#wftp

Brecht: It is true: I merely earn my keep

But, believe me: that is just a coincidence. Nothing

That I do gives me the right to eat my fill.

By chance I have been spared. (If my luck does not hold,I am lost.) & But you, when at last the time comes

That man is a helper to his fellow man,

Remember us

With leniency.

Leander:

"What?" He asked, his voice purposefully rising in pitch to accentuate his faked confusion. "Of course I want to skate with you two. Unless..." He turned on Ida, putting on his lawyer persona, or rather, the lawyer persona he had created to entertain Lottie; a child's idea of what sternness was like. "You are ashamed of my skating abilities -or lack there of- and don't want to be seen with me."

"Oh no! Objection, that is a very, very untrue and also," Ida made a pause for dramatic effect and through a quickly look at Lottie who was watching their exchange with rapt fascination, "mean."

"If that's so, I suppose you win this case then. Yet again, I have been beat. Don't tell anyone that your father is bad at his job, Lottie, or I won't get any clients."

Lottie shook her head, black curls flying around her head. "I won't!"

"Your skates, husband dear. Put them on."

Rosie grumbled something under his breath and then put on his own shoes without complaint or further attempts of distraction; the moment he stood up from the low bench he wobbled on his feet. A little like what Ida would believe a baby deer to walk like, unsure on it's long legs, but she had never seen one and couldn't say if this comparison was accurate.

Lottie took this as a sign to get up as well, carefully pushed to her feet and held onto the bench for a few more moments before she dared to let go of it and straightened up. She too, was unsteady on her feet and reached out to grasp onto Rosie's leg for support (certainly not the best option if she was looking for stability; but faced with the task of stopping his daughter from falling over, Rosie suddenly flailed a lot less). Once she was certain that neither her daughter nor her husband were in immediate danger of meeting the ground, Ida made her way towards the ice rink; she didn't mind walking on skates much, she had always been good at skating, first on the frozen Pegnitz and then on the Spree (even if it was, technically, forbidden to go ice skating on it. But such rules were only begging to be broken, especially by young women like Christa and her, their danger-seeking almost a flirtation with the men on their heels; Moritz and Viktor, and whoever poor soul had his eyes on Christa in the moment).

Ida stepped onto the ice and held out both of her hands for Lottie to hold onto, as she tentatively set one, and then the other other foot down. She was careful and slow enough not to stumble (in her maternal pride Ida liked to attribute it to her daughter's caution, in reality the firm grip she had on her daughter was what kept the girl from falling over) and Ida dared to let go of one of her hands, so that she could stand up straight.

"She's a natural," Rosie declared and stepped out onto the ice as well. He was smart enough to not let go of the wooden railing which ran all the way around the rink just yet.

The rink wasn't too busy, which Ida was glad for; she didn't need her daughter to be pushed around by some skater who thought that they simply had to race across a rink full of people. Once, back in Berlin, she'd seen the blade of someone's ice skate cut through someone else's finger, the blood crimson and bright on the ice and when she had remembered the sight, on their way here, a vision of Lottie's tiny hand, bloodied and cut up, had flashed in front of her, as clearly as if she had truly seen it.

It was, apparently in the nature of all mothers; even her who had seen so much death and injuries that one would think she'd be apathetic towards the thought of them; to be helplessly anxious about their children getting hurt.

"Let's try to move a bit, alright?" Ida asked Lottie. Her tiny hand held on tighter to Ida's hand, the process made harder by the layers of gloves between their fingers. Lottie was a little speck of color against the white ice, a light blue coat similar to the much darker one which Ida wore, the very same which Rosie had gotten her in Nuremberg, and a red hat.

She lifted her leg up high and then let it drop back down onto the ice, roughly two centimeters away from where it had been before. Lottie repeated the process with her other foot and then looked up at Ida proudly.

"Very good," she confirmed. Rosie snickered. "Better than anything your father has ever done on the ice." She did a little half-turn so that she stood in front of Lottie and took both of her hands again. 

Ida set out to skate backwards slowly, pulling Lottie along with her, every once in a while throwing a look over her shoulder to make sure they wouldn't crash into anyone. "Do you see what I'm doing with my feet?"

Lottie observed the motion of Ida's feet and then nodded, once, decisively.

"Don't lift them too high, slide a little. And lean forward, but not too much," Ida explained, or rather tried to explain, a motion which had become natural to her.

Lottie followed Ida's instructions to the best of her abilities, a little ball of cloth sliding across the ice; and was there any sight sweet than her baby, all bundled up like this? She did a well enough job, good enough for Ida to switch around again and skate alongside Lottie, hand in hand. Rosie followed them, using the side of the railing to pull himself along at first, before he felt steady enough and let go; joining them further in the middle of the ice. Rosie wasn't that bad, not as catastrophically as he had been the first time he and Ida had gone ice skating together, just a few weeks after they had moved to New York, back when he had done everything in his power to cheer her up. (Not that he had stopped doing this; Ida simply didn't need a lot of cheering up anymore.)

