The German House

Part Three

THE SCRAWNY BOY, wearing a uniform several sizes too big for him, trips over an endless carpet. The orange sky is so low, the boy can almost touch it. But he’s looking down. The carpet arches and ensnares his feet, but the boy breaks free and tumbles onward, his weapon at the ready. He’s not alone. Other children run alongside him, wheezing, falling, getting up. They all carry weapons. The boy’s ears prick up—there’s a rumbling and rattling approaching in the distance. He freezes and stares at the sweeping horizon. A row of black silhouettes appears before the fiery heavens, creeping slowly and inexorably toward him. Tanks, mighty and faceless, crawling over the carpet, hundreds, thousands of them, in one endless row toward the children. “Retreat!” the boy screams, but the other children continue on, as though deaf and blind. The boy watches as the first tank runs over two children. It swallows them noiselessly. “Retreat! I said retreat!!” the boy screams more loudly. He seizes one of the children walking past him toward the tanks, and the boy briefly turns his face to him. It’s Thomas Preisgau, his best friend. “We have to retreat, Thomas!” But Thomas breaks away from him and strides toward one of the tanks. It devours him. The scrawny boy cries in despair, “No! No!!”

“Hey there, little one, wake up. Stefan…” Stefan opened his eyes and blinked. Someone was bent over him with a worried look. “You’re dreaming.” Stefan felt relief at the sound of his father’s voice. He looked around—he was lying in his bed, in his room. Light fell in through the open door. Purzel sat panting at the foot of the bed, as if he had just been trudging through the swamp alongside Stefan. Ludwig swatted the dog on the snout and Purzel growled, but Ludwig was unimpressed and shooed him from the bed. “You’ve got no business being in here, you pest!” Purzel jumped reluctantly to the floor. Ludwig stroked Stefan’s sweaty hair.

“You were having a nightmare.”

“Daddy, I was yelling, but they wouldn’t listen to me!”

“Sometimes we dream about terrible things. But everything is okay now. You’re safe at home.”

“Do you sometimes dream about terrible things too?”

His father did not respond. He straightened out the twisted bedspread and tucked it in tightly around his son. Then he said, “I’ll leave the door open. You sleep well now,” and stepped over Purzel, who was still out of breath, and the toys littering the carpet, and left the room. Stefan heard him shuffling back to bed. He left the hallway light on. Toppled soldiers lay in the small band of light that shone on the carpet. Stefan had thrown no small number of them into a pile. Perhaps he had pretended those were the dead.

Next door, Eva lay awake in bed, on her back with her hands folded. “Retreat!” she had heard her brother calling. She had been about to get up, when their parents’ bedroom door opened and someone went over to Stefan. She heard her father and Stefan talking through the wall. It was just before four. Eva hadn’t fallen asleep yet. The incident from the night before played in an endless loop in her mind, like a short, grotesque film. In the restaurant earlier, after Edith locked the door behind Fräulein Wittkopp and Frau Lenze, Eva, who was wiping down the tables, turned to her parents and asked the question. Though it made her heart race and she was terrified of the answer, she summoned the courage she needed.

“How do you know that man?”

Her father, who was flushing out the beer taps behind the bar, shot her mother a look. Edith took Eva’s washrag, turned, and replied as she walked away that they didn’t know why he had behaved so strangely. They had never seen him or his companion before. Ludwig nodded, dried out the sink, and turned off the light. They filed out the door to the stairwell. They left their daughter behind in the dining room.

Eva began to sweat and threw off the two blankets. She could not recall a time when her parents had lied to her so blatantly. She stared at the shadow of Don Quixote, whose lance quivered threateningly. He was poised to attack. For the first time ever, he was against her. Her teeth began to chatter and she pulled the covers back on. It was five thirty before Eva fell into a light, feverish half sleep. He spat at Mum’s feet. He doesn’t like her. That’s a good thing. It’s good. Jürgen would also say that’s a good sign. Then why are they lying? Eva opened her eyes again. It was getting light out. Don Quixote had disappeared from her ceiling. Otto Cohn’s dark hat sat on the shelf.

“THIS CAN’T BE.” Annegret, wearing her white uniform in the nurses’ lounge, stepped over to the window overlooking the inner courtyard. She pulled the green curtain around herself like a blanket, as if she wanted to wrap herself up in it, as if she wanted to disappear into it like a child hiding from the world. Doctor Küssner came over to her and tried to gently loose her from the curtain, which was threatening to tear from the rod above. He spoke to her reassuringly. About how they were sometimes powerless, about how they could do everything humanly possible but couldn’t work miracles. About how Annegret had done everything she could. He said more along those lines, till Annegret suddenly and soberly uncoiled herself from the curtain and told him to “quit it with the bullshit blather.” She sat down at the Formica table in the middle of the room; there was a plate of cookies that had probably gone soft and stale overnight. “‘Everything humanly possible’? That sounds so pathetic,” she said bitterly. She covered her ears with her hands, as though she couldn’t stand to hear any more. Küssner looked at the back of Annegret’s head, at the little nurse’s cap and her white-blond hair like surgical cotton. “Will you come?” She did not respond. He gently pulled her hands from her ears. “Will you come back to see him?” Annegret did not look at Küssner but said softly, “I’m sorry, Hartmut, but I can’t be witness to that.” He lingered for a moment, then went out to the child dying in room five. Annegret began to eat the cookies.

