He looked away from her, gave his tie one last decisive tug. “Indeed we are not.”
Her mother had pressed hard for the move to this apartment, Rose knew, to this neighborhood in particular. Now they were close to the embassy quarter, within walking distance of Ringstrasse and the Opera—her mother’s dream. No one else had seen the point in moving. So what if some rooms in their old flat were forever hot and others forever cold? Who cared if their stretch of Liechtensteinstrasse was thick with leather and machinery shops? The man in the shop on the corner always gave Rose peppermint candy when she passed, and she loved playing in the walled garden of the hospital two blocks away. But her mother persevered—she always did.
“If we’re late, maybe we’ll miss Karl’s speechifying,” Wolfe said. “He makes it sound as if Schuschnigg is already at the gate, waiting to swing it open for Hitler.”
“No politics,” Charlotte said. “Not tonight.”
Rose had studied the Great War in school. She knew that Papi had been a foot soldier in northern Italy, but he didn’t like to talk about it. She heard him once telling Gerhard, “I fought a war so you don’t have to.”
Bette came in, holding Mutti’s wool cape in outstretched hands. “Ma’am,” she said, and offered it to Charlotte.
“Perfect,” Mutti said. “Thank you.” Bette gave a little curtsy and bob of her head and left. “I’m glad I noticed it before we left,” her mother said.
“Yes, can you imagine? Someone might have said, ‘Your cape fastener is loose. Horrors!’” Her father widened his eyes at Rose, who giggled.
Charlotte pursed her lips. “Someone should look presentable, don’t you think?” She touched Rose’s head. “You’re a good girl.”
“Thank you, Mutti,” Rose said. “Good night.”
“We’ll see you next year,” Papi said, and he too touched her head and they were gone.
She was a good girl, Rose thought as she ran a hand over the polished brass handles of her mother’s inlaid dresser. But not that good. She sat down on her mother’s settee and yanked off her black boots and woolens, liberating her sweaty feet, the air delicious between her toes. Then she went over to her mother’s closet, running her hand against her dresses—silk and worsted wool and light cotton.
She paused at a peacock-blue dress, linen with an Empire waist and beautiful white piping. Mutti had worn the dress at Bad Ischl last summer, when they ate pink ice cream in the café. Rose remembered how after the ice cream, they ran into Herr Schulman, her mother’s piano teacher, near the river. When Charlotte’s hat blew off, Herr Schulman leaped after it, retrieving it with speed, heaving, and handed it back to her with such a grin on his face, as if he’d won a grand prize. Now Rose tugged off her own dress and slipped into her mother’s. It was enormous—the square neckline slipped off her shoulders—yet it felt wonderful, like sipping from a big glass of lemonade in the shade of summer.
Rose wound a long string of her mother’s pearls around her neck, dusted her face with powder. She added her favorite scarf of her mother’s, blue-and-purple silk with a pattern of birds perched on branches, others with wings open in flight. The material felt fine and elegant against her neck. Rose assessed herself in the mirror and spoke: “Why, thank you, Heinrich, I would love to dance.” She gave a curtsy and held out her hands. She pictured Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. She spun in a circle. Once, twice.
When she stopped, she was in front of The Bellhop. The boy in the painting gazed at her. How many times had she looked at the picture? She knew Mutti had bought it on a whim in a Parisian gallery for far too much money—so said Papi. It had been painted by a man named Soutine, who was Jewish, her mother liked to say, as they were. (But Ostenjuden, her father would often add, not like us—an immigrant, from the east.) Rose had not changed her mind. She still thought the portrait ugly, but she couldn’t stop looking at it.
The boy in the painting stood awkwardly in his red uniform, gold buttons glinting, a matching red triangular hat perched atop his head. His hands rested on his hips, legs straddled open so wide he looked as if he might topple over. His pale face was impassive, his dark eyebrows shot up high. There was a resentful look in his eyes, as if he didn’t trust the painter, the endeavor altogether. The paint itself was so thickly piled on that Rose had the feeling it had been created in the middle of an argument—she heard shouting, she saw the flinging of color onto the canvas.
But now, none of this mattered. He did look awkward and unpleasant, but he was a boy only a few years older than herself, a boy who wanted more than anything to escape: his uniform, his life, his own skin. He didn’t want to be unpleasant, Rose was convinced. She longed to help him.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be rude.” She curtsied and said, “Yes, I would love another dance.”
Bette’s high pitch cut through Rose’s imagining. “Rose, where are you?”
“Coming,” Rose called as she stepped out of the dress and left The Bellhop behind.
Bette wouldn’t let her hold the ladle. “You’re my responsibility,” she said, tossing her thin braid back. “Heaven forbid you burn yourself.” But she did hand Rose a ball. “Now roll it around tightly, and shake well. My oma always said that this gives them your strength, your print.”
Rose made a fist and shook. Then she placed the ball in the cast-iron ladle. Bette positioned the ladle on top of the stove’s front burner. She held it with a steady hand over the flames. Every few seconds she angled the ladle from side to side, a graceful balletic move. Soon the lead ball was shuddering under the heat, no longer a ball but a silvery amoeba-like creature, slithering to spread to the edges of the spoon. Rose, peering close, thought of the fat caterpillars she and Gerhard spotted down by the marshy banks of the Danube. “Is it ready?”
“Almost,” Bette murmured.
Rose felt the heat. The ball had lost its color altogether. It flashed iridescent, something otherworldly, like something out of Jules Verne.
“Okay,” Bette said. “Now.” And Rose didn’t know how she did it, but Bette managed to keep the ladle steady and guided Rose’s hands to her own too. “You slide it into the water,” Bette said. “My oma says it’s part of the fortune.”