“Much better than Thomas!” Anneliese hugged me.
As we started toward the door to find our parents, we passed Thomas, still shoving music into his bag backstage. He puckered his lips and made a kissing sound. “I saw you,” he whispered.
“So?” Anneliese stared at him until he turned away. “What are you, the kissing police?” The way she said it made me laugh, my worry melting away. Everyone kissed people they loved, didn’t they? No one thought it strange when I kissed Stefi good night.
Our parents met us in the street, by the stage door. My parents shook Anneliese’s hand and kissed my cheeks. “Not terrible,” my father said, smiling. “That was lovely, Orly,” said my mother, drawing me into the curve of her arm. “Does Anneliese want to come with us for a cake?”
Anneliese looked pleadingly at her parents, who had greeted us formally, and refrained from commenting on my performance. When her mother shook my hand, her pale blue eyes gave me such a piercing look I felt she could see all the way down to my heart. That she could see the imprint of Anneliese’s lips on mine.
“Perhaps another time,” said her father, buttoning his fur-collared coat. “If there is one.”
Anneliese’s mother smiled without her teeth. “Oh, and I forgot to tell you, we’ve bought a piano! So there is no longer any need for Anneliese to trouble you.”
Nine
On February 12, 1938, Austrian chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg meets with Hitler in his mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden, hoping to find a way to avoid war with Germany.
My hands were full of shining things—buttons, ribbons, and rolls of orange crepe paper—as I leaned on Anneliese’s doorbell. Every year, we made our costumes for Fasching together and today we planned to begin transforming ourselves into flowers. This was Anneliese’s mother’s idea; she could make exquisite blossoms out of crepe paper, peeling apart rows and rows of stiff petals. Anneliese said she’d rather be a grape vine so she could wear green and walk around holding bunches of her favorite fruit, but her mother thought grape vines too suggestive of wine and Bacchanalia. Last year, she had helped us to sew twin harlequin costumes, but this year we wanted to be something that reminded us of country holidays, of life outside the city. Anneliese’s mother had become obsessed with nature. She made Anneliese eat a pastelike Birchermüesli made of oats and hazel nuts and apples for supper and gave her lectures about the healing air of the mountains. She had even stopped eating meat, telling us that “flesh foods were damaging to spiritual health.”
Anneliese was taking forever to answer the door. “Ana! I’m going to drop everything!”
I heard her footsteps, fast and then halting, arrested by her mother’s voice, too low for me to hear the words. Ana’s voice rose in protest, her mother’s tone growing sharper, until I could discern a few phrases—remember the danger . . . not an association . . . your friend—but nothing that made sense.
Finally the lock on the door turned. “Thank goodness! Here, take some of this, it’s all slipping and sliding.” I held out my arms but Anneliese just stood there, her arms hanging limp at her sides. “Ana?”
“Now isn’t a good time,” she whispered, her brow creased and her eyes trying to say something to me that her mouth could not.
“But we planned—”
“I know what we planned. My mother, she says you can’t come in.”
I stared at her, crinkling the paper against my chest. A button fell and rolled down the stairs. We listened to it descend.
“Tomorrow then?”
She shook her head. “She says you can’t come at all anymore. She’s gone mad, Orly, she says it’s too dangerous.”
I couldn’t move away from her door. Not at all? To the apartment I had freely entered for the entire decade of my life? I could smell frying dough, hear something sizzling in the kitchen. “She’s making Faschingskrapfen?” My mouth watered. Every year her mother made doughnuts that oozed apricot jam and we ate them when our costumes were finished.
Anneliese reached for my hand. “I’ll bring you one later. When she’s not being so stupid. I’m sorry.”
I nodded and turned before she could see my tears. As I ran back down the stairs to our apartment, I wondered if we would still go to the processions together. I had never celebrated Fasching without Anneliese. I didn’t want to go without her.
Our apartment was silent. My parents were both at work and Willi was studying. I dropped my armful of materials on the dining-room table.
“Erdnuss, is that you?” Willi appeared in the doorway of his room. “I thought you were making your costumes? Oh no, what is it?”
I shook my head and tried to swallow my tears.
“Her mother—”
Willi wrapped his arms around me. I rubbed my forehead against the wool of his sweater. “What did she say, that cow? Here, come sit with me.” He pulled me to the sofa in the parlor and held me on his lap, though I was too big for it.
He listened as I told him what she said, his forehead wrinkling. “That woman has some nerve. In our building!”
But I didn’t want his anger. I didn’t want to punish Anneliese’s mother. All I wanted was to be let back in.
* * *
• • •
THE MORNING OF THE PROCESSIONS, Willi came to my room, holding something behind his back. “Close your eyes.” I sat up in bed, clutching Lebkuchen to my chest. Something heavy and smelling of glue descended over my head. Rough edges weighed down my shoulders. I opened my eyes to darkness and reached my hands up to feel it.
“Don’t worry, Peanut, it’s just a costume. Look—” He adjusted the heaviness on me so that I could peer out small eyeholes and turned my shoulders so I could see myself in the dim mirror over my bureau. Willi had made me a giant bunny head out of papier-mâché. It was painted a light brown, with pink on the ears and nose. Its small mouth turned up at the corners.
“I was hoping you’d come with me to watch the parades. Mutti and Vati have already gone.” My father was playing on a float with a group of musicians from the Philharmonic, and my mother was riding with them.
I stared at myself. It was a beautiful bunny head. But the smell and the heaviness overwhelmed me. I lifted it off. “I just need to breathe a little.”
Willi sat down next to me. “You don’t have to wear it. I’ll wear it for you if you don’t mind being seen with a giant rabbit.”
“I’d rather be seen with a giant rabbit than any human I know.” I smiled at him. “Maybe we can take turns.”