“Oh, Uli.” Ava covered her mouth with both hands. “I didn’t mean that. I just…I just wasn’t thinking…”
“It’s fine,” he said quietly. Taking the certificate back from her, he’d folded it into the application papers and set them between them on the bed. Leaning his head back against the wall, his eyes opaque behind his thick lenses, he’d fixed his gaze on his Die Gefahr von Superman movie poster: George Reeves with his dimpled muscles stuffed into his silly sausage suit. Mortified, Ava pulled her knees up under her chin and rested her forehead against the scratchy twill of her skirt.
“I’m a monster,” she’d murmured.
“You’re not,” he’d said, covering her knee with his hand. “You’re the most beautiful girl I know.”
She just shook her head, feeling as unworthy of the compliment as she was the offer of comfort. “At least you have her name,” she said finally. “At least you know both your parents’ names.”
Even to her own ears her voice sounded defensive, almost petulant. But when Ulrich spoke again, he didn’t sound angry. He sounded thoughtful, alert. The way he sounded when he was shaping a particularly interesting political argument, or offering suggestions on one of Ava’s art projects.
“Actually,” he said, “you might too.”
“What are you talking about? I might what?”
“Have both your parents’ names.”
She blinked back at him, baffled. He knew she knew nothing about her father. That as a child she’d been told—first by her grandparents, and then by nuns in the orphanage to which she’d been sent when they died—only that he’d been “a brave German soldier.” She hadn’t even known for sure that he was dead, though a few years ago Ilse—in a fleeting moment of approachability on the topic—had implied that he might not be. In general, though, she’d only say that she would tell Ava more details “when the time was right.” Which, of course, it never had been.
“Your father’s name would be on your birth certificate,” Ulrich said now, retrieving his own certificate and pointing to his own father’s name. “If she knew who he was, there’d have been no reason not to put it down.”
Ava bit the inside of her cheek. On the one hand, it seemed impossible. And yet it also made sense, if only in the way fantastical things—bulky, square-jawed men flying through the air without wings, or the idea that she might actually have a father—did. Thoughts racing, she tugged at a lock of hair that still felt startlingly short following an impulsive session with Ilse’s sewing shears (she’d been trying for a Hepburn-style pixie but ended up with something more resembling a poorly executed military cut).
“Even if she has it,” she said slowly, “there’s no way she’d hand it over to me. Especially if his name is actually on it.”
“But she could order another one for you.”
“She’d never do that either.”
“She wouldn’t have to.” Setting the application materials aside, he gave her a quick kiss (See? Forgiven!) before sliding off the bed and padding over to his desk. “All you need is her signature. And you can dash that off in your sleep.” Excited, he yanked open one drawer, then another. “Actually, I think I have an extra request form somewhere in here.”
* * *
Sure enough, eight weeks later the official-looking envelope Ilse had unknowingly sent in for arrived at the Martinistraße post box she’d unknowingly subscribed to. Opening it with shaking hands, Ava first saw the Reich’s fading black eagle, hovering with ghostly authority over the Charité Hospital’s official letterhead. Below the faded stamp was Ava’s name, weight, and time of birth, and below that was Ilse’s name and city of residence.
And directly below that was the name of Ava’s father.
* * *
Nikolaus Hellewege, she thought again now, as the Opel sped along the Autobahnzubringer Hemelingen. City of residence: Berlin. She’d promised herself not to waste her time daydreaming about a man who in all likelihood was not only dead, but dead in service of a cause she now knew to be unspeakably evil. And yet, as usual, her imagination refused to sit quietly and behave itself: like the chatty girl in a classroom, it continued to spin stories and trot out scenarios in which her newfound parent played various heroic and villainous roles. Perhaps they’d been classmates, Ilse and Nikolaus! Or neighbors! Maybe they’d met in a bomb shelter, and made passionate love as the walls shook and trembled around them (and perhaps this was the real reason Ava had never fully escaped the nightmarish grip of the bombing she herself had survived)! Or perhaps he’d been a rakish rebel, like James Dean or the boys who’d dumped Ava before Ulrich, seducing Ilse with a few roars of his motorcycle engine. But couldn’t he also have been an artist (Ava had to get her talent from somewhere, after all), or even a bookish outsider like Ulrich?