He wasn't elegant, that was certain, and he still hadn't gotten the movement quite right (or was he simply playing it up for Lottie's entertainment?) but he hadn't yet stumbled or fallen and caught up to them quickly. He took Lottie's free hand in his; and Ida smiled at the sight. Lottie in winter clothing and her tiny hands in Rosie's big one - and Ida was content just watching for a moment, smiling to herself. She still remembered seeing it for the first time, just after she had given birth, still hazy with pain, impossibly tired, how Rosie had held their tiny daughter in his big arms and took her small hand in his own one, as carefully as someone handling the most fragile of porcelain cups.

Lottie soon grew tired and Rosie took her back to the bench where he had tied on her shoes so that she could rest a bit, while Ida picked up speed, tried a spin Klara had taught her almost twenty years ago, made a few, quick rounds around the rink and then she rejoined Rosie and Lottie. Lottie's cheeks were pink with exhaustion and she was holding onto a hot cup of cocoa, the steam curling towards her face, making her little nose run. When she exhaled, her breath froze white in the air and she looked like a mini-Ida, smoking on her lunch break. (Before Lottie, that was, she didn't smoke anymore.)

Lottie brought up her sleeve to wipe at her own nose, a habit she had picked up from Ida, who was usually well-mannered but this one vice of her youth she had never been able to drop and Lottie mimicked it, no matter how much Rosie despaired over trying to make her use handkerchiefs instead.

"Tastes good?" She asked and Lottie nodded and smile at her from over the brim of the ceramic mug.

Ida turned to Rosie. "I believe you own me a round across the rink, don't you think?"

"Oh no, no," Rosie refuted, "I think you do very well on your own, I prefer to watch."

Ida wasn't so easily deterred. "Robert," she commanded and held out her hand, "come."

He groaned over-dramatically and threw Lottie a pitiful look, as if to ask see what terrible things your mother makes me do? but he got up from the bench and took a hold of Ida's hand, tugged her against him and gave her a quick kiss, half swallowed by the scarf that covered her chin. She still wore Christa's green scarf, the one that had followed her all the way from Berlin to Nuremberg, from Nuremberg to New York, across a country and over an ocean. "Alright, 'cause it's you. Will you be fine on your own for a moment, Lottie?"

Lottie nodded again, very seriously. "Very fine."

Thus, Rosie had no further reason to put off getting back onto the ice and he followed Ida, hands linked together. They skated halfway across the rink, before Ida pulled to a halt, her shoes scratching up the ice in powdery snow as she stopped them. She wrapped her arms around Rosie's shoulders, even broader now than usually, covered by his thick winter coat and pressed a kiss to his lips, quick and caste, their cold noses bumping against each other.

"Mhm, if you'd told me I'd get a reward, I never would have complained," Rosie said as his hands found her hips, then her waist and slid over her stomach; the small bump there was maybe visible only to those who knew, or maybe still imaginary; and he smiled down at her warmly, gave her a quick wink, more of a blink with both eyes. "When are we going to tell Lottie?"

"Soon," Ida promised, "she'll be a fantastic older sister." At least as good as Ida had been, in those early years, before she had lost them all; Lottie was a sweet girl, softer than Ida could ever have imagined being.

"Have I ever told you how happy you make me?"

"Oh yes, I do seem to remember something. Vaguely. Recently, however, you seem to find that I demand horrible deeds from you," Ida joked and hugged him closer, rested her head against his chest.

"You do, but I forgive you," Rosie said and pressed a kiss to her head, right where her wool hat had slipped back to reveal a bit of damp, blonde hair. It was freezing cold, but the exercise had made her sweat lightly beneath the hat. "Are you tired, darling?"

Of course he could tell; Ida always hugged him like this when she was tired, as if he were a big cushion which she clung onto. "A little."

"Shall we go home then, my little ice princess? Our even littler ice princess looked a bit sleepy as well."

They finished their round slowly, the rink had filled up around them as it got later, mostly with teenagers and young adults, groups of friends and couples, clogging up the calm, orderly flow of the afternoon, when it had been mostly families with small children.

Lottie had finished her hot coca and did look ready to fall asleep at any moment, her empty mug placed carefully next to her on the bench. Ida speed up on the last few feet, leaving Rosie behind and wrapped Lottie up tightly in her arms. Her daughter hugged her back as much as she could, the coat allowing her to reach only halfway across Ida's body, and she dropped her head against Ida's chest just as she had done with Rosie.

Rosie slipped before he could reach the two of them, landing flat on his back comically with a barely audible thud. Lottie lifted her head up from Ida's shoulder to check where the noise had come from and, seeing her father laid out like that, started to cry.

