DELIVERY

HEINRICH FOUND HER IN THE FALL, WALKING WITH FRIENDS in the Tiergarten.

“Walk with me,” he said.

“I mustn’t.”

“Please,” he said, “I know you have received my letters.”

As they walked, he stared at her impolitely, never averting his eyes. He said: “I must see you again.”

“Here I am,” said Eva, “and there you stand. It seems we have met. What a pleasant day.”

“Stop,” he said.

“There is a breeze but it is not so strong. You enjoy a breeze, don’t you? Isn’t this what you said? Before you insulted my father?”

“I never—”

“Why did you pretend he wasn’t paying you for the portraits? Why did you invent that story about seeing us?”

“I did see you,” he insisted.

“But why did you pretend it was your idea? That you were loath to accept my father’s money?”

Heinrich looked uncomfortable, biting his lip, and then he looked away.

“You will never speak ill of my father again.”

“No.”

“My father is a good man,” she said.

“I know it.”

“One summer in Karlsbad when I was a child, our Mademoiselle Dautrey brought us to the train station to watch the trains passing through, and when the train chugged toward the platform and Mademoiselle cried, Regard, we looked up and saw our father sticking his head out the window. He must have been heading somewhere to do some business and planned this surprise. He waved and we screamed and he threw silver packages covered with colored paper birds and flowers and they fell softly and they were full of candy and none of it spilled. It was thrilling.”

“What a lovely story,” he said. He took a step closer.

She smelled smoke in his hair, strong soap she didn’t recognize. She thought of her father’s bald and shiny head, and how, when she was younger, she’d liked to pat it in the evenings as he smoked one pipe and prepared another for the very next morning. He played billiards on Wednesdays; he ate too many tortes; he could not pass a sea of blossoms without picking one for his buttonhole.

And on the subject of Jews becoming Christians he was very clear: One did not flee from a besieged fortress; it was the act of cowards, of slaves. It wasn’t necessarily a question of religion so much as a question of integrity. He might have rejected the Orthodoxy of his youth, but he could never reject his people, his culture, his God. There is no shame in being Jewish, he told his children; there is only shame from passing through life taking on origins at will.

Eva shook her head. “Mademoiselle had told us that the train would not stop, not in such a small station, but I hadn’t believed her. Candies weren’t enough for me. I wanted him to get off that train. I was a stupid child. Just as I am stupid today.”

“Please,” he said, “I apologize. You must believe I am truly sorry.”

She looked at him, straight into his eyes, and instantly regretted it. He had her then, right there in his starry irises, in their promise of another kind of world. He was not Jewish, nor wealthy, nor titled. But he was exceptional. He made her feel exceptional. She could barely hide this but she tried to hide this as she made her face a stone.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated.

“Why?” she whispered, hard. “Why are you sorry?”

He cleared his throat. “The crimson dress,” he muttered. “That day.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” she said, and she turned from him, shaking, taking care to walk and not run toward her friends who would be so full of questions, who she could see up ahead and moving forward, arms linked in a chain.

         

HENRIETTE WAS MARRIED AT THE HAUPTSYNAGOGUE TO A COMPACT man with a booming laugh and gray, bushy eyebrows. Julius Greilsheimer, some twenty years older with a rare professorship and a home in Heidelberg, overlooking rolling green hills and the river Neckar, had—for reasons unexplained—never married. Mother had met his mother at the baths, and they’d discussed their unmarried children. Father had not trusted any part of the match. For one thing, why would Henriette—his sophisticated daughter, a true Berliner—make her life in a small town such as Heidelberg? Father questioned every aspect of the arrangement until Mr. Greilsheimer had, with great affability, produced the following documents:

1. Certificate of good character signed by the mayor

2. Certificate of good character signed by the rabbi

3. Birth certificate

4. Proof of employment at the university

5. Bank records

Evidently Mother’s wits were not entirely missing, or so she said in an arch, frail voice, along with giving Henriette her blessing, after she’d stepped slowly off the train, finally home again. The doctors had advised that she was well enough to travel, but she’d return to Karlsbad immediately following the festivities. The reception was a lavish feast in a fine hotel with Henriette looking unsurprisingly exquisite in ivory silk and French lace—her dark lashes impossibly long, her chestnut hair upswept grandly—and aside from sitting for the wedding portraits, during which she appeared serious and ethereal, the bride could barely refrain from laughing along with her new husband. He was not whom one would have anticipated as Henriette’s choice (he was far less pompous than her usual taste), nor was he what one might expect from a distinguished professor of law. He was a red-faced practical joker whose deep voice broke very quickly into fits of boyish giggles. They drank fine wines throughout the evening, sharing the same silver cup long after they did so as a symbol of their joined future. When Henriette took a small sip, Julius urged her to please have another.

