The German Girl (35 page)

Louis ended up sleeping in the house almost every weeknight. Mother decided he needed a room of his own, and so we prepared the one next to hers. We had a hope. Of what, exactly, I had no idea, but those were joyful days. I was happy above all at seeing a child grow up who was free of the guilt of the Rosenthals.

We were slightly surprised that Hortensia kept her distance from Louis, in a way she hadn’t when Gustavo arrived from New York as an infant. I think that back then she thought we needed help, but with this child, it was different: we devoted our time to him and showed him affection. Or perhaps she did not want to get emotionally involved, only to find herself back in the role Gustavo had relegated her to in the end: that of a mere employee, not someone who had cared for him, fed him, given him her love in the years when he most needed it. One summer—the warmest of all those we had suffered until then—I got an envelope from Julian in New York. Inside was a photo of him in a park similar to the one where we used to meet.

There was no letter, only the photograph, the date, and a dedication. Julian never said much. I took the few words he had written on the back as his farewell message: “For my Ana with her
J
. I shall never forget you.”

D
ay dawns here in a rush. One minute it’s night, the next it’s day. There’s no in-between. I’m woken by sunlight piercing my eyelids and can feel Mom behind me. She is studying me with a smile and untangles my hair. Today she, too, has woken up with a scent of violets.

I turn to the photo of Dad I brought with me. I prop it up beside the lamp. We look at each other, and I can see he is happy. This trip has changed us all.

“I haven’t been paying much attention to you,” I tell him, “but now you’re in your home!”

Mom smiles when she sees me talking to the photograph. Ever since we arrived, Mom and Aunt Hannah have become inseparable. They spend hours talking together, and I wonder what Dad makes of that.

The pair of them have scoured every nook and cranny, every wardrobe. Mom knows that each folded blouse, or brooch, or old coin holds a story she wants to rescue.

“You shouldn’t get rid of this,” she tells Aunt Hannah, pointing to some yellowing sheets of paper tied with a red ribbon. “Keep them; you never know.”

They are the title deeds to the apartment building in Berlin, which for her now are sacred.

“Even if they’re no longer valid, they are family heirlooms,” she insists, stroking my aunt’s hand.

Dad is closer to her each day. He is no longer simply the man she met at a concert in St. Paul’s Chapel. Now he has a past, his family has a face, he had a childhood. Aunt Hannah has opened Dad’s book, told us his story. Mom’s reasons for complaining are gradually disappearing. It’s true she lost her husband, and I lost my father, but Aunt Hannah has lost her entire life.

I think that seeing the headstone in the cemetery with Dad’s name on it and having contact with the Rosenthals’ past has helped put Mom’s grief into perspective. I hug her, and just in case she’s worried, I tell her everything will be fine—that I feel like I’ve known Dad; that now we have someone we have to look after.

As the days go by, Aunt Hannah seems increasingly frail. Sometimes she even seems lost, not knowing what to do or where to go. The first time I saw her standing in the doorway, she was almost as tall as the doorframe. Now she seems more bent and walks with the slow, heavy step of an old woman.

Maybe it’s just that I’ve gotten taller here. That’s what Mom told me.

She also says that she would like to get back to New York.

I don’t understand why. Maybe she wants to return to her Spanish literature classes at the university, to renew the life she abandoned years ago. If it were up to me, we’d stay here, live in Aunt Hannah’s house, and look for a school I could go to.

Aunt Hannah’s silences when she tells her stories are growing longer
and more frequent. They are from a faraway past, but she often tells them in a present tense that confuses us.

I sit with her for hours, listening closely to this kind of monologue that leaves no room for anyone to interrupt. Sometimes while she’s telling her endless stories, I take photos of her, but this doesn’t seem to upset her. When she falls silent, Mom and I can see how vulnerable she is. When she is talking, though, a little color returns to her pallid cheeks.

By the end of our trip, there won’t be anything more for Mom to learn about Dad. But we’ll probably leave here without finding out what really happened to my grandfather Gustavo. Aunt Hannah always concentrates on Louis.

Diego is impatient. I can see him from the front door. He doesn’t know what to do and starts throwing stones at the tree. He digs up a piece of the sidewalk that makes us trip, and then wipes his hands on his trousers. He tries to call me without attracting attention. He’s afraid that the old German woman, who to him is still a Nazi, will complain to his mother about him.

When I do at last manage to get away, he gives me a warm hug. I look back to see if anyone has spotted us. I still can’t believe a boy is hugging me in broad daylight, in a city I don’t know. It’s my secret, and I’ll keep it that way.

Diego and I walk beneath a sun that scorches the asphalt. We reach a park, where he shows me a pharmacy on the corner.

“Look, my granny says that used to be your aunt’s pharmacy.”

There are still traces of yellow paint on the damp-covered walls. Above the cement doorway is faded lettering that shows my name: Farmacia Rosen.

We run down Avenida Calzada until we come to a narrow passageway between two big houses. I don’t want to ask Diego where we’re
going or if he has permission to enter. It’s too late anyway, because we’re already on someone else’s property. We reach the patio and climb a spiral metal staircase that sways as if it is about to come loose. As we climb, we hear someone playing the piano and a woman’s voice giving instructions in French as she counts out a strange beat.

Jumping over a low wall, we’re on a flat roof. Through a window, I see a ballet class taking place below. The girls are lined up perfectly; their arms stretch up toward the ceiling as if they are reaching for the infinite. They probably want to seem light as air, but from above, they look heavy—weighed down by gravity. Diego sits with his back to the window. He’s concentrating on the music.

