Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum Page B

aside.
    We have to get this off the ground quickly, she says, and we need historians who really know their stuff to be interviewers, and that means you. I think you’d be a natural. And you’d really be doing me a favor.
    Trapped, Trudy swivels to the window and looks out. The quadrangle is deserted, the sleet being whipped sideways by a relentless wind, the Gothic red sandstone buildings gloomier than usual in the premature dusk. Her reflection hovers among them, transparent and watchful, a streetlamp in its throat.
    It wouldn’t matter that I’m not Jewish? she asks.
    Well, of course you should be, since we are the Chosen People, Ruth says tartly. But no, it wouldn’t matter.
    Huh, says Trudy.
    Then she swings back around, reaching over to tug the papers from beneath Ruth’s behind and stuff them into her briefcase.
    I can’t, she says. I’m sorry, Ruth. I’m truly flattered you asked. But I have such a full courseload this semester, as you know, and now there’s this situation with my mother on top of everything else . . .
    She feels herself flushing. Anna’s transfer to the Good Samaritan Center having already been arranged, there is nothing much left for Trudy to do except make a weekend visit to ensure that she’s settled in. And this won’t take much time. But Ruth doesn’t need to know this.
    And, as Trudy has expected, she buys the excuse.
    Forgive me, she says, hopping off Trudy’s desk. I forgot. But maybe, when things settle down with her...Will you at least think about it?
    Of course, Trudy lies.
    Ruth goes to the door.
    Good, she says. Because I’m going to keep after you.
    She cocks a thumb and forefinger at Trudy in imitation of shooting a gun. You know where to find me if you change your mind, she adds, and leaves.
    Congratulations again, Trudy calls to Ruth’s departing footsteps in the hall. They are rapid. Ruth does everything quickly.
    Trudy smiles, then glances at her watch. She swears and leaps from her chair, tugs her still-damp boots on, and grabs her briefcase. Yanking the door open, she nearly collides with the student who is standing on the other side of it, head hanging.
    Professor Swenson? the girl mumbles to the carpet between her feet. Can I talk to you a minute? I’m so so so so sorry I missed class yesterday, I had this really really really bad urinary tract infection . . .

11
    DESPITE TRUDY’S TENURED POSITION, HER AFTERNOON seminar, Women’s Roles in Nazi Germany, is in the basement, the bowels of the university’s History Department. At the beginning of her course, Trudy routinely refers to the classroom as the Bunker— Hi, folks, and welcome to our lovely Bunker! —trying to alleviate first-day awkwardness and take the temperature of her new class. If it is a nice humorous batch, the quip earns a few smiles, even muted chuckles. More often, though, the students just sit stone-faced, extravagantly unimpressed by this feeble attempt to win them over. Trudy supposes she can’t blame them. There really is not much to laugh about in the prospect of spending an entire semester in a cramped windowless room, beneath light grids that resemble old-fashioned ice-cube trays, in little orange chairs better suited to midgets than the average undergrad.
    Truth be told, however, Trudy likes her classroom: the safety of being underground, the warmth of all those bodies packed together. This is her domain, where for fifty minutes three times a week she is in complete control. Where history is documented and footnoted, confined to text. Comprehensible, if only in retrospect.
    As she does at the start of each class, she snaps a fresh stick of chalk in two and stands rubbing her thumb over the rough edge, surveying her captive audience. It is a chocolate box of personalities; at this stage in the semester, Trudy knows each student, if not by name, then by trait. The quiet girl who arrives early and does crossword puzzles with obsessive zeal. The brilliant sophomore with the cobweb