a stranger in a bar. Not a soul. And when the university contacted me to ask whether I would participate in your sister study, the Remembrance Project . . .
He smiles tightly at the tumbler.
Other Jews are telling their stories, I told myself; why not you? But . . . I could not. I simply could not bring myself to do it. Then I saw your flyer and thought, Now even the Germans are talking.
Rainer drains his glass and sets it down with a bang.
So I called you, he says, and I played a nasty trick on you. Cruel and cowardly. I am ashamed of that now.
Trudy looks at him. He sits tall and rigid, his posture Prussian.
And yet you came back, Rainer says. I have often wondered why. The only conclusion I can draw is that you are a true masochist, a glutton for punishment.
He glares at Trudy over his bifocals.
Trudy bends her head to inspect her wrist, which she has been rubbing against her trousers under the table. The skin Rainer’s fingers have braceleted is tingling, as though it has been asleep and is just starting to wake up. She smiles secretly down at it.
I suppose I am, she tells him.
45
WHEN TRUDY LATER LETS HERSELF IN HER BACK DOOR, humming the opening bars of the Brahms, she is agreeably surprised to find that Anna is not in the kitchen. What a pleasant night this has turned out to be! True, the results of Anna’s afternoon labors crowd the counters, cakes and pies exquisitely decorated and suffocating beneath airless shrouds of Saran Wrap. A more recent product, a Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte, awaits similar treatment on the stove. But Anna has apparently succumbed to either exhaustion or sanity, for there is no sign of her. She must have hung up the apron at a decent hour, Trudy thinks, and gone to bed like a normal person for a change.
The Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte will go stale if left out until morning, so Trudy rips off an arm’s length of plastic wrap and drapes it over the cake. The smell of chocolate frosting drifts up to her, rich and nauseating, reminding Trudy of skin that has been licked. Yet even this cannot spoil her good mood. The cake duly protected, Trudy shuts off the lights and walks down the hall to her study, still humming under her breath. She wants to watch Rainer’s interview. Or rather, not to play the whole thing, but just insert the tape and put it on Pause, so she can see him once more before bed and say good night.
But somebody has beaten her to it, for in Trudy’s study Anna is huddled on the couch, staring across the room at Rainer on the television. Her expression is one of unadulterated horror. And because of this, and her long white nightgown, and the fact that her hair is in a single braid down her back, she reminds Trudy both of Bluebeard’s wife—how that new bride must have looked when she opened the forbidden door to discover the severed heads of her husband’s former curious spouses—and a child listening to the tale, too terrifying to be believed.
Trudy sags against the jamb, suddenly bone-tired. Then she walks into the room and sits quietly next to her mother on the sofa.
Oh, Mama, she says, closing her eyes. What are we going to do with you?
She feels Anna reach past her for the remote. This Anna must have been practicing with, for abruptly, as Rainer is saying, They will burn your brain with its magnificent network of neurons, his voice cuts out. Trudy opens her eyes and looks at his large, square, rather florid face on the screen. His bifocals are slipping down his nose, his mouth open. He might be yawning, or reading a menu.
Anna clutches the couch cushions for leverage as she starts to get up.
Once more I am sorry, Trudy, she says. I will go to bed.
No, that’s all right, Mama. Sit if you want to.
Trudy sighs and massages her eyes. Then she says, Don’t you think it’s time we stopped all this? Aren’t you tired of it, Mama? Aren’t you sick to death of it? I know I am. Why don’t you just tell me about him.
In her peripheral vision she sees Anna’s hands—small, rough, hard-knuckled, the only parts of her that are not beautiful—tighten on the sofa.
Who? I do not know what you—
Oh, come on, Mama. Don’t feed me that same old party line...Trudy waves toward the frozen