That Julius had made a successful life in Heidelberg was particularly significant in light not only of Heidelberg’s small size but also its lofty status as a famous university town. Everyone at the wedding reception had said so. What was not said at their wedding celebration or what was whispered but not announced: He must be exceptionally respected, mustn’t he? Because, after all, Heidelberg—it is not exactly cosmopolitan. The idea of a Jew succeeding at the university there seemed fantastic, even heroic. But Julius seemed oddly immune to the renowned discrimination. He was friendly with a count who’d sent him a barrel of wine along with compliments on a recent lecture, and when the count’s estate was rumored to have a sign at the entrance prohibiting Jews and dogs, Julius confronted the count and the count claimed that he knew nothing about it, that he would look into the matter and have the sign promptly removed; in the meanwhile, he sent more wine barrels.

         

FOR MONTHS HEINRICH APPEARED BEHIND TREES—TREES FAR TOO skinny to provide adequate coverage. Once she passed by a produce stand and he was standing behind stacked crates of turnips and potatoes.

“You are killing me.”

And then behind the skating park, at the mouth of the woods. She was waiting for her new friend Marta, who excelled at the waltz. It was snowing and the tips of Eva’s braids were frozen. His black hat was capped with a perfect layer of white. She turned and began walking into the woods, the snow soft and pliant underfoot.

“I would marry you,” he said softly.

She stopped walking and turned around, inhaling wind and snow.

“I would. I want to.”

She pulled in her breath so hard it hurt. “It would be for my money,” she said plainly. And once she said it, she knew that it was true. And not true.

“I love you,” he said.

She believed he thought he loved her or loved what she represented—a cosmopolitan, a girl of whom he would likely never tire, if only because he would never understand her—but she also knew that despite all of his posturing toward purity, he was covetous. She could tell that right away from how he moved through their home. He not only noticed but also wanted. And though he was hardly upper class, he would consider it a small sacrifice to marry a Jew, a sacrifice deserving of finer things. I would marry you. “You would never marry me if I didn’t have money,” she finally said, in what was not an accusatory tone, but an honest one.

“That isn’t true,” he said, failing to mask his frustration.

And her tears came as a relief; once they started they would not stop, and enough time passed during his second of hesitation for her to see the full scope of what such a future with Heinrich would look like. There would be low whispers in the park, in the corners of gilded rooms—How long do you think her parents wept? Did they tear their clothing? Did they cut off all her funds?—Nothing would silence the talk in Jewish houses. And the Christian houses? She was not stunning enough to be immune to speculation; prettiness and correctness would never be enough for the years of Christian rooms that she would enter and exit over the course of a lifetime. And she could feel, in Heinrich’s hesitation, how he would deny such talk existed, deny it until he resented her for forcing him to admit he heard such ugly things, until he hated her and her Jewish birth, the fact of which no baptism would ever wipe away.

“I would like to marry you,” he said again, this time with more volume.

“My father hates the portraits, did you know that?”

“Eva.”

“He says they look like the very worst of German ideals—drunk with self-love, sick with acquiescence.”

“Is this what your uncle writes in his letters? Your beloved revolutionary?”

“You know nothing about my uncle. My uncle loves his country. He only wants to live in a democratic nation; I should think that you do too.”

“It is not your fault that you are a Jewess; you were born into this curse as one is born into poverty or riches. But now you can choose your future. With baptism—such a simple ceremony—you can wash it all away.”

She shook her head. “I will not change my faith.” Up until she said it out loud, she hadn’t been entirely sure. But she knew right then that, although she often perceived her religion to be exceedingly dark and sad, and although the only time she felt devout was when mournful music played, she would not choose to be excluded from her own people only to become an intruder elsewhere.

“But why?” he asked, his voice still full of patience. “Why not leave it behind and convert, as so many others do?”

She took a few steps toward him. Her boots made a crunching sound. “Like that?” she asked, nodding back toward her small and seemingly insignificant footprints in the snow.

