Behind her the phrase Iudicate egeno, et pupillo, the guiding verse of the Order of St. Luisa, was painted on the wall in Bavarian script. The sisters translated it as “Defend the poor and fatherless.” Berni knew iudicate could mean “defend,” but it could also mean “judge.” Sister Maria insisted the two were interchangeable.
“Remember,” said Sister Maria, “where your treasure is . . .” She held out her hand.
“Where your treasure is,” Berni said, completing the scripture, “there will your heart be also.” She handed the Schultüte to Sister Maria. Across the room, Hannelore yelped.
• • •
Later, in the dormitory, when Berni opened her pockets, Grete was horrified to see the bills crumpled up inside. “Oh, Berni, how could you? You’re already in trouble!”
Berni unfolded one pale-pink banknote, holding it taut between her fists. “Look at this, Margarete. Eine. Million. Mark.”
Grete’s eyes widened. “But where would you spend it?”
Berni let Grete trace the scalloped patterns on the money with her fingertips, then stashed it all in her pillowcase. It would only upset Grete if she told her she longed to use the money to take her to a real ear doctor. Sister Lioba, who worked in the infirmary and performed annual hearing tests using tuning forks and whispers, knew nothing.
Grete said, lip trembling, “They’ll never choose you for the academy if you misbehave.”
“Ach!” Berni shrugged, pretending not to have thought of this. Every year the sisters chose a handful of teenage girls to attend a private Catholic academy in Wedding, run by Ursuline nuns. It was the girls’ only chance, besides finding a husband, at a better life. “I have years until then, to become a model child.”
After the lights in the dormitory went out, the girls slid under Berni’s quilt, leaving Grete’s bed empty. Grete put her face in the crook of Berni’s neck. “Tell me a story.”
For years they’d slept beside each other, even though the sisters liked to arrange girls by age. They’d come to St. Luisa’s when Berni was four and Grete two, after their mother died and they could no longer stay at her cottage in Zehlendorf. Berni remembered the smells of her mother’s home best: cedar chests opened in winter, nutmeg shaved over hot milk. As a baby, blond Grete also had a milky scent, and a fear of thunderstorms; as soon as she could toddle, she’d climb from her trundle into Berni’s carved wooden bed.
At times, Berni could not help feeling that her real life was a kind of river she was always running alongside, searching for a place to leap back into the water and be carried along by the current, back to her mother, Trudi. It was Trudi’s elder sister, a spinster whose name Berni would no longer utter, who had dumped them at St. Luisa’s. She’d come to live with them when Trudi fell ill with pneumonia and saw her through her death. The aunt stank of something briny and woke late every morning without feeding the girls. The last time they’d seen her, she’d been crying in the reverend mother’s office, hanky to her nose, saying she couldn’t do it anymore.
“Are you certain, Berni?” Grete asked once, chewing a fingernail. “That wasn’t our mother who gave us to the sisters, after our father died. Was it?”
“Hush! Mother can hear you in heaven.” Of course it hadn’t been their mother. Berni could vividly remember the first time she’d seen St. Luisa’s. It sat on a bleak corner in otherwise affluent Charlottenburg, gray as a prison, with rows of too-small windows. The trim, painted strenuous red, gave the building a stressed, weeping face, and Berni had known instantly they were in trouble. She’d given their aunt a good kick in the shin.
“Tell me a happy story,” Grete whispered now. Under the bedcovers her feet tickled Berni’s shins, her toenails poking through her holey socks.
“Once upon a time there were two sisters, Snow White and Rose Red. Schneeweißchen preferred the hearth and home; Rosenrot played outside and gathered berries for their mother.”
“No,” Grete said. “One about our mother.”
“Ahem. Once upon a time, in Zehlendorf, there lived a young woman who raised squab in a shaded dovecote in her backyard. She had two little girls who slept in the attic under the eaves: Bernadette and Margarete, one tall and raven-haired, one fair and small.”
“How did the dovecote smell?”
“It smelled foul, and so the mother planted wildflowers all around it.” Berni had recited the story so often she could see discarded feathers on grass. “One day, a magician came to the house. The young mother held baby Grete against her side and took Bernadette by the hand. ‘Choose the whitest birds you can find, my sweet, the ones with the most magic,’ she told Bernadette. The magician took them away with a sweep of his cape.”
“She was a kind mother.”
“Very kind,” Berni said. She did not have to recite the next part of the story, the one they knew best. Their mother had been very kind to introduce them to the magician; she did it to hide the real reason she raised their beloved doves, which was for meat.
• • •
So much money. Berni dreamt about it, woke up licking her lips. She felt it crunch between her fingers, under the sheets.
She didn’t tell Grete what she intended to do until Thursday evening, when Sister Maria marched out on her weekly mission to feed the poor and Berni’s accomplice, Konstanz, met them in the dormitory. “Sister’ll be out until eight, at least,” Konstanz announced. She had wide green eyes and a willowy build, more fairy than child. “You aren’t going to tell, are you, Grete?”
Grete had both hands over her ears, the corner of a blanket in her mouth. Berni knelt down, close to her face. “Nothing bad will happen. She has so much money she can burn it.” She couldn’t explain her need to possess something, anything, even if it did turn out to be worthless.
“Why must you always put us in danger?” Grete tilted her watery eyes toward the ceiling and sighed. “Every night I wish the next day will be quiet, every night . . .”
Before long, Berni was pulling Grete down the quiet corridor. Konstanz led the way, grabbing corners as the girls slid through the halls. At last they reached the east wing, where they tiptoed past the wooden doors to the sisters’ rooms. Berni put her arm around Grete, whose face had turned the color of bathwater, as Konstanz worked a hairpin into the lock. When finally the handle gave, Berni entered the room quickly and lifted the shade. Gray evening light illuminated the cot, the desk, the heavy crucifix. Sister’s laundry was folded atop her sheet.
“I don’t know why, but”—Konstanz’s eyes widened—“I never would have imagined they wore underwear.” Some of the bloomers were even faded pink, large and dainty at once. On a rough wooden table sat a teapot and tiny mug. Berni opened the pot to peek at the stiffened tea bag inside. She ran her finger over the edge of the cup to feel the greasy print of the sister’s lip.
“Let’s go,” Grete whispered. Berni pretended she hadn’t heard.
“Look at this.” Konstanz threw off a radio’s cover. It looked like a large wooden jewelry box with black dials. “It’s a TRF set. My father had one.” She began to adjust the reactor.
“Come, Grete.” Berni picked up the desk chair by the rungs. “You need to be closer to the sound.” Grete glared at her, face deep red, as she took her seat.
When a song burst out of the radio, they all leapt back. “Turn it down, turn it down!” Berni cried. She yanked Grete’s hands from her ears, trying to get her to smile.
“And now,” a voice announced when the music faded, “Frieda Pommer