Page 120 of Hell to Pay
“We’ll just try it, then,” he said. “And see.”
He didn’t grab me. He didn’t even hold me, other than my hand. He just bent his head and brushed his lips softly over mine, then stood back and asked, “OK?”
I touched my lips with my fingers. “How does it feel so good?” I asked. “As if there are sparks?”
He smiled, and it was so tender, it nearly hurt. “It feels like that, I think, if you’re kissing the right person.”
“Oh,” I said. Stupidly, I’m sure. Then, “Will I see you tomorrow? For our book discussion?”
“Just try to keep me away,” he said. “Just try.”
50
A CHRISTMAS FEAST
It was cold on Christmas Eve. When I went downstairs at three-thirty in the morning to put the kettle on, the little thermometer outside the window hovered just below zero, and ice clung to the inner panes of the windows. I wrapped myself more tightly in my coat, lit the ovens, and made my tea—peppermint, for I was saving my bit of black tea for tomorrow, which was my birthday—and instead of turning to work instantly on my bread, mixed the dough for my coffee cake.
Yes, actualStreuselkuchen! Joe had brought me a small bag of white flour the week before, and something even more precious: a little bag of walnuts and a twist of cinnamon. How long was it since I’d tasted such things? I’d decided then and there that I would save this just for the five of us, because the bakery was closing at noon today and we were having our Christmas Eve. A real Christmas Eve, complete with realKaffee und Kuchenfor dessert and candles on the tree; Joe, of course, was providing the coffee. It was with a light heart that I tied the strings of my apron, washed my hands, and set out my ingredients. Was my cake going to be authentic? Not with margarine instead of butter, powdered eggs, and powderedmilk. But itwasgoing to be better than anything I’d eaten for almost a year.
Outside, the sun remained resolutely below the horizon. Inside, I reconstituted the milk and heated it in a double boiler, shelled and chopped walnuts, and beat margarine, sugar, and salt with a wooden spoon before adding a reconstituted egg, then the warmed milk, white flour, and yeast. I beat it all some more and set the dough aside to rise before beginning to peel potatoes.
It was going to be potato bread and Pumpernickel—which I’d baked two days ago—and that was all, because I wanted as much holiday as I could get. We’d close at noon, and for the next two days, I wouldn’t be working, for the bakery would be closed. Joe had gone into the woods with Matti earlier in the week and carried back a Christmas tree, and it stood in the living room upstairs, decorated with paper flowers, stars made of woven straw, and carved wooden figures that, Frau Adelberg had informed me, came from her husband’s family. We’d have our Christmas dinner—more potatoes, yes, but not only potatoes—light the candles, exchange gifts, and be festive. And I would not, not,not,allow myself to remember last Christmas and sharing Frau Heffinger’s beautifulEierscheckewith the servants. Nor would I dwell on my father giving me his gold watch, or on my mother’s string of pearls. I still had the watch, for I’d been wearing it when I went down to the cellars. As for the pearls—had they burned in the fire, or were they around the neck of some Russian bride? Either way, they were gone, but I could remember my mother without them, couldn’t I?
You see how well my resolution not to remember was working! Maybe remembering wasn’t the problem, though. Could I remember and be sad, and still be happy, too? Emotions were much more confusing than I’d once thought. I’d been happy on that first day Joe and I had played musictogether, and happy, too, every time since. He kissed me now each time he walked me home—it was dark, and nobody could see—and his kisses were another thing that made me happy. Possibly also stirred up and confused, for we held each other now, and the kisses lasted longer. The feelings in my body when he kissed me were—I don’t know what they were. It felt good, but also a little frightening, because kissing brought yearnings that I didn’t understand. I wished I could ask my mother about it—though on second thought, perhaps not. If I’d been in Dresden still, if there’d been no war, I’d certainly not have been allowed to kiss a man outside the door, or to have walked out with him at all.