"Oh no," Rosie groaned and quickly pushed himself up, "I'm alright, sweetie, I'm fine. You don't have to cry." He made it the last few steps towards them without falling again and took Lottie from Ida. "See? I'm fine. No need to cry at all. Great," he added towards Ida, cupping the back of Lottie' head in his hand, "now I ruined her whole day."

"No, no. She's just overly empathetic, she'll calm down soon."

And she did; they had barely made it down the road when Lottie fell asleep in Rosie's arms, little cheek mushed against his shoulder, with tiny clouds of smoke curling out of her mouth so that she looked a bit like a sleepy baby dragon.

Fifty - holding hands to calm each other down

She had thought - or rather hoped, somewhat naively - that she could get used to this, get used to anything, and for a while it had even been true. Roughly half a year of night time bombings, from August '40 to the happy new year of '41, had served to thoroughly desensitize Ida against the trembling ground and ceilings, the sounds of bombs hitting the ground and buildings collapsing and most of all it had allowed her to push the knowledge of her own human fragility to the back of her mind, built a protective wall around it that not even the RAF's bombs could shake lose. Or so she had believed.

Day time bombings - the American's lovely contribution to the war - weren't nearly as bad; partly because they at least tried to hit only military targets (not too successfully and also, the RLM was not exactly a civil target either) and because everything seemed less terrifying in the light of day.

They were mostly expected to simply work through it, even when the table shook beneath her typewriter and when it became so loud that they had to scream to hear each other. Sometimes that wasn't enough, every noise drowned out by the sounds of explosions and Ida could only follow Hoffman's lips and try to guess at what he was telling her, watch his face turn red with anger - at the Americans for causing all that noise or at her for not being able to read his lips? Her, mostly likely, if she knew him.

That day was different though and Ida couldn't tell why. The first bombs had fallen a few minutes ago, not too far away from them and maybe that was what had Ida on edge, nervous rather than the usual vague apathy she had developed towards the bombings.

Maybe there was simply something in the air, for Christa seemed to sense it too. She had been here already an hour ago, before the bombing had started, for a smoke and a quick chat, but now she stood in the door again.

"And?" She asked. There was something nervous in her stance, a slightest hunch of her shoulders, although she looked as flawless as every and held herself almost forcibly still.

"And what?"

"And what are you doing?" Christa asked and stepped into the room, leaned her hip against Ida's desk and crossed her arms; almost the image of one of the soldiers that stopped by to flirt with her every once in a while.

"Working," Ida replied dryly, "what are you doing?"

"Supervising."

The meeting report which Ida had transcribed from her DEK notes, had been staked neatly next to her typewriter before the American's had shook the ground and left the sheets of paper in disarray, caught Christa's attention and she leafed through them. "You made a spelling mistake here," she informed Ida, who didn't bother to look up from her typewriter.

"Correction ribbon's right there, fix it if it bothers you that much."

Christa snorted.

Ida reached the end of the sheet of paper she was writing on, the invisible border that her typewriter wouldn't cross and it dinged cheerfully into the still, tense air. This was a break, both Ida and Christa knew that. More would come soon.

"I need to bring this to Bock," Ida said, nodding at the notes.

"Bock? That's a ten minute walk, or what? Completely opposite end of the building."

Ida stood up and plucked the sheets from Christa's fingers, tapped the edges, the short and then the longer one once each, against the table to recreate a semblance of order.

Christa handed her a paperclip. "You should go later."

"What do you mean, later?"

"When they're done," Christa made a somewhat blasphemous gesture up at the ceiling, at the sky above the concrete. "Let's go outside, take a break."

"Why? We already had one."

"Oh no! I'm sure they'll fire us immediately if they find out we took two breaks before lunch. No, actually they'll brand us Arbeitsverweigerer and send us to Dachau." When she noticed Ida's eye roll, she added: "I just have a feeling. But if you don't want to come, be my guest."

Ida, who had never been superstitious, and Christa, who was only barely religious, had learned not to ignore those feelings, the tingling in their guts; sometimes it was a notion they could laugh at later - how silly of me to be so nervous - somehow, however, it was this almost  primal intuition that saved their lives.

"Alright," Ida conceded, "lead the way."

They took a seat at their usual little nook at one of the outer walls of the RLM, a sprawling creature in Wilhelmstraße, more village than building. Christa stretched ut her long legs in front of her, nylon-clad, her dark green skirt ending shortly below her knees. Her heels were much higher than those of Ida's simple black shoes. She had been correct, just as Ida rested the back of her head against the rough wall behind them, a new salve of bombs was dropped onto Berlin.