Küssner crossed the hallway. He was also upset by this case. Two weeks earlier, the nine-month-old Martin Fasse had undergone surgery performed by a veteran specialist—it was a complicated but critical procedure to reverse a congenital stricture of the esophagus, which the undernourished boy had withstood remarkably well. For ten days, they could positively watch him gain weight. Four days ago, though, he had unexpectedly developed diarrhea and begun vomiting. Penicillin did nothing, antiviral agents did nothing, and he couldn’t keep their tonics down. Martin steadily declined, and even Annegret, the master of nursing children back to health, had looked uncharacteristically fearful. Last night, she stayed with the boy almost without pause, dabbing his little, bluish mouth by turns with milk and water, and ultimately she picked up the whimpering, rapidly cooling child and carried him close to her body, to warm him up. Martin went very still at about four in the morning, and Küssner had to search for a pulse, moving his stethoscope across the child’s sunken chest. Stepping into the room now, which held just three bassinets for especially critical cases, he could see from the door that Martin had lost the battle. Küssner stepped up to him and performed a final examination of the tiny body, which had already gone cold. He looked at the clock and recorded five thirty as the time of death in the medical chart. As he wrote, he thought about the fact that in just a few hours, he would have to account for another case of infant diarrhea to the hospital director. Enhanced hygiene measures—boiling all bottles and nipples twice before use, changing bed linens daily, medical staff washing their hands before and after every patient contact—had not brought about any improvement. Küssner was at a loss. When he returned to the nurses’ lounge moments later, the plate of cookies was empty. Annegret stood at a cupboard, preparing the morning meal for the children who could not yet be nursed. She dispensed powdered milk among the bottles. Water boiled in a kettle. “Would you like to see him one more time?” Annegret shook her head. Küssner came up to Annegret, turned her around to face him, and hugged her. She stiffened but did not resist. Küssner said he would wait till seven, then call the parents. Why wake them now with news like this? Annegret pulled away from him, drew herself up, stroked his cheek briefly, firmly, and replied that she had a good connection with Frau Fasse. She would call. She turned her back to Küssner and poured the boiling water. He looked at her back and thought, Today’s the day.

After Küssner stood before the hospital director for three quarters of an hour, trying to radiate competence and optimism regarding what had happened, when all he felt was helpless and sad, he went home, exhausted, to his recently constructed, single-family house on the outskirts of town. He paused in the front hallway and listened to the noises in the house. The kids were at school, their colorful slippers stowed under the coatrack. Ingrid was busy upstairs with the radio on. A Schlager pop song played, and Ingrid joined in the refrain, “All of Paris is dreaming of love.” Küssner thought of Annegret and her disdain for any form of sentimentality, the way she sneered the time he suggested they take a trip to said city of love. “Romance is dishonesty in disguise,” she said. He turned to the mirror and saw a tired man who appeared much older than he was. His hair had long since taken its leave. Soon enough, he would start gaining weight and develop blocked arteries and suffer a heart attack at forty-five, like his father. He had not been happy in his marriage. As Küssner still stood there, Ingrid came downstairs, carrying a heap of used bedclothes, cheery tangles of flowers printed on white. She moved jauntily, energetically. She smiled at the sight of her husband. As always, he was struck by what a unique, timeless beauty she possessed, and what a miracle it was that she had chosen as average a man as he was. He did not smile back, and she also turned serious.

“Did something happen?”

“I have to speak with you, Ingrid.” Ingrid dropped the laundry by the door to the basement and turned to him expectantly. She waited.

“Let’s go to the living room.”

“I’m starting to get scared. What have you got cooked up this time? We are not moving again, though! I like living here! The children like living here—”

“Yes, I know.”

Doctor Hartmut Küssner followed his unsuspecting wife into the living room.

EVA DID SOMETHING UNUSUAL that morning too. She was not needed in court, so she visited Jürgen unannounced at his office at the Schoormann warehouse. She had been there only once before, late one evening when he led her through the many stories of puzzling passageways, and she peeked into deserted rooms packed floor to ceiling with products and into a gloomy hall containing endlessly long tables and conveyor belts, where shipping started every morning at four. “This place starts humming like a beehive,” Jürgen said. They climbed the stairs to the roof, where they kissed under a ledge, because it had started raining. The sound of the rain hitting the window façade in Jürgen’s office grew louder and louder as Eva spun around in his executive chair, pulling up her skirt as if by accident till her thighs and underwear were fully exposed. Jürgen abruptly crouched before her on the carpet, collapsed between her knees, and pressed his face so forcefully into her lap that it hurt. She held her breath and waited. Only seconds later, Jürgen stood back up and said that they were leaving. She had come at an inconvenient time today, she could tell. He greeted her distractedly and helped her with her transitional coat—bright red and brand new—and said, with a slight edge to his voice, “Aren’t we seeing each other this evening?” Eva sat down in one of the visitor chairs. “What’s so urgent?” Jürgen continued. His curt tone threw her off. “I needed someone to talk to, Jürgen.” “Do you want something to drink? A cup of coffee? I do have a meeting in five minutes.” Eva watched the way Jürgen took a seat behind his big, shiny black desk, as though behind a barricade. She noted how deep-set his eyes were, and how dismissive he seemed with his arms crossed like that. He was almost alien to her at that moment, and she saw him through her parents’ eyes: shadowy, black-haired, rich. Jürgen could sense her skepticism, and he spread out his arms and smiled with a sigh. “Eva, spit it out, since you’re here.”

Eva haltingly began to tell him, first about the encounter in the ladies’ room at the municipal building months earlier and the feeling she had, that she knew the main defendant’s wife from somewhere. About her clear memory of the man in the white coat, who showed her the number tattooed on his arm, and about how, even as a child, she had been able to count from one to ten in Polish. About her recurring suspicions that she was somehow connected to the camp. Finally, she told him about the incident in the restaurant. About her parents, who had lied to her. That they had not been able to look her in the eye at breakfast that morning.

“Wait a minute.” Jürgen had not once interrupted Eva, but now he lifted his hand. “Why don’t you believe your parents?”

“Jürgen, what other explanation can there be for this man’s behavior? They know each other from the past!”

