shortages; children were dying of malnutrition. Then, in 1919, at Versailles, the Allied nations demanded Germany pay war reparations amounting to three billion gold marks a year. The Reichsbank was printing money like it was nothing, and it was nothing; three years after the war, the mark was worth less than zero. It was true, what their parents said, the girls all agreed: in Germany, the peace was worse than the war.
The nuns grew vegetables in the convent garden and kept chickens and gave every scrap, every crumb they could spare, to those in need. Natalia saw men begging on the street, lining up at church doors for a bowl of soup. Soldiers in filthy, torn uniforms, disfigured, sightless, missing limbs. Don’t stare, the nuns said, don’t pity them; they are brave men, they are heroes.
In Natalia’s history class, Sister Maria-Clare said God lived and moved in history; they were not alone in their suffering. As Germany’s future wives and mothers, they must have faith that life would improve. Natalia’s mother said something like this, in a very different way, when she spread documents out on the dining room table in Charlottenburg: land deeds, certificates of shares, stocks and bonds, passbooks to German bank accounts, statements from foreign banks. In 1914, weeks before war broke out, her mother’s friend Erich Saltzman, a senior official at the Reichsbank, arranged for a large part of her wealth to be sent out of the country, to Switzerland and then to “safe havens” in America and England. When the situation stabilized in Germany, as it would eventually, her assets would make the return journey, like a flock of migrating geese fattened up from a season in the sun.
It was not impossible to make money during a war, she told Natalia. Far from it. Property could be cheaply acquired; investments in armaments and coal and steel paid off handsomely. War was costly, she said, and as in most of life, the cost was borne by those who could least afford it. Not that she was any sort of Communist.
In 1924, on the advice of Erich Saltzman, Beatriz bought land in the new western Berlin suburb of Zehlendorf and hired an architect to design a villa for her. The house ended up being larger than she’d planned, too much for Hildegard to manage alone, and Beatriz found a Polish girl to help her. Trudy was young, skinny, wore a starched apron over ankle-length black skirts, spoke with a Polish accent, and adored Natalia’s mother. Hildegard and Trudy had their own rooms near the kitchen, looking out on the kitchen garden, where Trudy planted carrots, peas, and tomatoes. Hildegard brought home a black-and-white kitten. Natalia named him Benno and missed him desperately when she went back to school. But she liked school now that she was older, and Claudia was there, and she had more good friends as well. She enjoyed learning and worked hard, imagined doing something worthwhile with her life, and wondered, at times, whether she had a religious vocation and would enter a novitiate.
Then, on a dark March morning, snow falling outside the classroom windows, her mother arrived unannounced at the convent. In Sister Mary Ignace’s office, Natalia listened in disbelief as Beatriz said Natalia must pack her clothes; a taxi was waiting to take them to the train station. Sister Mary Ignace tried to convince Beatriz to give Natalia a chance to finish the term and write her final exams. A place at a university was assured; she could look forward to a rewarding career in one of the professions. Beatriz smiled. Her daughter, she said, would never need to work for a living. Anyway, she had plans; they were going to travel, do lots of interesting things. Surely Sister Mary Ignace would agree that seeing firsthand the world’s great cultural capitals equaled or surpassed whatever dry bit of information could be found in the pages of a book?
Beatriz, in a long crimson wool coat, like a prince of the church, was an incongruous, febrile splash of color in the principal’s austere office. She made Natalia’s eyes water. Later, when they were at home in Zehlendorf, her mother said they lived in modern times. Girls didn’t live sequestered behind stone walls anymore. And why even have a sixteen-year-old daughter if she couldn’t enjoy her company? They were going to have such fun. Did Natalia remember their vacation last summer?
Yes, she remembered, and it had been nice, the two of them together for a