Gretchen gave her the foal. “For Inge,” she said. “It’s not much, I’m afraid.”
Dora touched Gretchen’s arm. “It’s plenty. Inge and I thank you. She would starve if it weren’t for good people like you. How’s Oskar?”
“Much the same. He lives in his own world.” They could hear him in the bedroom, snoring open-mouthed. “He remembers nothing of the war, and he has no idea what’s coming.”
“I envy him,” said Dora. “He’s probably better off than the rest of us.”
After Dora had gone, Gretchen prayed for an end to the war, for the Americans or the English to come and end it. For liberation. They needed to come in such numbers that the city would have to surrender. Too many of the defenders were SS men or Gestapo, committed to fighting to the last bullet. Such ideas were defeatist, of course, and couldn’t be spoken out loud. Not even to Hans. Especially not to Hans.
Oskar woke up. Gretchen swore under her breath. He would be awake for hours; she would get no sleep that night. She read the newspaper until she fell asleep in her chair.
6
Dora cycled home. She lived in an old house on Schiller Strasse, once the home of a wealthy family, now a rundown ramshackle tenement divided into seven apartments. She parked her bike on the ground floor and headed up the stairs. The top floor had been subdivided into two unequal units. Professor Hepple, an old man, occupied the lion’s share of the floorspace. His daughter had lived there, but Dora was aware that she had left the city a year earlier. The old man had retained two bedrooms; Dora had just two rooms.
The attic space was home to Inge, a 14-year-old Jewish girl in hiding from the Gestapo. A ladder and a hatch gave access to a single room 8-foot wide by 20-foot long. Inge shared the space with a colony of bats. The roof leaked when it rained, having lost several tiles. A bare lightbulb provided the attic’s only light, and there was a single electric socket. It had floorboards and plywood walls to give it the rough appearance of a room.
Their diet consisted of vegetables and the bread that Gretchen supplied three or four days a week; Dora was wary of eating meat ever since she’d had a bad experience in the early days of the war.
The air was rank. Inge’s toilet was a bucket that she lowered through the hatch each morning on the end of a rope to allow Dora to empty it in the bathroom that she shared with her neighbor, Professor Hepple.
Moonlight streaming through the holes in the roof caught hundreds of dancing dust particles. Inge waited until Dora had removed the hatch cover before emerging from the gloom at the back of the attic. The movement stirred up the dust. Inge sneezed twice.
“Gesundheit, child,” said Dora. She turned on the radio.
Inge climbed down the ladder and Dora handed her the small loaf, an onion, and a carrot. Inge made a face. “Another onion?”
“It’s nourishment,” Dora whispered. “You have to eat. Onions are full of goodness.” Inge was naturally thin, but her muscles had atrophied. She was pale as a ghost, having hardly seen the sun in three years.
Inge wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Onions are horrible. I hate them. They taste revolting and they give me bad breath.”
“They’re full of good nourishment. I’ve told you before.”
“Yes, and I’ve told you before I don’t like them.” Her voice rose. “Why do you force me to eat things that I don’t like?”
“Nobody’s forcing you, Inge.”
Inge’s voice rose another notch. “If you give me nothing else to eat, isn’t that forcing me?”
“Keep your voice down!” hissed Dora. “I’ve given you bread and a carrot.”
Inge’s voice dropped again. “That’s not enough. I’m hungry all the time.”
“I’m sorry,” said Dora. “I’ll see what else I can find tomorrow. Put the onion in your pocket. You may be glad of it later tonight. What have you been reading?”
Inge ignored the question. She took a bite out of the bread.
“Are you still reading Friedrich Schiller?”
Inge grunted.
“You read him at school, didn’t you?”
“We had to learn The Song of the Bell by heart.”
“He was a great poet.”
“I suppose.” She chewed the bread many times before swallowing it. “Can’t you find me something younger to read?”
“You don’t like my library?”
“None of the books you’ve given me are—”
They both heard a loud creak from a floorboard outside the door. They froze. A man’s voice called out, “Are you all right in there Fräulein Hoffmann?”
Inge climbed back up the ladder and slid the wooden hatch into place.
“Fräulein?” Professor Hepple rapped on her door.
She turned up the volume on her radio. A news programme. She opened the door.
“I thought I heard voices.” He peered past her into the room.
“That was my radio. Sorry if I disturbed you,” she said, smiling at him.
“Were you in the attic?”
“I thought the reception might be better up there.” Her face was a picture of innocence. “Are we expecting an air raid tonight?”
“I don’t think so.” He had a puzzled frown on his face.
“There was no mention of one on the radio, but we don’t always get any warning.”
“I wouldn’t worry. We’re lucky to be so close to a shelter.”
“Good night, Herr Professor.”
“I hear noises from the attic from time to time when you’re not home…”
“We have bats,” said Dora.
“Bats. How do they get in and out?”
“There are small holes in the roof, tiles missing.”
Hepple sucked air through his teeth. “We should report that to the landlord.”
“Good idea,” she said. “Now I’ll bid you good night.”
“Good night, Fräulein.” The nosy neighbor retreated. As she closed the door, Inge, in the attic, sneezed again.
“Gesundheit!” Hepple called out.
“Danke,” Dora replied. If Inge had sneezed two seconds earlier…
7
Inge pinched her nose to smother another sneeze. The book she was reading was incredibly boring. She was tempted to pick up Adam Kuckhoff’s book about the clown again. It wasn’t wonderful, and she’d read it twice already…
