How old? There are men who’ve asked her this question in a different way now. It makes her uncomfortable. She answers, but he only nods at the information. “I figured it was something like that,” he tells her and whistles out smoke. “I figure my daughter’s about that age too.”
Rashka feels herself sit back. A daughter? Such a man and he has a daughter?
“Course, I don’t know exactly. Last time I saw her, she was just a little pitsl in nappies.” He says this, then something about him quiets, settles for a moment with his cigarette before he says, “If you want, you can make a run for it.”
A blink. Rashka believes she must have imagined that this was said, but then the man glances back at her. “Did you hear me? I said you can make a run for it,” he repeats casually. “There’s the door,” he points out. “You can go. I won’t stop you. But you’ve got to do it now. Now,” he repeats. “Before she comes back.”
A kind of confused panic crackles through her. For an instant, her heart shimmers with the possibility. There’s the door! Head out and run! That’s all. Just run. But when she thinks about moving from her chair, something is wrong. She is paralyzed. Where would she go? How would she hide or feed herself? Mostly, how could she abandon Eema to the Gestapo? That’s what she
A moment later, it makes no difference. The Fräulein returns to the table. She frowns suspiciously as she sits. “And what are you two plotters up to?” she wants to know.
The man Cronenberg returns to his usual frown. “Just have your coffee and let’s get back on the street,” he says. “It’s getting late. Dirkweiler will think we’ve laid an egg.”
Rashka receives grudging permission from the gnä’ Fräulein to visit her eema down in the morgue. “For a few minutes if you must. Just don’t bring any disease back with you,” the woman commands. A chest infection has begun to circulate among the prisoners. Her mother is burdened by it. Eema lies on straw, coughing and sputtering, sweating and shivering under a thin cover. Rashka brings her something heavier. A wool horse blanket. She brings her tea in a steel thermos and bread with lard. Her mother has no stomach for the bread and is too weak to sit to drink the tea, so Rashka spoons it into her eema’s mouth.
“She’s very ill,” Rashka tells the gnä’ Fräulein.
“Yes?” The woman is clad in a silk dressing gown, showing a stockinged leg as she lounges on the davenport in the room that she shares with Cronenberg. She pages through a copy of a fashion magazine. Elegant watercolors of stylish women are on the cover of
“She has a fever.”
“What do you want of me, Bissel?”
“Some medicine?”
“I can get you aspirin for her,” the gnä’ Fräulein is willing to concede.
Rashka is silent for a moment. The gnä’ Fräulein looks up from her magazine. “
“I thought…” she starts to say.
“Yes? What? What did you think?”
“I thought,” says Rashka, “you loved her.”
The gnä’ Fräulein glares darkly. Then turns back to her. “Would you like to look like this, Bissel?” she asks and turns fashion pages to face Rashka. “So elegant. Can you see yourself in such modern kleyd?”
Rashka doesn’t know how to answer.
“You’re a woman now, Bissel. Aren’t you? I mean, you’re on your cycle now.”
Rashka’s eyes search the air anxiously.
“Bissel?”
“Yes,” Rashka says.
“Yes,” the gnä’ Fräulein confirms. “So you must know that men are looking at you.”
Again, the uncertain silence.
“I wonder is all. Are you looking back?”
Rashka senses a pulse of danger. Shakes her head. “I don’t…”
“You don’t what? Know they are looking or look back?” The question has gained an edge. “It’s all right. You’re allowed to answer. In fact, I insist.”
“I don’t,” says Rashka. “I don’t know. And I don’t look back.”
“
Rashka is stunned. Her skin prickles, and she feels her belly hollow out.
“Do you deny it?” the woman asks her, flipping tightly through the magazine pages. “No? Good. At least now we have the truth between us,” she says. “Do you know what the Stapo men call it here—to iron out a problem? It’s when a problem is