Of all the possible options, this last one somehow seemed the least likely—if only because Ava couldn’t fathom her mother with someone as good and kind as Ulrich was. Then again (she reflected), it would explain Ilse’s aversion to Ava and Ulrich being involved. Perhaps he reminded her too much of the man who’d left her pregnant and alone.
Rolling the window back up, Ava rested her cheek against the glass and watched the bark-bare trees flashing past. Nikolaus Hellewege, she thought again. What had her mother called him? Klaus, perhaps? Or simply Gunn—perhaps he’d preferred his middle name to his first? Could he have had any part in choosing her name? Had he even known she was going to exist? Ava Lara Hellewege. She whispered it under her breath, exploring it like an exotic sweet on her tongue. What would this other, two-parented Ava have been like? Perhaps, simply, a better Ava: an Ava as understood and beloved by her father as she was misunderstood and overlooked by her mother. An Ava who sketched and painted without shame or blame, dated freely, took university classes when she liked…
“Are you awake over there?”
“What?” Blinking, Ava turned toward her driver.
“You look like you’re in another world.” Glancing in the side mirror, Ulrich switched lanes in order to pass a tomato-red VW pickup truck. “Also, you’re about to start a fire.”
Glancing down, Ava saw that the cigarette in the hand she’d left resting on the atlas had burned itself down to the filter. “Damn it.” Flipping open the ashtray below the lighter, she stubbed the smoldering filter fully out. “Sorry. I barely slept last night.”
“The license?”
“Just nerves, I think.”
“Like I said, don’t worry about it. First off, it’s almost perfect. Secondly, those GDR yahoos can barely read. Just make sure you don’t give anyone any lip.” Another quick, pointed look.
“Of course I won’t give them any lip,” Ava said indignantly.
“And maybe put a hat on.” Reaching out, he ruffled her botched hair. “If anything raises questions, it’ll be that haircut.”
“I thought you said it wasn’t that bad.” Ava checked her reflection in the side-view mirror again, futilely pulling a few strands toward her ears on both sides, as though she could physically force them to grow faster. (Another reason to love him: he still somehow thought she was pretty.)
“What I said,” he said, deadpan, “was that it could have been worse.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?” Rummaging in her purse, she found her lipstick and carefully applied it to her top and bottom lip, then blotted it against her handkerchief.
“Not at all.” He checked the speedometer, then tapped the brake lightly. “You could have shaved yourself bald. Or stabbed yourself in the eye with the scissors. You could have…”
“All right!” Reaching over, she shoved him in the shoulder. “Does makeup help, at least?”
He darted a quick, assessing glance. “Decidedly. Is that new?”
“Max Factor.” She pursed her lips, Monroe-style. “I got it at the Galleria.” She didn’t mention that she hadn’t paid for
it but rather slipped it into her purse while the saleswoman was helping another woman pick out cold cream. Though in her own defense Ava hadn’t really had a choice: she couldn’t borrow lipstick from Ilse because Ilse never wore makeup. And she certainly wouldn’t give Ava money to buy it. (“Only tramps paint their faces at your age,” she had said; she used the same disparaging measure for high heels.)
“I was a little worried it was too bright,” Ava said now.
“No, the color is good.” He looked at her again carefully. “It distracts from the disaster up top.”