So, no, I couldn’t have asked my mother. Frau Heffinger, though, I could have asked, in some alternate universe in which I’d been a normal person living in normal times. Meanwhile, I had Joe to ask, and Joe alone, because Frau Adelberg certainly wouldn’t want to know.
Such were my thoughts as I baked. Well, notallmy thoughts; I may have spent a minute or two wondering whether Joe would bring me a gift, or more honestly, wondering what my gift would be, because of course he would bring me something! I wished I had something better for him, but at least I’d tried.
He came through the door at noon as the final customer went out of it, and as soon as he did, Matti, who’d been underfoot all morning, asking about theKuchen,about dinner, about when we could light the candles and when Joe would come, and above all, about presents, ran to him headlong. Joe picked him up off his feet and whirled him around, laughing, and Frau Adelberg and I laughed too, especially when Joe held him upside-down over his back. Some things, a man is better for.
How to describe Matti’s excitement at Joe’s gifts? A box of chalk and a bag of marbles, which Matti, Joe, and I all playedwith as Frau Adelberg cooked, Joe boldly drawing a chalk circle right onto the wooden floor while Frau Adelberg threw up her hands and protested. A toy called a Slinky, which was nothing but a very long piece of coiled wire, but which one could set on a top step and watch “walk” to the bottom—very amusing to see. A wooden airplane with a rubber band attached to the propeller that you could make fly around the house. If it landed in your mother’s bowl of potatoes, though, look out! Matti was beside himself with delight, and threw his arms around Joe again and again. And when I produced my gift, a very old edition ofGrimm’s Fairy Taleswith the most beautiful—and sometimes frightening—watercolor illustrations? He sat down on the floor and began to read it.
Joe had brought gifts for Frau Adelberg, too. Chocolate and caramels, cigarettes and sugar, and two pairs of nylons. Yes, nylons. How delighted she was, and how she laughed! “But surely I’m much too old for nylons,” she said. “And where will I possibly wear them? To think I would be given nylons by an American GI! I’ll have to leave them out where Frau Lindemann can see them, just to watch her explode.”
“You can wear them when your husband comes home,” Joe said. “When he takes you out to a dance club. Well, once thereisa dance club.”
It was the wrong thing to say, for Frau Adelberg’s face fell, and she said, “Yes,” and went back to her potatoes. I realized that I’d spent so much time thinking of my own losses, I hadn’t bothered to think about hers, and was ashamed. Her son had been only seventeen, and she still didn’t know when her husband would return. Month after month had gone by without news, and I suspected she wondered sometimes whether he were dead. The post was so unreliable, how would one even know? I myself had had only one letter from Dr. Becker, merely saying that he and the children were well andsettling into life at Föhrenwald, and that had taken weeks to arrive.
I said, “I have a gift for you also, Frau Adelberg.”
“Oh?” she said, and didn’t turn around from her work. I thought she might have been crying, and a stab of pity pierced me.
“Yes,” I said. “I very much hope you like it.” I went to my room and came back with the thing. I’d had nothing to wrap it in, of course, and had secured it into a twist of newspaper. I put it into her palm and said, “Merry Christmas.”
She said, “But I’m covered in potato juice.”
“Yes,” I said, “but I want you to have it now anyway. I’ve wanted you to have it ever since I found it.”
“Young people,” she said with a sigh. “Always so impatient.” I noticed, though, that she didn’t set it aside for later. Instead, she washed and dried her hands, sat in a kitchen chair, and carefully untwisted the newspaper. And then she stared.
It was a small gold cross pendant. Done in Art Deco style, it was inlaid with a bit of black enamel, and it hung from a gold chain.
“How did—” she began, and then stopped.
“I saw it offered,” I said, and didn’t say where. On the black market, of course; somebody else forced to sell their precious heirloom. “I thought it should stay in Bavaria, and go to someone who would treasure it as it was meant to be treasured. To a good Catholic who would wear it to Mass on Christmas morning.”
She was crying now, slow tears that rolled down her cheeks, and the pity nearly overpowered me. “I sold my heirloom,” I said. “It makes me feel better to give you one.”
