Caroline Woods - The Cigarette Girl

All these years I’ve been able to think of nothing but Berni. I wonder if you feel the same. You knew her better than I did. You were her true sister. There is so much I would tell her if she were alive. I’d tell her I loved her, first, and I would do my best to explain what happened between Klaus and myself.

Please accept my gratitude, Anita, for all you did for Berni that I couldn’t. If you are willing to correspond, I’ll write again. If not, I will disappear.

Should we never speak again, I wish you the very, very best.

Grete

The record player whirred and whirred; it had reached the end of Side A.

Janeen’s entire body tingled. There it was, in black ink: Klaus Eisler, also known as Henry Klein. The man in the newspaper. The man Anita had pretended not to know.

Janeen felt sick. Why would her mother have lied about knowing him—an officer in the SS? Had he been her mother’s boyfriend? Or worse, had he been her—Janeen’s stomach lurched—colleague? She’d heard her mother say before, in passing, that the Nazis had been able to seize the minds of all kinds of people. What if she’d been talking about herself?

Janeen sat up shakily. She unwrapped a root beer barrel from a cut-glass bowl on the bookshelf and sucked it to think. She read the note again, then a third time. Anita had stood in the Eislers’ courtyard. She’d been a “true sister” to someone named Berni. Janeen found herself feeling oddly jealous. Her mother had lived an entire life without her, one she knew absolutely nothing about.

She bit the candy in half, grinding it smooth against her molars, and tore a page from her notebook. She wrote very little, so that she would not reveal her limited German:

Dear Grete,

I will listen. That is all I can promise. I’ll look for your letter.

Anita

Janeen read it over and nodded. It was the only way to find out the truth—she couldn’t ask her mother. This woman would respond and confirm that Anita had been no Nazi. Of that Janeen felt certain. Almost certain.

This was how she justified sealing the envelope. Before she could change her mind, she ran the reply down to the mailbox. She waited, breathing heavily, until she saw the mailman loop back around, drawn by the raised red flag.

Part II

Berlin, 1932–1933

We take them [the youth] immediately into the SA, SS, et cetera, and they will not be free again for the rest of their lives.

Adolf Hitler

For over a year Grete lived at St. Luisa’s without Berni, and in that time she allowed the other girls to stream around her as a river wears down a stone. It was easier not to talk, not to risk entering conversations she might not be able to hear. By the summer of 1932, she knew the other girls had forgotten she existed. They thought of her as inanimate, a bench or forgotten hymnal.

The plan had been for Berni to find an apartment for them to live in together, and that would have happened long ago, according to Berni, if it weren’t for the Depression. “I can barely make enough money selling cigarettes to support myself,” Berni said on her most recent visit, avoiding Grete’s eyes. “In St. Luisa’s, at least you know you will be fed every day.”

Sister Josephine helped facilitate their meetings. Every month or two she sent Grete on an errand, to get soap flakes or cherry juice for her gout. Like clockwork, Berni would appear outside the store. How she and Sister Josephine communicated was a mystery.

“If you have so little money, why are you smoking?” Grete snapped. Her sister’s excuses were growing tiresome. Sometimes she wondered if Berni was having too much fun to burden herself with a deaf little sister.

The changes in Berni disturbed Grete. First her hair had been chopped to chin length. Then she began wearing ties. She used suspenders to hold up trousers made for men. Her hair became shorter and shorter, combed wet like a boy’s, and her laugh changed; it became deep, hoarse, a smoker’s laugh. Whatever had caused this metamorphosis, it had nothing to do with Grete, and she both hated and feared it. The same unease she had felt with Sonje Schmidt, she felt around Berni now.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.