“Are you...” I searched for something to say, not wanting to leave her just yet. Human interaction wasn’t a given these days. Who knew if she had anyone at home to converse with. “Do you have a family?”
“I live with my mother and younger sister,” she said. “My father and brothers were sent off two years ago. My fiancé the year before. We used to get letters from all of them, but...” She shook her head. “They stopped months ago.”
I nodded.
“My sister and I were in The League, of course. They had us at two different camps. When our mother became ill, neither camp informed the other and we were both sent home to care for her. We never told, and no one ever came looking for us.”
“And is your mother well now?”
“She is.”
“Good,” I said. “Well, I hope you hear from the rest of your family and fiancé soon. I should get home now. It’s been lovely chatting to you.”
I was about to turn away but stopped and reached into my bag instead. I couldn’t tell what anything was, save for the bread, since everything was wrapped in brown paper. I grabbed one of the smaller items and handed it to her.
“Oh,” she said, holding her hand up. “No. I can’t take that.”
“Please,” I said, lifting the bag as proof and glancing at the tiny loaf in her hand. “We have plenty.”
She sighed, looked from the item in my hand to my face, and then nodded.
“You are very kind,” she said.
“Stay safe,” I said, and then turned on my heel and hurried down the street for home, preparing myself to be admonished by Paulina for taking so long.
As I turned the corner I looked back. Johanna still stood where I’d left her, head bent as she hurriedly ate the food I’d given her.
37
Christmas came,Paulina and I doing what we could to make the day a tiny bit festive for one another. She had pulled out one of the many boxes of decorations from the attic the week before and we’d placed a few items here and there around the first floor, smiling as the flames coming from the fireplace danced off stained glass angels and stars.
As a girl, Christmas had been the one time of the year that life in this house had actually felt magical. My mother would hire a decorator to come in while the four of us, plus Nanny Paulina, went out for a day of meals, shopping, and dazzling the citizens of Hamburg with the perfectly coordinated outfits my mother had put together for us all. She’d be in a red dress with a white fur coat, my father in a charcoal suit, white button-down shirt, and a red tie that matched her dress, and Catrin and I would wear matching white dresses with full skirts, and red sashes tied into bows at our backs. Even our nanny would be outfitted to complement our festive attire, her usual uniform swapped for one in a deep forest green with red piping.
When we’d return from our adventures, the house would look like a winter wonderland that lasted until the second of January, when it would all come down and be tucked away once more, taking with it a small bit of my happiness every year. It was only during Christmastime that we got any kind of acknowledgment from our parents that wasn’t pure scrutiny and dismay. They watched with interest when we opened our gifts, as if genuinely hoping we’d like whatever they’d had their assistants pick out.
I reached out now, my finger brushing a crystal angel hanging from a small gold metal tree. Firelight glinted off it, casting prisms of light around the room. I’d done the same thing when I was a girl when no one was around to reprimand me for touching the expensive ornaments.
“The lamb is roasting,” Paulina said and I turned, a question in my eyes. “And the champagne is chilling.”
I grinned at her joke.
We’d been reminiscing on Christmas dinners past as we’d decorated the previous week. It had begun in sadness, and then became a game that had at one point made us laugh so hard we both had tears running down our faces, remembering how over-the-top the meals had been. The guests. My mother’s attire. At one point we grew so loud in our mirth, we woke my mother, who screamed down at us“den mund halted!”Shut up. We’d clapped our hands over our mouths and continued to snicker quietly. It had felt good to laugh so hard.
There was no lamb this year, of course. No elegant cuts of steak. No array of perfectly roasted vegetables. No trifle. But there would be small servings of chicken, roasted potatoes, canned green beans one of the residents on the lower floors had offered us, and for which we exchanged one of the muffins we’d received from the bakery that week, warm bread Paulina had browned and slathered in butter, and a small, dense cake whose lack of sweetness was covered with the addition of small chunks of apple throughout.
And there were three gifts. One for her, and two for me.
“Oh,” I said, looking down at the two small gifts wrapped in some of my mother’s expensive paper. “But I’ve only gotten you one thing.”
“And I’ve only gotten you one.” She held out one of the two boxes. “This one is for...” She looked to my stomach, which had just begun to show, but was still barely noticeable when I was covered in layers.
“Oh,” I said again, my eyes filling with tears.
It was still strange to think I had a child growing inside me. In fact, I often tried not to think about it, beyond determining I was about four months along and still had plenty of time before worrying about the process of giving birth. My biggest concerns were getting stuck and having to have the baby here or the city being attacked again. And what if something went wrong with the pregnancy and there was no one to help? Sure, I was a nurse. But I hadn’t trained in childbirth. I wouldn’t know how to help myself if something went awry.
And then of course there was always the chance my mother might tell the lieutenant who I was. So far she had been asleep when he came, not even stirring when he slammed cupboard doors and drawers in her room. But Paulina had convinced her that there was danger for her in telling the lieutenant who I was. He might not believe her story that I’d run away and instead come to his own conclusion that my parents had sent me away in an attempt to save me. That they’d hidden me and they themselves were traitors. My mother may be in pain, but her pride in her status was greater. She would not be sent to her death as a traitor to her country, and so she promised to keep my identity a secret. For all our sakes.
Of course, her promise made our exchanges that much worse. She knew she was doing me a favor and thus demanded my assistance over Paulina’s more and more, screaming for me whenever she was awake, her broken voice sending shivers up and down my spine daily.