Closer still than the ones before and they both flinched involuntarily and then gave a startled little laugh, as if to ridicule their own fear. Their laughter, thin and high, was quickly drowned out by the earth shattering sound of explosions and Ida's whole body tensed up. She glanced over at Christa, who had her hands placed almost casually in her lap, but they were balled into tight, white-knuckled fists. Ida reached out to take a hold of one of her hands; Christa had carefully manicured fingernails, Ida's own were bare and cut short. Christa's grip was firm and warm, calming in the tumult around them.

They couldn't have been outside for more than five minutes, fingers interlinked, hands resting on Christa's thighs, clenching and unclenching around each other in the rhythm of their own strained breathing and then it was over - over and they went back inside.

Ida picked up the notes, went over to Bock and found his outer office sprinkled red. The desk, set up just like her own, was vacated, a pool of still fresh blood under the chair. Broken glass glittered between the red, crunched under Ida's feet. The window had exploded, given into the pressure of the falling bombs which had spared most of the building, a shard of glass slicing through the neck of Bock's secretary.

Minna, her name had been. Von Barnhelm, they had teased her.

They had been watching Tilda play in the street from the bathroom in unusually amicable silence, both with their arms crossed and their shoulders brushing together whenever one of them had taken a particularly deep breath.

“Is it bad that she doesn’t have any friends?” Klara had asked Ida after a while.

“It’s probably worse that her mother is never around.”

“Yes, probably,” Klara had snipped and then she had taken a deep breath, nearly nudging Ida into the hallway, “still, we had friends at that age.”

“We had each other. I don’t know if that counts as friend,” Ida had quibbed, which had earned her an elbow in the side.

“So no friends is just fine, you say? All she ever does is play with that doll all day,” Klara had continued, unwilling to drop the conversation until it had come to the conclusion she had surely envisioned before starting it. Ida had watched Tilda for a moment longer, doll girl and girl doll down in the street, before turning back to face Klara and taking the bait.

“And what exactly do you want me to do about that? I don’t have a spare child or some toys for her to play with.”

“But you do have an American,” Klara had pointed out, “can’t you get him to get her something a bit more… interesting? I know he can get all sorts of stuff sent over from the states. Like that nice coat you’ve been wearing.”

“Aha, so so,” Ida had made, typical German sounds of judgement, “just so I don’t misunderstand you. You want me to ask a man you hate, to get Tilda some shiny new toy from a country you also hate?”

“Exactly that. Good to see that you didn’t leave all of your wits behind in Berlin.” 

Now, in her American’s bed, Ida was turning the same page back and forth and watching Rosie read over the top of the book. She didn’t like asking him for things. She liked it when he knew what she wanted and got it for her, but asking for things felt wrong, as if she were confirming what everybody thought of her.

Rosie looked up and caught her gaze; he smiled at her and Ida, helpless to do anything else, smiled back. “Hi. What’re you doing?”

“I’m thinking,” she told him, and reached out to trace his mustache with her finger. 

He caught her hand in his and pressed a kiss to her palm, the soft hair she had been touching now tickling her skin. “About what?” 

“Klara. Or rather what she said about Tilda.”

“The girl who lives with you?” 

Ida nodded in confirmation.

“It’s like pulling teeth with you, Ida. Come on, tell me what Klara said about Tilda and then you can go back to brooding in peace.”

“Did you know I lived in Brooding street?”

“I know,” he confirmed and closed the file, “stop trying to distract me.”

“It’s just that Klara thinks that Tilda is a little unchallenged, I suppose? She’s got her doll and she’s got us sometimes but that’s not really enough for a young girl at her age, right? This isn’t a good place for a child to grow up in, with all the rubble and the lack of… everything, really. The lack.” 

Rosie nodded, his blue eyes understanding. “No, it isn’t. Klara’s right about that. And I don’t like thinking that Klara is right about anything,” he joked and then kissed her hand again quickly, presumably to stop her from taking offence. Then his brow furrowed slightly, small creases forming at the bridge of his nose and his tone became serious again. “No child should grow up like that.” 

“And Klara told me to ask you if you could get her something,” she added words flowing freely now that she had started to talk, “but you don’t have to, of course. It would be nice.”

“Of course I will,” he told her, “what kind of thing would be good?” 

Ida shifted down on the bed and rolled onto her stomach, so that she could rest her head against his knee. “I was thinking maybe something to draw with? Crayons, some paper? Art’s good for the soul, isn’t it?”

Rosie reached down to stroke her hair, long fingers scratching against her scalp, impossibly soothing. “I’m sure it is. Consider it done.”

“Thank you.” She turned her face to the side to press a kiss to his clothed knee.

“And Ida? Next time, just ask. I’ll get you anything.”

–

She was seven years old which meant that she was big. Or at least big enough when he mother needed her to do certain things like watching over her little sister, as she was doing now. 

