“I have to cancel. Oh, don’t look at me like that. So puppyish.”
She cupped his ears, soft and fragile, and kissed his wonderfully unremarkable face, one sharp cheek, then the other, and finally his chapped lips. He was a small man, shorter than she liked; they would be almost the same height if she stood with the posture she’d had in the war. Back then, the Allies had claimed an iron rod was fused to her spine. They had called her unnatural, part human, part machine. Punch did a caricature of her eating coal and drinking oil, with cogs for joints. She had framed it and hung it next to her office chair to remind herself of what she’d become to the outside world.
Dr. Blum knew nothing about all that.
“Darling,” she said, stroking his cheek, “I’m going to Essen for a few days.”
“You said you were going at the end of the month, for Christmas.”
“The weather is turning so fast. I thought I’d better go now for a short visit before the trains freeze to the tracks. I don’t want to get stranded somewhere.”
He looked skeptical, and it surprised her. He’d always been so understanding, so ready to listen. She’d first come to him complaining of weakness, a sudden darkness in her head, a weight pressing down on her so hard that she had to sit before she fainted. He prescribed pills that tasted of sugar, and foul concoctions that left an oily film in her throat. She’d had a touch of anemia, he told her. By then she knew the real diagnosis. Hunger, the national disease. For the first time in her life, she had gone hungry long enough for it to change her body down to the blood.
“Margarete, there’s something wrong. You’re very pale. I can tell by the shadows around your eyes that you haven’t been sleeping.”
She looked down at their hands, their fingers intertwined. “I’m just worried. Not about us, about my friend in Essen. I told you about Elisa, remember?”
“No, I’m not sure you did.”
“She hasn’t answered my letter. It’s been bothering me for weeks. I must go and see that she’s okay.”
“It can’t wait until Christmas? We have plans tonight.”
She explained again about the weather, and the days off work she’d negotiated with her employer, a cement factory where the management was astonished at her knowledge of production and logistics. She seemed too young, they told her, to know so much. She smiled modestly at that and mumbled about the valuable work experience she’d had—in Essen.
“I’ll be back before you know it,” she said. “We’ll be able to spend Christmas together.”
Dr. Blum pulled away, ruffling his hair on the way to his desk. He yanked open the drawer, reached inside, and went back to her holding out his fists knuckles down. “Pick one.”
“Is it a peppermint?” She brightened. “A chocolate?”
He raised one eyebrow, a cockeyed look that made her smile. He wasn’t one for boyish humor, and she appreciated this side of him she hadn’t known was there. She tapped his left fist. He opened it finger by finger.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh my.”
In the lamplight, the ring in his palm shimmered darkly like old gold. It was a simple band without stones, and her hands went clammy when she looked at it.
“I wanted to do this tonight,” he said. “I’d gotten up the nerve—” He cleared his throat, began again. “Dear Margarete, I’m not a wealthy man.” From there, he outlined his finances, the expenses of the surgery, the reality of living in the rooms upstairs, how the war had wiped out his savings. “But you won’t go hungry,” he said. “I swear you won’t. We’ll manage to live honestly. We won’t be thieves or beggars like the rest.”
She was still looking at the ring. They’d known each other such a short time, most of it as doctor and patient. She wanted to ask him why the rush? But he was blushing and making so many promises about their life together, she didn’t have the heart to interrupt him.
“And I thought perhaps you could take over the bookkeeping,” he said. “You have a good head for that. The paperwork and the charts are a bit of a mess. I’ve been drowning since I lost my assistant.”
“Aha. You want the cheap labor?”
“Of course not.” He pressed her to his chest. “Although . . .”
She thumped him on the arm, more nervous than she let on. Marriage had been a delicate topic in her family and