Jürgen got up and went over to the wall, where a long line of draft catalog pages hung from a panel of clips. “Fine, but they clearly don’t want to talk about it.”

“And I should just leave it at that?”

Jürgen pulled down one of the pages. There were white boxes pictured on it. He had clearly taken Edith’s advice and added washing machines to their selection.

“Maybe they experienced something similar to my father and don’t want to be reminded of their pain.”

“But my parents weren’t Communists.”

“Maybe they were in the resistance?”

Eva almost laughed at the notion. “Not a chance, Jürgen!”

Jürgen clipped the page to a different open spot along the panel. “If they don’t talk about it, how can you be sure?”

“Because they always say, ‘Leave politics to the powers that be, and we’ll just suffer the consequences.’ I know my parents!”

Jürgen went back behind his desk. “The Fourth Commandment states, ‘Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.’”

“Why would you say that right now?!”

Jürgen didn’t answer. He sat down. When he heard the Ten Commandments for the first time as a young boy, listening as his mother read to him from the Bible, he pictured how he would honor his parents: adorning them with wreaths of flowers, kneeling before them, and giving them all the chocolate he had gotten from Aunt Anni. He’d thought it a bit much, but if God said so? Eva stood up and came over to him. She looked furious. And he could understand why.

“What does this have to do with the Ten Commandments? I want to know what happened between this person and my parents! Can’t you understand that?”

Eva didn’t wait for him to respond, but continued, “No. How could you? You don’t know the first thing about what I know, what I’ve heard, the unthinkable things that happened. The crimes these men committed!”

“I can imagine it.” Jürgen’s face hardened. He glowered at Eva and turned away. For a moment, she thought, That’s what he’ll look like when he’s old. She despised him.

“It’s not something you can imagine! Not once have you come, not once have you listened. And not once have you asked me what these people experienced. Do you think they want to be reminded of their pain? Yet they still come! And they get up and stand there, in that room that’s always too hot, under the glare of those floodlights. And they’ve got those pigs breathing down the back of their neck, sitting there in their suits with their legs splayed, and they laugh and turn away and say, ‘You’re lying! That’s not true! It’s all slander!’ Or, worst of all”—Eva stood up tall and mimicked the main defendant’s icy tone—“‘That is beyond my knowledge.’ And despite all of that, the witnesses, they stand there and describe how they were treated like animals, like cattle for the slaughter, like the scum of the earth. They suffered pain like you can’t imagine, and neither can I. Doctors did experiments on prisoners, medical experiments—”

Jürgen stood. “Eva, I think that’s enough now! I’m not as ignorant as you think, but this isn’t the time or place, and now I have a—”

But Eva could not be contained. “You listen to me, Jürgen! Even though they were tortured! And there was nothing to eat! Even though everything in the camp was full of shit—”

Jürgen waved off Eva’s outburst and tried to adopt a scornful tone. “And now you’re forgetting your manners too. Would you mind toning it down….” He gestured toward the door, his secretary on the other side.

But Eva continued, “Even though there were dead bodies everywhere and the stench and the shit, the people still wanted to live!” Eva rubbed her face with both hands and let out something resembling a wail. She had flown into a rage unlike one she had ever known. She stood in the middle of Jürgen’s huge office on the pale woolen carpet, breathing heavily.

Jürgen took a step toward her. “I knew that this would happen. Your nerves can’t handle it.”

Eva recoiled. She looked at him and tried to speak quietly. It was difficult, though. Nerves. What a ridiculous word! “The day before yesterday, there was a woman from Krakow who described a Gypsy camp that was going to be broken up. The prisoners found out about it and made themselves weapons out of sheet metal. They sharpened pieces of metal into knife blades. They gathered sticks and boards. That’s what they used to defend themselves when the SS men came. Women, old and young, men, and children all fought for their lives with all their might. Because they knew they were bound for the gas chambers. They were all shot dead with machine guns.”

In the office outside the padded door, Fräulein Junghänel—a plain, gray-haired woman nearing her twentieth work anniversary, who had performed many years of good service for Jürgen’s father—sat at her desk, typing a personal letter. She was writing to her landlord, informing him that the young man who had recently moved into the first-floor apartment of her building could no longer be tolerated. He tossed his rubbish in the courtyard and urinated in the front garden. Loud music could be heard from his open windows until late at night. The smell was atrocious. He had once tried luring a child into his apartment. She was writing on behalf of all of the tenants in the building and wished to remain anonymous, for fear of possible retaliation by the man. Fräulein Junghänel pulled the sheet out of the typewriter and scanned it one last time. Besides having twice heard some quiet music coming from the first-floor apartment, nothing she had written was true. But the man, whose language she didn’t understand, scared her. She had to pass by his apartment several times a day. She didn’t want him in her building anymore. As Fräulein Junghänel folded the letter, she thought she heard a scream coming from her employer’s office. She paused. Surely that wasn’t possible, what with the thick door padding? Fräulein Junghänel stood and stepped up close to the door. She listened, her mouth open slightly, but heard nothing. She must have imagined it. She returned to her desk and slid the letter into an envelope on which she had already typed her landlord’s address. She had almost made the mistake of addressing it by hand. In her own writing. She placed the letter in her purse. She would stamp it that evening at home—she would never steal a stamp from her boss—and then, once it was dark, toss it in the mailbox two streets over.

It was silent in Jürgen’s office. Eva sat hunched over in the visitor chair. She had broken into a crying fit, and Jürgen had slapped her across the face twice. It had helped. Jürgen had turned to the window. They did not speak. Then Eva asked quietly, “Why won’t you even listen?”

