Is that why you started feeding the prisoners? Anna asks. I've often wondered why you take the risk when everyone else turns a blind eye. Is it because some of them are… different, like Fritzi?
Mathilde blinks at Anna, startled.
I never thought of that, she says slowly. I just feel so sorry for those poor men. But… yes, I guess that could have had something to do with it.
She runs a thumb over Trudie's small foot. A silence falls between the two women, broken only by the hiss of water on the stove.
Oh, Anna, Mathilde says abruptly. Her little voice wavers. What will become of us? After the war, maybe you'll marry. The child will need a father. And me, I guess I'll go on running the bakery. But it'll never be the same, you know? The world has gone crazy. To burn people in ovens… That we talk about this the same way we used to talk about-about-whether Irene Schultz's husband was going to leave her, or the price of turnips, or the weather-
I know, says Anna, alarmed. Shhhh.
For now it is the baker who cries, her body quivering with the force of it, her small black eyes, fixed imploringly on Anna, awash with tears.
There's no use in getting yourself so upset, Anna tells her. We do what we can and that's all we can do.
Mathilde lowers her head and wipes her cheeks with her filthy skirt.
You're right, she says after a time. She heaves an enormous sigh. You're right. We won't talk of such things anymore. It's no use. I don't know what's wrong with me, bringing it up tonight of all nights.
Getting to her feet with a grunt, she bends and gives Anna a clumsy kiss on the hair.
Happy Christmas, she says.
Anna smiles at Mathilde, unable to return the gesture for fear of joggling and waking the child. War makes for strange bedfellows, it is said; apparently it makes for strange friendships as well. The brave, unlucky baker is the only true friend Anna has ever had.
Happy Christmas to you too, she replies, and doesn't tell Mathilde that she had completely forgotten.
17
ONE MORNING IN EARLY MARCH 1942, ANNA TUCKS THE blanket around her sleeping daughter and climbs from the cellar to find Mathilde on her hands and knees in the kitchen, digging in one of the long, low cupboards that line the south wall.
Nice of you to interrupt your beauty rest, she tells Anna from within the cabinet, her voice muffled and hollow. I thought you were planning to lie in bed until noon.
Despite Mathilde's tart tone, Anna smiles in relief. Since Christmas the baker has been increasingly gloomy, falling into spells of despondency from which not even Trudie, running to her beloved Tante on fat little feet, can rouse her. Admittedly, the baker's behavior this morning is a bit bizarre, but it is better than her sitting in her rocking chair in her chamber above the bakery, staring at nothing.
What are you doing? Anna asks.
Receiving no reply, she goes to the sink, where she splashes her face with icy water. The window is a glowing sheet of gold, the frost on it lit by the first rays of the sun. It is going to be a fine day.
Her toilette complete, Anna fastens her apron around her waist and turns to watch Mathilde crawl backward from the cupboard with her fists full of pistols. Collapsing onto her haunches, the baker begins packing them in a flour sack which, by the looks of it, she has already stuffed with rolls.
Where did you get the pistols? Anna asks.
Mathilde uses the edge of the worktable to haul herself up.
Ask me no questions, she says, and I'll tell you no lies.
She buttons her tattered coat and carries the sack through the back door. Bracing herself against the cold slipstream that enters, Anna lifts the rack of loaves baked the previous night and follows Mathilde outside.
I assume you're not delivering those weapons to the SS, Anna persists, her breath coming short and smoky as she stacks the bread in the rear of the bakery van.
Mathilde snorts. She is cramming the sack into the false floor beneath the passenger's seat; once this is secured, she lets the rubber mat fall over it. Anna watches with approval. Without the most thorough search of the vehicle, nobody would ever suspect the guns were there.
Mathilde comes over and puts her mouth directly to Anna's ear.
They're for the Red Triangles, she whispers.
The Red-?
The political prisoners. They're planning a revolt.
Anna steps back, surreptitiously wiping flecks of the baker's spittle from her cheek.
Well, God bless, she says.
Mathilde hoists herself into the high driver's seat, where she rolls and lights a cigarette before starting the engine. Then she turns and looks at Anna over one shoulder, squinting through the smoke.
For shame, Anna, she calls. You're still so naive as to think there's a God?
Without waiting for an answer, she wrenches the van's stick shift into gear and drives off, the cigarette clenched between her teeth.
Anna stands coughing in blue billows of exhaust until the flatulence of the van's muffler has diminished in the distance. Then she shrugs off Mathilde's question and hurries shivering into the kitchen. Although the pickings will be slim for the bakery's patrons today, since the SS have requisitioned their bread, there is still much to do.
In fact, the morning is so busy, the customers squabbling like pigeons over stale rolls and rock-hard rye, that Anna doesn't have a moment to herself until midafternoon, when everything has been sold. Apologizing to the last disgruntled women, she ushers them out, locks the door, and goes to tend her daughter. Thankfully, Trudie has resisted the lure of climbing the stairs, her new favorite pastime; she is still in the kitchen, from which Anna has forbidden her to move. But instead of playing with her doll, a sorry creature Mathilde has fashioned from a sock, Trudie has overturned her lunch and is happily smacking her hands in a puddle of parsnip soup.
Bad girl, Anna says, hauling Trudie to her feet and swatting her rump.
She marches the child to the corner and instructs her to stand with her face to the wall. Trudie complies until her mother is swabbing up the mess; then she whirls and scowls at Anna and slides to the floor in a heap. She kicks her wooden heels against it. She manufactures an indignant sob. Anna, trying to ignore her, wonders how it is that such an angelic-looking child should prove so intractable. She wrings her rag in the sink and starts in on the dishes.
The view from the window, so promising this morning, has turned ugly. The field is piebald with mud and snow, the dark trees beyond it lashed by wind. The sky hangs low and threatening. There will be more snow. Already the light is dimming as the sun sinks somewhere above those dense clouds. A bad afternoon for making deliveries, particularly in a temperamental van along a road treacherous even in better conditions.
So, when the last pan has been dried and put away, Anna turns to Trudie and says, Time for a nap.
Trudie, who has been digging loose plaster from a hole in the wall, shakes her head so vigorously that her fine hair escapes its braids.
No, she says. No nap.
Yes, nap, says Anna. And as a special treat, you can sleep in Tante's bed. Won't that be nice?
No, says the toddler.
But she allows herself to be persuaded upstairs, though she insists on walking up the steps instead of being carried. She breathes heavily in concentration as she lifts one small foot, then the next; to Anna, it seems to take Trudie a good half hour to reach the second-floor landing.
Once she has settled Trudie in Mathilde's bed, Anna fetches the last of the cough elixir from the WC.
Noooooooo, Trudie cries when she sees the dreaded bottle.