Page 51 of Hell to Pay
“In your rucksack,” Dr. Becker suggested. “That’s the only place. But—no. Too dangerous. A rucksack is too easily seized and searched.”
“I’ll come back for it later,” I said. “It can stay hidden here for now. It’ll be safe here.” I put it and the bag that had held the necklace back into the cavity, then hefted the stone, fitted it back in place, and tested the mechanism. “I don’t see how anybody will find it.”
“What if we can’t come back?” Gerhardt asked. He and Andrea had been sitting on the broad edge of the stone cistern, swinging their legs as they ate and seeming for once like actual children. “The Russians are coming. They’ll kill us if we come back.”
“Who says?” Andrea scoffed. “The Russians aren’t who we have to worry about, silly. It’s the Germans.”
“But weareGerman,” Gerhardt said.
Andrea sighed in exasperation. “You don’t understand. You’re a child. We’reJews.”
“Not anymore,” Dr. Becker said firmly. “We’re no longer Jews. We’re now Catholic.”
“But you can’t just—” Andrea began.
“Yes,” Dr. Becker said. “We can, and we must. I’ll explain on the way.”
“I’ll take the stars off your clothing,” I said. “Bring them to me.”
After that, Gerhardt held the flashlight while I sewed the pieces of the parure into the cuffs of Franz’s coat. I can’t imagine that I’ll have to sell them. I have money and ration books, and the war can’t last long now. When it’s over … well, when it’s over, who knows what will happen? Most people will be poor, won’t they? There’ll be work cleaning up, if nothing else, although the aches in my body tell me that this isn’t the work for me. Perhaps I can become a maid. I should know how to do that after watching them work all my life.
I can’t think about that now, though. I can’t think ahead at all. Leaving the palace, now that we’re safely underground again, leaving the protection of my parents and my name, leaving them unburied, for that matter, and heading who knows where …
I can’t do it. How do I do it?
I must do it, though. I have no choice.
24
STRENGTH THROUGH JOY
Ashleigh joined us the next morning for breakfast. Ben was developing quite the gourmet appreciation for cheese, although he still drew the line atMilbenkäseand its mites, and also enjoyed taking the top off his boiled egg with one deft blow of his knife. We all find pleasure where we can. At the moment, he was saying, “Ashleigh and I produced four more bites last night. We didn’t finish until almost two in the morning, but the stuff isfire.”
“Pardon?” I asked.
“You know,” he said. “Good. It’s really good. And you know what the view count is now on the first bite?”
Ashleigh said, “Hey! It’s my channel. Let me tell. Over three hundred forty thousand, that’s how many, across all platforms. I just want to sit there and refresh over and over to watch it go up, but I can’t, because I have to keep getting the bites up there while we’re hot. You should see the comments, though,” she told me, “on the finding-everybody-dead part. You made so many people cry.“ She sighed happily. “And I didn’t even do the part with the organ yet! Also—” She drummed on the tabletop with her palms for emphasis, anaction that made a waiter or two look our way—“I passed the threshold for monetization on YouTube last night! I have over a thousand subscribers—I have overtenthousand subscribers, in fact—and because I had to make the bites longer to get all the juicy stuff in—around ten minutes is the sweet spot, I think—I have enough watch hours, too, and we’ve barely even started!”
“Impressive,” Sebastian said.
“Are you OK with this, Oma?” Alix asked.
“Please say yes,” Ashleigh implored. “Please pleasepleasesay yes. Because this is so awesome.”
“I don’t quite understand the references,” I said, “but I don’t see what harm it can do. As long as I don’t have paparazzi following me on their motor scooters.”
“Ha,” Ashleigh said. “It means people start advertising on my channel and I get paid actual money, that’s what. Once it happens,” she told Ben, “I can start paying you, too. I’ll have an employee. How cool is that? Of course, it’ll probably just be for a week or two. But hey—we can do a bite on that Augustus the Strong guy, too, don’t you think? With all his palaces and kids?”
“Yeah,” Ben said eagerly. “I could do an equation, in a spreadsheet, like—how many kids the guy had to have each year, and how many, you know?—”
“How many woman he’d have had to sleep with!” Ashleigh said. “Oh, that’s good. Considering fertility rates and everything—how many months it takes a woman on average to get pregnant—because it wasn’t like they were going to a sperm bank or having sex with him every night. The guy got around. That’s agreatidea.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. It seemed fairly crude to me, but then, I’m a dinosaur.
“We’ll put that in between the tiara-search parts,” Ashleigh went on, “since we have to wait. Kind of a whole—” Shewaved a slice of toast spread with Boursin cheese, the garlicky wonders of which she and Ben had bonded over. “A whole saga. We should do Mrs. Stark’s parents, too, the King and Queen, because he was a war hero and in the Resistance or whatever, and she was really beautiful. I found some old pictures online of her in gowns and the tiara and everything—royal tiaras are mostly on really old, wrinkly ladies, have you noticed? I mean, I’m sure Queen Elizabeth was great, but she didn’t exactly rock that tiara. She had the exact same hairdo for about seventy years, and so does the new queen. Camilla, right? Exact same hairdo she had in, like, 1970. Must be a queen thing. People love to watch stuff about glamorous, beautiful royals, though, and the Beauty and the Beast part makes it even better.”
“My father,” I said, aware that my tone was cold, “was no beast.” I didn’t dispute the “old, wrinkly ladies” bit. Ashleigh was right about that. True European royalty scorns cosmetic surgery, tooth bleaching, those enormous eyelashes women favor nowadays that look as if they’re wearing spiders on their faces, and the rest of the beauty culture so important to those who live by their looks. Working royals probably still cleanse their faces with Pond’s cold cream, as my mother had done and as I still do, though it makes my daughter sigh in despair. Alix has developed more along my lines, if not worse. Self-confidence is the best makeup, though, and she has enough of that.
