybe these maps had something to do with that. Maybe these maps set people free where they weren’t free.
“Aren’t you afraid?” I asked suddenly. “What if the Stasi found these?”
The two students exchanged looks, and then the woman said, “I hope they don’t. There’s enough here to convict us. And we couldn’t help anyone from prison.”
“More balloons went missing,” whispered a Schöpfer pausing by our table, oblivious to our discussion. He glanced at me, and I looked away, pretending to study the maps in front of me.
“Why haven’t they posted a guard?” hissed the woman.
“They did. He said only Schöpfers came in and out,” said the new Schöpfer. “It’s got to be one of us.”
“Don’t be a fool. No one’s going to risk that. We all have too much to lose.”
I wondered who didn’t have much to lose. But I didn’t know anyone’s names, and everyone knew who I was. I couldn’t ask any questions. I could only listen. They were careful around me though, and little more was said on the subject. I sorted until my eyes began to close of their own accord. I jerked awake, and then began to fall asleep again. Then a hand touched my shoulder and I sat up straight in my chair. Aurora’s mouth twitched in the tiniest of smiles.
“I’ll walk you home,” she said. Her voice never rose, never pitched, never went above a quiet, soft whisper. I didn’t know how she could do it. “You’ve been here all day.”
“Thank you,” I said awkwardly, standing up. “I like the work though.”
“I can tell,” she said as we walked toward the door. “I’m appreciative. The students dislike that busy work, and we’re under pressure to teach and place the students as quickly as possible these days. The world’s changing rapidly. I don’t have the time I’d like.”
“My grandfather likes to say that none of us do,” I told her as I jumped down onto the tracks. I turned around to see if Aurora needed help, but she was sliding, long dress and all, down onto the tracks. I wondered where she lived. Did the workshop have rooms for her and Ashasher?
I couldn’t see her face, but her tone was warm. “He would say that. Benno was never particularly optimistic.”
I stiffened a bit and said, “Hard to blame him.”
She didn’t apologize. Instead she said, “Sometimes I wonder if his cynicism made him more resilient. Maybe that’s why he survived.”
“He survived because of you,” I said softly, still in disbelief. I shook my head. “Did I thank you? I can’t remember if I said thank you. Thank you. He still calls beautiful days balloon days.”
“Does he?” She sounded truly delighted.
We didn’t say anything for the rest of the tunnels, but it didn’t feel uncomfortable. At one of the major intersections, a police officer leaning against a wall straightened and started to come toward us. His walk was light and casual, as if he’d been waiting for us. Aurora turned me down another street, her face paler than normal.
“They’re always there,” she murmured. “They’re always waiting. Sometimes, I think they know what we’re doing, and they just want to know when we’ll write a balloon for them.”
“Are you ever afraid?” I asked her.
She walked me all the way to the door of the safe house before she answered. “No, I’m not often afraid. I have too many stories inside me to be afraid.”
She waited while I climbed the steps to the door and unlocked it with the key Kai had given me. When I turned around, she waited for me to go in, her dark-purple dress damp at the hem and her hair as dark and glossy as it ever was. She was strange and quiet, but then, I thought I understood her. A lot of people found me strange and quiet at home too. My loud and boisterous family didn’t really get why I found the world so tiring. Aurora did. Just looking at her that night, I could tell that she found the world every bit as exhausting as I did on a daily basis.
“Thank you,” I told her. I’d said it a thousand times, but how do you thank someone for what she’d done for you? For the people she saved?
“You’re welcome, Ellie Baum,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Thank you for your help. It’s been illuminating and invaluable.”
Chapter Twenty
WHERE WE ARE
Łódź Ghetto, Poland, March 1942
Benno
The streets were mud and the sky was gray, one reflected back in the other. The cold faded from the air, but it stayed in our bones. And sometimes it stayed in our eyes. One of the men next to me at the factory elbowed me and told me to look bright. He kept his head down and whispered out of the side of his mouth.
“If you don’t look bright, they’ll put you on the next train,” he said.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay. They used Łódź as a stopover ghetto. A holding pen for people who came to us emaciated and left us little more than skeletons with hearts beating through thin skin. Everywhere I turned, someone was dropping dead of starvation or tuberculosis. Every time I coughed, I thought to myself, This is the end.
When a few of us met for an illegal Shabbat one Friday night, one of the men said, “I cannot believe that the Sabbath is observed in hell.”
Last week, a man collapsed in the factory. We wanted to take him to the hospital, but the man in charge of our shift asked what that would accomplish. The hospital had no medicines. The doctors, as well trained as they were, couldn’t cure anything. They prescribed potato peels as medicine. If you were lucky, you might get onion broth. So the man died on the floor of our factory. We covered him with our coats.