“Because that’s where evil lurks.” Jürgen said it soberly, without any recognizable emotion. He gazed over the city; his office was on the eleventh floor, and beyond the high-rises, he could make out the rippled green band of the Taunus hills along the horizon. Eva dried her face with the handkerchief Jürgen had handed her, wiped her nose, and got up. She retrieved her purse, which she had set on the leather sofa beside the door when she arrived. She draped her coat over her arm. She swallowed the phlegm that had formed, and the final salty tears that passed through her nose ran into the back of her throat and burned. She approached Jürgen by the window and said, “That isn’t true, Jürgen. That’s not where evil lurks. Or some devil. It’s just humans. And that’s what’s so horrible.” Eva turned to go. She left the door open, nodded to Fräulein Junghänel, who eyed her with curiosity, and exited the front office. Jürgen remained where he stood by the window. He looked down at the front courtyard, where people moved about like flies. He waited to catch sight of Eva in her bright red coat. She appeared and crossed quickly to the left, toward the streetcar. He had expected her to appear much smaller. She looked tall, though, upright. Fräulein Junghänel appeared in the door and reminded him of his meeting with the head of the fashion department. He was already five minutes late. Jürgen replied that she should say he wasn’t coming at all. She stared uncomprehendingly at his back and waited. He corrected himself: “In twenty minutes.” Fräulein Junghänel closed the door. Jürgen went to his desk and opened a drawer. He pulled out a heavy black book, the back cover of which was stamped in gold with his name and the date of his First Communion. Jürgen simply held the Bible in his hand. He did not flip through it. He thought of Jesus in the desert, and how thrice he was led into temptation and how thrice he resisted. He thought of the fact that he hadn’t managed the same, that he’d been too weak. That something alien had taken control over him. He had smelled it on himself as he stood there in the middle of the field and looked into the eyes of the dying man: cloying sulfur and the acrid smell of burning. His hands had become claws. Jürgen smiled in exasperation. Of course that was a childish image of the devil. Not that that made it any less real. After all, that experience had inspired him to become a priest, close to God and out of harm’s way.

THAT MORNING, LUDWIG BRUHNS was in an office at Henninger Brewery, busy negotiating keg prices for the upcoming season, as he did every year at about this time. Seated across from him was Klaus Belcher, whose name no one dared mock. They’d known each other for years, always reached an agreement, and polished off a fair amount of schnapps during their ritual haggling. At a certain point, Herr Belcher’s mood would turn gloomy and he’d bemoan the city’s ban, years ago, on horse-drawn conveyances—“Boy, those were the days, and were those handsome steeds, or what!” Today, however, Ludwig turned down the very first schnapps. Herr Belcher was genuinely shocked. Was Ludwig seriously ill? What on earth was wrong? Everything all right with the family? Ludwig nodded vaguely and blamed his gut, which had been acting up recently.

Meanwhile, Edith lay in a dental chair with her mouth open wide for Doctor Kasper, an ageless, austere man. He was inspecting Edith’s teeth with a mirror and poked her gums here and there with a small hook. Then he inserted his thumb and index finger into her mouth and wiggled each tooth, one after the other. The room was silent, except for a hose gurgling somewhere. When Doctor Kasper finished, he leaned back a little on his stool. “Frau Bruhns, you have periodontitis,” he told her gravely.

“And what is that?”

“Inflammation of the gums, hence the bleeding when you brush. Several candidates are already loose.”

“Candidates?”

“Unfortunately.”

Edith sat up. “But how can that be? I always brush. Do I need vitamins? I eat plenty of fruit.”

“It’s your age. Menopause.” Edith stared at Doctor Kasper. Her family doctor, Doctor Gorf, had used the word before too. When he said it, though, it sounded like little more than a passing cold without lasting consequences. Coming from Doctor Kasper’s mouth, by contrast, it reverberated like a death sentence.

“Is there nothing I can do, Doctor?”

“Rinse with antiseptic mouthwash. And at some point they’ll need to come out.”

Edith leaned back into the chair and gazed at the ceiling. “The candidates.”

“Yes. But there are really decent replacements these days. Nothing like the old chattering teeth from before the war. The only place you’ll find those is in the haunted house ride at the fair…. Now, Frau Bruhns, there really is no reason to lose your composure.”

Edith couldn’t help it. Though she felt ashamed and covered her face with her hands, she began to weep piteously.