He reached for her, his arm wrapping tightly around her waist as if he could not hold her close enough. His breath was warm and smelled like cloves. She fought him for a moment before stopping short, nearly out of air. Eva looked up at the sky that was white on white: The skeleton branches shrouded under snow pointed every which way. She could swear she heard them crying out, desperate to be seen. “Let me,” he said, and he kissed her gently, eliminating the image, obliterating all the words.

AT JUST OVER SEVEN MONTHS PREGNANT, JULIUS ALLOWED HENRIETTE to accompany him on a much-anticipated lecture tour. He would give a talk in Berlin before continuing to Breslau, and Henriette would have the chance to visit with her family, whom she was missing terribly. Upon her arrival she was showered with attention. Eva played the Chopin Minute Waltz, Father recited Goethe’s “Die Braut von Korinth” but forgot the last lines, and Henriette finished it for him—with high color in her now plump cheeks—before detailing her many nauseated months with equally impressive dramatic flair.

Eva was happy to see her sister but, as it was with her lately, when she closed the door to the washroom, she was that much happier to finally be alone. Rahel had drawn a bath, and Eva could not have been more grateful. After unpinning her hair, she lay in the bathtub and wept. She wept until the water grew tepid, until she could no longer distinguish tears from bathwater. She thought of how a few days earlier, she had told her friends Marta and Ilse that if she was allowed to come skating with Marta’s Aunt Lotte, she would be downstairs, ready to be collected at a quarter to five. She thought of how, in a true attempt to be a normal girl with respectable social appointments, she had asked her father for permission, and how (she was sure he’d grown vaguely suspicious) he’d claimed it was too cold and wouldn’t grant it. She thought of how she’d stood by the window and watched the girls and Marta’s Aunt Lotte—how they’d all barely stopped to wait for her but had instead dashed off to the skating park, laughing all the while. Although they had looked for her just as they’d promised, it had been so clear they did not and would not miss her; it was somehow terribly obvious that no one would miss her but Heinrich. That afternoon she’d wept at the unbearable weight of secrets, just as she wept now, until the sun no longer slanted through the picture window, until Henriette knocked on the door and called her out for dinner.

         

“DARLING.” HENRIETTE LAUGHED, AS EVA SAT ACROSS FROM HER, chewing a modest piece of lamb. “Just because I am a pregnant woman, big and ugly and frightening, you needn’t look so serious!”

“My dear,” said Father, raising his index finger into the air, “please don’t be foolish. Your sister always looks this way.”

“I’m sorry.” Eva smiled a shaky smile, her heart beginning to race. “I didn’t intend—”

“My wife is a vision of excellent health, is she not?” Julius asked proudly, helping himself to more lamb. “Just look at her big, rosy cheeks.”

“But are you well?” Henriette asked Eva, suddenly concerned. “Father?”

“We’re all just splendid,” Father said. “Everyone here is in perfectly good health, Henriette. Even Mother writes of returning home. Her headaches have subsided.”

“How marvelous,” Henriette said, her eyes welling with tears.

“Don’t cry,” said Eva. “Please. Everyone is fine.”

“I am only so happy to see you,” she said. “This is why I’m acting like a fool.”

“Nobody is a fool,” said Father. “At least not in my house. Go on my dear—take some more potatoes. Make sure she takes more potatoes, Julius.”

“Tell us, Eva,” said Henriette, after daintily taking a bite and swallowing her tears, “how many marriage proposals have you had?”

         

JULIUS CONTINUED TO BRESLAU TO GIVE HIS LECTURE, BUT ONLY AFTER embracing Henriette so many times and so tightly that Eva grew concerned for the baby. He would be back at the end of the week to escort her back to their home, where (Henriette had confided in Eva) the maid and the cook had received her politely enough before ignoring any requests to do things a bit differently. Father was busy each day in the city, and each morning of Henriette’s visit the sisters woke late and sat by the fire, discussing Henriette’s new life: Julius, she explained, was popular and generous. He wasn’t handsome but he was kind, which was far more important, more so with each passing day. He enjoyed playing billiards like father and often hid gifts for her in unexpected places, after he’d been cross. After so many cheerful testimonies of domestic habits and preferences, Henriette inevitably lowered her voice.

“Evie,” she said, leaning in close, “there is no need to be afraid of having a husband—of lying with a husband—it is not frightening after all.”