Else was a baby. Ida knew a few babies who weren’t babies anymore, like Willi and Goldie and even Theodro but she didn’t remember that because she was very small then herself. Now, she wasn’t very small though and she knew what to do with babies (it wasn’t that hard). You just had to put them somewhere where they wouldn’t fall down or get walked on and then sometimes you had to look at them to make sure they were still alive. (But in Ida’s experience babies didn’t just die that often, apart from Klara’s little brother who had died.) When they started to scream or cry you had to hand them back over to their mother.

They were in the park together, all five of them and Rosa and Goldie too and maybe Klara later, if she could figure out where they were. The park was really only a small square with a few trees offering some shade and a bench which they ignored in favour of the ground. Dirt was fascinating to all children, big and small, at least all children Ida knew.

Their clothing was all brown anyway, so it didn’t matter much if it got dirty.

There was something in Ida’s shoe, a pebble presumably, poking at the sole of her foot, so she took it off, turned it over and shook to get the something out. As she was doing this, she noticed a ladybug crawling along a blade of grass. Ida held out her finger and waited patiently for the ladybug to crawl onto her hand.

“Look Elselein,” she said, as she held out her hand for Else to see, “a ladybug.” The insect picked exactly that moment to take flight, lifted into the air as it was, Ida’s outstretched finger serving as the perfect runway, and flung itself against Else’s forehead.

Else immediately started to cry, impressively loud for someone so small, but Ida knew already that babies were always surprisingly noisy.

“Oh you crybaby,” Ida said, her voice somewhere between soothing and annoyed, “always crying. Why do you always have to cry?”

“Because she’s a girl,” Friedrich explained, “girls always cry, everybody knows that.”

“No, they don’t. I don’t. Boys don’t know anything, and that’s true,” she snipped back and stuck her tongue out at her brother. 

Two

Tilda’s fingers were small, warm and sticky in her own. Ida was oddly grateful for that stickiness, like glue between their skin, holding them together so that she wouldn’t lose Tilda. Ida had been in charge of small children throughout most of her own childhood and teen years but only now, with this child that wasn’t related to her, did it seem like the responsibility it was.

Maybe she had believed, back then, that the blood which tied them together would tatter them together strongly enough, that it would be impossible for her to lose a sibling. With the same blood in their veins, how could that be separated? She had learned, of course, had learned that you could lose a sibling in the blink of an eye, between one breath and the other and before the letter arrived at your door, you were none the wiser. 

Looking away, Ida knew now, older (so much older) and wiser, was dangerous and so was letting go.

It was too late anyway, now that all of them were gone. Her clinging onto Tilda was like a futile attempt to hold her sibling, a compensation for how she had failed them. As if Tilda would get lost in the streets between the Henkersteg and the Weintraubengasse. And even if, she would be able to find her way back or someone would be able to point her in the right direction. Rationality did not make Ida loosen her grip; and besides, just because Tilda wouldn’t be haunting the streets of Nuremberg forever (enough ghosts already, no space left for another one), didn’t mean that she had to provoke it. 

Tilda tugged on her hand, or rather Tilda had stopped and Ida had continued walking, their interlocked hands stretching between them.

“What is it?” Ida asked.

Tilda pointed at the pavement in front of them, at the crack in one of the stones lining the street. A ladybug was crawling between the two halves, red body bright and colourful against the dark grey stone.

“Bug.” Tilda explained, pointing her doll towards the insect, the doll she always seemed to be carrying around with herself. 

“That’s right,” Ida confirmed, “do you like ladybugs?”

Tilda tilted her head to the side, gave Ida a critical look and then stepped onto the bug, forcefully. She even twisted her foot a little, like Christa used to do when she stubbed out her cigarette, although Tilda certainly did it in a less elegant way. 

“A simple ‘no’ would have been enough, you know? You really don’t like to talk, do you?”

“It’s dead,” Tilda told her, sounding rather proud, and stepped off the bug to double check. 

“You made rather sure of that,” Ida said and then, because Tilda looked up at her somewhat hopeful, she added, “well done. All those bombs really messed you up, huh?”

Three

Lottie liked to sit at the window, waiting for her father to come home from work. It was always the same procedure; at about five to six (if Rosie hadn’t called to let Ida know that he would be late) Ida sat Lottie down on the window sill. Lottie would press her little fingers and her tiny nose against the glass, eyes big and round, and look down into the street, every once in a while making little noises and turning to check if Ida was still there. (Ida was, of course, still there. She was holding Lottie upright after all.) At around six o’clock, Rosie’s dark head would appear at the end of the street and Lottie would start to flail her arms and legs and call out to him.

Rosie would keep his eyes firmly straight forward until he stood just underneath their window. Then he would look up, feign surprise and wave up at the two of them. Lottie would wave back and giggle and coo and overall express more joy than Ida had thought to be possible. 

It was, of course, not only Lottie who enjoyed this little ritual. 

Rosie liked it too. (Ha!)