“You’re a jackass.” But she felt her lips twisting into a smile despite herself. Recapping the tube, Ava tossed it back into her purse, then leaned forward to give the radio another try. This time she was in luck: after an advertisement for Hamburg’s “most popular dance hall,” Fats Domino broke through the static, the rich voice like a honeyed sunshaft through a cloud. Pleased with herself, Ava leaned her head back and closed her eyes, humming along with the lyrics she knew by heart even if she didn’t fully understand them:
You made me cry when you said good-bye
She felt Ulrich’s strong, long-fingered hand on her knee, and heard his voice joining in as well, his American accent impeccable as always, his melody perfectly in tune:
Ain’t that a shame
They sang together until they lost the station and Ava switched the radio off again. She lit him a cigarette, then another one for herself as well, and they drove on a few kilometers in smoky companionable silence, his hands gripping the wheel and hers her cigarette and the lighter. Watching the latter’s round eye turn from molten orange to deep red to ash gray, she briefly fantasized about pressing it against the pale soft flesh on the inside of her arm. For some reason the idea of it—the searing pain, the singed skin—seemed less frightening than clarifying. Even bracing.
“If I ask you something,” she said suddenly, “will you be honest with me?”
“Am I ever anything but?”
Still, she hesitated. “If it turns out he was one of the bad ones—the truly bad ones…”
He shook his head. “Wouldn’t change anything between us.”
“Even if he was, say, the one who locked your mother in the chamber? You won’t hate me?”
He didn’t even blink. “Not a whit.”
She hadn’t expected another answer, but relief washed over her anyway, so unexpectedly comforting she swayed a little in her seat. “You’re sure?”
“You have my word.” He looked at her sidelong, his glasses glinting in the hazy morning light. “Though if you’re really that worried about it, it’s not too late to turn back. We might even make it back by the end of school.”
I do love him, she thought. I do. For how could she not love a boy who not only stole a car for her, and used a forged document for her, and not only drove her fully across the country, but who halfway there offered to stop and drive all the way back? Ava shut her eyes again, pressing the tip of her pinky lightly against the lighter’s disc. It now felt only pleasantly warm.
“The hell with that,” she said, opening her eyes. “We’ve made it this far.”
* * *
After three more hours of driving, with a brief roadside stop for gas and sandwiches, they reached Helmstedt-Marienborn and the double-sided entry point to the German Democratic Republic. The guard on the West side waved them through with barely a glance at their documents. On the GDR side, though—a dreary line of cement-gray checkpoint stations manned by men in mold-colored uniforms—it was another story. Their guard—who barely looked old enough to drive himself—blinked at Ulrich’s doctored license for a moment or two before tossing it back at him. But he studied Ava’s student card with such a dubious-looking frown that she felt her palms start to sweat.
“No school today?” His face was round and puffy-looking, his nose bulbous and pink. His eyes, however, were an almost startling shade of teal—the eyes of a much more handsome man.
“It’s a family emergency,” she explained. It wasn’t really a lie. And yet her pulse continued thrumming at the base of her throat as though she were covering up a murder. She wiped her palms on her skirt.
“From Bremen, you say?”
“Ja.”
“Destination?”
“Berlin. Reinickendorf. Same as my friend’s.”
“Only friends, eh?” He leered openly at her breasts.
“Yes,” said Ava, wondering why she said it even as she did. Crossing her arms across her chest, she scowled. “Yes,” she repeated. “He’s driving me to see my dad.”
“Who doesn’t live in Bremen, I take it.”
“That’s correct.” Avoiding his eyes, she fixed her gaze instead on the flimsy-looking Trabi that had just pulled into the checkpoint station to their right. The man driving it had a long, glum face that resembled a camel’s, though perhaps the glumness was because the woman next to him was shouting at him. Ava watched as the latter—with a final shot at the driver—stepped from the vehicle’s passenger side and walked slowly around to the car’s rear. She seemed visibly agitated, gesticulating with one hand and dabbing at her face with the other with a handkerchief. Ava couldn’t tell if she was wiping tears or perspiration.
“Divorced?”
“What?” Ava snapped her gaze up again.
“Your parents,” the guard said. His skin was so pale that it almost looked gray in the shade of the checkpoint’s concrete overhang. “Are they divorced?”