So when the man next to me warned me against my dead eyes, I thought about his comment as I stood in line for bread and potatoes. I chewed on it as I ate and walked down our street to Number 18, our rooms. Mama said it was good luck to be in Number 18, but we hadn’t had much luck at all. If I left, Mama would be left with no one. She’d lost Ernst and Ruth and my father. If I left, what chance did she have?
I never thought I’d be the anchor of this family, but our luck had left me no options. I trudged through the mud and thought about going down to the fence. But I didn’t want to deal with the girl at the fence today. I couldn’t take her relentless optimism and questions today. I had too little hope and too many questions of my own. I thought about the way my father had given up and about the way Ruth had died. I didn’t want to go that way. If I were to die, I wanted to die in resistance. We heard about resistance movem
ents in other ghettos. We heard sometimes they could take out the Nazis before they died.
If I had to choose, that was how I’d go.
But Łódź didn’t have that resistance. We couldn’t. They were deporting us with too much regularity to allow such a movement to coalesce. The day the man at the factory warned me about the dead look in my eyes, I came home to Mama sweeping our rooms and humming a song I didn’t recognize.
“Benno,” she said, and she smiled at me. I couldn’t remember the last time she smiled. “Chana gave me a second loaf of bread. I wanted to save it, but I don’t think it’ll stay good. Let’s just have one good night.”
One good night. I said, “Teach me that song.”
So we sat with our bread and our soup on the beds, our knees touching each other as Mama taught me the song she’d learned at work. “Ani Ma’amin.” It meant “I Believe.”
“I think,” Mama whispered to me after the bread was gone and our stomachs ached from unusual fullness, “I’ll keep singing that song. Where would you like to go after we get out of here? I promise you that we’ll go.”
I didn’t have to think very long. “Israel. It’s warm there.”
Mama laughed. “Think! No more snow!”
“Do you think we could?” I asked her.
She reached over and grasped my hand. “I do.”
“What’s going to happen, Mama? What if they separate us?” They’d done that with some families.
“They won’t,” Mama said, her voice firm like her hand gripping mine. “We won’t let them. But if we are separated, we’ll meet in Israel. We’ll go swimming in the Dead Sea. I heard you can float there.”
I believed her.
Chapter Twenty–One
SEQUINS FOR A CERTAIN KIND OF FUN
East Berlin, German Democratic Republic, May 1988
Ellie
A week after I started sorting maps, Mitzi and Kai came home, both in bright moods. Kai was whistling, and Mitzi shouted for me as soon as the door slammed behind them. “Eleanor Baum! Are you decent?”
“I’m always decent,” I said, putting down the book I was reading and watching her literally bounce into the room, grinning. Behind her, Kai twirled a finger next to his head, but he couldn’t keep a smile off his face. “What?”
“Come upstairs and pick out a dress. We’re going to a club.”
“A club’s not really my thing,” I said automatically. But I wasn’t sure I was telling the truth anymore. That was Ellie in my true time. Ellie here? The idea of going out was more thrilling than I wanted to admit. Out of the house? Not sorting maps? Dancing? A thrill, like sneaking out, but without the danger.
“Did it sound optional? No. Come on.”
“And I have to wear one of your dresses?” I asked doubtfully as she grabbed my hand and pulled me off the couch. “Sequins aren’t usually my thing.”
“Apparently, lots of things aren’t usually your thing,” Mitzi said huffily.
“I imagine time traveling wasn’t either, but you’re here now,” Kai said from the doorway. He looked indecently good, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets. He smiled a little slyly, like he knew I was checking him out. “Come on. It’ll be fun that doesn’t involve dead people or magic.”
“Well, when you put it that way…” I teased him as Mitzi dragged me past him and up the stairs. “How can I resist?”
I probably should have waited until I saw the dresses Mitzi had to offer. She essentially emptied the closet in the other room onto the bed she or Kai used, depending who was there at night. I had stopped asking where else they spent time because Mitzi wouldn’t tell me, and I didn’t want to know what other bed Kai spent time in. Then she started to match outfits that under no circumstances should ever have gone together. Not that I was a fashion expert, but for the love of all things in the world, a black pleated leather skirt should never go with a red sequined top and pink stockings with deliberate holes in them. Red and pink! And a dress that looked like a peacock had been flattened onto cotton. There were actual feathers on it.
“Mitz,” I said. “I don’t want to look like your nails and hair combination.”
“Lighten up, Ellie. You worry too much. Clearly I’ve let you spend too much time with Kai,” Mitzi said. She looked over her shoulder at me as she tugged her shirt off over her head. “Though, neither of you seem to be minding it that much.”
My brain flashed back to the train tunnel, to his hands at my hips and the warmth of his mouth against mine. I flushed and said, “We’re friends. I think.”
“I think we’re friends as in I think we’re friends but he might secretly hate me, or I think we’re friends but we might secretly be…What’s the word Kai uses? Ah. Snogging on the side.”
I threw a hanger at her. Maturity. “Shut up.”
“So you have kissed him!” Mitzi cried, and there was zero, absolutely zero way that Kai did not hear that downstairs.