In the apartment above German House, Eva knocked carefully on Annegret’s door and then peeked into the room. Annegret was asleep in the dim light the yellowish blinds let through, as always rolled up on her side like an embryo. It smelled like beer and potatoes in there. Eva didn’t want to know why and slowly closed the door. She went into the living room, Purzel prancing about her feet, and walked up to the heavy, tall cupboard. As a child she had often pretended she was a princess, the cupboard her castle, complete with parapets, windows, and turrets. Now, opening its doors and drawers, one after the other, she was met with the familiar smell of dry cigars, sweet liqueur, and dust. Every last white tablecloth and cloth napkin was familiar to her, the half-burned red Christmas tree candles in a box, the case containing the silver-plated cutlery that both her parents proudly thought “fit for a king” and therefore never used. Eva dropped to her knees. Her parents stored documents and albums in one of the lower compartments. Eva paged through a ring binder containing bills and warranty certificates. The oldest receipt was from December 8, 1949, shortly after her parents had opened German House. It was the proof of purchase and warranty for an appliance from Schneider Electrics on Wiesbadener Strasse. A dish heater. Eva recalled how it hung above the bathtub. Whenever she went to the bathroom, she would pull the chain to turn on the heater. As she sat there and took care of her business, she watched in fascination as the thick gray filaments inside the metal dish slowly turned pink, then began to glow bright red. At a certain point the heater disappeared from the wall. Eva never addressed its absence, because she was convinced she had broken the appliance by turning it on too often. There were also five photo albums in the compartment. Three were from recent years, with pale, patterned cloth covers, whereas the other two were made of black and dark green cardboard. Eva pulled out one of the older two albums, the dark green one. It contained photographs of a group trip her father had taken as a youth. Heligoland in 1925. Her father had freckles and a huge smile on his face. It was his first time away from home. In one picture, he stood outside by a fire and stirred a pot hung over the flames. The steam from the pot obscured his face, but one could tell it was Ludwig by the shorts and undershirt he was wearing in the other photos as well. Ludwig loved telling the story about how for ten days he had cooked for thirty boys. At the end, they’d awarded him a medal made of tinfoil, naming him “Master Chef of Heligoland.” The rosette was also in the photo album, flattened and dulled with time, the writing barely legible. Eva sat on the carpet, Purzel lying beside her, and opened the black album. On the first page, in painstakingly ornamental script, her mother had written, “Ludwig and Edith, 24 April 1935,” with a white pencil on the black cardboard. Their wedding picture was pasted on the following page. Eva’s parents stood before velvet drapes, a low pillar beside them, out of which flowers appeared to be cascading. Her mother had linked arms with her father and both were smiling, Ludwig incredulously, Edith in relief. She was wearing a flowy white dress that did not quite conceal her little belly. Annegret had pointed out this part of the photograph so many times in the past, that the photo paper around Edith’s midsection had been rubbed off. “And that’s me!” Eva turned the pages, mechanically stroking the dog at her side, and studied the familiar, silent images. The reception had taken place in a restaurant in Hamburg. It was easy to distinguish Edith’s family of refined city folk from the ruddy island dwellers on the Bruhns side. Edith’s parents had not agreed with their daughter’s choice in partner. Nevertheless, the young couple occupied two rooms in their apartment in Rahlstedt after the wedding. Ludwig found seasonal employment, working summers by the sea, winters in the mountains. He was earning good money, but struggled to find a permanent position. The couple would be separated for months at a time, which neither liked. Shortly after Eva was born in the spring of 1939—arriving within twenty minutes on her grandparents’ most valuable carpet—they finally got the chance to lease a restaurant near Cuxhaven and live there as a family. Ludwig was nearly thirty years old, Edith in her mid-twenties. “But then war broke out and everything changed.” It was a line Eva had often heard repeated by both parents. Ludwig was conscripted for the field kitchen shortly after the war began, serving first in Poland and later in France. He was lucky, because he was never sent to the front line; sometimes pots went flying by his head, but he was never seriously injured. Edith initially stayed with the girls at her parents’ in Hamburg. They managed fine, had enough to eat. When the English began bombarding the city, though, Edith sent her daughters—ages eight and four—to relatives on Juist, Aunt Ellen and Grandpa Sea Lion. That was what little Eva had called him. She didn’t remember it. The only memory she had of her grandfather with the walrus mustache was from the wedding photos. He looked like he was crying in every picture. Eva had nearly reached the end of the album. The final photos were of Edith and Ludwig dancing. Her mother’s veil had been traded for a nightcap, and her father was now wearing a long, pointed nightcap as well, an old tradition, as her mother had explained: at midnight, the bride’s veil was removed, the couple was given nightcaps, and a poem was read aloud. The poem was printed on a sheet that lay folded up in the album:

The guests stood in a circle around the couple and clapped with blurred hands, their faces gleaming white, some merrily cockeyed. Eva’s parents alone appeared sober and clear, as though cutouts, in a firm embrace and looking into each other’s eyes.

“HE’S GETTING OLD.” Annegret stood in the doorway in her dressing gown, a glass of milk in her hand, and pointed at Purzel, whose tongue was lolling out. “Definitely has heart problems.”

“Nonsense,” Eva responded, although she had thought the same for some time. She pet Purzel’s head, and he snapped at her hand.

“Annie, do you remember the time we spent on Juist?”

“Sure, but not exactly—”

“Why do we have so few photographs? And none that were taken during the war?”

“People tended to have concerns other than taking pictures in those days.”

“Did we ever swim in the ocean?” Eva didn’t want to let Annegret go, but she turned in the door and muttered, “I had a terrible night.” She left. Eva closed the album and returned it to the cupboard. Finally, she took out a manila folder wedged in to the right of the albums. It was where their parents kept some of their childhood drawings. Eva opened the folder. Right on top was a drawing of the smaller house next door to the main defendant’s house. It had a pointed roof, crooked door, and disproportionately large windows. Next to the house were two girls—both had braids sticking out of their heads, a big girl and little girl holding hands. Two yellowish-red stripes had been colored in thick behind the house, soaring into the sky. One might have thought they were the product of a child’s imagination. But Eva knew what they were meant to represent. She leaned back against the cupboard that had once been her castle.

LATE THAT AFTERNOON Eva went to the public prosecutor’s office. She was hoping that most of the staff would have left for the weekend, so that no one would catch her in the act. There was a list of names of officers who had served at the camp. It included more than eight thousand names and was kept in two hefty ring binders Eva had often seen when the chief judge was cross-referencing witness testimony. Had this or that officer been working at the camp at the time of a given event? This incorruptible list had often proven statements wrong. It was a demoralizing moment for the witnesses every time. They stood before the court as liars simply because they could no longer recall the month or season their suffering had taken place. Eva had grown to fear these two binders. The idea that her own life could be tied to this list, however, would never have occurred to her. She walked to the end of the deserted, infinite-seeming hallway, where the file room was located. She paused outside the door and thought of the many forbidden doors in fairy tales, which Stefan had been losing interest in for some time. She entered the room and closed the door behind her. She oriented herself in the windowless space, walked among the racks, and discovered the two gray binders more quickly than she would have liked. She pulled out the one labeled “Personnel SS/Camp, A–N” and carried it cautiously, as though it might explode in her hands at any moment, to one of the tables that had been pushed together in the middle of the room. Then she set it down. It was still quiet outside the door to the file room. Eva wondered whether it wouldn’t be better to simply put the binder back as carefully as she’d taken it out, leave the room, go home, have a bath, and get dressed up to go see The Treasure of Silver Lake at the movies with Jürgen. Muffled laughter came through the wall. There was a kitchenette next door. Fräulein Lehmkuhl, one of the secretaries, was probably in there flirting with David Miller or another one of the clerks. Eva listened—more laughter. It was Fräulein Lehmkuhl, a rosy, carefree woman who had already earned a bad reputation. The office girls certainly did talk…. Eva opened the binder. She scanned the index with her forefinger, starting at the letters B–Br. She turned the pages and read through the names. From top to bottom: Brose. Brossmann. Brosthaus. Brücke. Brucker. Bruckner. Brückner. Brüggemann. Brügger. Bruhns.

