The Baker's Daughter

Chapter Thirty-six

STRASSENFEST

LEOPOLDSTRASSE IN SCHWABING

MUNICH, GERMANY

JULY 28, 1945

“They got pretzels with mustard over there!” Robby yelled above the oompah band. He bobbed and weaved through the crowd, pulling Elsie along by the hand. Sam and Potter trailed behind with tall pints of frothy pilsner.

Elsie tasted bile at the thought of spicy mustard. She’d been feeling poorly for a couple weeks. At the end of her night shifts, she barely had the strength to wave to Robby from the kitchen galley and bicycle home. She was exhausted from sunup to sundown, and her lack of appetite wasn’t helping. The butcher received a new shipment of pork, thanks to the Americans, and Mutti was able to buy long links of sage sausage—Elsie’s old favorite—but the smell of grease from the kitchen made her nauseated, and she hadn’t craved a single bite. Mutti brushed it off as “working too hard,” which they all were; but after so many months of paucity, it was strange to now have no hunger for the very foods she once desired most.

A day off, that’s what she needed. The R&R kitchen was closed that Saturday so a leaky water pipe could be replaced. Elsie asked Papa if she could take the day off from the bäckerei, too. Robby and a couple friends were catching the train to Munich for a summer street carnival. Since the Nazis forbade celebrations unconnected to the party, no town had been able to host their traditional events in years. Deep down, Papa missed the old ways as much as everyone. He consented for her to go with a friend from the Von Steuben, though no such friend existed.

The morning of the festival, she’d slept longer than usual and it helped. She awoke energized and seemingly restored, even eating a plate of boiled ham for breakfast, though it tasted off.

Mutti surprised her with a new dirndl beautifully embroidered with delicate poppies and trimmed in matching red. It was the material Hazel had sent.

“You need something new to wear to the festival,” Mutti had said and smoothed the dirndl’s seams between her fingers. “I know red was your sister’s favorite, but she would want you to have it. With your eyes, you can wear any color and look beautiful.”

It was the first time Mutti had ever praised Elsie’s beauty over Hazel’s, and Elsie understood all too well: Mutti didn’t believe Hazel was ever coming home.

“Here, dear.” Mutti handed over the dress. “Take this before I ruin it with flour,” she said, though she had yet to begin baking. “Promise to show me how it looks on before you leave.” Mutti shut the bedroom door behind her.

Elsie laid the dress on the bed so that the brown skirt spread wide like a peacock tail. Hazel would’ve been lovely in it. A striking garment, it was as if Mutti had threaded the fabric of her heart onto each sleeve and hem. Elsie hadn’t worn anything so fine since Josef’s gown on Christmas Eve. This, however, was more precious than all the chiffon of Paris, all the silk of Shanghai, all the wool of Castile, because of everything it had survived—everything they had survived. She slipped out of her muslin robe and undid the dress’s waistline. Snaps of electricity arced between her gauzy slip and the copper buttons.

In the mirror, she admired herself, astonished that the dress made for Hazel’s measurements fit her to a T. Her figure had blossomed over the past few months. Even with her recent lack of appetite, her chest and hips were rounder and fuller than ever before. She buttoned the dirndl, dotted her wrists with rose shampoo, grabbed a matching hat from the closet, and gave herself one last inspection. She was ready. Almost.

The outfit needed something. Pizzazz, like the American poster girls in the R&R Center. A flash of red fluttered in the outdoor window box. Red geraniums against the summer breeze. She pinched the largest cluster at the base and stuck it in the brim.

Now, someone in the carnival crowd knocked her hat askew. The bloom fell and was smashed by clogged feet. Elsie readjusted once they reached the Johanns’ bäckerei booth. The artfully arranged pretzels looked like they’d spent too little time in the soda ash bath and too much in the sun, in her opinion.

“Two.” Robby made a peace sign with his fingers.

“Nein,” Elsie protested.

“You’ve got to eat something.” Robby frowned. “Are you bent on getting pie-eyed?”

She’d drunk an entire beer stein alone. The malt magically settled her stomach. She craved another, but knew it unwise. Her head already felt a blissful airiness. Papa told her that dark lager, like dark chocolate, had that effect.

“They’ve got fried kreppels. How about one of those?” pressed Robby.

Petite sugar dumplings floated on tufts of brown paper, leaving slick shadows beneath.

Her mouth watered. “Ja.”

Robby ordered one pretzel and one kreppel. Sam and Potter were content with their beers and distracted by two busty girls wearing frilly, low-cut dirndls.

The kreppel was warm in Elsie’s palm. She bit expectantly only to find the sweetness cloying. Gulping down the morsel, she handed the remaining portion to Robby. “Take.” She screwed up her nose and waved it away.

“Not up to Schmidt quality?” he teased.

“Schmidt?” interrupted a woman in line behind them. She was round in the belly with a similarly pregnant pustule on the tip of her nose. “Hazel Schmidt?”

Elsie tried to focus past the blemish. “My sister,” she clarified.

“Oh! Then you must be familiar with Josef Hub?”

The kreppel nearly came back up. She tried to walk away, but the woman followed.

“He was looking for your sister. Did he ever find her? He was the commander of her fiancé’s unit in Munich. Peter Abend?”

Elsie turned so that Robby was to her back. The woman did the same and continued.

“I used to be a Naz—an archive secretary in Munich. Never forget a name.” She rubbed her belly. “Josef and I were acquaintances before I met my husband.” She pointed over her shoulder to a corpulent man waiting in line. “Josef asked me to pull the file on Hazel Schmidt, which of course I never would have done. That was classified information then.” She straightened her shoulders defensively. “We lost touch. I wondered if he ever found her.”

“When was this?” Elsie’s heart fluttered, hope alive.

“Hmm …” She tapped her fingers on her belly bulge. “1941-42. I can’t remember. It seems like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it?”

It did. Elsie recalled the first time Josef strolled through the bäckerei doors in his starched uniform, tall and dignified; it was like a scene in a dark movie theater, out of focus around the corners.

“So much chaos when the Reich fell. I haven’t heard from Josef in months,” said Elsie.

“So you did know him. A good man.” She cleared her throat. “Such a shame.”

The summer sun blazed hot despite Elsie’s hat.

“A shame?”

“You’ve heard the news?”

She shook her head. Her ears burned.

The woman looked to her husband, then leaned in close. “They found him and a group of SS officers on a docked boat in Brunsbüttel. Mass suicide.”

Elsie blinked hard. Her vision tunneled.

“Everyone had been shot—a bloody mess. But not Josef. His was lethal injection, so they say,” she whispered.

Elsie sipped in the air, but it did no good. Acid rumbled up her throat and before she could turn away, she vomited on the woman’s wooden clogs.

Robby rushed to her side. “Elsie?”

She knelt to the ground and gripped the blades of grass to steady herself.

“I’m sorry. It’s the drink,” Robby explained to the woman. “She’s been sick all week. Hasn’t been able to stomach much.”

The woman stamped the pottage of fried dough from her toe. “It’s fine. Reminds me of myself not too long ago—terrible pregnancy sickness with this child.”

Elsie focused on a bright dandelion, its yellow bud wide open. Her head still spun, but the din of the crowd quieted. She put a hand to her stomach. Impossible.