That evening, Rosie was a little late, without having informed Ida, which made her unreasonably mad, so she used the extra time to tell Lottie anti-Rosie propaganda in German. Like, “dein Papa ist böse” or “dein Papa ist schrecklich”. It was rather ridiculous to do so, but Lottie’s delighted giggles at Ida’s furrowed eyebrows and scrunched up nose were rather rewarding. 

It didn’t take Ida long to run out of mean things to say about Rosie, so she hooked her chin over Lottie’s head, black curls tickling her skin and looked out of the window with her. 

Ida noticed a ladybug crawling across the glass right above them and she pointed at it. “Look, Lotte, isn’t that lovely?” 

Lottie seemed to agree, because she made a blubbering noise and pointed at the insect, before clapping her hands together, like a tiny adult applauding an opera performance. 

Four

Betty had tugged off her sunhat again. It was a cute little thing, one which Rosie’s mother had gotten her, and Ida liked how Betty looked in it and that it served to stop her daughter’s skin from getting burned. 

Betty, unaware of the fact that she had inherited Ida’s light blonde hair and not Rosie’s thick, dark hair, disagreed and hated to wear it. 

Ida, stretched out in a lawn chair, in her own sunhat, felt little like getting up, so she called over to Rosie, buried in some file or another. “Rosie, your child is behaving badly again.”

He made a noise, somewhere between a grunt and a laugh, which was supposed to tell her that he was listening but meant that he was doing anything but.

“Robert.”

The same noise followed; if even the use of his government name couldn’t tear him away from his work nothing could, so Ida sighed, put her book down and pushed herself out of the chair. She stretched out her limbs, heavy from the sun and not having been moved in a while and then walked over to where Betty was playing on a small blanket.

Ida put the sunhat back onto Betty’s head. “Now, will you be good and keep it on?”

Betty ripped out a blade of grass and tried to shove it in her mouth. 

“I take that as a no,” Ida said, as she removed the grass from Betty’s fingers, giving her hand a little kiss.

Betty cared little about her mother’s affection, for her other hand had already found her next target; a ladybug, up until now innocently crawling along its way. It was picked up, died a rather brutal death between two toddler fingers and was nearly eaten by its murderer, had the murderer’s mother not caught the murder weapon (hand) as well.

They were standing in the broken bathroom, watching melting snow dripping down into the room under them; Ida could feel cold drops running down her neck, falling down from the jagged ceiling over them. 

As above, so below. 

“Alright, du Klugscheißer. I had hoped that I had imagined how bad it is but it looks even worse.” Klara spoke lowly, away from Ida, but her voices carried easily to the other. Or maybe Ida’s body had memorized the thrum of Klara’s vocal cords, the humming which had been pressed against her for so many nights, that she would understand a whisper through a crowded room. 

“I think it looks nicer now that we’re not freezing to death any more.” 

Not that it was warm outside, not yet. These last few months Ida had thought of warmth as something small, contained. The flicker of a zipper (Where did you get this Klara? What did you give for it?); the short sting of a match which had burned too close to her fingers, fingers that had yearned for a flame they would usually shy away from; the press of another body against hers. To imagine that warmth was sometimes all encompassing, inescapable, was almost impossible, to think that air could be warm, could bring sweat onto her forehead and not just icy death. 

“You’re an optimist,” Klara accused.

“Please.” Ida nearly laughed. “Anyone would seem like an optimist next to you. You’re not even a pessimist, you’re a despair-ist.” 

“I’m a realist. We might still die.”

“I never denied that. Only said that we weren’t going to freeze to death. At least not until next winter.”

“Next winter,” Klara repeated with a scoff. “I hope I die before then. Ida, you know you’re very dear to me, but if I have to spend any more time sleeping next to you, I might strangle you in your sleep.” 

“Sure,” Ida agreed, “if I don’t live somewhere else by next winter you have explicit permission to murder me. I’ll give the military government a little slip so they don’t put you on trial.”

“I think they are a little bit too busy for that anyway. Can you imagine? Me in the dock next to Heß and Rosenberg?”

“Maybe they’ll put you next to Streicher.”

Klara shuddered, a shiver of disgust and not of cold (not this time, although it still lingered in their bones). “Maybe I’ll go for a murder-suicide instead.” 

The sludgy snow was starting to sweep through the leather of Ida’s shoes, cold dampness creeping into her toes. “Sounds like a plan. Let’s go back inside, you can contemplate your plans for the future there.” 

Klara wasn’t wrong, not really. When the ruins of Nuremberg had been covered in a thick layer of pure, untouched snow, they had looked almost serene. One could almost imagine being caught in a snowglobe, in the sculptured landscape of a crumbled old castle; a fairytale still, the romantic notion of peace which snow and its silent fall always brought with them. 

Nothing had been romantic about this winter; nothing romantic about cold bodies, empty fire places, empty stomachs, empty eyes. 

