Florence’s attentions went a long way toward pulling Anna out of her melancholy but they didn’t cure her, by any means. She still missed her parents fiercely and worried about them constantly. The night before Florence died, the two girls had returned home from the pictures to find a letter from Anna’s mother on the dresser in the apartment’s entryway. Anna had grabbed it, torn it open, and begun reading it on the spot, while Florence summarized the plot of Little Miss Marker to Joseph, who sat in the living room reading.
“Anything interesting?” Joseph had asked, over the hum of his daughter’s monologue.
“Didn’t you think the little girl in the film was brilliant?” said Florence. “Mark my words, she’s going to be a big star.”
Anna ignored her and read a small excerpt of the letter aloud, translating as she went, “A new statute has just come out of the Reichsregierung. The Nazis are levying a special tax on Jewish émigrés, equal to twenty-five percent of our capital.” Florence stopped talking.
“She goes on,” said Anna. “ ‘Considering the other seventy-five percent of our money is already earmarked for the Sperrkonto, this is very bad news indeed.’ ”
“What’s the Sperrkonto?” asked Florence.
“A crime is what it is,” said Joseph. “The Nazis are telling Jews that, if they want to emigrate, they can only take two hundred Reichsmarks with them. Everything else, minus the taxes, goes into a special state-owned bank account, which they can tap if and only if they return to Germany.”
“They can’t do that!” Florence said, indignant.
“Unfortunately,” said Joseph, “very few people are telling Hitler ‘no’ these days.”
“So, they’ll have to start over here? With nothing?” Florence had barely gotten the question out before she spit out a solution. “You’ll help, won’t you, Father?”
“Of course I’ll help. But it’s not so straightforward. They need that capital to prove they won’t be a drain on the U.S. economy. It’s a requirement for getting a visa.”
“It’s a paradox,” said Florence.
“Exactly.”
Anna didn’t know what the word for paradox was in German and wondered if she should interrupt to ask. The letter shook in her hands. “You’re sweet. Both of you. But I think I’m going to go to bed.”
“Of course,” said Joseph. “We can talk more tomorrow. Remember, Anna—this isn’t a setback. Not yet.”
“I know.” She could feel her voice beginning to break. “It’s just a lot. To take in.”
“Get some sleep.”
She folded the letter and made her way out of the room.
“Anna,” Joseph called, when she had already disappeared around the corner and down the hall. She stopped, retraced her steps, hovered in the living room’s doorway. “Your parents are not so old they can’t start again. None of us ever are.”
Anna dared not cry in front of Joseph. So, when she felt her chin begin to tremble, she pressed her lips together—tight—and tried her best to nod her head believingly.
In the bedroom, she kept the lights off, crawled into bed with her clothes on, and wept. After several minutes, the door creaked open and shut and the springs of the bed next to hers groaned.
“Anna?” Florence asked. “You all right?”
She tried to say yes but her words dissolved on her lips. It was as though this setback had released a torrent in her, and now she was crying for all sorts of reasons that had both nothing and everything to do with the content of her mother’s letter. She cried because Esther had barely spoken two words to her since her arrival and because she wasn’t in a university lecture hall in Berlin and because she was unlikely to see her school friends for years, if ever again. She cried because she missed the way her mother twisted her hair out of her face and the way the tobacco in her father’s cigarettes smelled when he rolled them at their kitchen table. And she cried for Germany. How was it possible to both pine for and resent a place so much at the same time?
“Do you think it’s so unlikely the visa application will be approved? Even with everything Pop’s working on?” Florence asked.
Anna shook her head, a signal she wasn’t sure Florence would be able to interpret with one side of her face buried in her pillow.
The springs under her own mattress rasped, the mattress bending to absorb the weight of a second person. Florence had moved to the edge of Anna’s bed and begun repeating a soft “shhhhh.” She stroked Anna’s hair, and Anna let out a whimper. The gesture reminded Anna of all the times her mother had tucked her into bed and soothed her to sleep. When Anna’s shoulders continued to heave, Florence lay down beside her in the dark, took hold of her hand, and waited.
Anna could feel Florence studying her in the dark, and eventually, that sensation—of being carefully considered—did calm her. Her convulsions became shudders and her sobs hiccups. She opened one eye and then the other, and was able to make out Florence’s features, so close that she couldn’t focus on them. Even the sharp line of her nose and the arch of her eyebrow blurred. Anna pulled back several inches so that she could view Florence properly.
Florence moved to brush a tear from Anna’s cheek, running her thumb along her cheekbone. Was it possible that, in only three months of living among strangers, Anna had forgotten what it felt like to be touched? Florence lifted her head off the pillow and stared at her as if she were awaiting the response to a question Anna hadn’t heard her ask. She leaned forward and kissed the spot on Anna’s cheek where the tear, fat with anticipation, had sat so recently. Anna held her breath as Florence scattered several small kisses across her cheek, like tiny
