As it turns out, Ania lasts only two. The nuns in the cloister are realists. “You will be sick most of the time,” Sister Catherine tells her. “The people don’t speak German, so you must learn French. There are no potatoes. Everyone will want to touch your hair.”
Ania could not care less. She is familiar with discomfort and sickness. She is genuinely curious about the natives. The problem for her is God. “You must keep him close to your heart always,” says Sister Anne Marie. “If you don’t, he will forsake you.”
But when Ania tries to keep God close to her heart, she is filled not with warmth and reassurance, but with emptiness. Every night she says her prayers, and each morning she goes to chapel. She feels her habit rough against her elbows, the risers cold and hard against her knees, but she does not feel God. In his place she feels dread and fear of death. And this worries her. She is an earnest girl. She takes the nuns’ admonitions seriously. She is Herr Doktor Fortzmann’s daughter, after all.
On her second Saturday in the convent, Rainer invites her to come see a presentation of a local Landjahr lager. The day is bright and lovely, and the air outside the convent walls seems to crackle with energy. A great many people have assembled outside the city hall, and, unlike the cranky, embattled crowds she remembers from her youth, they are not here to fight or protest. They are here to celebrate. They want to capture a little corner of this new spirit of possibility and togetherness for themselves.
And the presentation is marvelous! The fourteen-and fifteen-year-olds on the improvised stage look happy, healthy, and innocent in their matching short pants and thin dark neckties, their hair cut with a flop of bangs in front. They march in remarkable unison and sing spirited songs and traditional ballads, paeans to the beauty of nature and the joys of wandering. They enact a skit they have written themselves about the great German hero Hermann overthrowing the Romans. The costumes are basic, the lines are not particularly poetic, but the acting is committed and they have even worked in a few good jokes. When it is over, the actors stand straight and tall beside their leader, a handsome young man who can’t be much older than Rainer, as he speaks about pride and self-control and discipline, and, most of all, togetherness—sons of steelworkers and department store owners, fishermen and nobles, all brought together through a year spent living on the land. Behind him, five boys wave Hitler Youth flags with their single, elegant lightning streak. It is, possibly, the most beautiful thing Ania has ever seen.
They close with a devotional song to mother Germany.
We are all connected, under our flag of solidarity
Since we found ourselves as one people
No one is alone anymore, we are all obliged,
God, our Leader, our blood.
Raised in our faith, happy in our work that everyone does
We all want to be as one
Germany, we are brightly standing by your side
We want this high alliance seen in all our glory!
Ania is surprised to find tears filling her eyes. She has not realized, until this moment, how isolated she has been. She has been alone every moment of her life. She goes to sleep alone and wakes alone—she has no siblings since her brother died and no experience of a mother’s touch, nothing more than Frau Richter tsk-tsking about whether she has swallowed her spoonful of cod liver oil. And she imagined herself content in this solitude!
Before today, she has always understood togetherness as factional: the rioting groups of her postwar youth, drawn together only because of whatever they were against. But she is against nothing. And neither are these young people onstage, who seem so sincerely lifted by one another’s company. They are for something—for solidarity and Germany.
This must be what Hitler means when he says Kraft durch Freude: “strength through joy.” Strength through community and song and happiness. It is the opposite of everything Ania was raised to believe. The feeling she experiences at this realization can only be described as religious.
So? Rainer says, after the youth march offstage. She feels a thousand kilometers from the nuns, the musty, damp-smelling cloister, the whole creaky missionary enterprise.
Yes, Ania says, breathless. You’re right.
And so it is not as a conformist but as a rebel that Ania Fortzmann joins the Nazi Party.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Dortmund, 1935
Ania and Rainer are married at city hall. She wears a sensible blue suit and he his best Landjahr leader uniform.
The solemnity of the occasion strikes Ania as funny. She feels like a child playing at being a grown-up. But Rainer is serious as death. He remains two steps ahead of her as they climb the building’s steps. Even when she hurries, he won’t quite allow her to catch up.
Following this new, stiff, and humorless Rainer, Ania feels the chill of doubt. Do you love him? her friend and gymnastics partner Ulrike asked her when Ania told her they were engaged. The question took Ania by surprise. She and Rainer have known each other since they were children. They share a passion for the work and for improving Germany’s future. And Rainer says he has always known he would marry her. His certainty is compelling. Ania is used to following the lead of opinionated men. But is she “in love”? She is not even sure what this means exactly. In novels, love seems to be a stormy and irrational thing, full of chaos and bodily urges. Ania has never experienced this. And it is not something she wants. What she wants is a partner.
She is marrying Rainer because as husband and wife, they can lead a lager together. They will be assigned their own troop of boys from all over the country. They will teach them how to till the land and grow vegetables and be proud, unpretentious, able-bodied citizens of the Reich. Never mind that neither she nor Rainer knows much of anything about farming. They have acquired some simple skills in their training and will work alongside local farmers. They will bring their passion for the movement and its ideals of togetherness, class equality, and national pride.
When Rainer reaches the top step, he turns and offers Ania his hand. “My almost husband,” she says, smiling and panting slightly. He steps back and gestures for her to precede him. Together, they make their way down to the musty basement and the town clerk who handles such matters.