But there’s little use reviewing these familiar obstacles this morning, as Gerda bustles around, clapping her hands and ordering “Up, up!” She is of uncertain age, gray-haired and dumpling-cheeked, with a body like that of a sturdy wooden doll. For Lilli and Helga, Gerda has come to be Grossmutter Bayer’s daily emissary.
The girls never address the proud older lady with the informal “Oma” that they used with their wizened, loving Frankfurter grandma before her death. Nor do Lilli and Helga, although living under the roof of the same austere gray-stone house, see much of the elder Bayers, who keep Elspeth close to them in the lower quarters. Grossvater is a more cheerful-looking character than Grossmutter. He appears to be a jolly fellow of the old school and still wears side-whiskers. But he is always hurrying off on “official business,” so the two older girls feel they hardly know him.
“You are to take special care with washing and dressing this morning,” Gerda instructs. “You are going on a shopping outing with your grandmother. Everything must be immaculate. And you are to wear your best clothes.”
Helga and Lilli are speechless. How can this be? It has never happened before. Grossmutter has lavished lots of care on Elspeth and has even shown her blonde little angel off to her women friends. But she has not taken Helga and Lilli anywhere since they have come to live with her, or even appeared to be very concerned with their secluded daily life.
True, she did engage a tutor for the two older girls, because Mutti is now working at a job in a fashion house (as she did before her marriage to Papa). So Mr. Anton Hess, with his sharp-tipped nose and pince-nez eyeglasses, comes every weekday to give Helga and Lilli instruction in science, history, and English. “Enough German grammar,” Grossmutter decreed aloud soon after the girls moved in. “Englisch!”
Helga has never questioned this peculiarity. In view of the fact that England is declared to be Nazi Germany’s chief target of destruction, why would Grossmutter Bayer want her granddaughters to learn English? “Perhaps,” Lilli remarks slyly, “she is training us to be spies!”
Helga finds this “crazy,” but Lilli insists it could be true. “Once we know English, the Hitler secret service will smuggle us into England to send them signals about the English war plans. But instead, while there, we could escape the Nazi clutches and become free.”
“Yes,” Helga mocks, “and send for Mutti and Elspeth, and get Papa out of Buchenwald, and live happily ever after. You read too many books, Lilli, all of them fairy tales!”
The mention of Papa returns Lilli to the somber mood that underlies her every conscious minute these days. Yes, there has been some mail from him. The first was a postcard, written from Buchenwald about three weeks after his arrest, which raised everyone’s hopes. My loved ones, I am fine and thinking of you only, as I wait for my case to be reviewed. You cannot write to me, but I will write you again. Do not worry. I send my love to you, Martina, and to my three treasured girls. Josef/Papa
Hope began to fade, however, after a second and a third postcard arrived, bearing the same message in Papa’s handwriting, but with a later date. What could this mean? Only last week a fourth post card of the same kind arrived. “It’s as if Papa wrote these cards all at the same time, but dated them several weeks apart,” Lilli had commented to Mutti. “Why would he do that?”
Mutti had shrugged sadly. “I will try to inquire,” she murmured.
“From who? How?” Lilli challenged.
Mutti had turned away and reached for her handkerchief.
It is time for the trip to the Kaufhaus, the large and elaborate department store that is the pride of this mediumsized German city.
The façade of the store could be that of a palace, with many windows and carved stone decorations. It sits in the busiest part of downtown and has six stories and a basement that are served by electric elevators. Each mirrored and gilt-trimmed moving car is run by a uniformed young woman, who calls out the number of the floor and the type of merchandise offered for sale.
Lilli says she can remember having been to the Kaufhaus before, when she was four or five. She insists to Grossmutter in a friendly way that she has often seen this “dream palace” in her sleep. Helga says that can’t be true, while Grossmutter remarks that Lilli has a “too-strong imagination.” But Lilli remembers the ground-level floor, where they sell beauty accessories, ladies’ gloves, handbags, silk stockings, and fine jewelry. She is certain now that she has been here with Mutti. Of course, she and her sister won’t be lingering on this exotic ground floor—they are both too young for such frippery.
What are Lilli and Helga hoping for on this surprise shopping trip, on a sun-drenched May day that heralds warmer weather? They are visualizing cool summer frocks of cotton or linen, with short sleeves and a bit of smocking or embroidery, new underwear to replace their itchy winter garments, half-socks, and shoes with straps, not laces!
“Come along,” Grossmutter urges, as the girls’ heads are turned by smartly-dressed women shoppers, and even some gentlemen and high-ranking officers who are sniffing perfumes, holding jeweled earrings up to the light, and examining incredible alligator handbags.
Who would have thought, Lilli muses to herself, that with all the rationing of everyday goods, such luxuries are still plentiful in Germany?
Now at last they are in the miraculous elevator, smoothly passing the so-named “first floor” of the great emporium, which is devoted to men’s apparel ranging from formal wear to shooting jackets, and includes hats, shoes, sleepwear and whatever other garments the man of wealth and standing might require.
Lilli’s heart gives a thump as the elevator slows for the second floor, women’s and girls’ apparel. Other passengers file past them and leave the car, but Grossmutter restrains Helga and Lilli, who look up in puzzlement.
More floors flit past them . . . china, silverware, and home furnishings on the third; radios, gramophones, toys, and souvenirs on the fourth. Perhaps they are going directly to the lacy glass-roofed tea room and restaurant on the sixth floor, known as the Winter Garden. Dainty sandwiches, tiny iced cakes, and chocolate torte with whipped cream are its afternoon-tea specialties.
It is two hours later and the girls are back in their attic room, with Gerda helping them to sort out their new clothing. Lilli had been so close to the Winter Garden that she could almost taste its goodies, but had never reached the Kaufhaus pinnacle. Instead, Grossmutter had ushered them out of the elevator on the fifth floor, sports clothes and sporting goods for the entire family, and there they had made their purchases.
Then, at the very end of the shopping trip, Grossmutter Bayer had taken the girls down to the famed food court in the basement of the store. There, a tantalizing spectacle of gourmet specialties dazzled the girls’ eyes. Smoked meats and sausages, cheeses, bakery delicacies of every sort, jams and preserves, and an array of chocolates and other confectionery, crammed the shelves. Small samples of some of the foods were offered to the roaming shoppers.
Lilli and Helga, hungry by this time, were permitted to help themselves to tiny squares of imported Norwegian goat cheese impaled on toothpicks. Helga gulped and spat the sweetish caramel-colored lump into her palm. Lilli managed to down hers, acknowledging that it was the most awful thing she had ever tasted. Grossmutter angrily muttered, “Manners!” and hurried both girls out of the Kaufhaus. It was the last time Lilli would ever lay eyes on the great store.
Without a word, Gerda clips the price tags from the girls’ new clothing and neatly folds the drab-colored blouses, skirts, jackets, and high socks that are to be stored in the room’s huge wooden wardrobe, presumably for summer wear. There are also new shoes, brown oxfords with laces, and high leather boots for each girl. The only really welcome item is the new cotton underwear that will replace the worn flannels of the seemingly endless winter.
“Such long faces,” Gerda remarks. “What did you expect? Summer frocks? Parasols? Dancing shoes?”
Helga is silent, but Lilli speaks up. “We