The door burst open and two people stumbled in, pushing and pulling at each other, kissing loudly. David Miller fumbled with the buttons on Fräulein Lehmkuhl’s blouse, and she laughed again, this time loud and clear. David pushed her onto the table—and discovered Eva. She stood frozen on the other side, a ring binder open in front of her, a look of pure horror on her face. David slowly righted himself, pulled Fräulein Lehmkuhl up, and grinned sheepishly.

“Sorry, the kitchenette was too cramped.”

“We were just coming to get a file—” Fräulein Lehmkuhl lied poorly.

Eva closed the binder. “I was on my way out,” she said softly. She returned it to its spot on the shelf, and David followed her with his eyes.

“But you’re not going to tell anyone, are you, Eva?” Fräulein Lehmkuhl nervously called after her. “It was just a bit of fun…”

Eva left without responding and closed the door behind her. Fräulein Lehmkuhl shrugged and looked at David. “Now, where were we?”

But David turned away from her. He strode over to the shelf and pulled out the binder, whose contents had so rattled Eva.

MONDAY WAS THE BRUHNSES’ DAY OFF. That meant the family ate dinner together. Even Annegret attempted to schedule her shifts at the hospital so that she was free Monday evenings. The Bruhns family ate at six thirty in the kitchen. They had bread with sausage and cheese. Sometimes canned fish. Their mother would open a jar of Stefan’s favorite, mustard pickles, and their father prepared a large bowl of his famous egg salad with mayonnaise and capers, which was also on the menu at German House. It was only for his family that Ludwig used fresh dill, however, “whatever the cost.” That evening, they had opened the window to the back courtyard, because the weather was unusually mild for early May. The song of a lone blackbird floated in. They were all gathered at the table. Only Stefan’s spot was empty. Edith called, “Stefan, dinner!” Annegret spooned egg salad onto her plate and told her father about a doctor at the hospital, an older surgeon, who for years had suffered the same back problems as Ludwig, and who’d been saved by a corset. He was practically pain-free now. Her father joked about how hard it would be for him, as a man, to wear a corset, but he thanked her for the new information. Maybe one of those things would help him beat his pain, and allow him to start lunch service again. Edith, who was eating just two pieces of crisp bread, since she’d been putting on weight, smiled and said she would lace him up every morning and unlace him at night. As a young girl, she’d had to help her grandmother on with her corset. She was sure she’d still know how to do it. “The things you learn as a young girl, you never forget. Although I never would’ve dreamed I’d have reason to do that again.” Everyone laughed but Eva, who mutely observed the amusement her parents and sister found in picturing Ludwig in a corset.

Her father had not looked at Eva once today. Her mother, on the other hand, occasionally gave her a quick, concerned glance. She reached over now and stroked her hair. “It’s the Italian mettwurst you like so much.” Eva jerked back her head like a petulant child and felt annoyed with herself. What should she say to them? What should she ask? She was sitting with her family in the kitchen, the most familiar place on earth, and couldn’t express a single clear thought.

“Mummy.” Stefan appeared in the doorway. He looked different than usual, his face blotchy and eyes open wide in horror. “Mummy,” he said again, miserably. All four instantly saw that something bad must have happened. They rose, one after the other, as if in slow motion. Stefan said, “He won’t get up.”

Moments later, they all stood among the soldiers on the carpet in Stefan’s room, gazing at the dead dog by the bed. Stefan was crying and attempting to tell them what had happened, between sobs. “He went number two on the floor, and I yelled at him and hit him a little, and then he fell over and was kind of shaking all funny, and then… and then…” The rest was drowned out by his bawling, impossible to be understood. Ludwig pulled Stefan toward him, and Stefan pressed his face into his father’s comforting belly. His cries sounded quieter, but no less frantic. Edith left the room. Annegret crouched down beside Purzel with a grunt and examined his black, furry little body, as she was accustomed to doing. Breathing, pulse, reflexes. She got back up.

“It was probably his heart.”

Stefan wailed, and Eva stroked the top of his head. “Purzel is in dog heaven now. There’s a big meadow there just for dogs…”

“Where he can play all day long with other dogs….” her father added. Annegret rolled her eyes but kept quiet. Edith returned to the room with a piece of newspaper, which she used to clean up Purzel’s final little pile.

After wrapping Purzel in an old blanket, they laid him to rest in a biggish box Ludwig had fetched, with the words “Pronto Thickener—For Clump-Free Gravies and Sauces” printed on the side. The family placed an array of “grave goods” in the box: their mother contributed a slice of Italian mettwurst, while Annegret donated a handful of fruit candies—the green ones she didn’t like, and had therefore picked out. Eva dug out Purzel’s favorite toy, a gnawed-up tennis ball, from under the sofa in the living room. Stefan deliberated for a long time, still hiccupping and whimpering, whether to put his wind-up tank in the box, but then decided on ten of his best soldiers to protect Purzel—just in case there were bad dogs in dog heaven too. Stefan then got to choose who he wanted to sleep in his room that night. “Everyone,” he said. The family discussed, and ultimately Eva lay down beside Stefan. She held the little boy’s body tight, as he sniffled and cried himself to sleep. The tied-up box sat by the bed. In dark blue colored pencil, Edith had written “Purzel—1953 to 1964” on top. Eva buried her nose in Stefan’s hair; he smelled of grass. She closed her eyes and saw the list before her, the ring binder lying open in the windowless room. Following “Anton Brügger,” the next name had been “Ludwig Bruhns, SS Noncommissioned Officer, Cook, Served in Auschwitz 9/14/1940–1/15/1945.”

