you stupid girl. They’re watching.
Who?
Anna glances over her shoulder. On the ground door of the dwelling across the road, a curtain flutters, then falls back into place.
But you mustn’t mind your neighbors, she whispers. If they had any decency, they’d take you in. You must be freezing—Not them, you idiot, the librarian mutters through his wispy beard. The SS.
SS? Where? I don’t see—
Everywhere. SS and Gestapo. Something has set them off; they’re on a real rampage. Started going through the Quarter this morning looking for something, God knows what. And they haven’t stopped since.
Anna’s stomach turns to water.
Every house? What about the Doktor? Herr Doktor Stern? Did they—
The librarian gives a small fatalistic shrug: probably, it says.
You’re just making things worse for me, he hisses. Go away!
Anna seizes her bag and runs down the street toward the clinic. It looks as it always does, with its soot-stained stones and bronze nameplate, and for a moment Anna is reassured. Then she touches the door in the center of the six-pointed Star, and it swings wide to reveal the reception area dark and empty behind it.
Max? Anna calls.
Well, perhaps he has no appointments this afternoon. Most of his patients have emigrated anyway, and the remainder will not be seeking medical attention with the SS about. But—
Max?
Anna peers into the examining room. It is in wild disarray, the apothecary jars smashed, cotton wadding soaking up medicine on the tiles. The filing cabinet has been forced open to regurgitate its patient histories on the floor: GOLDSTEIN, JOSEPH ISRAEL, says the one Anna steps on, in Max’s distinctive, all-capitals hand; 3 MARCH 1940, SEVERE HEMA-TOMAS FROM BEATING, COMPLAINT OF PAIN IN THE LEFT ARM—Max! Max—In the kitchen, a teacup lies on its side on the table, milky curds clinging to the rim. The plants have been swept from their perch, and there are large bootprints in the soil surrounding the shattered clay pots. Anna races upstairs to Max’s bedroom, a place to which she has never been but often envisioned visiting under very different circumstances. It is small and impersonal and similarly despoiled, the mattress and pillows slit in an explosion of feathers, sheets on the floor. Anna picks one up in icy hands and buries her face in it; it smells of Max, of his hair and sleep. Then she flings it aside and descends the steps on legs that feel both rubbery and too heavy, as they sometimes do just before her time of the month, as though the blood in them is more responsive than usual to the pull of gravity. There is an unpleasant odor in the hall, reminiscent of sheared copper. It grows stronger as Anna follows it to the door of the shed.
The fanlight window over the clinic entrance brightens for a second with weak sunlight as she opens the door, enough to show her the animals before dimming again, and at first Anna thinks they are sleeping. Then her vision adjusts and she realizes they are dead. The dogs must have been shot or stabbed, for blood drips from the cages, the air thick with its metallic stench. The cat’s fate is clearer: its skull has been crushed along with those of its kittens, whose corpses lie in a drift by the wall. Only the terrier, in the cage beneath Spaetzle’s, is still alive. Its paws twitch; one brown eye rolls piteously in Anna’s direction as it whines.
Anna takes a few steps toward it. Something crunches under her heel. She looks down, grimacing: Max’s spectacles.
A high, outraged little note escapes Anna’s windpipe. She scoops up the glasses and slides them into her pocket. Then she bends and vomits in the hay. When nothing is left in her stomach, she crosses the shed. She pauses in front of Spaetzle’s remains, wishing she could feel something about the death of her father’s dog. But as she can’t, she lifts the terrier from its cage.
The animal is clearly dying, and Anna knows she should put it out of its misery with a swift twist of the neck or blow to the head. Instead she sinks to the ground cradling it, stroking the matted fur. So Max, for whatever reason, has been arrested. God in heaven, what if it is Anna’s fault? Anna presses a bloody fist to her mouth, her eyes stinging with tears. What if, despite her caution, somebody has seen and reported the Aryan girl visiting the Jewish physician’s house? But no; the SS would not be ransacking the