—I’m sorry. You know, sir, I was thinking…
—About something other than the road, obviously.
—I… Yes. I know a good quarter of your V-2s blow up at launch, or you just throw them out because they’re unusable.
He won’t like that. He’ll say it’s not his fault.
—It’s not my fault if—
—No, I know. I know. But I was thinking, and… Why not build them in sections?
—Here we go again. And tell me, Lili, why would I do that?
—Well, you could assemble them at the last minute on the launch site. Transport would be a lot easier, for one thing, and that way you’d throw away one-third of a missile instead of the whole thing if it doesn’t pass QA.
—Someday, Lili, you and I will need to have a serious talk about who you are and what you do.
—I’m sorry, I just… You could also make the warhead detachable while you’re at it. You need that big rocket to go up, you don’t need it going down. There’s no point in keeping it along for the ride.
—Just watch the road, will you?
I will, I am. But helping him keeps my mind busy. Not busy enough, though. I keep thinking of Didi. The look on his face, his brown eyes disappearing into squints when he smiled. I now have this crystal-clear image of him in my mind. He’s holding me in midair. One hand on my chest, one on my back. I’m laughing, screaming, flying to the sound of lip trills. I can’t be more than two or three years old, so I know these memories aren’t real. But I see it. And I ask myself who that man was. Mother and I rarely talk about Berlin. If ever one of us brings up the past, the other reminds her of the rules. Don’t leave a trace. The Ninety-Eight is dead. We say it often and we believe it, even, but that doesn’t make it true. I knew that man. Mother knew him for over a decade. Who was he to her, to me, before I put him in a dumpster?
I’ve never met my father….
Mother always said she didn’t want a man around. She told me my father was a sailor, that he’d done his part and went on with his life. I never questioned that. Men aren’t exactly our strong suit. What if she lied to protect me? What if he was there all along? A friend. There were many of those. Dieter, Bernhard. Maybe one of them was a really good friend, a special friend. Just one time, and we’ll never talk about it again. Maybe she lied to him and he didn’t know. Maybe… Maybe my father was a sailor, had done his part and went on with his life. I suppose I’ll never know what happened in Bad Saarow. I do know I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t have come.
There’s this dream I keep having. I’m wearing a pink dress, and a boy is picking me up for prom. My father walks me to the door. The boy looks nice in his tuxedo. He pins a corsage to my dress and we walk away, my arm under his. We walk into the dance and all my friends smile at me because he’s so handsome. We dance, and my heart jumps when he kisses me on the lips. It’s a fantasy. Prom was two years ago and I went alone. I don’t have any real friends, and all the boys I’ve met wouldn’t be content with a kiss on the lips. I’m nineteen years old and I dream of being seventeen. I would trade places with a child right now if it meant I could be normal. I can’t be with anyone. I can’t get close. I’m alone.
Maybe I could live in that fantasy. Forget the rules, forget everything. I didn’t choose this life. Someone chose it for me, even if that someone was me…. Maybe I’m losing my mind.
I think I was twelve when Mother and I had the talk for the first time: “When the time comes, Mia, you’ll know what to do. We cannot let a single life get in the way.” I didn’t want it to be true. I still don’t. All I want is to close my eyes and wake up in my bed, eat some eggs and tell Mother about the crazy dream I just had. I want to close my eyes so bad, but I’m afraid of the things I see. A woman in a red dress, floating into forgottenness. A man I knew facedown in the garbage.
I felt my muscles tense, first in my hands, then my forearms. I heard his collarbone snap. His head became heavier and heavier, until I let his face slip through my hands and watched his limp body collapse on itself as if someone had cut the strings off him. I could see it happening, and I try to convince myself I thought it through, but I didn’t. It was all instinct. I didn’t think. I just… happened.
Mother said I would understand when I grew older. I don’t want to. I don’t want to be like her. I do what she tells me to do. It usually means learning new things, and I’m happy to do it. This. I don’t have what it takes for this. We’re supposed to protect people.
Dieter wanted to help. “Why are you crying, Mi’a?” I could have told him the truth, that I’m—
—LILI, WATCH OUT!
—OH SHIT!
I’ve lost control. We’re gonna crash.
—AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!
…
I can’t… feel my…
ENTR’ACTE
Rule #4: Don’t Draw Attention to Yourself
The front axle on their carriage broke as they hit a hole. The rain and hail had left the road to Amsterdam in the worst shape they had seen it. There would be no one to fix it in the nearby villages, and as much as Sura dreaded the long walk home, she hoped it would help her shake the feeling of disappointment.
The sawmill they had just seen was a remarkable feat of engineering. Powered by the wind, it was the first of its kind, and she knew others like it would soon fill the landscape. It was fast enough to make the men toiling in sawpits look like they were standing still. It would allow the Dutch to build ships faster and cheaper than anyone else, to control shipping routes and claim more colonies. Sura knew this was more than a piece of technology: that machine would change the map of the world.
And yet, she felt let down by the experience. Perhaps it was because she had spent too much time building it up in her head. The ride there was long and uneventful, and her daughter Ariani slept for most of it. Sura let her imagination run wild. Magnificent castles stretching their long arms into the sky to catch the breath of the gods. Timber conveyed from the hills by endless loops of moving link chain.
What she saw was clunky and noisy, completely devoid of aesthetic consideration. The sails, she thought, were poorly angled and the cap couldn’t be turned in to the wind like that of the tower mills she had seen in England. She tried to find awe in seeing the contraption move on its own, powered by an invisible force. For a moment she considered building one herself. She quickly gave up on the idea but left open the possibility of an afternoon spent putting what she imagined to paper.
—Mother, look! A traveling show!
Street artists were a staple of Amsterdam life, especially in the fall. Surrounded by a perimeter canal, the city couldn’t grow with the population. It was bursting at the seams with factory workers, traders, and migrants arriving every day from the four corners of the world. What Amsterdam lacked in space, it more than made up for in entertainment. Despite her mother’s warnings, Ariani, who was now a very precocious ten, often ran outside to chase the sound of crowds gathering for jugglers or fire breathers.
There were, indeed, people up ahead—thirty or forty, probably the entire village. All were facing the river, arms raised, cheering and screaming. As they drew closer, Sura made out the words. The hair on her arms stood on end and she squeezed her daughter’s hand harder and harder as her heartbeat quickened. This, alas, was no traveling show.
—Ariani, put your hood up and don’t say a word.
Sura took off her necklace and hid it inside her boot. She had seen mobs like this one before. She had seen women hanged or burned alive. No one knew why, but the temperature had cooled in recent years. Weather patterns were chaotic, thunderstorms appearing out of nowhere and laying waste to fields and farmland. Entire crops were lost. People were hungry, angry. Unable to explain the phenomenon with the knowledge at hand, they found their answers in superstition.