be safe than sorry.
Finally, when two more minutes have passed and the only sound is that of water pattering from the eaves, Anna unlocks the door to the Christmas closet and steps inside. To her left is a wall with a high window that allows a dusty shaft of light to fall on another little door to her right. This conceals a maids’ staircase connecting the upper stories of the Elternhaus to the kitchen, once enabling servants to scurry behind the wall to answer their masters’ demands while remaining out of sight. Now, of course, Anna is using it for a different purpose. She knocks on the interior door, three soft raps, and pushes it open.
A few meters down, on the landing, Max shields his eyes with a hand. Even such indirect light is painful to him after hours in the dark. His upturned face is a pallid circle, and Anna pityingly thinks, as she gropes her way along the steps, of creatures living in caves so deep beneath the sea that they have never seen the sun and are white and blind in consequence.
Max rearranges his nest of blankets to make room for Anna.
You have brought spring with you, he says. I can smell the wind in your hair.
The landing is barely big enough for two. Anna wedges herself in beside Max, feeling the bony jut of his hip against her own, and removes her coat with some difficulty. Max buries his face in the cloth.
The past few days have been warmer, she tells him. The gutters are rushing like waterfalls.
I know, says Max. I listen to them at night.
Are you hungry?
Max laughs. Perpetually. But please, don’t run off to the kitchen just yet. I’m more starved for company than food.
He puts an arm around her, and Anna imagines that, were he unclothed, she would be able to see his bones through his skin. He eats next to nothing of what she brings him. His stomach, he has apologetically explained, roils with nerves.
They sit in comfortable silence, Max rubbing a thumb over Anna’s collarbone. It amazes Anna: she spends much of her time in this dim, elongated box, fusty with years of disuse and the unlovely exhalations of Max’s chamber pot, and so, on a physical level, Anna’s life has shrunk to its confined proportions. Yet here, in the dark, she feels herself expanding. For years Anna has trudged through her days like an automaton with only her daydreams to occupy her, paying no mind to what happens around her unless it hinders her routine in some way. Now, as she walks beneath dripping trees and visits shops, she observes her surroundings with as much keen interest as if she were a visitor to a foreign land. She embroiders and rehearses overheard conversations for Max, hoping to be rewarded by his barking laugh; she lays anecdotes at his feet like treasure. Her personal landscape has never been brighter nor her mental horizons wider.
I went back to the bakery today, Anna tells Max now. Frau Staudt has a terrible hacking cough. You should see the black looks the customers give her as she handles their bread.
Any news? Max asks, smiling at Anna’s scowling imitation.
We didn’t have much time alone. Only a few minutes. But new papers are being drawn up for you so you can be moved to Switzerland. Frau Staudt says to be patient; these things take time, she said. And money. They are trying to raise the money.
Max takes his arm from Anna’s shoulders and stretches, wincing.
And the film?
She hasn’t mentioned it since I passed it to her on Thursday. But I’m sure she would have told me if something had gone wrong.
Max sighs.
Dear Anna, he says. My sole regret about what I’ve done is having to involve you.
Anna performs a complicated wriggling maneuver that ends with her sitting behind Max, his back to her chest.
How many times do I have to tell you I don’t mind? she says in his ear.
Max doesn’t answer. As best she can in the gloom, Anna studies his profile. She yearns to toy with his hair, which has grown long enough to relax into curls above his collar. Observing the way it wings back from his fine, bony face, Anna imagines Max wearing tails, attending an opera in Vienna, perhaps, or Berlin. She feels a sudden wretched longing for the things they will never know together.
You need a haircut, she says lightly, yanking a wayward blond tuft.
I’m sure I do, Max replies.