baby’s immortal soul, Anna refuses to bring her to church to be baptized. She is done with churches. The two women perform the rite themselves, in an impromptu ceremony in the bakery’s kitchen sink.
15
ANNA SOMETIMES SPECULATES THAT HER NEW LIFE, PAR-ticularly given the arrival of her daughter, might actually be pleasant but for Mathilde’s gift for petty tyranny. From dawn until dusk, the baker issues a constant stream of orders and admonitions in her girlish voice. Everything must be done immediately and exactly the way she likes it; otherwise, her red-faced tantrums are terrible to see. During an especially bad argument over a misshapen batch of hot-cross buns, Anna, reeling with fatigue from Trudie’s nightly feedings, points out that the Reich suffered a great loss when Mathilde became a member of the Resistance, since under different circumstances she would have made an excellent Feldsmarschall. Anna expects the baker to respond with the usual threat to throw her charges out into the street, but Mathilde takes this as a compliment and laughs.
Anna’s fantasies, which have progressed from escaping her father’s reign to running off with Max to what their child might look like and finally to hours of uninterrupted sleep, now consist of imagining her existence without Mathilde in it. And in late April 1941, she is granted a temporary opportunity to find out, since Mathilde falls ill. The baker’s ailment, food poisoning, is not serious, but she wallows moaning in her bed as though she has suffered a gunshot to the stomach. Anna has to race up and down the narrow staircase in answer to the bell ringing from the sickroom while simultaneously attending to the bakery’s patrons and her infant daughter. She does so with great cheer. In fact, Anna is so delighted that Mathilde is confined to her quarters that she charitably refrains from saying, I told you not to eat those three tins of black market sardines.
Toward the end of the afternoon, Anna decides to close the shop a bit early. She enters the day’s earnings into the ledger while sitting in Mathilde’s chair, pretending the bakery is her own. Yes, life is very pleasant when Mathilde is out of the way, and Anna is just speculating as to how long this might last when the bell jingles yet again.
What is it this time? she yells, without moving.
There is no request from above, however, and Anna realizes that what she has heard is the bell over the storefront door. Startled, irritated with herself for not locking the bakery after setting the Closed sign in the window, Anna goes into the front room to send this latecomer away and finds, standing on the other side of the counter, an SS Rottenführer.
Anna’s stomach plummets, but the apologetic smile she has summoned for the tardy patron remains fixed on her face.
Can I help you, Herr Rottenführer? she asks.
The man doesn’t answer right away. He is examining the bakery’s sole decoration, a gaudy Bavarian landscape purchased during Mathilde’s long-ago honeymoon, with an air of contempt.
I’ve come for Frau Staudt, he says, when he has finished his inspection.
Anna conceals her shaking hands in the folds of her apron.
She’s indisposed at the moment, but perhaps there is something I can do for you?
The Rottenführer turns his attention to Anna, who sees that he is not much older than she. If not for the Sudeten accent, he might have been someone with whom she attended Gymnasium. His thick neck and insolent expression mark him as one of the boys who would have been a poor student, interested only in sports, his education otherwise consisting of yelling jibes from the back of the classroom.
Frau Staudt failed to make her weekly delivery to our facility, he says.
I see, says Anna. Well, she’s quite ill, unable to get out of bed. She ate something that disagreed with her—
The Rottenführer grimaces, apparently disgusted that he should be bothered with the intestinal problems of a fat widowed baker.
Whatever the cause, he says, it violates her contract. If Frau Staudt doesn’t provide the bread by Friday, we’ll have to take the appropriate measures.
I— I’m sure that won’t be necessary.
Good, says the Rottenführer.
He looks at Anna’s bosom and smirks. It is almost time for Trudie’s evening meal, and Anna’s breasts are leaking in anticipation. Anna straightens her spine and thrusts her chest forward, some silly vestige of female pride insulted by this boy’s sneer.
I’ll pass on your message, she says.
The Rottenführer probes a cheek with his tongue as if searching for