You don’t choose to join it; it’s thrust upon you. And the members whose lives have been changed have more knowledge than those who aren’t in it, but the price of belonging is so terribly high.
Max tilts his chair back and considers Anna for a long moment, scrubbing his hand over his face and neck.
Yes, he says. Yes, it is much like that.
Then his chair legs hit the floor and he stands.
Speaking of your father, he says, smiling, would you like to see how his dog is doing?
Anna gazes sadly at him, disappointed by this return to more superficial conversation. But as Max beckons to her, she obediently gets up and follows him.
After turning down the heat under the teakettle, Max takes Anna’s elbow and leads her to a door at the rear of the house, which Anna expects to open into a garden. Instead, she finds herself in a dark shed smelling mustily of straw and animal. She hears a thick, sleepy bark, and when Max lights a kerosene lantern, Anna sees that he has constructed a makeshift kennel here. Including Spaetzle, there are five dogs in separate cages, and Anna catches the green glitter of a cat’s eyes from the corner, where it presides over a heap of kittens. There is even a canary in a cage, its head tucked under its wing.
Anna walks over to Spaetzle.
Hello, boy, she says.
The dachshund snarls at her. Anna snatches her hand from the wire mesh.
I see his disposition hasn’t improved any, she observes.
Perhaps it might, says Max from behind her, if you’d stop stuffing him with chocolate.
Anna flushes. I told you, that’s my father’s doing—
Ah, yes, of course, says Max. So you’ve said.
Anna turns to see him smiling knowingly at her. Face burning, she stoops to peer at a terrier.
So you are something of a veterinarian after all, she comments.
Max doesn’t answer immediately, and when Anna is certain her color has receded she swings around again to look at him inquiringly. He is standing with his hands in his pockets, regarding the animals with an odd expression, both tender and grim.
I’m more a zookeeper, he says. And not by choice. Not that I don’t love animals; I do, obviously. But these have been abandoned to my care. Left behind.
Left . . . ?
By my friends, by patients who’ve emigrated, to Israel, the Americas, whoever will have them. People I’ve known my entire life—gone, pfft! Just like that.
Max snaps his fingers, and the canary lifts its head to blink at him with indignant surprise.
Anna digs a toe into the straw.
Circumstances are truly that bad for—for your people?
Worse than you can imagine. And they are going to get worse still. The things I have heard, have seen . . .
When he doesn’t finish the thought, Anna asks, And you? Why don’t you go as well?
She looks down and holds her breath, praying that he won’t answer in the affirmative. But Max gives only a short, bitter laugh.
What? And leave all this? he says.
Anna glances up. He is watching her, his gaze speculative.
Loneliness is corrosive, he says.
Anna’s eyes film with tears.
Yes, she says. I know.
She thinks that she might be able, in this moment, to go to him and put her arms around him, rest her head on his chest; she wants nothing more than to be able to stay here with Max forever, in this simple dark place smelling of animal warmth and dung. But of course this is impossible, and the thought only serves to remind her of how late it is.
God in heaven, it’s hours past curfew, I have to go, Anna says, darting past Max into the house.
In the kitchen, while Anna fastens her hat, Max holds her coat out like a matador, flapping it at her; then he helps her into it. His hands linger on Anna’s shoulders, however, while she fastens her buttons, and when she is done he spins her around to face him.
Where does your father think you are? he asks. When you come here?
Oh, it doesn’t matter to him, as long as his dinner is served on time, Anna murmurs. He thinks I’m at a meeting of the BdM, I suppose. Sewing armbands and singing praise to the Vaterland and learning how to catch a good German husband.
And isn’t that what you want, Anna? Max asks. Aren’t you a good German girl?
Before Anna can reply, he kisses her, much more violently than she would have expected from this gentle man. He drives her back against