As Henriette blushed, Eva nodded and tried to be the sister to whom Henriette imagined she was speaking, someone worthy of such precious and now irrelevant advice. She knew that Henriette sometimes felt that in order to have a conversation, she usually had to start, otherwise the girls would just sit in silence, and so Eva made a concentrated effort at being amusing. She told the famous story of Mr. Blumenthal, a guest of Father’s, who, during one winter’s evening, drank seven glasses of wine, ate ten toasts with goose liver, and twelve buttered potatoes. She made Henriette shed tears of laughter at her fine imitation of the jolly but hapless maid at Karlsbad, who—over the course of just one day—dropped a tart at breakfast, a whole fish at lunch, and a bottle of wine during dinner. The sisters drank milky coffee and nibbled on rolls and butter and cheese, and sometimes Henriette felt queasy and Eva brushed her hair, and sometimes she insisted on a walk. They donned furs and walked through the Tiergarten. The grass was still covered in patches of snow, but it was easy to imagine the push of springtime, the dark and fertile soil. Sometimes Eva closed her eyes for moments at a time, and when she saw Heinrich in a dark wood, so serious in a snowcapped black cap, she opened her eyes instantly, somewhat surprised that he wasn’t standing in the distance, calling her name, the sound carried by a sudden wind.

“Berlin is so much lovelier with sunlight,” lamented Henriette. “The stones turn a whole different color—they look almost blue! And—”

“Henriette,” Eva said, her gaze fixed on the ashen sky. A black crow glided overhead; Eva followed its flight until it landed on the poor choice of a spindly branch and was forced to take flight again. “It couldn’t be more perfect than right now.”

Her sister abruptly stopped walking, her large frame looking suddenly weak, as if the weight of the baby might pull her straight down to the frozen ground.

“Henriette?” Eva said, panic rising—panic like none she had anticipated. Her sister would need to become an animal in order to do this, she realized, an animal that pushed through peerless pain. Eva also realized—with an odd absence of surprise—that she could not imagine her surviving.

“I am perfectly fine,” she said, looking at Eva strangely.

“What is it then?” asked Eva, shaking.

“You’re changed,” Henriette said.

“Am I?”

“And you are not going to tell me why.”

“There is nothing to tell,” Eva said. She wriggled her still child-sized hands through the brass buttons on Henriette’s coat and found the warm solid globe taking up space between them. She looked into Henriette’s glossy hazel eyes, at her rosy complexion, and she lied.

         

HENRIETTE WAS ANXIOUS TO HEAR MUSIC. IN THE PURPLE BERLIN twilight, she held Eva’s arm as they approached the concert hall. They had done this for years—this stroll toward the palace, this walk and talk in anticipation of music, but usually it was alongside Mother, who liked to point out ladies she knew and comment on their fashionable or unfashionable furs, their rumored arguments and affairs. Henriette and Eva strolled by the queue leading up to the doors—a queue comprised of those who weren’t fortunate enough to possess tickets ahead of time. Eva couldn’t help but notice how these women’s furs were not done in the current fashion, how the men’s suits were inevitably too short or too long. This evening, during the long intermission, Mother would not be there to offer Eva and Henriette apple cake. She would not be there to offer sparkling hellos to fellow piano pupils and to parade the girls before her beloved teacher, Mrs. Shein, who would usually be seated at the bar, enjoying a glass of champagne.

“How was it,” Henriette asked, “that Mother attended all of those concerts? Why did Father never insist that she remain at home and get her rest?”

Eva shrugged. “She once said that being home too often was what in fact made her nervous, and that hearing her beloved music played was just the thing that made her well. I heard them quarrel in the drawing room.”

“Did you?”

Eva nodded, remembering how she had smelled Father’s pipe outside the heavy pine doors. Only the occasional glass being dropped or match being struck had interrupted their familiar coarse voices.

“Do you remember Mother’s skin?” Henriette asked suddenly. “How beautiful she was. Now she is…well, her hair has turned white! She barely brushes it!”

“She always said—she still says—that when one listens to someone play the piano, one can always recognize a person’s nature, in so far as whether the person is temperamental or not. But I have always wanted to say: Mother, since one can only deduce this through music and most everyone knows that musical people are temperamental to begin with, please tell me, what is the use?” Henriette laughed and Eva saw the fine lines feathering her sister’s hazel eyes and felt proud to be with her, to make her laugh again. “Look,” Eva said, nodding toward the doors. “Look at those people who are first in the queue.” Her gaze lingered on one man among them. A man with a dirty coat. A man with long, pale hair. “Do you see them?” she asked, her pulse quickening, as she could not help but try to catch a glimpse of his face. “They have all been standing here for hours. I’ve heard that some attend an evening performance and simply queue up for the following evening right then. They have a party throughout the night…” The man took something from his pocket and passed it between his hands. “They stand together on this queue all that time.”

