Motherland by Maria Hummel Page A

both of Hans’s knees. He froze, listening for his stepmother’s answer, but Jürgen made a fussy cry and a chair scraped as she rose and creaked back and forth across the floor with him.
    Stumbling on clumsy legs, Hans thundered down the last steps and into the damp, carpeted room lined with shelves holding their food, gas masks, water, fuel. Just last week, he had hung some old green curtains on the wall, where windows might ordinarily go. He angled the light over the room, the curtains, breathing hard gusts of hate at Fräulein Müller and her oozing voice. If they had an air raid tonight, he would tell her there wasn’t space. There wasn’t really, not if their two neighbors ever needed to squeeze in. She could go back to Berlin and find somebody else to insult.
    “You breathe like a horse,” said a young woman’s voice.
    He spun to see a dark shape on Herr Geiss’s side of the hole.
    “What’s it to you?” Hans retorted.
    The dark shape didn’t reply.
    “What are you doing down here?” he said.
    “I was looking for a tool to help me open a suitcase,” she said. “The lock’s stuck.”
    “Herr Geiss can help you,” Hans said.
    “Herr Geiss isn’t home.” The figure shifted and poured through the hole, Berte Geiss’s mouth and cheeks suddenly snagged by the light of the lamp. Her round eyes blinked at Hans.
    “What are you doing down here?” she asked.
    “Checking on supplies.” Hans moved off with his lantern, adjusting the canned sardines on the shelf.
    “You do that a lot.”
    He didn’t answer. He didn’t talk to girls at school. He didn’t know why anyone would think he liked any female at all.
    “Would some of your supplies include a pair of pliers?” said Berte.
    He shrugged.
    “A screwdriver? I’m down to my last pair of hose.” When she pleaded, her voice sounded younger. He went to the tool shelf and slid his hand around two handles.
    Footsteps thudded down from above. “What are you doing?” said Ani, his skinny legs pausing on the steps.
    Hans shoved the tools in his front pocket, suddenly aware of the metal digging into his right thigh. “I’m helping Frau Geiss with her suitcase,” he said, watching the girl disappear through the hole like a drop of ink sliding off a desk. As he followed her into the wall, the earth scraped his skull. A damp crumb kissed his neck. He paused.
    “You can come if you want,” he said, without looking behind him.
    In the second-floor hallway, the girl vanished through a threshold. He knew it was her bedroom even without stepping through the doorway because it gave off a vague flowery scent, and though it was as dark as the rest of the house it seemed warmer. It was also mysteriously and intensely cluttered. From the hallway, he could see heaps of dresses andshoes, spilled jewelry, open drawers, an empty sleeve trailing across the wooden floorboards, as if inviting another two-dimensional guest to dance. He backed up and called his brother’s name.
    “In here,” Ani said from somewhere on the same floor.
    “Hurry up,” hissed Berte.
    Hans took the tools from his pocket and held them out before him. He breathed in deep before entering the room, closing his lips around the air.
    She sat on the bed, a lamp lit beside her, her skinny legs slightly parted, the suitcase on her lap.
    “Totally kaputt,” she said. “I told him not to be cheap.”
    “Who?”
    Her eyes flashed over him. “You need a haircut. Doesn’t she ever cut your hair?”
    Still holding his breath, Hans stretched out his hand to take the suitcase, but the girl’s knuckles whitened. “I’ll hold it, silly,” she said. Her voice was cross.
    He bent down and inserted his screwdriver into the lock, aware of his heavy head angled toward her chest, aware of its rise and curve. His hands jiggled above the gap between her thighs.
    “Who’s the woman visiting your stepmother?” she asked.
    “I don’t know,” said Hans.
    “She looks rich.”
    He hesitated. He had