Page 132 of Hell to Pay
“I fear that must wait until tomorrow,” I said.
“Oh,” Ashleigh said. “Well, at least the story’s pretty much done.”
“Very much not so,” I said. “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
“As long as we have time,” Ashleigh said. “Tomorrow night’s the opera, and then that’s it, you’re gone, so …”
Sebastian rose. “No more talking,” he said. “Let’s go. Can I order you that platter again, Marguerite? And a pot of tea?”
He’s really so very much like Joe.
Friday morning, and another breakfast. I would miss the bread most of all once I went home, I thought, spreading Quark over a moist, dense, coffee-colored slice of true German Pumpernickel. The same kind I’d baked during the war, made of nothing but ground rye berries, salt, and water. “Americans don’t appreciate this bread,” I told the others. “Possibly because they don’t eat Quark. Pumpernickel spread with Quark, thinly sliced cucumbers, smoked salmon, and a bit of chopped dill—now,thisis breakfast.”
Ben said, “OK, I’m going for it. I ate sour meat already, right?”
I smiled at him. “You’ve been very adventurous, yes. Open-mindedness is a fine quality.”
“Thanks,” Ben said. “But it’s mostly just that I like food.” And I laughed.
Ashleigh was all but hopping up and down in her eagerness to get going again. She had her phone in her hand, too. I asked, “How are the bites coming along? And I really cannot recount more, you know, until I finish my breakfast. Nobody wants to see an old woman talking with food in her mouth.”
“We’re so viral,” she said happily. “Ben and I were up until one again editing, and I’ve got enough to keep going for two weeks. One a day is better, so you keep people coming back.Andhaving the whole thing up so new people can binge-watch, of course. After this is done, I want to do more stuff about World War II, but not the super sad parts.”
I said dryly, “You’ll be a bit starved for material,” and ate another bite of Pumpernickel.
“Why?” Ashleigh blinked at me. “I mean, there’s England, and Czechoslovakia, and Poland—I’ve been reading some books so I know what questions to ask—and Paris, too. Who doesn’t love Paris? And the French Resistance is romantic,right? I can be the World War II channel. Everybody who remembers it will be dead soon, though, so I have to move fast.”
“Well, yes,” I said. “Very true. We old people could drop dead at any minute.”
Ben said, “That’s, like, really un-tactful, Ashleigh.”
“Why?” she asked. “Mrs. Stark knows she’s old.”
“True,” I said. I must endeavor to spend more time among young people; they are so very amusing.
“And Oma’s saying you’ll be starved for material,” Alix said, “because the whole war was super sad.”
“War brides, though,” Ashleigh said. “New beginnings, right? Did you know that Army officers’ wives did classes for Japanese war brides, teaching them how to cook American food and put on makeup and dress like Americans? Cultural suppression, anybody? Now,thatwould be a funny season—I’m calling them seasons, by the way—the Japanese wives talking to each other in disgust about cooking with Spam and Velveeta and making Jell-O salads and buying Wonder Bread. And these really gross TV dinners they had back then, and Kraft Macaroni & Cheese with that bright-yellow sauce. How come American food after the war was so terrible? They were about the only country that had enough food for everybody, so they thought, “I know how we can contribute to global well-being! Let’s introduce the concept of Disgusting Ultraprocessed Foods, and then push them on everybody else!”
“Because they were convenient,” I said.
“So is stir-fry,” Ashleigh said.
“The ingredients for which were mostly unavailable at least six months of the year,” I said, “unless one used frozen or canned vegetables, which I can’t imagine would turn out well. Food transportation, you see. Whereas Spam comes in a can.” I took a last sip of tea, wiped my mouth carefully, and said, “All right. You may film now.” You see how regal and entitledI’d become, simply because a few people actually wanted to listen to my life lessons! Or were willing to hear my life lessons in order to get the rest of the story, of course.
“OK,” Ashleigh said, and held up her phone with an extra little bounce. “Starting now. So your troubles were pretty much over, right? You married Joe, you came to the U.S., and you both lived happily ever after?”
“Not even close,” I said. “You see, there was a wrinkle with that War Brides Act.”
“I thought you said they passed it, though,” Ashleigh said. “In December of 1946.”
“They did,” I said. “Now think about the American public, not to mention the U.S. military. How much do you imagine they longed for more German and Japanese-born citizens at that moment?”
“But you were women,” Alix said. “Not soldiers.”
“Ask Frau Goebbels,” I said, “whether a woman can be a Nazi. You can’t, because she’s dead, along with her entire family. She and her husband poisoned their children in the bunker after Hitler died. She didn’t want them to live in a Germany without Hitler, so she killed them. Six beautiful little blonde children, aged three through twelve, dead in their beds by their mother’s hand. Oh, yes, women can be as evil as men. The SS guards in the women’s barracks at the concentration camps, for example; who do you think they were? Many records were destroyed at the end of the war, and there was a great deal of confusion. Would the Americans want to risk somebody like that coming to their country?”
“So they left German and Japanese—and Italian, I guess—women out of the Act?” Alix asked.