But, Ida reasoned, spring was coming. Spring was at their doorstep, greeting them with an impish smile and the promise of a better future. She knew already that she would fall for it again.

It felt inappropriate that the sun was still shining, still high in the air, when Ida walked back. She should have been wrapped in darkness, or there should have been clouds like curtains in front of the sun, something to hide her embarrassment.

But no; the sunlight followed her like a spotlight illuminating her shame, an actress at the center of stage delivering her lines for the greedy audience to watch.

Her only consolation was the fact that she simply wasn't that important. An injured woman on the streets was nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that caught someone's empty gaze for long. To everyone but the women who had witnessed the fight between Ursula and her, she was nothing but a woman who had gotten in trouble with an American soldier, or her own husband, or someone, anyone else. Nobody she passed would waste a thought on her.

This shame was hers alone, at least until she found Klara again in the evening.

Hands pushed into her pockets to hide her bruised knuckles, she took steady breaths.

It was alright, no harm done. One single slip-up in more than five years of flawless behaviour. Ida would allow herself that, allow herself this one display of anger. She wasn't the only one; violence was the norm. American and Germans, men and women, adults and children; the whole miserable lot of them was angry and hungry and itching for some relief.

Itching for someone to blame, someone they could let their anger out when the International Military Tribunal already had its hands on the people who shouldered more blame than anyone else in the country. How frustrating to have these men in the same city, to walk past the building they were looking in, to see their faces in black and white across the front page of the Süddeutsche* and to know that they were as unreachable to you as if they had lived on another continent.

Her hand curled around Rosie's handkerchief again and her fingers searched for something on it. Some proof that it was truly his, embroidered initials, two swooping R's, but she did not find anything. It was simply an unmarked, anonymous square of white fabric, a corner of which was stained red by the blood which had dripped from her lip.

Her knees still hurt but she took the long route back to Klara's apartment anyway, avoiding the streets where she would find witnesses of her earlier debacle.

Ida pushed open the front door, tugged on the useless light cord ("You love your rituals so much, Ida, you should have been a Catholic," Christa whispered in her mind) and pushed open the door to the apartment they lived in.

Ida, in her head, referred to it as 'theirs' or 'Klara's' but the two women weren't the only ones living there. In fact, they only occupied one room. The second one - once the living room - had been taken over by a mother and her daughter and there was a woman who sometimes slept in the kitchen. From what Ida knew she was some black market acquaintance of Klara's and she hadn't bothered to find out more.

She tip-toed across the hallway and into their room, where, to her surprise, Klara was already seated on her bed.

"Good afternoon," Klara declared, like a queen receiving a peasant who was late on payments.

"Hello."

"I think this is yours," Klara told her and held up Christa's green headscarf. It seemed cleaner than it had this morning, when Ida had tied it around her head in the low light of the waking sun.

Ida took it from Klara, the fabric still damp underneath her fingertips. Klara must have washed it then, after she picked it up from the street, gone down to one of the water pumps and cleaned away the grime for her. The simple, quiet gesture, maybe Ida’s heart squeeze in a surge of affection for her friend, an almost painful sensation in her chest. 

She stuffed it into her pocket, next to the handkerchief he had given her and sat down opposite of Klara on her bed. Their knees knocked together and they looked at each other silently, carefully assessing each other. 

Until Klara burst out laughing. 

Ida bit the inside of her cheek, fighting against the smile tugging on her lips before letting out a snicker herself, giving up this pointless fight. Why did she have to punish herself still? Smoother down each of her body’s attempts of happiness like a heel grinding out the glowing but of a cigarette? 

“Oh Ida,” Klara began once she had calmed down a little, her voice still light and filled with mirth, “that was delicious. What the hell did you say to her that made her attack you like a dog?”

Ida waved the question away; she knew that her allusion to her connection to the Americans wouldn’t go over too well with Klara either, not even in her happy, relaxed state. “Nothing much. I think we both just got a little hot headed under the sun.” 

Klara didn’t press further, her mind still too occupied with Ida’s great exploit in impromptu street fighting. “And the noise when you punched her in the face! It was brilliant.” 

“I’m glad I could entertain you, Klara,” Ida said, her tone as dry as her throat.

“You’re something very special, you know that?” Klara asked, her voice a mix of mocking humor and almost painful sincerity. “One of a kind.”

“Not of a very good kind,” Ida joked, even though she knew, deep down, that she was one of the better ones. One of the better Germans at least. Not that hard to achieve, Ida. It doesn’t make you special. 

“The very worst.” 

“It wasn’t… I didn’t mean…” Somehow she could not form a complete sentence, she who had learned how dangerous it was to hesitate, to show doubt, to make it seem as if she wasn’t entirely sure of herself, her conviction, her country. “I hope this doesn’t affect you negatively.” 

