Wanted: Germans of native descent to participate in study conducted by University of Minnesota history professor. I am seeking any and all recollections you have about living through the war in Germany. Interviews will be filmed on camera but used for university research purposes only. Female subjects of particular interest but males also encouraged to apply. You will be reimbursed for your time.
This is a chance for you to tell your story, which contemporary history has largely ignored. If interested, please contact Dr. Trudy Swenson, Department of History, University of Minnesota, extension…
Trudy has also run this advertisement in the German papers, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press, placing them-after some bemused consideration-in the Personals section as well as the Classifieds.
Because of the holiday tumult, Trudy has anticipated not getting many responses before the turn of the year, but she hasn't expected to receive none. She lurks in her office, gripped by the superstitious conviction that if she stays by the phone her potential subjects will call, in the same way that leaving milk and cookies for Santa guarantees his visit. She grades papers and reads journals and draws up next semester's lesson plans, meanwhile trying to feign unawareness of the silent phone at her elbow as if she were waiting for nothing at all.
December 20, a day whose blinding sun and hard blue sky provide the illusion of warmth while really signifying that it is too cold to snow. The campus is eerily quiet, the students long since fled to their homes and the professors, after turning final grades in to the registrar, having followed suit. Trudy has nothing to do. She sits canted back in her desk chair, gazing through the windows at the empty pathways of the quad, noting without conscious thought the sharp contrast of light and lengthening shadow. In one hand she holds the little gold case that contains the incriminating photograph. She runs her thumb over the swastika and art deco design.
Come on, Trudy thinks. Come on, Germans. I know you're out there.
The only reply is snow falling, with a gentle whump, from an overhead cornice to the ground.
Trudy sighs and gets to her feet. She reminds herself that her subjects have other things to do right now-gifts to buy and wrap, Christmas dinners to cook, arriving grandchildren to spoil. All Trudy has to do is be patient. But as she pulls on her coat, she worries that this entire endeavor is doomed, a waste of money and energy and hope. Anna has never talked. Why should her compatriots be any different?
Trudy is in the hallway, sorting through her keys to find the one that locks the door, when her phone rings.
She steps back into her office and stares at the blinking red light on the console. It's probably just Ruth, Trudy tells herself, checking in to see if there has been any progress-or to boast, in the subtlest of fashions, about the number of Jewish subjects' testimonies she has already recorded.
Professor Swenson, Trudy says into the phone.
Hello?
It is a woman's voice. Not Ruth's. Containing the quaver of the elderly.
Ja, und with whom am I speaking? Have I reached the Department of History?
Trudy's pulse quickens and flutters in her throat. The woman's accent is more Bavarian than Anna's, but some similarities exist: the broadening of the vowels, the clipped consonants, the emphasis on the ff's in of. Department uff History.
Yes, ma'am, this is the History Department, Trudy says. Are you calling about the advertisement? The German Project?
There is a clunk, as if the caller has dropped the receiver, and some scuffling in the background. Trudy braces herself for the buzz of a severed connection, but then she hears the woman breathing.
What is your name, ma'am? Trudy asks. Are you still with me?
Kluge. Frau Kluge. First name Petra.
Trudy grabs a pen.
Danke, Frau Kluge, she says. Now, I assume you're volunteering for-
You want to know about the war, the woman says.
Yes, that's right.
Why is this?
Well, says Trudy, as I said in my ad, I'm doing some research-
What kind of research? You will not make me look bad?
You vill nutt mekk me look bett?
Of course not, says Trudy. I'm just trying to collect some stories-
Gut, the woman says. Because I can tell you a little something… But! You said volunteer?
What's that? says Trudy.
Volunteer, you have said this. But your advertisement said I will be paid. How much, exactly?
Um, says Trudy, annoyed with herself; she has forgotten to ask Ruth the amount of the stipend she is offering her own subjects. Fif-A hundred dollars?
Gut. That is agreeable.
I'm glad, Trudy says. So, when would you-
I live at 1043 North Thirtieth Street, apartment B. You will come tomorrow.
Oh, says Trudy, scribbling madly. Well, thank you, Frau Kluge, but are you sure you want to do it so soon? We won't have much time to prep-
Three o'clock, the woman says.
Okay then, says Trudy. Now, there are a few other things you should know, Frau Kluge: I'll have a cameraman with me to record the interview, and-
But Frau Kluge has hung up.
Trudy removes the receiver from between shoulder and ear and regards it for a moment. Then she wedges it back into place and sifts through her German Project paperwork for the number of Ruth's videographer. It seems too much to hope that he will be available this close to Christmas. But if he is not, Trudy is prepared to beg.
Her luck holds, at least until the following afternoon, when it seems to abruptly run out: the cameraman, while cheerfully acquiescent on the phone, is late. Trudy waits for him in her car on Frau Kluge's street, feeling like a burglar. This would be nothing new in this neighborhood, she thinks; the residents here are probably on perpetual alert for thieves. Frau Kluge lives in a two-story brick building in a grid of five identical others, all surrounded by chain-link fencing into which garbage has blown. In the parking lot, a few old cars are nosed up to dirty drifts of snow. Somehow this surprises Trudy. She doesn't know what she has expected, but it was certainly not to find her first subject in the projects.
She is trying to focus on the questions she has spent all night preparing when a white truck turns the corner, cruises slowly down the street, and parks at the curb a few yards away. A man in an army jacket jumps from the driver's side and jogs around to the tailgate, which he yanks up with a rattle. Thank God, Trudy thinks. She grabs the bakery box of cookies she has bought for Frau Kluge and gets out of her car to greet him, her boots gritting on the sanded ice.