“Such endless standing for nothing but a closer view,” Henriette said. “Can you imagine?”

“Yes,” said Eva, picturing dull silver flasks of brandy, fingers linked to keep warm. “I believe I can.”

The sun set in glowing embers over the stony city. A buxom lady laughed, a dark silk glove covered a delicate rouged mouth. Henriette stifled a yawn.

“Are you certain you’re well?”

“Perfectly,” said Henriette. “I don’t even feel the cold.”

“Uncle Alfred was never cold,” Eva said. “This is what Mother always said. Do you remember? On winter walks we would all blow into our hands and she would speak of how Alfred only looked straight ahead when it was cold, as if he were standing by the sea.”

“You don’t remember that.”

“I do.”

“She said that only once. You were too young to remember.”

“I remember,” Eva insisted. “When he was fighting, when he was in hiding, I remember thinking: I hope he isn’t cold. ‘Things are going to improve’—he wrote that over and over in his letters—‘not only for Jews but for all of Germany.’ He is still writing that.”

They passed by the man in the dirty coat on their way toward their entrance; he ran his hand over his own pale hair, and when he turned to the side and squinted, Eva saw a particularly thick mustache, a crooked pair of spectacles. They walked past the man who wasn’t Heinrich at all, past the buxom lady who was no longer laughing. Inside, the anteroom was done in ochre brocade. A silk upholstered chair was immediately brought forth.

“Look,” Henriette said, sitting herself down. She didn’t bother to hide how she was out of breath as she pointed to the concert entrance. Eva had forgotten her sister’s impatience, how charmingly it combined itself with hope. “The doors are opening.”

“It only seems that way,” said Eva, her heart still beating rapidly at the sudden possibility of seeing Heinrich. “Be prepared for a nice long wait.”

         

AFTER THE PERFORMANCE, HENRIETTE INSISTED ON BUYING THEM not only apple cakes but also sweet rolls before hiring a carriage. Many people passed them by, as Henriette’s legs couldn’t easily support her present weight, but she was in no hurry. Her sister missed Berlin; Eva could see this plainly and realized that she could not imagine ever going too far from home herself. But then a child walked by, holding a mother’s hand tightly, and Eva noticed her sister’s expression, how she could not suppress her joy. Henriette’s choice of husband, her uncomplicated happiness—it was as foreign to Eva as the idea of meeting Heinrich’s family—provided, of course, that he had one. It was as foreign as looking into his parents’ eyes on the threshold of his home and seeing only kindness.

One year when she was a little girl, during Taschlich after Rosh Hashanah, the whole family went to the Spree River to empty their pockets of sins. They had curiously joined Father’s relations—the very religious family of twelve—all of whom wore scratchy, bad-smelling clothing. It was the clothes she remembered most—heavy wool in a dark color that, not unlike the familial bond, was a cousin to navy, a cousin to black, but somehow exactly neither. Aunt Esther, a stutterer, (they’d met again at Henriette’s wedding) instructed the girls to cast stale breadcrumbs into the water below. Eva listened carefully and knew she was to name her sins inside her mind in order to cast them off, and yet she had searched in vain, coming up with not much more than pestering Henriette or eating too many pastries. As she now walked the crowded streets of Berlin between winter and spring, with her sister holding her arm, Eva remembered when sins were a novelty, no more familiar than the taste of sausage, which she now saw through a foggy window, darkly steaming on a platter.

“Do you remember what Father used to say about sausage?”

“Let the good Lord eat sausage,” said Henriette immediately, “only He knows what’s in it.”

They rounded a corner, laughing, and when they saw Heinrich, they were each taken aback and—for different reasons—could not help but smile. He bowed his head, asked after Henriette’s health, offering quiet congratulations, and as Eva watched her sister’s sparkling manner, she knew the carriage ride home would be filled with guileless babble about the mysterious painter who would really be quite handsome if he bathed and stood up straighter, if he didn’t do that funny thing with his hands as if he needed something—a paintbrush, a cigarette—to hold.

“Let’s go,” said Eva, but her eyes were fixed on Heinrich’s hands, convinced that she’d actually conjured him forth by the sheer force of her longing. “You must be tired,” she said to Henriette, but Henriette shook her head.

