"Of course not. They're always threatening stuff. They just like to scare people." Annemarie took her nightgown from a hook in the closet.
"Anyway, if they did, it would give me a chance to practice acting. I'd just pretend to be Lise. I wish I were taller, though." Ellen stood on tiptoe, trying to make herself tall. She laughed at herself, and her voice was more relaxed.
"You were great as the Dark Queen in the school play last year," Annemarie told her. "You should be an actress when you grow up."
"My father wants me to be a teacher.He wants everyone to be a teacher, like him. But maybe I could convince him that I should go to acting school." Ellen stood on tiptoe again, and made an imperious gesture with her arm. "I am the Dark Queen," she intoned dramatically. "I have come to command the night!"
"You should try saying, 'I am Lise Johansen!'" Annemarie said, grinning. "If you told the Nazis that you were the Dark Queen, they'd haul you off to a mental institution."
Ellen dropped her actress pose and sat down, with her legs curled under her, on the bed. "They won't really come here, do you think?" she asked again.
Annemarie shook her head. "Not in a million years." She picked up her hairbrush.
The girls found themselves whispering as they got ready for bed. There was no need, really, to whisper; they were, after all, supposed to be normal sisters, and Papa had said they could giggle and talk. The bedroom door was closed.
But the night did seem, somehow, different from a normal night. And so they whispered.
"How did your sister die, Annemarie?" Ellen asked suddenly. "I remember when it happened. And I remember the funeral—it was the only time I have ever been in a Lutheran church. But I never knew just what happened."
"I don't know exactly," Annemarie confessed. "She and Peter were out somewhere together, and then there was a telephone call, that there had been an accident. Mama and Papa rushed to the hospital—remember, your mother came and stayed with me and Kirsti? Kirsti was already asleep and she slept right through everything, she was so little then. But I stayed up, and I was with your mother in the living room when my parents came home in the middle of the night. And they told me Lise had died."
"I remember it was raining," Ellen said sadly. "It was still raining the next morning when Mama told me. Mama was crying, and the rain made it seem as if the whole world was crying."
Annemarie finished brushing her long hair and handed her hairbrush to her best friend. Ellen undid her braids, lifted her dark hair away from the thin gold chain she wore around her neck—the chain that held the Star of David—and began to brush her thick curls.
"I think it was partly because of the rain. They said she was hit by a car. I suppose the streets were slippery, and it was getting dark, and maybe the driver just couldn't see," Annemarie went on, remembering. "Papa looked so angry. He made one hand into a fist, and he kept pounding it into the other hand. I remember the noise of it: slam, slam, slam."
Together they got into the wide bed and pulled up the covers. Annemarie blew out the candle and drew the dark curtains aside so that the open window near the bed let in some air. "See that blue trunk in the corner?" she said, pointing through the darkness. "Lots of Lise's things are in there. Even her wedding dress. Mama and Papa have never looked at those things, not since the day they packed them away."
Ellen sighed. "She would have looked so beautiful in her wedding dress. She had such a pretty smile. I used to pretend that she was my sister, too."
"She would have liked that," Annemarie told her. "She loved you."
"That's the worst thing in the world," Ellen whispered. "To be dead so young. I wouldn't want the Germans to take my family away—to make us live someplace else. But still, it wouldn't be as bad as being dead."
Annemarie leaned over and hugged her. "They won't take you away," she said. "Not your parents, either. Papa promised that they were safe, and he always keeps his promises. And you are quite safe, here with us."
For a while they continued to murmur in the dark, but the murmurs were interrupted by yawns. Then Ellen's voice stopped, she turned over, and in a minute her breathing was quiet and slow.
Annemarie stared at the window where the sky was outlined and a tree branch moved slightly in the breeze. Everything seemed very familiar, very comforting. Dangers were no more than odd imaginings, like ghost stories that children made up to frighten one another: things that couldn't possibly happen. Annemarie felt completely safe here in her own home, with her parents in the next room and her best friend asleep beside her. She yawned contentedly and closed her eyes.
It was hours later, but still dark, when she was awakened abruptly by the pounding on the apartment door.
Annemarie eased the bedroom door open quietly, only a crack, and peeked out. Behind her, Ellen was sitting up, her eyes wide.
She could see Mama and Papa in their nightclothes, moving about. Mama held a lighted candle, but as Annemarie watched, she went to a lamp and switched it on. It was so long a time since they had dared to use the strictly rationed electricity after dark that the light in the room seemed startling to Annemarie, watching through the slightly opened bedroom door. She saw her mother look automatically to the blackout curtains, making certain that they were tightly drawn.
Papa opened the front door to the soldiers.
"This is the Johansen apartment?" A deep voice asked the question loudly, in the terribly accented Danish.
"Our name is on the door, and I see you have a flashlight," Papa answered. "What do you want? Is something wrong?"
"I understand you are a friend of your neighbors the Rosens, Mrs. Johansen," the soldier said angrily.
"Sophy Rosen is my friend, that is true," Mama said quietly. "Please, could you speak more softly?" My children are asleep."
"Then you will be so kind as to tell me where the Rosens are." He made no effort to lower his voice.
"I assume they are at home, sleeping. It is four in the morning, after all," Mama said.
Annemarie heard the soldier stalk across the living room toward the kitchen. From her hiding place in the narrow sliver of open doorway, she could see the heavy uniformed man, a holstered pistol at his waist, in the entrance to the kitchen, peering in toward the sink.
Another German voice said, "The Rosens' apartment is empty. We are wondering if they might be visiting their good friends the Johansens."
"Well," said Papa, moving slightly so that he was standing in front of Annemarie's bedroom door, and she could see nothing except the dark blur of his back, "as you see, you are mistaken. There is no one here but my family."
"You will not object if we look around." The voice was harsh, and it was not a question.
"It seems we have no choice," Papa replied.
"Please don't wake my children," Mama requested again. "There is no need to frighten little ones."
The heavy, booted feet moved across the floor again and into the other bedroom. A closet door opened and closed with a bang.
Annemarie eased her bedroom door closed silently. She stumbled through the darkness to the bed.
"Ellen," she whispered urgently, "take your necklace off!"
Ellen's hands flew to her neck. Desperately she began trying to unhook the tiny clasp. Outside the bedroom door, the harsh voices and heavy footsteps continued.
"I can't get it open!" Ellen said frantically. "I never take it off—I can't even remember how to open it!"
Annemarie heard a voice just outside the door. "What is here?"
"Shhh," her mother replied. "My daughters' bedroom. They are sound asleep."