“Ida, you ruin my reputation by screwing Americans, not by roughing up that bitch. Nobody likes her anyway.” 

Ida nearly rolled her eyes. Of course Klara was going to fall back on this again, her very favourite wound to press her dirty fingers into. “I have not, will not and don’t want to sleep with an American.” 

Klara ignored that, stepping over Ida's protest as if it were a mere pebble on her war path. At least this time her target wasn't actually Ida, although she still got caught in the crossfire. “Ursula’s pathetic. She's so brave when she's attacking you and then, in front of the Americans she cowers like a kicked dog.”

“You really like comparing her to a dog, don't you?”

“It brings me great pleasure, Ida, and that is a rare commodity these days.”

---

1937

The door to her room was open and yet Friedrich lingered in the doorway, instead of simply barging in like he'd usually do. He even rapped his knuckles against the door frame to get her attention, as if she hadn’t already felt his awkwardly looming presence. Ida looked up from the translation work she was doing - German to English. 

"Come in."

Her brother stepped into the room and sat down on Else's bed, which stood opposite the desk on which Ida did her work. She turned her chair around to face him, its legs scratching across the floor, adding yet another groove into the scrapped up flooring beneath the table. 

"What did you want to talk about?"

"Do you remember Tim?" Ida nodded; Tim was another Wehrmacht soldier, who belonged to the same unit that her brother did and she had met him once or twice. "His older brother is in the Luftwaffe, a great pilot. I talked to him and he agreed that he would show you around the Heeresflugplatz** in Altenstadt."

"What for?" 

She knew of course what for. Friedrich had been trying to convince her to get a job at the Reichsluftfahrtministerium for weeks now. Ida said too many things that she shouldn't be saying. She spent too much time with people she shouldn't talk to. She was too critical. And people noticed, of course they did. Sending her off to some prestigious ministry would clear her reputation. 

Not just hers. 

She assumed that Friedrich had to listen to all sorts of things about his sister, that her actions tainted her entire family. In Berlin, nobody would know about her tendencies and people in Nuremberg would forget quickly. It would become a thing they would laugh about at family dinners. Remember when Ida caused all those issues? Teenagers. They always have to find some way to rebel. 

Only Ida didn't want to go to Berlin. She wanted to stay in Nuremberg. She wanted to stay with Rosa and Klara and she didn't want to shut up. 

"Just to look. You were always so fascinated by airplanes," Friedrich told her and she was touched that he remembered that, despite him having made fun of her when she had first declared that she would be a pilot, "just look around. I promise, you'll like it. And if you don't, I'll lay off, alright? I won't mention it again. But please give it a try. For me?"

She wanted to say no. Wanted to tell him to get lost. To ask him if he was blind, why he couldn't see that she was right, that this was all so terribly wrong. "Yes. I will. You’re an idiot anyway. You might convince me, but you don’t have as much of a say with Göring." 

“I don’t think Göring is in charge of personnel hires, Doldi***.” 

---

She liked it. 

There was no denying that she did, even if she had wanted to. 

Tim's brother had even taken her on a short flight and she had watched as the air field became smaller and smaller beneath them, as the sky had swallowed them up. It hadn't at all been like Ida had imagined flying as a child, when she had taught that it would feel like being a bird, to simply spread her arms and be carried by the wind, but it had been exhilarating nevertheless.

Ida had made her choice. 

She would be going to Berlin. She would be a diligent secretary, a loyal citizen of the Reich and her family's reputation would suffer no longer. Friedrich would make it to Leutnant, Theodor and Willi would be model soldiers, Else would find a nice, loving husband and there would be no mention any more of their truculent sister. 

Ida would shut up, for her own safety and that of her family. She'd keep her own thoughts close to her chest, her cards down turned on the table. She could do that. It wouldn't be too bad. 

Of course, she would have very little to do with the actual airplanes, would probably not visit many airfields again but it would be manageably boring. Besides, she wanted something to do. Needed to work to keep her mind off things. She would go insane if she didn't, if she kept thinking about everything which was happening around them and would happen in the future. 

She sent her application and got her acceptance letter a few months later, alongside that of the girl she would share an apartment with in Berlin. Ida almost forgot her resentment during all that excitement. She was still a young woman, only a girl really, and the goodbye parties, the congratulations she got from whoever she crossed on the streets, the prospect of going off to a big city, all this had her looking forward to Berlin so much that she could barely wait for her train to depart. 

Klara was seething with jealousy, she could tell. Rosa gave her a tight, warm hug and told her how incredibly proud she was, how Ida was going to become a big city girl in no time and how Rosa was going to visit her all the time, promise, hoch und heilig****.

Klara on the other hand had merely given her a curt nod and a ‘Congratulations’ which sounded like it had cost her considerable effort to press out. 

Something about that made Ida’s success even sweeter.