“It is so good to be here in my city,” Henriette said. “And how lucky to see you again, Heinrich. Have you been very busy with your painting?”

“I have been preoccupied as of late,” he said, and though Eva would not lift her eyes, she knew that he was watching her. “I can be found too often at the café across from the academy. Many students and instructors gather there.”

“It sounds like a lively time,” said Henriette.

“I suppose it is lively. But not for me. I can be found there every night,” he said pointedly, “well into the night. I must admit I have been melancholy.”

“Well then,” said Henriette, teasingly, as if she were not seven months pregnant but rather virginal and lounging on the sitting room divan. “Perhaps you should paint us again. Perhaps you simply miss us terribly.”

“Henriette!”

“I am only teasing, Eva. He knows I am teasing.”

“It is nice to see you again,” Eva said to Heinrich, finally looking into his eyes. “But we really must be going.”

“Of course,” he said, and then softer, “only if you must,” before turning around and becoming part of the passing crowd.

         

AFTER BIDDING GOODNIGHT TO HER SISTER, EVA FRANK FOUND HERSELF wanting to take some air. At the time she couldn’t admit why she fetched a wool wrap, why she stood outside for at least one hour in the garden. She looked around at the familiar rose bushes, beaten limp by the cold, and up above at the patterns of stars, as if they alone might absolve her of what she was about to do. And then, very much in spite of her better self, she hid her hair with her wrap and prayed that the servants wouldn’t see.

She began to walk. She walked and breathed the air—the air that was not enough somehow—past stone and tree and gate and thorn and, as a fine mist gathered into light rain, she picked up momentum; she could not articulate the destination, only the bottomless need. Underneath a stable master’s roof—a stable far enough away from her father’s house—as if she had been preparing for this inconceivable behavior all throughout her girlhood, she hired a horse and driver. The driver balked when he saw her, as no sane young woman hired a carriage unchaperoned (not to mention the late hour) but she’d provided for this reaction. He accepted the extra coins from her tightly clutched purse and, without a word, helped Eva into the anonymous coach and out into the night.

         

THERE WAS, AS HEINRICH HAD SAID, A COFFEEHOUSE NEAR THE academy where he often lingered with a few instructors. She knew this already for she occasionally had found an excuse to visit that street during the daytime and had looked through the glass where, through the floating vines of smoke, through the burnished amber light, she had seen him. She had memorized the blue eyes in turmoil, the smooth, high forehead, the thick, fair brows drawn in concentration, as if he himself had drawn them—charcoal in his tapered pale fingers, charcoal pushing into thick, cream paper the distinct shape of a V.

This time she didn’t stop at the window, but went straight for the door. There was a talkative set that carried an air of expectancy as they rushed inside, and she trailed them—hoping to blend in—a bit of flotsam caught in their buoyant wake. She was standing alone for what felt like hours, but it was no more than a moment before she found him reading a folded newspaper, sipping from a full glass of beer. There was an empty seat beside him, and sitting down felt like landing, like a paper bird coasting through the air.

He reacted so quickly, she was sure he’d turned over the glass, but there it stood, a glass of brown beer on a small café table between them. She stared at the beer until her lips, if not her fingers, stopped trembling.

“My sister,” she said, her eyes downcast, tears becoming trapped in the table’s knots and grooves.

He took her hand and leaned in close, as if he were making a point.

“She doesn’t know I am here,” she somehow managed to say. “If she knew…if my father—”

“My darling,” he said, “my sweet girl.”

“I came alone. My family—”

“Come closer,” he whispered.

As if she had no choice at all, Eva did as he told her and leaned across the table, close enough that she could smell light wool mixed with the malt and grass scent of beer. His shoe touched the top of her boot, and doing so, sent tiny colored lights colliding through her vision like a swarm on a summer’s eve.

“Heinrich!” cried a young man, approaching. “Great artist of our time!” The man had long, wavy hair, a broad grin, and a beery bass voice that echoed like a drum.

Eva pulled away and sat stiffly in her chair, hands locked in her lap. At first she thought she was mistaken when she heard him say, before breaking into laughter, “Heinrich, great sponger of the rich!”

She braced herself for Heinrich’s fierce rebuttal, but he only shook his head with a stiff smile. “Go on, go away now.”

“You will not introduce me to your friend?”

“No, I don’t think so,” said Heinrich.

“I apologize,” he said, with a sobering expression. “Merely having some fun.”

