A skinny man approached me to see if I’d be his bride.
A poor man with a good heart said that heart was free, but lied.
I’d gladly dance with either, but I’m already obliged
To a portly chap in uniform who has something to hide.
Berni was enthralled. The lyrics did not make her think of politics, only of men and marriage, of dancing and wine. She and Konstanz kept their shrieks silent and clapped without sound. Konstanz twirled and goose-stepped, and when Max began to sing, Berni stood.
She could not have said where the idea came from. If she had known how Grete would react, or what would come after, she never would have done it. She wasn’t even sure how or when she’d learned what made men different from girls, but she snatched a rolled-up stocking off Sister Maria’s bed and stuffed it into her underpants.
Konstanz put her hands over her eyes, giggling. Then Frieda looped back to the chorus, and Konstanz threw back her head. She and Berni linked arms, and Berni thrust her little crotch this way and that, hands on her hips like a Prussian soldier, the sock forming a bulge under her skirt. She had tears streaking her cheeks, her tongue pumping silently in her mouth.
Round and round she and Konstanz went, in dizzying circles—the dull Spartan room a blur, the only color the shockingly intimate laundry on the bed and the bright yellow of Grete’s hair, until—
The radio’s volume shot sky-high, blasting Frieda Pommer’s voice throughout the building.
Berni whirled around. Grete’s sticky fingers held one of the dials, and her mouth was pressed shut. She stared past Berni, at nothing. Berni had completely forgotten her as she danced.
Konstanz cried out, covering her ears. Berni tore the stocking from under her skirt and whipped it at the bed, then slapped Grete’s hand away and shut the darn thing off. Too late; she could hear the sisters’ doors opening, could hear their alarmed voices.
“If you wanted me to stop,” Berni murmured, “you could have just said so.” But Grete wouldn’t answer. She wouldn’t meet Berni’s eyes, not even when Sister Odi burst triumphantly into the room.
They were stopped on a corner of the Kurfürstendamm, the busiest shopping street in the city. A place where they very decidedly did not belong, Grete thought. Their clothes gave them away; donated dresses did not grow at the same weedlike pace that girls did. Strings hung from Berni’s broken hem, and still the fabric did not cover her knees.
Berni didn’t seem to notice. Her hand shielding her eyes, she had the optimistic, faraway look of a sea explorer. She held the last of the three boxes of communion she’d been asked to deliver to churches in west Berlin, Grete the red cash tin. Berni had been ordered to return to the home in time for lunch. Grete was not supposed to be out at all.
“Can you read the time, Grete-bird?” Berni pointed to the clock on the Memorial Church, its stones blackened with city pollution.
Grete squinted up at the gold numerals. For a moment, she considered telling a lie to get Berni moving. “Eleven thirty,” she said honestly. “We need to go home, Berni.”
“Eagle eyes!” Berni bent down so that her lips touched Grete’s earlobe. “That means we have time,” she said in a low voice, affecting an Eastern accent, “to visit Libations of Illyria.”
A blade of fear stabbed Grete’s stomach. “Please, no. Let’s find St. Matthias, then take the U-Bahn home before anyone notices I’m missing.” She leapt back when an omnibus lumbered to the curb, sending oily water toward her shoes.
Earlier in the day she’d been peacefully changing beds in the nursery when Berni burst into the room. Grete would join her, she declared without asking, on her communion-delivery adventure. It was something to celebrate, Berni insisted: the sisters entrusting her with the communion wafers the Lulus baked, worth more than a pfennig apiece, meant they were on the verge of choosing her for the academy.
Grete had given her usual excuses, knowing they would not deter Berni: she had to carry soiled sheets up to the laundry, she had a Latin exam to study for. Tomorrow, Sister Maria would fire questions at her in Latin, standing behind the dais so that Grete could not see her mouth. Her only hope was to study until she could recite the whole dead language in her sleep, and here was Berni, pressuring her to go on one of her larks. But Berni promised they’d practice this evening; she’d have Grete speaking like Julius Caesar by the end of the night.
“Come, one more detour,” Berni said now, shielding Grete from two women in trousers walking and smoking, moving at breakneck speed. “I’ll buy you a pretzel.”
Bells tinkled, and a young man rode by on a bicycle. He tossed some change into a homeless veteran’s cap. Grete had seen only the thin white arms of the cyclist’s companion, clasped around his waist. Watching them, Berni’s face took on a look of naked yearning. It seemed she longed for those pale arms to belong to her.
Grete pulled at her sleeve. Berni had to remember they weren’t both Rose Red. Somebody had to be Snow White. “I must prepare for Latin.”
“This is more important.”
“You always say nothing’s more important than schoolwork.” In a matter of weeks, the sisters would choose three girls out of Berni’s class of forty to study with the Ursulines in Wedding. For months Berni had been struggling to behave, to polish her shoes, to bite back crude comments. Around the sisters she smiled so broadly she’d developed an eye twitch. Why would she risk that now?
Berni shook her head. “They sell real potions at Libations of Illyria—love spells, strength tonics. I’ll buy an elixir for luck.” She patted her pocket, which jingled. “I’ve enough change saved for both of us.” To show she’d won the argument, she began to walk up the boulevard so quickly that Grete had no choice but to scramble after her. Berni’s long black braids flagged behind her, the plaits of a little girl; on Berni’s gangly, sixteen-year-old figure, they reminded Grete of garlands tacked up long after Christmas.
Grete tried to keep up with her, dodging pedestrians. The Ku’damm was packed with people. Behind iron gates, cafés crammed table after table onto the sidewalk to enjoy the damp May weather. A waiter with a tray bent to show the Viennese strudel, the obsttorte, the black forest. Two delivery boys in aprons hauled loads of pink flowers down the restaurant’s cellar steps. Grete’s mouth watered; she smelled coffee, browned onions, custard.
“Everyone looks so angry,” she said breathlessly, when she’d caught her sister.
“That’s the Berlin sneer. Watch.” Berni affected an exaggerated frown and strolled with her shoulders thrown back. “You have to hold your Schnauze high.”
Graffiti was everywhere, even in this neighborhood; someone had defaced every National Socialist poster adorning a Litfaß column. When the girls stopped at an intersection, Grete pointed to a row of perfectly trimmed hedges on which KPD and BLUTMAI were scrawled in white paint. Berni chuckled. “Serves them right for trying to make shrubs behave like walls. If I had a garden, I’d let it grow wild.”
“But what does that mean? What does blood have to do with May?”
“It’s for the anniversary, I’d imagine.” Berni worked her lower lip over her teeth. “Some troubles between the police and Communists. The demonstration turned . . . heated.”
“Did anyone die?”
Berni drew a long, impatient breath. “We aren’t political. We don’t have to worry. Wait!”
The passing motorcar honked its horn at them, seconds after Berni yanked