Hazel
SCHMIDT BÄCKEREI
56 LUDWIGSTRASSE
GARMISCH, GERMANY
DECEMBER 21, 1944
Dear Hazel,
Good Saint Thomas Day! The bäckerei is so busy this time of the year. With only the three of us to knead the dough, work the oven, stock the shelves, and manage the till, I can’t find a moment to enjoy the Christmas cheer. And then there are customers like Frau Rattelmüller who make it almost unbearable. Such a pest! Always complaining and making rude remarks about my hair being a mess or I’m lazy or asking if I still have yesterday’s dirt under my fingernails. (Which I do not. I scrub them every night!) She makes such a scene to Mutti and Papa, still treating me like a child. That’s the donkey chiding the other for having long ears. She’s acting so peculiar lately.
She used to come round at the normal hour like everybody else, but not anymore. 5:30 in the morning and she’s at our back door, peeping in the windows, banging her cane when she knows good and well we’ll always opened at six o’clock. I believe she’s gone senile. Not to mention that a dozen brötchen is a gluttonous amount. Doesn’t she know there’s a shortage of flour and milk! You should see the SS rations Papa has resorted to using. The powdered milk and flour bake hard as brick. Many customers have complained of finding pebbles in their rolls and almost breaking a tooth. So now I have the added chore of sieving all the supplies we receive. Frau Rattelmüller swears if she cuts her gums and dies of infection, her blood will be on our hands. But it’ll take more than a pebble to bring down that old witch. I suspect she’ll be showing up for the next century munching her way through all our bread and bang-bang-banging that ridiculous cane. We’ll never be free of her.
This morning I was fed up to my ears, so I woke up early with Papa and forced myself out of bed despite the chill. (It’s colder this winter than last. Too cold for even the snow to melt into ice on the eaves. Remember that December we ate icicles dusted in sugar. You told me that snow sprites dined on them every night, and I believed you because I wanted to … even though I knew there were no such things.) I was downstairs with a tray of hot brötchen when Frau came hobbling up the street in her long coat and cap.
Before she had a chance to knock her cane, I opened the door. “Good morning, Frau Rattelmüller.” I smiled wide as Lake Eibsee. “Your brötchen has been waiting for you. Dear, dear, I pray it isn’t cold. You must’ve been visited by the dream gnomes to have slept in so late.” I looked over my shoulder to the cuckoo for emphasis. “Why, you are almost a minute past.”
That sent Papa into a fit. He laughed so loud it echoed round all the pans in the kitchen and made Frau mad as a honeybee. She bought two loaves of onion bread instead of her usual. Mutti said Papa ruined a whole batch of lebkuchen with his salty tears. But it was worth it. How I wish you had been here! You would’ve laughed yourself to crying like you used to do when Papa wore his jester cap in the Fasching carnival. Mutti was not so pleased. She told me not to play with the old woman. She’s hanging by a thread, she said. But I told Mutti that Frau has been playing with me for far too long already. Besides, this is wartime. Who isn’t hanging by a thread!
Mutti, being Mutti, pulled out the currants that very minute and made thomasplitzchen buns to take over to Frau’s as a peace offering. She’s there now as I write.
I wonder what you’re doing in Steinhöring. I miss you terribly. Can you believe you’ve been gone six Christmases? Feels like an eternity, and this war seems even longer. There’s nothing new here. The Zugspitze Mountain is a bore. Nobody’s skiing this season anyhow. I wish we could go back to sea. Remember that summer trip to the coast of Yugoslavia when we were girls? Walking the pebble beach and eating cold cucumbers in the sun? We were so happy then. It feels a hundred years ago. Not that we could go back now. War, war, war. It’s everywhere, and I’m sick of it.
On to happier tidings: Did you hear the news? Our friend Josef Hub was promoted to lieutenant colonel and transferred to the Garmisch SS. He is rumored to dispatch information from the Mountain Troops to Reichsführer Himmler. Imagine that! But he’s not like the others. His rank hasn’t changed him a bit. He still comes to the bäckerei and eats raisin kuchen with Papa every Saturday. Mutti swears he has the bluest eyes in the country, but I told her there are plenty of perfectly blue eyes all around. She’s just partial to Josef for all he’s done for us.
How is Julius? You said they enrolled him in a special kindergarten for future officers. Papa nearly burst his buttons when I read that part to him. He’s so proud. We all are, of both of you.
Don’t worry about us and the bäckerei. The SS rations are small and of poor quality, but they are more than any other baker in town. Josef and Papa have a deal. The Gestapo bring SS flour, sugar, butter, and salt to the back door on Sunday afternoons, and Papa takes a cart of bread to headquarters each Monday. Business couldn’t be better. I know I shouldn’t complain about the long hours when so many of our countrymen are facing harder times than us.
Did Mutti tell you? I’m going to the Nazi Weihnachten party. Josef said it is time I attend one. He gave me the most beautiful ivory dress. Though the tag has been cut out, he said it came from Paris. At first I thought I oughtn’t to accept, but he gave Mutti an iridescent clamshell compact and Papa a rosewood pipe. So I assume these are our Christmas presents. Quite extravagant! Not having any family of his own, Josef dotes on Mutti and Papa like his own parents, God rest their souls. His company has been a godsend, and I hope it means more sacks of sugar and presents! The dress is proof of his good taste.
I’ll have Papa take a photograph before I go to the party. I want you to see the dress. I’ll write again at Christmas. I hope you get this letter soon. Mail is moving slow, these days.
Heil Hitler.
Your loving sister,
Elsie
Chapter Three
SCHMIDT BÄCKEREI
56 LUDWIGSTRASSE
GARMISCH, GERMANY
DECEMBER 24, 1944
Elsie, hurry! You don’t want to keep Herr Hub waiting,” Mutti called from downstairs.
Elsie fumbled with the buttons on her kid gloves. She’d worn them only once—years before at her First Holy Communion. They made everything she touched feel like newly risen dough. At communion, she’d kept them on when the Lutheran minister handed her the chalice. The smooth cup against gloved hands felt truly divine; the bite of red wine, not so much. She’d instinctively put a hand to her mouth after tasting the tart sacrament and stained her right fingers. Mutti thought it a sacrilege and soaked the gloves in water and vinegar for nearly an entire day. Still, the index finger retained a slight blush.
Elsie dabbed a last bit of rouge on her bottom lip and smeared it round, checked that all her hairpins were hidden and blinked hard to make her eyes glossy bright. She was ready. It was her first official Nazi event—a coming-out party—and she couldn’t make a better appearance. The dress, ivory silk chiffon trimmed in crystal beading, hung at just the right angle so as to give the illusion her breasts and hips were rounder than their actuality. She puckered her lips at the mirror and thought she looked exactly like the American actress Jean Harlow in Libeled Lady.
Her older sister, Hazel, and she had spent one whole summer holiday sneaking into matinee showings of pirated Hollywood films. Libeled Lady was a favorite of the owner who also operated the reel. He ran it twice a week. Elsie had just completed an abridged English language course in Grundschule and eagerly plucked familiar words and phrases from the actors’ lines. By the time school resumed, she was performing whole scenes for Hazel in their bedroom adorned in Mutti’s feather hats and fake pearls. So accurate in her English clip with its musical up and downs, Hazel swore she could’ve passed as the American blond bombshell’s doppelgänger. That was before Jean Harlow died and the Nazis closed the cinema for displaying American movies. The owner, like so many, had quietly disappeared.