Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(53)
Hanna said nothing to this.
“Is it true that you are going to Poland?” Oskar didn’t wait for an answer; the question was just a formality. “You will make a very fine teacher. A perfect German. You will honor your brother’s sacrifice,” he announced, stiff as a greeting card, and if the circumstances weren’t so awful, Sophie would’ve laughed at his stunning inability to be a person. “Will you write to me from Poland? If you do, then I will write back to you.”
“Yes, that is how letter writing works, Oskar,” Hanna snapped. Even in grief, she had no trouble being blunt. Her surliness toward Oskar only seemed to make him more besotted with her, and Sophie wondered, with a touch of envy, what it must be like to hold such feminine power. But now Hanna turned syrupy sweet. Only Sophie knew that was when she was at her most dangerous. “Oskar, dear, I need a moment. With Sophie. Alone.”
“Oh. Yes. Of course. Heil Hitler!” Oskar gave a short nod and turned on his heel, striding through the graveyard as if he meant to impress it.
“How can he be so irritating? It’s almost a gift,” Hanna marveled.
Sophie sputtered with a laugh and clapped a hand over her mouth, horrified—how could she possibly laugh at a time like this? But then Hanna was also laughing and there were tears in her eyes and in Sophie’s, too, all of it mixed up together, and it was hard to know if their grief was for Karl or for all of the lonely months they’d spent apart.
Hanna took hold of Sophie’s hand. “I know he was sorry. About what he did. About what he should have done.”
Sophie understood what lurked underneath: I am sorry, too.
The next afternoon, Sophie marched down the slope of frozen dirt to the small depot by the weedy railroad tracks. The snow had turned to bitter sleet. The train, a big steel monster, idled behind a scrim of sooty steam that made it seem like something out of a dream. Two older BDM girls from another town who were also going to Poland handed luggage up to a young conductor who seemed torn between flirting with them and chastising them for coming so late. On the platform, the stationmaster checked his pocket watch and called out for everyone to board. Now that Sophie had gotten Hanna back, she wished she could pull the moment out like an afternoon spent under the welcoming arms of the oak.
“I brought you something. For the trip.” Sophie presented Hanna with her beloved book of fairy tales. She had encircled it with a piece of fraying string to make it seem more like a gift.
“But this is your favorite,” Hanna said.
“It’s a long train ride. You’ll need something to read. Don’t worry. There are plenty of kisses and killings. You won’t be bored.”
Hanna grabbed Sophie, hugging her violently. “Take care of the tree, will you?” she whispered. “You’ll have to give it magic for the both of us.” Then she turned and ran up the train’s steps without looking back.
And though spring was still a month away, Sophie could already feel its first hopeful thaw.
The rest of March was endured with its usual dread. Books had not been rationed, and despite everything, the shop was doing good business, which at least kept Sophie’s mind occupied. Whenever a new shipment arrived, it was all she could do not to plop herself down in some corner and read through the entire stack. She made lists of new words to share with Hanna: Absolution. Wistful. Radiance. And fornication, just to make sure she was paying attention. Sophie had received exactly two letters from Hanna, which didn’t surprise her. Hanna was not one for letters. It would mean needing to sit long enough to write. The first spoke of Poland’s dismal weather—I didn’t know any place could be colder than Kleinwald in winter. Everything is gray upon gray upon gray—her annoyance at rooming with the two older girls—I’ve known cows with more imagination. One of them slurps her soup—and her difficulties in trying to educate Polish and Estonian women who’d been forced to abandon their native cultures and languages to assimilate as “True Germans”—They don’t seem in the least happy about it. I can’t say I’d feel any differently. Sophie wrote back with gossip from Kleinwald—Klara got in trouble with Fr?ulein Volker for wearing lipstick; Hedy was seen making eyes at Werner. She’d heard that Oskar was seen ice skating with Gerda and thought about reporting it to Hanna but decided against it. Instead she wrote, I placed flowers on Karl’s grave today. A handful of spring forsythia. They look resplendent there, which means beautiful. Hanna did not write back for some time.
April blew in with news of Germany’s invasion of Denmark and Norway. In town, the newspapers carried triumphant headlines of Germany’s victories. They assured the people that the shortages— of fuel, of food, of clothing—were all necessary for the glory of the Reich. Many people didn’t want war, just peace. But with only German newspapers to read, German radio stories to hear, and all other outside sources made illegal, they believed what they were told: Germany was under attack and was only defending itself. “What else can we do?” said many. They refused to believe the terrible rumors coming out of Warsaw and Lodz, Dachau, Auschwitz, and Neuengamme. “No one likes war but Germany has to defend itself against these British and French aggressors,” Herr Binder said one day in the shop. He was a funny little man with a barrel chest and a mustache like the kaiser’s. He said it to Herr Ohlsen, the willowy, dreamy-eyed piano teacher who also worked in the radio shop. Herr Binder had bought a book on the Vikings. Herr Ohlsen, a book of poetry. You got to know people by what they read, Sophie often thought.