In the bathroom, Edith brushed her teeth at the sink. She kept her eyes closed to her face in the mirror. The foam she spit out was bloody. At the same time, Ludwig sat in the living room, in his corner on the sofa, with the television on. The crocheted coverlet had been folded back. A talent show highlighting strange acts and hobbies was on, but Ludwig wasn’t watching as a man, who had filled his basement from floor to ceiling with all sorts of fake owls, was introduced onscreen. Ludwig was thinking about his daughter Eva, who had sat at the table that evening like a stranger.

Early the next morning, before even the lonesome blackbird had woken, they buried Purzel under the black fir tree in the courtyard. Ludwig dug a hole and had to fight a few roots, which he severed with forceful blows of the spade. He paused a few times to clutch his back. Stefan didn’t want to let go of the box, but with gentle force, Eva managed to wrest it from him. Their father quietly struck up a tune. “Now take this little doggy, who was so true and good.” The others hummed along, although they didn’t recognize the melody Ludwig had chosen. As they walked back into the house, Edith put her arm around Stefan’s shoulder and said he would get a new dog. Stefan replied earnestly that he would never want a dog other than Purzel. Eva hung back and was the last to go inside. She didn’t want anyone in her family to see how hard she was crying about the dog’s death, a dog that had lived such a thoroughly satisfactory life. A dog that had been forgiven everything.

AN ORDINARY FACE. He sat between the Beast and the medical orderly but never spoke to anyone. It looked like he had slipped down, deep into his dark suit—Defendant Number Six was the least conspicuous of all the men seated at the defendants’ tables. On the seventy-eighth day of the trial, the day after Purzel’s passing, the focus turned to his function at the camp. He removed his horn-rimmed glasses and wiped them lazily with a white handkerchief while Eva translated the testimony from a Polish witness named Andrzej Wilk, a man in his late forties with an ashen face and who smelled of liquor. They sat at right angles to each other, the two water glasses and carafe set before them, along with Eva’s dictionaries and notepad. Wilk reported on how the defendant had killed prisoners in the so-called medical building. The prisoners were led into an examination room. They had to sit down on a stool. They had to lift their left arm and cover their mouth with their hand, both to muffle the anticipated scream and give the defendant access to his victims’ hearts with the syringe. The witness said, in German, “‘Abspritzen,’ that’s what we called it.” Then he switched back to Polish and Eva continued translating, “I worked first as an orderly, then I moved corpses. That is, it was my duty to dispose of the murdered bodies. We carried the dead from the room where they were killed, across the hallway to the washroom in the cellar. In the evening, we then loaded them onto the truck and took them to the crematorium.”

The chief judge leaned forward. “Herr Wilk, were you present in the same room in which the defendant performed these injections?”

“Yes, I stood about a half meter or meter away from him.”

“Who else was in the room, besides you and the defendant?”

“The other prisoner who helped carry the bodies.”

“How many people were killed in your presence, in this manner?”

“I never counted, but it could be anywhere between seven hundred and a thousand. They sometimes did it daily, Monday through Saturday, sometimes three times a week, sometimes twice.”

“Where did the people come from, who were killed there?”

“They were from Block Twenty-eight at the camp. And one time, seventy-five children were brought. They were from somewhere in Poland, between eight and fourteen years old.”

“And who killed the children?”

“The defendant right there. Together with Defendant Number Eighteen. The children were given a ball beforehand, and they played with it in the courtyard between Blocks Eleven and Twelve.”

A pause followed; everyone involuntarily listened for noise coming from the schoolyard behind the municipal building. The children were in class at this hour, though. The shadow of a tree swaying gently was all that moved beyond the glass panes. The accused had put his polished glasses back on. The lenses reflected the glare of the floodlights. Andrzej Wilk sat there very quietly. Eva waited for the next question from the judge, who was paging through a folder. A young associate judge pointed out something in one of the documents. Eva noticed that she was starting to sweat. It was always stifling in the auditorium, but today she had the feeling the oxygen had been depleted once and for all. She took a sip of water from the glass on the table, which somehow made her mouth feel even drier. The chief judge was now formulating his next question and turned his kind, moonish face toward Eva.

“Was your father at the camp too?”

Eva stared at the judge and felt the blood drain from her face. The witness beside her understood the question and responded, in German, “Yes. That he was.” Eva took another sip of water, which she barely got down. The figure of the chief judge grew hazy before her eyes, as though he were disappearing behind the wall of glass. She blinked.

“And how did your father fare?”

The witness responded in Polish. “The defendant murdered him before my eyes. It was September twenty-ninth, 1942. They were giving injections daily at that point.” Wilk spoke on, while Eva stared at his mouth and attempted to understand the words. But then his mouth dissolved as well and the words poured out.

“I was in the examination room… defendants, we waited… the door… my father… Take a seat. You’ll be getting a shot… against typhus…”

Eva laid a hand on Andrzej Wilk’s arm, as if she were trying to hang on to him. “Could you please repeat what you just said?” she asked quietly. The witness said something. But it wasn’t Polish. Eva had never heard this language, and she turned to the chief judge, who had by now completely evaporated. “I don’t understand him. Your Honor, I don’t understand him…” Eva stood up and the hall began to spin around her, hundreds of faces circling, and in the same flash, she saw the linoleum floor racing up toward her. Then everything went black.

