How many times as a girl, as an adolescent, has Trudy done exactly this, while Anna was hanging laundry in the dooryard or busy at the stove or helping Jack with the livestock? Peering at the photograph, trying to tease the details from its background. There aren't many. The folding canvas chair in which Anna and Trudy sit. The curving bulk of the staff car at the officer's back, a dot that might be the Mercedes emblem on its hood. Behind his head, tiny waving lines the size of lashes: the fronds of the willows in the Park an der Ilm, where Trudy knows this picture was taken. Or does she? Does this photograph truly confirm her earliest memories? Or has she merely looked at it so often that she only thinks she remembers? Images substituting for reality.
Trudy wipes her eyes on her sleeve. They are watering and her nose is clogged, facts she decides to blame on the cold.
She gets up, her knees popping like gunshots, and takes the photograph over to the window. She tilts the case this way and that, an action she performed countless times in her youth, as if by doing so she could shake off the officer's hat and finally, finally see her father's face.
But since of course she cannot, other memories obligingly come in its stead.
Where is he, Mama? Why isn't he here with us? I miss him-
Be quiet, Trudie! Do you want Jack to hear you? Now I will tell you something very important. You must never say such things in this house. You must never speak of that man at all. You must never even think of him. Never. Do you understand?
But I don't want Jack. I want him-
Her mother's strong fingers, digging into the soft flesh on either side of Trudy's childish chin.
I said you will not speak of him. He no longer exists. He belongs to the past, to that other place and time, and all of that is dead. Do you hear? The past is dead, and better it remain so.
And this conversation, held in the barn where Jack spent most of his time:
Daddy, I have a question.
Sure, Strudel. What is it?
Promise you won't get mad?
Why would I get mad?
Because it's kind of a bad question.
I could never be mad at you, Strudel. Ask away.
Daddy, did you know my real father?
I don't know what you mean, honey.
Yes you do. My real father. From Germany. Did you ever meet him?
Well, Strudel, you're right, that's not a nice question. It hurts my feelings. I'm your dad.
I know, but-
And that's all there is to say about that.
Okay, but-
And you shouldn't talk about these things, Strudel. Not to anybody. But especially not around your mother. You know how it upsets her.
And so on and so forth. A conspiracy of silence, a wall that Trudy could neither penetrate nor scale. She has often wondered whether Anna and Jack conferred as to what they would say when faced with such queries or if they made their responses independently and instinctively. Not that it really matters. The denials are confirmation enough. And the photograph, the solid evidence. Of course Jack, despite his stumbling, kindhearted evasions, is not Trudy's father. No, her real father, though perhaps now as dead as her adopted one, is still with her. He is Trudy's blond hair, her love of organization, her penchant for chess and classical music and all the other tastes to which Jack and Anna never subscribed. Sometimes Trudy thinks she can smell him on her, the personal scents of the man coming from her own pores: fresh barbering, boot polish, the sauerkraut and venison he had for lunch.
What Trudy doesn't know is the nature of Anna's relationship with him.
Was she the officer's mistress? His wife?
If either, did she enter into the contract willingly? Did she care about him, even love him? Trudy can't quite bring herself to believe this. The very thought turns her stomach cold and closes her throat. But why else would Anna have kept this picture-and her silent counsel-all these years?
Trudy holds the image up to the light and squints at her young mother. Anna's expression gives nothing away. It is calm, perhaps a bit grave. Does this signify a secret satisfaction at having secured such a powerful partner? Could Anna really be so morally bankrupt as to have solicited the liaison with the officer, enjoyed it, relished it? Could there be, behind that beautiful face, a void?
Or perhaps Anna's expression conceals resigned acceptance. Or horror. Or is an external portrait of the internal deadening, the numbness, that accompanies repeated abuse. Trudy has read dozens of case studies of women who undertook desperate measures in times of war, in order to survive. Maybe the officer forced Anna. Maybe she had no choice. But if this is so, and Anna is a victim of circumstance, why has she chosen never to explain this to her daughter?
The past is dead. The past is dead, and better it remain so.
Trudy gazes at the photograph a minute longer, then shakes her head and decisively snaps the case closed. Enough is enough. There is nothing to be gained by once again asking painful questions to which there are no ready answers. Whatever Anna has done, Trudy has made her own life, and it is high time that she return to it. She has afternoon classes to teach.
Moving from the window, she sets the little gold case on the dresser and finishes packing Anna's things. A favorite brooch, an afghan, hairbrushes. Trudy snaps the latches shut and takes a last look around; she will not be seeing this place again. She hefts the suitcase and leaves.
She is halfway down the stairs when she suddenly turns, runs back up, and seizes the gold case. She slips it into her coat pocket. Then she hurries from the bedroom, this time for good, her breath coming and going in ghosts.
10
ALTHOUGH SLEET SLICKS THE ROADS ON THE WAY BACK TO the Twin Cities, Trudy manages to arrive on the university campus a few minutes before her scheduled office hours. This is a relief; Trudy hates being late, the way rushing from place to place frays her composure, leaves her sweating and disheveled with her socks falling down inside her boots. She is also grateful to see that no students are lying in wait for her. When Trudy is her best self, she likes talking to them-in fact, she delights in any sign of their intellectual effort, no matter how small. But the past twenty-four hours have been trying, and Trudy knows that were her pupils to seek her out now, she would be impatient with their ever-ringing cell phones, their fidgeting embarrassment at being in such close proximity to her; their improbable, grammatically incorrect, unpleasantly intimate excuses as to why they haven't turned their assignments in on time.
Today, Trudy thinks, with any luck, the weather or the demands of their mysteriously busy lives will prevent them from coming to see her. She needs the hour to shift gears from her personal persona to her professorial one. She helps herself to a cup of coffee from the History Department hot plate and hangs her damp coat, then assumes her usual post at her desk and pulls a pile of midterms onto the blotter. With an air of diligence, Trudy uncaps her red pen.
The Mother's Cross, the top paper is entitled, An Examination of German Women as Breed-Horses of the Third Reich. Trudy sighs and flips open the oaktag folder to the first page:
It has been argued and indeed perported by historians of the time period under discussion, that is to say the Third Reich, that during this time period the German woman was viewed by the Nazi Government as a Baby-Machine, that is to say she was valued for her fertilization abilities above all. A partickular Award was awarded to German women that produced three, six or nine Purebloded children, bronze silver and gold respecktively, and from this an implication can be drawn that the real station the German woman occupied during this time period was the stable. She was merely a Breed-Mare or Horse.