“Sometimes they have an orchestra, or two violins accompanying the piano,” he says dreamily.

Diego is always surprising me with things I am least expecting. Normally he can never stay still in one place, but here he’s sitting hidden on a private terrace and listening to monotonous musical exercises.

I want to leave. I feel uncomfortable in a place where we haven’t been invited. But Diego wants to continue with his music therapy.

“Be careful, you might be stepping on my ants.”

Up here on the roof, Diego has an ants’ nest. He brings them sugar or bread crumbs, and studies them. They’re his pets. He takes a carefully folded piece of paper containing his magic powder out of his pocket. When he pours the sugar crystals into a corner, they appear at once. Some are red, others black. They form a long line from one end of the wall to the other. Diego pauses to watch them carrying the tiny white grains back to their nest. Then he picks up one and looks at it closely.

“These don’t bite,” he tells me, carefully putting the ant back down. “In a few years, I’ll learn to swim well. Then I’ll climb onto a raft and come over there to be with you.”

“You, too, Diego? So it’s true that everybody here is obsessed with the idea of sailing off to sea?”

“There’s no future here, Anna,” he replies very seriously.

He speaks with the pessimism I’ve already noticed in adults here.

“Do you want to be my girl?” Diego asks out of the blue. He obviously finds it hard to say; he doesn’t look at me. Just as well, because I can’t bear anybody seeing me blush, even when it’s something I have no control over: anybody can tell what I’m feeling. And my feelings are my own business, not to be shared.

I instantly see myself back at Fieldston, telling the girls in my class that I’m in love with a boy who has black, curly hair, big eyes, and suntanned skin. Someone who speaks only Spanish, who swallows his
s
’s until they completely disappear, who hardly ever reads, who runs through the streets of Havana, and who wants to leave his own country on a makeshift raft as soon as he has learned to swim.

“Diego, I live in New York. How can I be your girlfriend? Are you crazy?”

He makes no reply, and still has his back to me. He must regret what he’s just said but not know how to get out of it. And I don’t know how to help him.

I take his hand, which makes him jump—did he think that meant I was accepting? He grips my hand so tightly I am unable to free it. It’s too hot to be so close to each other. I don’t want to be rude.

Finally, he lets me go, stands up, and walks over to the rickety staircase.

“Tomorrow we’ll go for a swim at the Malecón.”

S
eñor Dannón came to visit us for the last time. He entered with his usual swagger, smelling as ever of tobacco, but his hair was disheveled. There was not much brilliantine on it, and his unruly locks would have needed a lot more to make sure they lay flat on his enormous head.

This time Mother did not receive him in the living room but showed him into the dining room. I think she realized that the lawyer was there to draw a line under a relationship that had always been based on money and mutual convenience, but she was grateful for it, even if she never told him so.

In fact, I didn’t know what would have become of us without Señor Dannón through all those years. He charged us a fortune but never abandoned us. Nor did he swindle us, I was sure of that.

Hortensia served him freshly made coffee and a glass of ice water, and then came over to me and whispered that she felt sorry for him.

“The poor man, he doesn’t know what to do.”

Although Señor Dannón had never mentioned any of his problems, she could tell what they were from the way he was sweating, anxiously mopping his brow, and trying to arrange his rebellious curls. Ever since he had told us about losing his only daughter, Hortensia regarded him differently. I think Mother did, too.

The rank smell of tobacco he gave off was what prevented me from getting near him: it was all I could do to stay in the same room. Now he sat close to Mother and spoke almost right up against her ear while she listened calmly. Neither Hortensia nor I could gather if he had brought good or bad news. All at once, Mother got to her feet and went upstairs. Señor Dannón gulped down the ice water, dried his lips on a napkin that he left stained brown, picked up his heavy briefcase, and followed her up to her room.

“Something bad is going on,” declared Hortensia, but I decided not to pay her much attention. In fact, I was rather nervous, but I didn’t want to start asking myself questions that led nowhere. I was tired of going through all the worst that might happen so that I would be relieved when things turned out less dreadfully. Besides, I could never foresee what was going to happen. That was a trick I had given up on by then.

I went to sit with Hortensia on the patio steps, waiting for Señor Dannón to leave so that I could learn the news about our legal and financial situation in Cuba. Maybe we would even have to leave for another country.

In an hour’s time, I had to go pick up Louis from his school with the name of a martyr, where he had begun kindergarten and was happy. On his first days, he cried when I left him in his class. When I picked him up, he cried disconsolately again, as though to make me feel guilty. A week later, he had already adjusted, and although he did not have a gift for making friends, he was learning quickly how to survive socially. His only complaint about the school was that the other children spoke very loudly. I said to myself,
You’re living in the Caribbean; you’ll get used to it
.

Señor Dannón came downstairs looking very nervous and said he
wanted to say good-bye. I don’t think he was expecting me to embrace him, but he did look surprised when I held out my hand. Rather than shaking it, he took hold of it gently, so that my fingers were engulfed by his soft, moist palm. That was the first time in all those years that we had come into physical contact.

“Take good care of yourself. And the best of luck,” Hortensia said, patting his broad, sweaty back.

He left the house with a much lighter briefcase. He paused at the iron gate and turned to say good-bye. He stared at the house, the trees, the bumpy sidewalk, for a few seconds, and then sighed and climbed into his car. We came out onto the porch to watch him go.

I was anxious. Not for whatever news he might have brought but because I was convinced he would never be back. I understood we were now left all on our own in a country heading into the unknown and prepared constantly for war. A country ruled by angry military men who had set themselves the task of reinventing history, of telling their own version of it, of changing its course as they saw fit.