Motherland by Maria Hummel Page B

heard Fräulein Müller drop the name of the Reichsmarschall and his wife, but he didn’t believe a person like her could know someone like that. She was probably puffing herself up.
    “I don’t think she’s rich. She only had one suitcase.”
    The lock did not budge. Hans fumbled for the pliers, dropping the screwdriver on the ground with a clonk. “Ani, where are you?” he said testily, as if his brother was responsible for the noise.
    “In here,” said the voice again.
    He knocked at the lock with the pliers.
    “Hurry up,” Berte said again, but now her voice was curious and he felt her eyes on him.
    “I’m trying.”
    “I got married when I was sixteen,” she said. Her breath blew a small warm wind against the crown of his head.
    He drew back. “May I break it? If I break it, I can probably open it.”
    Her thin shoulders rose, making her unbuttoned collar fall open.
    He closed the pliers on the lock and twisted, ripping into the brass. His hands ached. The metal groaned but did not give. “It’s really stuck,” he said, hysteria in his voice.
    “You’re a little Kohlenklau,” she said. “I saw you snitching wood from the park.”
    Coal snatcher . Hans blinked. His eyeballs felt hot and dry. His lids scraped over them. He kept twisting the pliers.
    “Will you steal something for me sometime?” She leaned in, her cheek radiating heat into his. He wanted to pull away. He wanted to calmly stroll from the room and get his brother and walk down the stairs and out through the cellar hole into his own house. But instead his hands kept cranking at the metal until it shrieked and broke and her cheek was touching his. Her softness startled him. He jerked back, and then the suitcase sprang open to reveal snakes of hose, all heaped and coiled on top of one another, in the pale, variegated shades of flesh. The girl gave a cry. She pulled the suitcase away, her knees closing, her hands fluttering down to the stockings.
    Hans stared at her. He dimly remembered drawing a Lancaster that morning. He recalled listening to their little black radio for any reports from Weimar. He remembered Ani and his infernal licorice. But he couldn’t remember how to say good-bye to the girl and leave. It was completely beyond his comprehension, that simple casual courtesy, Gute Nacht .
    “I didn’t mean to break it,” he said.
    Then loud planes passed overhead and they both flinched, waiting for a siren. In the pause, Berte sank her hand deeper into her stockings and a tremor of genuine fear crossed her face. She looked as if she was going to be sick.
    The siren did not sound. The girl withdrew her hand from the suitcase. “Why are you still here?” she said in a tight voice.
    Once Hans started moving, he did not stop, not to drag Ani from the adjacent room, not to ask what he was doing, not to pause in the cellar, or wish his stepmother good night. He went straight to bed with the screwdriver and pliers still in his hand, holding them under his pillow, their hard edges grinding, clanking every time he turned over. Kohlenklau , the double k’ s like a door slamming twice. Will you steal something for me sometime? For the first night since his father had left, Hans did not dream of him.

 

    In the silence after the planes passed over, Uta sagged onto the couch in Otto Kappus’s study and looked up at the ceiling. “I’ll never forget my first sight of you,” she said. “A little daisy from the fields, and now look at you: the very picture of Bürgertum.”
    Liesl pulled an eiderdown from the wardrobe and handed it to her friend, listening with one ear for Jürgen, sleeping in the other room.
    “Remember how I used to visit you on Sunday nights and tell you all the spa gossip?” said Uta. “I always loved your room. It was so peaceful, so sweet, so positively Liesl.” Her blue eyes glistened. “But this is yours, too. I’m happy for you.”
    Liesl sat down on the edge of the couch. “Thank you,” she