I groaned and flopped onto the bed. Mitzi wiggled her way into the leather skirt and pulled the red top over her head. I grabbed the pink tights so she couldn’t add them to the outfit, with the bonus of distracting her from that line of work. She pulled at the tights, laughing, and then reached out, tickling me with her free hand. I squealed and dropped the tights, rolling away from her. The grin on my face stretched my cheeks so hard it hurt.
“I heard he was a good kisser. We dated the same girl once. That was such a terrible idea. I mean, not at the same time, but still…” Mitzi pulled on the pink tights. “When are you going to make a move? You mostly stare at him and blush.”
“I’m cautious,” I argued.
“You’re practically speechless around him.”
“I wasn’t tonight.”
“You said maybe six words,” Mitzi pointed out. “Wear the peacock dress!”
“We’re from two different time periods,” I reminded her, my voice falling from playful to serious. I looked around for any option other than the peacock dress and saw none.
“But you’re here now,” Mitzi replied easily, reminding me of another conversation Kai and I had had. She shook out the skirt and admired herself in the mirror. “Kai is suffering from what we would call weltschmerz but he can’t quite shake his fernweh.”
Before I could ask what those words meant, Kai knocked at the door. “Mitz, we should go soon while Rainer’s at the door.”
“He’s right,” Mitzi said to me. “Rainer will let you in. Bert comes on after him. He might not. We should get going.”
I donned the peacock dress despite my better judgment and told my reflection it was just my version of Halloween this year. Or a belated Purim. Or something that said there was a reason I was wearing this ridiculous dress that hung off me like a big, sparkly bag. Really sparkly. Did I mention sparkly?
“Turn around,” Mitzi ordered me. “Sit down. I need to do your makeup.”
“Oh hell no,” I said when I saw her eyeliner. “No. I’ll do my own.”
I bent over the mirror, applying a neutral and natural version of Mitzi’s flamboyance while she wrestled on her boots behind me. Kai knocked at the door again and pushed it open without even asking. “Girls, hurry up.”
“Boy, calm down.” Mitzi replied without missing a beat.
He scowled. “I’m not a boy. That’s for little kids.”
“I forgot you were a man in the midst of being called a girl,” she said. “And the part where you just opened the door without waiting for us…Ellie could have been naked!”
“Mitzi,” I said. “Shut up.”
Kai grinned, and I finally glanced over at him. I wasn’t sure where he’d found the time, or the clothing, or whether maybe he was as magical as the balloons, but he looked practically edible. I barely remembered what Mitzi had said about me just staring at him before I jerked my attention back to the mirror.
“You both look fine,” Kai said, stomping his boot in annoyance, not unlike the little boy Mitzi had accused him of being a few
minutes ago. “We really can’t miss Rainer. Otherwise, Bert’s going to give Ellie the Stasi inquisition and check her against all the known informants. My tolerance for that is—”
“Yes, we’ve noticed your patience, darling,” Mitzi said with a surprising drawl. She came over and pat his cheek. “We’re ready now. Right, El?”
“Right,” I said, and closed the makeup. “If I get arrested tonight, it’s your fault, Mitzi.”
“No one’s getting arrested tonight,” Kai said, but his brow furrowed deeply. “Why does she get to call you El?”
“You two really need a drink. Or seriously, make out already,” Mitzi said. As she breezed by us out the doorway, I sneezed and glitter puffed in front of me. She had doused her hair in silver glitter. And considering it was the 1980s in East Germany, I was pretty sure it was made out of lead or mercury or something that was probably going to poison me slowly, puzzling modern-day doctors when I got back home.
“I can handle one of those,” I heard myself saying. Then I stretched up on my toes and kissed Kai, right there in the middle of the doorway. Because I could. Because I wanted to. Because hey, maybe Mitzi was right. Maybe we did worry too much. Kai tasted like cinnamon and stale coffee. I sank back down onto my feet, and Kai shook his head, his hair moving around his face.
“Always surprising me,” he said, sliding his hand into mine. “Now we’re ready…and thanks, Mitz.”
He reached out with his hand and ruffled her hair, making it rain silver glitter all over the stairs. We laughed as we stepped into the night, bright and sparkly and with all the stars in the sky above us.
Chapter Twenty–Two
PHANTASMA AND PHANTOMS
East Berlin, German Democratic Republic, May 1988
Kai
We meandered through the back streets, avoiding the heavy police presence on the main streets. Ellie still eyed Mitzi’s outfit with misgiving, but I was surprised Mitzi had tamed her inner wild child to only a few incongruous color combinations and a handful of glitter. There were nights when she wrote slogans against East Germany on her skin, and those were the nights that I spent more time glaring at her than enjoying the fun. I figured she really did get that the risk was high tonight and we didn’t need to tempt fate.
Girl with the Red Balloon (The Balloonmakers) Page 15
