The Baker's Daughter

Prologue

GARMISCH, GERMANY

JULY 1945

Long after the downstairs oven had cooled to the touch and the upstairs had grown warm with bodies cocooned in cotton sheets, she slipped her feet from beneath the thin coverlet and quietly made her way through the darkness, neglecting her slippers for fear that their clip might wake her sleeping husband. She paused momentarily at the girl’s room, hand on the knob, and leaned an ear against the door. A light snore trembled through the wood, and she matched her breath to it. If only she could halt the seasons, forget the past and present, turn the handle and climb in beside her like old times. But she could not forget. Her secret pulled her away, down the narrow steps that creaked under weight, so she walked on tiptoe, one hand balancing against the wall.

In the kitchen, bundled dough mounds as white and round as babies lined the countertop and filled the space with the smell of milk and honey, and promises of a full tomorrow. She lit a match. Its black head flamed and licked the candlewick before fuming to nothing. She preferred the candle’s burning ribbons to the electric bulb, buzzing bright and incriminating high above. Armed soldiers patrolled outside their doors; she couldn’t risk inciting curiosity or waking her family.

She bent to her knees beneath the rising bread, pushed aside a blackened pot, and groped in the darkness for the split in the floorboard where she’d hidden the new letter. Her palms, callused from the rolling pin, snagged on the timber planks. Shallow splinters embedded in her skin, but she did not take notice. Her heart pounded in her ears and radiated heat through her arm and fingertips until she heard and felt the crackle of the paper she’d bunched into the crevice earlier.

It had arrived in the day’s mail, sandwiched between a receipt from their local miller and a long-since-forgotten edition of Signal Magazine: its cover torn off; its pages watermarked beyond legibility, except for a pristine BMW ad boasting an aluminum bicycle for the “modern” rider. This tiresome correspondence made the letter’s delicate handwriting and old-fashioned wax stand out. She’d recognized it at once and quickly tucked it into her dirndl pocket before anyone in the post office could catch a suspicious glimpse.

At home, her husband had called to her, “What’s the news?”

“Nothing new. Buy or pay.” She’d handed him the magazine and bill. “Take, take, take, the world never stops.” She shoved her hands into her pockets, gripping the letter tight.

Her husband grunted, tossed the disintegrated magazine into the trash, then slid a pointed blade across the top of the miller’s note. He retrieved the receipt and held it close, summing the numbers in his mind and nodding in agreement. “As long as it keeps on turning, man will wake with hunger each morning. And thank God for that. Otherwise, we’d be out of business, ja?”

“Ja,” she’d echoed. “Where are the children?”

“Out doing their chores,” he’d replied.

She’d nodded, then retreated to the empty kitchen to hide the letter until it was safe.

Now, with the sickle moon hanging high above like a fishbone, she crouched low and brought the candle to the ground. The letter’s waxy seal had been cracked by her earlier clutch. Fragments littered the tiles. She carefully swept them into the base of the burning candlestick, unfolded the paper, and read the familiar script. Her hands trembled with each weighty word, the sentences tallied; her breath came faster and faster until she had to cover her lips to keep quiet.

The candle flame arched and quivered. A blue vein pulsed in its core. The air had changed. She stiffened on the floor and listened to a faint rustle of movement on the other side of the kitchen. A mouse, she prayed. A stray dog sniffing at the back door. An alpine gust or passing ghost. Anything but someone. She could not be discovered. Not with this letter in hand.

She scooted farther beneath the countertop, crumpling the paper into her lap and hugging the iron pot that stank of yesterday’s stewed onions. She waited for the flame to curl upright and steady, staring so hard that her eyes began to burn. She closed them for relief and saw scenes like old photographs: girls with matching bows at the end of plaited pigtails sitting beneath a fruit tree; a boy with limbs so thin they looked like bent reeds on the river’s edge; a man with a face marred by shadows swallowing chocolate that oozed out a hole in his chest; a woman dancing in a bonfire without smoldering; crowds of children eating mountains of bread.

When she opened her eyes, the flame had gone out. The black of night was lifting to velvet blue. She’d fallen asleep in the hiding place. But morning was coming, and it would no longer be safe. She crawled out, bones creaking and popping.

She carried the letter with her, hidden in the flimsy folds of her nightgown, and once more took the steps on tiptoe, past the girl’s room; through her bedroom door, she slipped back beneath the covers; her husband abided in dreamlessness. Slowly and with great precision, she reached around the bedside and pushed the paper beneath the mattress, then rested her hand on her chest.

Her heart felt foreign, as if someone else’s thudded within, moving ceremoniously, while the rest of her lay numb and cold. The clock ticked on the bedside table—tick, tick, tick without the tock of the pendulum swing. Her heartbeat filled the balancing pulse. In her mind, she read the letter’s words to the rhythm of the metronome. Then suddenly, the clock erupted in clattering shouts. The hammer struck the bell again and again.

She did not flinch.

Her husband rolled over, pulling the blanket with him and exposing her body. She remained rigid as a corpse. He switched off the alarm clock, turned back to kiss her cheek, and rose. She feigned deep sleep. The kind that, when true, gives glimpse to eternity.

Soon enough she would join him in the day, keeping silent what she knew and welcoming the white-hot sun as blamelessly as possible. She would tend to the children, scrub the dishes, wind the cuckoos, and sweep the floors. She would bake bread and glaze the buns in melted sugar.