“Who said he wasn’t?” Lotte cracked a walnut with particular violence.
She and Gertrud had their own way of communicating—a kind of closeness achieved through years of living side by side, sharing the profound and the mundane. Benita existed entirely outside its confines, a subject of their conversation rather than a participant. “Well, he is nice,” Gertrud said to Benita. “It’s true.”
Obviously they had discussed the job already; Benita was their mutual problem to solve.
“I’ll go tomorrow,” Benita said.
She had tried to find work already. First at the local kindergarten, but she had no experience. Then with Frau Kurtzdorf, the town seamstress, but she did not know how to work a sewing machine. She had even applied at a department store a long bus ride away in Bremel but was told she was too old. Too old! The portly Dutchman conducting the interview had given her a lascivious once-over even as he pronounced this. It made her furious and despairing in turn.
But what could she do but keep trying? Lotte needed money for coal and provisions. Gephardt either could or would not work; it was unclear which. In any case he contributed nothing by way of household income, and beneath her scornful demeanor Lotte was worn out. She worked long hours in the canning factory office. Benita could not blame her for wanting support, and she did not want to be a burden.
Standing in the small, chilly parlor with its familiar lamp on the table—the same one Frau Gruber had kept in a place of honor in her own dingy parlor—Benita knew she should sit down beside Gertrud and help shell the walnuts, that she should make conversation and inquire whether there was any news of Gephardt, or ask what the church had planned for the first Sunday of Advent or whether Gertrud’s children were over their colds. But she could not. “I have a headache—I’m going to lie down a moment,” she said instead.
“Of course you are,” Lotte retorted, raising her eyebrows in Gertrud’s direction. “That’s our Benita.”
Upstairs, Benita sank onto her narrow bed and looked at the photograph of Martin that hung beside it. In it, he was about nine; his arms were outstretched, his hair ruffled by wind. It was taken in the field below Burg Lingenfels. The grass rose to his knees, and Benita could almost hear the skylarks and swallows, the papery rustle of grasshoppers. It had been a beautiful, warm afternoon—a picnic with Marianne and Ania and all the children, at the end of their time living in the castle. There had been resistance to the plan in the beginning—Elisabeth had wanted to stay inside and read her book, Fritz had complained of a toothache, and Benita herself had wanted to go into Tollingen to shop for a new hat. But Marianne had prevailed—it was the perfect day for a picnic, she insisted. And she wanted to take photographs with her new camera. Photographs of a picnic! Both Ania and Benita had been appalled. In their experience, cameras were precious, delicate tools, reserved exclusively for formal portraits—not toys to be toted along to take pictures of sweaty, disorderly children running wild. But how right Marianne had been to insist! The day had been wonderful—one of the happiest of Benita’s life. And in the photograph of Martin running, Marianne had captured a rare and unguarded moment of joy. Here was the thing Benita was most proud of: She had raised a boy capable of such feeling. Somehow, despite everything, he could experience this.
Why did you decide to go back to Frühlinghausen? he had asked in his first letter, and she had answered as best she could: There was no reason for her to rely on Marianne’s hospitality any longer. And it was important to be near her sisters; Lotte needed her help with the house . . . She knew her answers were thin. But Martin seemed to have accepted them because he had not asked again.
In his last letter he had written of an invitation.
A wealthy classmate from an old family had asked him to spend the winter holiday skiing with them in Switzerland. He was reluctant to accept. I don’t want to leave you alone at Christmas, Mother, he wrote. I could stay with you in Frühlinghausen. Does Lotte have room? The thought depressed Benita. She hated the idea of him here among Lotte, Gertrud, and their families. He would have to sit beside Gephardt in the dingy church pew she had loathed as a child. He would have to eat with people who gobbled their food in silence and wiped their mouths with the backs of their hands. This was not what she had raised him to be.
No, she had insisted. Accept the invitation. You can come visit in the new year. It will be good for you to learn how to ski. So he would spend Christmas on the slopes of St. Moritz with some happy family of dukes and duchesses. It was better this way, but at the same time her heart ached. She would content herself with his image and letters and the knowledge that he was happy.
The next day she steeled herself for an interview at Weseman’s.
Lotte, being Lotte, had gone over first thing in the morning and laid the groundwork. God knows what embarrassing things she had told them. In any case, she reported, the owners were happy to meet with Benita. In fact, Trude Weseman remembered her from their days together in the BDM.
This startled Benita. She did not remember a Trude Weseman.
Lotte stared at her impatiently. Trude Schultz. She had married a Weseman.
A face presented itself to Benita: pale and large eyed, with pimply skin and dark hair pulled back into tight braids. Of course! Benita felt the stirring of hope. They had shared experience to go on—not friendship, but a connection: all those long hours with Fr?ulein Brebel, singing Nazi Volkslieder and slogging through arduous Sunday hikes. All that ridiculous homemaker training, stamping butter and aerating batter and generally learning skills the war would render useless. There would, maybe, be something to laugh about.
But when she arrived, she did not recognize the woman who opened the door. Over the years Trude had grown stout. And her pimples had given way to pockmarks. Her hair had gone prematurely gray. Benita realized with dismay that she had seen this woman around town once or twice already and not acknowledged their connection.
“Trude!” she said warmly, offering her best smile.
Trude nodded her head curtly, rejecting Benita’s familiar tone.
Had she felt snubbed by their recent encounters? Benita resolved to be particularly self-deprecating and complimentary. “How long it’s been since the days of Fr?ulein Brebel,” she said. “And you look wonderful. Not a day older.”
“I certainly look days older.” Trude sniffed, shaking her head. “Come this way—Horst is in the parlor.”