“I must go,” Eva said, and stood, gathering up her skirt.

“Don’t leave,” he called out. “We like to tease him. I am only jealous—he’s such a skilled guest of the Jews. We all need such commissions but—alas—my talented friend will not make the necessary introductions.”

“Shut up, Fritz,” Heinrich said, but curiously, he was still smiling.

“He is apparently the most fashionable fellow to paint all their portraits. And—make no mistake—he is well compensated. Or at least that’s what I’m told.” He clapped Heinrich warmly on the back.

“Is that right?” Eva asked, as Heinrich stood up too, and the café passed in swatches of brown tables and white candles, in coffee poured and wine spilled, and outside the street was empty, misty, barely lit by streetlights. She had never been alone at nighttime on any kind of street, let alone one as strange as this one. Heinrich appeared within seconds, but she walked away, ignoring him, until the narrow street came to an end. There was stone in all directions.

“I came to see if you still wish to marry me,” she finally said, through infuriating tears. “But I do not wish to know anymore.”

“He is drunk,” he said, taking her hands. “He likes to tease me—do you understand?” His touch was soft, grateful. He moved one hand to rest on her cheek. “I mean to say, though he is a fine artist, there is jealousy among painters and—”

“He does not have your charm—is this it? Your way with Jewish daughters? Is this why he says hateful things?”

“But he did not think for a moment that you are a Jewess.”

Eva shook her head and his warm hand fell to his side. “No,” she said, “probably not.” Aside from understanding its irrelevance, she knew she took some small pleasure in this fact and it shamed her. A strange grin twisted across her face.

“What?” asked Heinrich. He had stopped touching her. “Why do you look this way?”

“How many daughters?” She asked—although she knew that whatever truth she was after was never going to be revealed. “Please, do tell me—how many have you loved?”

He shook his head as though nothing could be of less consequence. “We could be free,” he whispered, as if he truly believed.

“But I cannot be. I cannot be free as a German without also being free as a Jew.” She gave a little shrug. “I’m not even quite sure why.”

“If you are not sure why, then you cannot possibly be certain. It is something else,” he said defiantly, as his expression turned bitter. “I wonder—would it be different if I were a baron? If I were a professor of law like your beloved sister’s match? Could you then be free?”

She realized that it was nighttime, and that she’d come quite a long way here.

“My sister…” she said, but this time it was in recognition, as there—impossibly—was Henriette. Henriette approaching in the darkness. A Bengal tiger could not have shocked or frightened her more. “Henriette!” she cried. “But what are you doing here?”

“I was worried,” she said plainly, in a voice Eva did not recognize. “I knew,” she said, as Eva rushed to her side. “I woke up and I knew. Or maybe I knew all along and was afraid to admit it could be true.”

“Henriette,” Eva said, but Henriette was breathing heavily, leaning now against a closed butcher’s stall. Eva swore she could see the faintest bloodstain in the grain of the well-worn wood, a brown scratch that could have been anything, but it was old blood, she was certain.

“Are you mad? You should not be here!” Heinrich cried.

“Oh dear God,” Henriette said softly, even calmly, as a puddle of water began spreading in a pool beneath her skirt.

“Help us,” Eva screamed, and Heinrich responded with the promise of help, calling out as his worn shoe soles smacked the stones and echoed into silence, into the smell of a side street at night—smoke, gravy, beer—a smell with no trace of a woman.

“Help us,” Eva called again, in case he had merely run away. Then: “Isn’t it too early?” She worked her small hands under Henriette’s arms, doing her best to hold her sister up and off the ground, and then she saw three men from inside the café come running out to assist them. She didn’t know whether to be frightened or relieved. “Henriette, what will you name him?” Eva whispered, as if the existence of her second question could serve to counteract the answer to her first.

“You believe it is a boy?” Henriette strained, wincing with obvious terror.

“I do,” Eva said. “I do.” Her voice shook, as she saw how her sister’s round face had already drained of color.

         

ONLY WHEN HEINRICH HIRED THEM A DRIVER DID EVA REALIZE THAT he too was terrified—not only of what was happening to Henriette but also of being somehow implicated and punished. He seemed no stranger to punishment, but also—even as he directed the driver in a suitably forceful voice—he seemed suddenly and considerably younger. Eva wondered, as she gripped her sister’s hand and smoothed her hair, as the carriage sped uphill and back toward the world she’d been unhappily fleeing, if she would ever see him again.

