let sleeping dogs lie. She leans forward and yanks the drawer out as far as it will go, ignoring the protesting shriek of old wood.
She digs through the sleepwear and darned underpants and pushes aside, in one corner, a decades-old sanitary belt, and there, at the very rear of the drawer, she finds what she is looking for: a single wool sock. She lifts it out and unrolls it with trembling hands and shakes the hard object within into her lap. Then she sits on the cold floor and stares at this sole souvenir of her mother’s wartime life.
It is a gold rectangle about the size and shape of a ladies’ cigarette case, and indeed, at first glance, it might be mistaken as such. The back is smooth metal, the front etched with a horizontal band of zigzagging silver lines in an art deco pattern. In the middle of this is a circle of diamonds—two or three of them missing now, leaving tiny pocked holes—and in the center of this is a silver swastika.
To somebody of Trudy’s historical knowledge, this might seem an incongruous gift, since during the Reich German women were discouraged, even forbidden, to smoke. But to Trudy it is not strange, since the case is not intended for cigarettes at all. She pries open the catch at its side to reveal, framed in balding maroon velvet, an oval black-and-white photograph. Of a young Anna, seated. With the toddler Trudy on her lap, wearing a dirndl, her hair in looped braids. And behind Anna, one hand possessively on her shoulder, an SS officer in full uniform. His head is raised in an attitude of pride, his peaked cap tilted forward so that his features cannot be seen.
How many times as a girl, as an adolescent, has Trudy done exactly this, while Anna was hanging laundry in the dooryard or busy at the stove or helping Jack with the livestock? Peering at the photograph, trying to tease the details from its background. There aren’t many. The folding canvas chair in which Anna and Trudy sit. The curving bulk of the staff car at the officer’s back, a dot that might be the Mercedes emblem on its hood. Behind his head, tiny waving lines the size of lashes: the fronds of the willows in the Park an der Ilm, where Trudy knows this picture was taken. Or does she? Does this photograph truly confirm her earliest memories? Or has she merely looked at it so often that she only thinks she remembers? Images substituting for reality.
Trudy wipes her eyes on her sleeve. They are watering and her nose is clogged, facts she decides to blame on the cold.
She gets up, her knees popping like gunshots, and takes the photograph over to the window. She tilts the case this way and that, an action she performed countless times in her youth, as if by doing so she could shake off the officer’s hat and finally, finally see her father’s face.
But since of course she cannot, other memories obligingly come in its stead.
Where is he, Mama? Why isn’t he here with us? I miss him— Be quiet, Trudie! Do you want Jack to hear you? Now I will tell you something very important. You must never say such things in this house. You must never speak of that man at all. You must never even think of him. Never. Do you understand?
But I don’t want Jack. I want him—
Her mother’s strong fingers, digging into the soft flesh on either side of Trudy’s childish chin.
I said you will not speak of him. He no longer exists. He belongs to the past, to that other place and time, and all of that is dead. Do you hear? The past is dead, and better it remain so.
And this conversation, held in the barn where Jack spent most of his time:
Daddy, I have a question.
Sure, Strudel. What is it?
Promise you won’t get mad?
Why would I get mad?
Because it’s kind of a bad question.
I could never be mad at you, Strudel. Ask away.
Daddy, did you know my real father?
I don’t know what you mean, honey.
Yes you do. My real father. From Germany. Did you ever meet him?
Well, Strudel, you’re right, that’s not a nice question. It hurts my feelings. I’m your dad.
I know, but— And that’s all there is to say about that.
Okay, but— And you shouldn’t talk about these things, Strudel. Not to anybody. But especially not around your mother. You know how it upsets her.
And