So, on this particular afternoon, when the time comes to leave for Gudrun’s, she hides beneath the weeping willow in the back of the Fortzmanns’ garden. Its branches hang to the ground and provide a thick, leafy cover.
The smooth patch of dirt here is one of Ania’s favorite places. She loves the smell of the garden wall’s decaying stucco, the damp ground, her own warm hands after playing with the twigs and leaves and worms. She hides things under the willow’s branches. For instance, the cheap novel she found on a park bench that she knows her father would disapprove of—too modern, too sensational. He believes in reading only the Bible and Schiller. Even Goethe is too liberal for him. Ania has also hidden the candy she pilfered from her class graduation party, a snake skeleton, and a colorful mosaic brooch she stole from her mother’s dresser three months ago.
Why is this willow here in the Fortzmanns’ orderly suburban garden? There is no pond, no stream, no river to quench its thirst. The tree is a leftover, someone told her once—maybe Frau Richter, who is, at heart, a romantic, or her uncle Dierck, who is young and bad and recently ran off to find work on a ship. The tree is left over from a time when the whole neighborhood was marshland, dotted with ponds and sloughs and great waterbirds. Its bent, grief-stricken shape is a product of its longing. While Ania lies under its grand draping branches she feels that same longing—her own cells thirst for the disappeared body of water, her ears fill with the ghostly burble of an extinct stream.
On this particular Sunday, Ania does not go into hiding alone. She is accompanied by her best friend and neighbor, Otto Smeltz. When she hears Frau Richter calling, she grabs his hand and squeezes it.
Shhhhh, she whispers fiercely, and Otto’s eyes widen in surprise.
He is a little nymph-like boy: thin and pale and dark haired, and he and Ania often play for hours under the willow, making hospitals for sick animals. Sometimes Otto pretends to be a girl and lets Ania braid his shaggy hair. They carve games in the cool, smooth dirt, using pebbles as pieces.
No one else on Langebein Strasse plays with Otto Smeltz. For one thing, his father is not a doctor or a lawyer like the other men on the street. He is a shopkeeper who runs a small specialty goods shop in the city center. For another thing, the family is bohemian, at least compared to everyone else. And also they are Jewish, immigrants from Poland.
Sometimes, when the weather is nice, his family plays music in the garden. Herr Smeltz has a fiddle and his wife a mouth harp. Their daughter, Susi, a wild girl with messy hair and an insolent expression, plays her accordion. It is considered unseemly—like a carnival, according to Frau Richter, who would have a heart attack if she knew how much time Ania spent with little Otto. On warm summer evenings, Ania opens her bedroom window and listens as she lies alone in bed.
This afternoon, Ania’s rebellion makes Otto nervous. When will you come out? he whispers. What if they don’t leave without you? What will your father do when he finds you? His questions nip at her high spirits. Shut up, she hisses, suddenly aware of her own power in their friendship. She is a year older and taller and also in possession of a more intangible authority. Be still.
Ania—Otto tugs at her sleeve and she shakes him off. Shut up—Ania clamps a hand over his mouth and watches an instinctive, animal-like fear jump in his eyes. Reluctantly, he stays with her and does not call out.
Later, when she is finally discovered by the policeman neighbor Frau Richter enlists to help with the search, Ania is both terrified and jubilant. Why did you do this? Doktor Fortzmann asks gravely, sitting in the big leather chair in his study. You should know better. He uses his deepest, most moral voice. The switch is propped against his chair.
He made me, she says, squirming and looking down at the carpet.
The Smeltz boy?
The policeman found Otto, too. But, unlike Ania, he was dragged by the ear to the police station.
She nods her head, thinking of the officer’s expression. It was his idea, she says, and her heart races. He wouldn’t let me come out.
Something changes in Doktor Fortzmann’s bearing—his hands spread over his knees and tighten slightly.
What do you mean by this?
Ania’s story gathers steam. He held on to me. He put a hand over my mouth when I wanted to call out.
Herr Fortzmann’s brows lower. You are not to play with him again. Do you understand?
Yes. She nods. I understand.
To Ania’s surprise, the switch remains untouched. She is sent to her room without supper, and later that night Frau Richter slips her a bowl of pea soup with a slice of ham. Poor child, the woman says, shaking her head, clucking her tongue against her teeth. We should have guarded you against that boy. It leaves Ania with a peculiar feeling, as if the lie is a physical object stuck in her gut. And though she is hungry she can’t eat. The night is beautiful, but there is no laughter or music from the Smeltz house.
Afterward, people throw stones through the Smeltz family’s windows. Someone paints a slash across their door. Word has gotten out. Otto does not return to school.
In fact, Ania sees him again only once. He is walking across the park, his shoulders hunched against the cold, and she is surprised at how small he looks. It gives her a funny feeling—the way his dark hair flies up like feathers in the wind, and the thinness of his legs in short pants, like delicate twigs. So Ania tells herself the story she has concocted: he is a manipulative child who forced her to disobey her father and clamped his sweaty, dirty hand over her mouth. She imagines it so carefully that it feels real.
Then one morning the Smeltz family disappears. In the middle of the night, they load up their wagon from Herr Smeltz’s shop and leave their home for the Jewish neighborhood.
On the long, boring afternoons at 34 Langebein Strasse in the days and years to follow, Ania misses her friend. And at night, she lies in her silent bedroom and attempts to recall the music his family used to play. It makes her heart ache. She knows it is her own fault the music has disappeared.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Dortmund, 1934