So there were to be new chapters. This was the happy feeling that filled Marianne after Ania’s wedding. To see her friend married to a good man, a good German man (almost an extinct species!), this was a hopeful thing. Her dear Ania—stalwart companion, comforting presence, perpetual enigma—was to begin a new life.
But if she was honest with herself, Marianne also felt a twinge of grief. It was the end of their partnership. In the past years, she and Ania had volunteered together at the local displaced persons camp. Even now, two hundred thousand refugees remained in German camps. But Carsten would need Ania on the farm. It was half the reason he had married her, anyone could see that. He was aging, and Ania was strong. She would have to work like a horse. And she would have no more time for Marianne’s schemes and projects and lists. Marianne would have no one to bounce her ideas off, to type up her letters, to help her sort boxes of library books.
Today, Marianne was hosting a send-off party for the last DPs at the camp, a group of Estonian Jews. This was the camp Ania had first landed in, re-created in the last years as a camp for Jewish survivors. In the beginning everyone had been mixed up: Nazi collaborators thrown into the same dormitories as Polish nationalists, Gypsies, and Jews. Concentration camp guards with former inmates. Thank God they had changed that.
Over the past year, Marianne had completed enough paperwork on the Estonians’ behalf to sink a ship. And her efforts had finally paid off. They were granted entry to the United States.
Signor Carfolo, the International Refugee Organization official responsible for the camp, had been skeptical about the celebration—For such an emotional thing, the last refugees, the final survivors of their small community . . . a party? The man was not very Italian. But Marianne knew that if she planned it, he would enjoy himself.
It was the Tuesday after Ania’s wedding: blustery and cool. Marianne waited at the camp’s front gate for Ania and also for Benita, who had reluctantly agreed to help them set up. The area looked desolate now—the barracks empty except for the building where the Estonians lived, the delousing station long since shuttered and the cook fires replaced by kitchenettes. Good riddance. But today, as Marianne stood in the silence, she missed the old bustle and restless energy. It had served as a physical manifestation of the war, evidence. And now it too would be erased. With the departure of these last refugees, the camp would be demolished and rebuilt as modern apartment-style housing.
What would you think of all this? she asked Albrecht. And Connie. Connie would have been especially disgusted by the town’s proposals. After all, before the DPs, the site had been a Wehrmacht barracks and training camp. Burn the place down, erect a terrible monument, he would have declared. He had never been a pragmatist.
You’re not a real German, Marianne had so often teased him on account of this. He was a romantic and an idealist.
Just as her thoughts turned glum, Marianne saw Ania arrive, driven by Herr Kellerman. Two fine new horses pulled his wagon, but the wagon itself was the same one he had first met Marianne and her children with so many years ago.
“Won’t you join us for the celebration?” Marianne asked as he helped unload the food.
“Nha.” Kellerman shook his head with a sheepish smile and offered no excuse.
“What a feast you have prepared!” Marianne exclaimed, seeing the two cakes her friend had baked. There was a whole pot of sausages, and bread and cheese as well. Ania always knew how to feed a large group. Where did you learn to cook in such quantities? Marianne had once asked. Just instinct, Ania demurred.
“Let’s set up in the library,” Marianne said. “The dining hall is too gloomy for a party. Never mind what Signor Carfolo says. After all”—she turned to Ania slyly—“it’s our library, isn’t it?”
The library was nothing fancy, a large room with bookshelves and a comfortable table and chairs. But it had been Marianne’s idea, and she had been right—it was a great success. The DPs had relished access to books. And Marianne had collected and organized them herself.
As Marianne and Ania approached, a few children ran toward them—Aarne Alver, Lev Pulvel, Janna and Eha Masing. These last two were sweet, rosy-cheeked twins born right here in the camp, members of a surprising peacetime baby boom.
“Have you brought things for the party?” Lev asked in his near-perfect English.
“Kuchen?” Eha asked, bouncing with excitement. This was a German word all the children had learned, whether or not their parents approved.
“Cake, yes,” Marianne corrected, in deference to their mother, Jutta, who stood in the doorway of their apartment. “And lots of spinach soup.” The children squealed and shrieked in mock horror. Spinach soup was what they had eaten for breakfast, lunch, and dinner during the early days of the camp.
“Süssigkeiten?” Janna tugged Ania’s skirt. Sweets? The children loved Ania, who spoke little English, and no Estonian, but somehow seemed, always, to grasp what they wanted. In the presence of these children, Marianne saw her smile far more than she ever did with her own sons.
Ania had cared for some of the children since they were newborns. When the camp administration had placed an ad in town for local women to serve as nannies for babies whose mothers were too sick after the war, or too traumatized, Marianne had pressed Ania to apply. And Ania had proved a deft and patient nanny, swaddling the babies in old army blankets, coaxing them to swallow their sugared vitamin water from medicine droppers. Her silence put the families at ease. You’re so good at this! Marianne had once remarked, and was startled to see tears spring to her friend’s eyes.
“Let us arrange the party and we’ll call you in,” Marianne said to the children. She nodded her head toward the residence where she could see Jutta waving. How tall and strong the woman looked—so different from the diminished figure she had once been. Marianne waved back, surprised to find tears pressing at her own eyes. All the men in Jutta’s family were dead: executed by one of Hitler’s Einsatzgruppen.
“Now,” she announced, once they had entered the library, “we must make a beautiful end.”
The party was set to begin when Benita burst through the door. “There you are!” she exclaimed, her cheeks flushed. “I can never find my way in this place!”
She looked particularly lovely this morning—and the waft of high spirits she brought with her was contagious.
“Ania,” Benita said, beaming. “How is this new married life?”
“Not so different than before.” Ania shrugged.
“Oh really,” Benita said with a twinkle in her eye. To Marianne’s surprise the other woman did not blush.
“A man wants what he wants,” Ania said demurely, and they both laughed.
Marianne busied herself with the tablecloth.
“Marianne, you’re shocked,” Benita said, some combination of her light mood and Ania’s presence making her brash.
“Me?” Marianne asked, although it was true. She had never shared this sort of banter with Ania—or Benita, for that matter.