She would look on that moment as the last one of its kind, for the idea that she would—that she could—ever see him again: It would become a dark and ridiculous joke.

As the driver approached their street, Henriette insisted on getting out a short distance from the house, so that no one would wake and catch them in this inconceivable position.

“No!” cried Eva, and she could hear how her voice was trembling. “We’ll go straight to the door and send this carriage for the midwife. I will live with my consequences. My punishment means nothing compared to your safety.”

Henriette yelled to the driver to let them out right there. She yelled with the certainty of a true mother. Eva hollered back but the driver must have been frightened of what would greet him at their destination, for he listened to Henriette and stopped exactly where she’d requested. “Keep driving!” cried Eva. “For God’s sake, can’t you see her? She is having—”

“Hush,” cried Henriette, as she made her way out of the carriage, imbued with sudden energy. “Come!” she hissed, and Eva saw that she had no choice, that to argue would mean endangering her sister that much further. “You listen to me,” her sister said, as she walked at a fearsome clip. The night was pale and humid and they were part of it, part of the air and mist and the minutes ticking onward into an impossible morning. They looked up at the grand houses of Charlottenburg—houses they had known their whole lives—which were now looming above them like great kings at rest, ignorant of sedition. Her sister said, “I will never speak of this night to anyone.”

“Thank you,” Eva managed to whisper, as their family home came into view.

“You think this is only for you?” Henriette cried. “This would ruin all of us, don’t you understand?” She shook her head gravely before stopping for a moment and clutching Eva’s shoulders. “Are you really so ignorant?” she demanded, her voice stern but disappearing into a severe embrace. Eva could smell Henriette’s perspiration, the terrible water soaking her skirts. “Oh Eva,” Henriette whispered, seconds from weeping, but instead drew a sharp breath. “Promise me you’ll never speak of what you have done.”

“I promise,” Eva said, as tears poured down her face, tears so plentiful they ceased to matter.

         

They passed through the back entrance without incident. They hurried up the stairs before silently changing into dressing gowns and Eva ran toward their father’s bedroom door, crying out for his help. The servants were woken. Water was boiled. The midwife was called and finally arrived.

         

THAT NIGHT, HENRIETTE—DRENCHED IN SWEAT, LANK HAIR STICKING to her back—became the very animal that Eva could never have imagined. This—Eva thought, while grasping her sister’s hand—was a fierceness that must only be possible once in a person’s life, at the very moment of discovering that such strength in fact exists. Here was power undiluted by effort, with a face hollowed out to the very bones working to scream out in pain. The engorged breasts were shocking, swinging beneath a sweat-soaked nightgown that Eva took small comfort envisioning being bleached and hung to dry. She was shocked at Henriette’s voice, how it lowered and growled with fury as much as with anything else. She was shocked at the way her hips moved under the sheet, thrusting in violent motions as her knees stabbed up and out to the side like wings of a monstrous insect.

She was so shocked that it took the midwife shaking her shoulders in order to make Eva come back, come back to the peach-colored room of their childhood, where she had been standing for nearly twenty hours. She was shocked to recognize how silent the room had grown, a silence that she could barely distinguish from the baby’s piercing cry. She heard the baby, the baby boy! She swore she heard him crying and screaming to the ceiling and out beyond the roof—sound spilling madly into the dark and starry night. But the baby’s mouth was closed. He was beautiful and tiny and perfect and he was not crying. He was not making a sound.

She held him in her arms until she realized that Henriette should be holding him, that it should not yet be Eva’s turn. By the time Eva turned to see her sister—mouth slack and arms splayed, drenched in the unknown yet instantly certain fatal hush—the midwife was forced to utter the words about her sister and the child, words Eva refused to repeat in this country, in this language, and later, in another country in other languages that she would come to know. She would write them, sometimes over and over, for many years to come, but the exact words would never cross her lips. And though logic played no part in her conviction and she believed very deeply in logic, Eva knew that she alone was responsible.

She had been with Heinrich. She had stood there and loved him even as she knew he hated her. Maybe it was only a small part of him that hated only a small part of her, but it was hate just the same and she had loved him. This was her doing: this moment, this fatal birth, and Eva lay on the bed with her long-lashed, willful, frivolous, sweet, sweet sister—clutching the still baby to both of their breasts. And then the silence came to an end and she realized the violent banging was not in fact inside her mind but outside herself, outside the door, where Father pounded fist to wood over and over again.