remind Anna of wood shavings. She presses herself against the wall to let the pair pass.
As she emerges into the chilly night, Anna casts a wistful look back at the clinic. Then, with unease, she remembers her father. It is late, and Gerhard will be furious that his dinner has been delayed; he insists his meals be served with military precision. On sudden impulse, Anna turns and hastens toward the bakery a few streets away. A Sachertorte, Gerhard’s favorite dessert, will provide an excuse as to why Anna has been out at this hour—she is certainly not going to tell him about the debacle with the dog—and may act as a sop to his temper.
Like everything else in this forlorn neighborhood, the bakery is nothing to look at. It does not even have a name. Anna wonders why its owner, Frau Staudt, doesn’t choose to relocate outside the Jewish Quarter, since she is as Aryan as Anna herself. No matter; however run-down the shop, its pastries are the best Weimar has to offer. Anna arrives just as the baker is flipping the sign from Open to Closed. Anna taps on the window and makes a desperate face, and Frau Staudt, whose substantial girth is trussed as tightly as a turkey into her apron, throws up her hands.
She unlocks the door, grumbling in her waspish little voice, And what is it you want now? A Linzertorte? The moon?
A Sachertorte? says Anna, trying her most winning smile.
ASachertorte ! Sachertorte, the princess wants . . . I don’t suppose you have the proper ration coupons, either.
Well . . .
I thought not.
But the widowed and childless baker has long adopted a maternal attitude toward the motherless Anna, and there is indeed a precious Sachertorte in the back, and Anna manages, by looking suitably pitiable, to beg half of it on credit.
This accomplished, she returns home as quickly as she is able, given that she is holding the pastry box under one arm and the dachshund, who is starting to squirm, in the other. And again Anna is in luck: when she sneaks in through the maid’s entrance, she hears a rising Wagnerian chorus from her father’s study. Gerhard is in a decent mood, then. Perhaps he has not noticed what time it is. Anna deposits the dog in his basket and frowns at the sideboard. The Rouladen, left out of the icebox this long, has probably spoiled. Anna will have to concoct an Eintopf from last night’s dinner instead.
As she hastily assembles the ingredients for the casserole, she pinches bits from the cake and eats them. The cold night air has given her an appetite. It has done wonders for Spaetzle too, apparently, for he makes the quick recovery the Doktor has promised. He waddles from his bed to lurk underfoot; he stares with beady interest at Anna’s hand, following the progress of Sachertorte from box to mouth. As Anna does not appear to be about to offer him any, he lets out a volley of yaps.
Quiet, Anna says.
She cuts herself a sliver of cake and eats it slowly, savoring the bitter Swiss chocolate and sieving her memory for more details of Herr Doktor Stern’s house call five years earlier. She recalls that the red beard made him look like the Dutch painter van Gogh, whose self-portraits were once exhibited in Weimar’s Schlossmuseum. Even now without it, the resemblance is striking, Anna reflects: the narrow face, the sad blue brilliance of the eyes, the weary lines etched about the mouth, not without humor. The artist in his final tortured days.
Anna sighs. In the time before the Reich, she would have been able to revisit the Doktor with some conjured malady. She might even, with careful planning, have encountered him socially. But now? Anna has no excuse whatever to visit a Jewish physician; in fact it is, as the Doktor himself has reminded her, forbidden. Not that Anna has ever paid much attention to such things.
She takes a disheartened bite of cake, and Spaetzle barks again.
Shut up, Anna tells him absently.
Then she looks down at the dog. Encouraged by Anna’s thoughtful expression, he begins to wriggle and whine. Anna smiles at him and slices another piece off the cake, somewhat larger this time. She hesitates for a moment, the chocolate softening in her palm. Then she says, Here, boy, and drops it to the floor.
2
CHECK, THE DOKTOR SAYS.
Anna frowns at the chessboard, at the constellation of battered pieces on their cream and oak squares. This