“That’s not really…” She’d planned to say any of your business, but before she got the words out she felt Ulrich’s glance, as pointed as a physical dig in the ribs. “Not something I like talking about,” she finished lamely.
The guard shrugged. “Seems to happen a lot with you Wessies. Bourgeois values, I suppose.” Handing the card back, he pointed at the purse in her lap. “Mind if I have a look?”
“Seriously?” Ava looked at her watch. Their appointment in the city was in just under two hours; they were already cutting it close.
But Ulrich was already leaning over and reaching across her lap. “Of course we don’t mind,” he said firmly. Picking the bag up, he pushed it at their interrogator. “Take your time, comrade.”
“Danke.” The guard lifted the bag with his black-leather-gloved hands, fumbling for a moment with the snap. Biting her lip in vexation, Ava returned her gaze to the Trabi. Its trunk was now open and the weepy-or-sweaty female was speaking animatedly while the guard rummaged through its contents. As Ava watched, he pulled out a box of some kind and held it up, a triumphant look on his face.
“So you’re an artist?”
Glancing back at their own guard, Ava saw with dismay that he’d removed the little sketchbook she carried everywhere with her and had opened to a self-portrait she’d done of herself a few nights earlier. It was a full view of her nude torso, neck to navel, etched out minimally with a handful of charcoal lines. There was no way for the guard to connect the image to her personally (she’d left the head out because she hated her hair). But she found herself flushing anyway. “I try.”
He held the book to the light, his head tilted as his gaze flickered back and forth between her face and the page. For a terrifying moment she wondered whether she’d unwittingly broken another law: trafficking in pornography, perhaps. But he simply shrugged.
“Nice tits,” he said crisply, and tossed the sketchbook through the window.
Her face flushing, Ava flipped quickly through pages, checking for the carefully filled-out forms they’d need later and suppressing a sigh of relief when she found them. But the guard wasn’t done yet: after digging a bit more he pulled out the fragrance spritzer Ava carried with her to cover the smell of cigarettes before she went home at night, since (of course) Ilse disapproved of smoking. At the moment, it contained the last of the Guerlain L’Heure Bleue that Ulrich had brought back f
or her from a recent trip to France.
“What’s this?” the guard asked.
“Perfume.”
He unscrewed the bulbed top of the little flask and held the vessel beneath his nose. “German?”
“French.”
“Ooh-la-la.” He lifted his brows again. “Smells expensive.”
“I don’t know,” she said shortly. “It was a gift.”
The guard nodded pleasantly. Then, keeping his sky-blue gaze locked on hers, he poured the pale liquid onto the ground.
“What??” Ava sat up sharply in her seat. “What the hell…”
“It’s fine,” Ulrich muttered.
“Why did you do that?” she hissed, ignoring him.
“You clearly didn’t read up on our rules.” The guard smiled condescendingly. “You’re not permitted to bring foreign luxury goods worth over twenty-five marks over the border.”
“But it was a gift. How am I supposed to know how much it’s worth?”
“Perhaps next time, simply ask.”
Opening her mouth to argue, Ava threw a furious glance at Ulrich. Seeing his expression, she shut it again and simply glared. The guard laughed, clearly pleased with the reaction.
“Just be thankful I didn’t arrest you for smuggling.” Still smiling, he screwed the cap back on and tossed both the purse and the empty bottle back into her lap. Flipping his rubber stamp and inkpad from his pocket, he marked her card with a flourish.
“Have a nice visit with Papa,” he said, handing it back through the window.
* * *
“What an Arschloch.” As Ulrich pulled onto the dreary gray road Ava realized she was shaking.
“Could have been worse. That Eastern couple is still back there.”
Ava looked over her shoulder and saw that he was right: the blue Trabi was now parked by the side of the road, while its occupants—the weepy woman and camel-faced man—huddled beside it.
Wunderland Page 16