When Eva opened her eyes again, she was lying on a small couch in the room behind the auditorium, the dim green room with its illuminated mirrors. Someone had opened the top buttons on her blouse. Fräulein Schenke placed a wet cloth on her forehead. She hadn’t squeezed it out enough, and water seeped into Eva’s eyes. Fräulein Lehmkuhl stood beside Eva, fanning her face with a folder. “The air in there is just hellish,” she said. David leaned in the open door and looked truly concerned. Eva sat up and said she was already feeling better. David gestured for her to stay seated. “The witness will continue his testimony in German. He speaks it well enough,” he told her. A hall attendant appeared in the door and told them that the recess had ended. Fräulein Schenke and Fräulein Lehmkuhl both nodded encouragingly at Eva and scurried out. Eva tried to get up and follow them, but her knees buckled, as if she had the joints of a child attempting to carry an adult. She took a deep breath. David came into the room and took the last open-faced ham sandwich from one of the plates set out by the mirrors.

“Ludwig Bruhns. That’s your father, isn’t it?” Eva thought she had misheard, but David continued. “He worked as a cook in the officers’ mess at the camp. How old were you then?”

Eva was silent. She’d been found out. She searched for the right response. Then she gave up and spoke the words heard so often in the courtroom: “I didn’t know.” She continued, “I had no memory of it. How else could I have taken on this job? I didn’t even know my father was in the SS.”

David chewed stoically. Eva looked at him and detected a sense of satisfaction. She felt a rush of anger and stood up. “You feel vindicated, don’t you, Herr Miller?! You’ve always said that every last one of us in this country had something to do with it. Except maybe your colleagues in the prosecution—”

“Yes, I do believe that,” David interrupted. “That so-called Reich could never have functioned so seamlessly had the large majority of people not been involved.”

Eva laughed bitterly. “I don’t know what my father did there, other than fry eggs and make soup!” She added softly, “But I will hand in my resignation.”

David put the sandwich, with bite marks, back on the plate and looked at Eva in the mirror. “Pull yourself together, Fräulein Bruhns. We need you.” He turned and came up close to her. “I won’t tell a soul.”

Eva looked at David and noticed his differently sized pupils, which she had only ever seen up close that one time, months ago in the German House dining room. It had appeared strange back then, but this peculiar part of his face now struck her as strangely familiar. Eva finally nodded uncertainly. Then she said, “Andrzej Wilk told me this morning that speaking German is torture to him. I will continue translating.”

SEVERAL DAYS LATER, the Saturday morning before Pentecost, four people crossed an airfield under pale blue skies. A baggage cart rolled past, and the driver, a white-uniformed steward, pulled up beside a small silver plane, a Cessna that belonged to Walther Schoormann.

“Perfect flying weather,” Jürgen said to Eva, whose colorful head scarf had loosened around her updo and flapped in the wind. Brigitte had linked arms with Walther Schoormann, who looked around in wonder, smiling like an excited child. He hadn’t recognized Eva, but greeted her happily with the words, “I wear diapers now!” The four climbed into the aircraft, one after the other, and the steward loaded the suitcases from the cart into the small hold beneath the cabin. In the cockpit was a man whose face was unrecognizable behind his mirrored sunglasses and enormous headphones. He shook hands with Jürgen and Walther Schoormann, then carried on checking the displays, levers, and controls. Eva nervously took her seat in the narrow cabin. She had flown to Warsaw once, on business. She hadn’t had any issue putting her trust in such a big, bulky airplane. But this dinky little thing seemed like a model, and it didn’t feel safe. Eva told Jürgen, who was buckling his seat belt beside her, that she didn’t love the designation “single engine.” What if that single engine failed? Jürgen responded, very businesslike, that the plane had just been thoroughly serviced. The door was shut and locked, but the pilot didn’t start. Walther Schoormann asked from the back why they weren’t going yet. Jürgen explained that they were still waiting for clearance to take off. The pilot held up three fingers to Jürgen, who gave a thumbs-up back. Eva knew that they’d be waiting for another half hour. Half an hour to allow the sleeping pills Brigitte had mixed into her husband’s breakfast tea to take effect. Jürgen had told Eva that on the last trip from Frankfurt to the island, his father had tried to get out somewhere over Hamburg. He had tried opening the door, which wasn’t exactly safe. As a result, Brigitte and Jürgen had hatched this plan. As Eva’s fear grew, Walther Schoormann fell asleep behind her. When his head finally tipped back, the pilot got clearance over the radio and engaged the engine. They taxied to the runway. Eva clutched her armrests with both hands as the small airplane accelerated. And as the engine’s howling grew louder and the markers on the runway began to zip by beneath them, she’d have liked nothing better than to scream. At that moment, Jürgen took her hand from the armrest, and the wheels left the asphalt; they lifted off, they were flying. They left behind the houses, traffic, and people in the city and climbed ever higher into the pale blue.

The flight lasted just under three hours. The engine noise in the cabin was so loud that conversation was completely out of the question. Walther Schoormann was asleep with his mouth open, and with a handkerchief Brigitte wiped away the drool that leaked from the corner of his mouth. Jürgen was reading work documents, marking things occasionally in pencil or writing a note. Eva could see that they were contracts written in English. Brigitte pulled an illustrated newsmagazine out of her bag—Quick—and began to read. Eva looked out the window, into the tremendous depths; she followed the dark lines that were rivers, counted the green patches, the woods, and imagined herself walking among the trees, small and insignificant, and looking up through the branches at the silver dot creeping silently across the sky. Eva reflected that dying now would not be amiss. I lived there, and my sister lived there. My father walked through the gate every day on his way to work. My mother closed our windows. She kept our house free of soot from the smokestacks. David Miller was the only one who knew so far. And the main defendant’s wife. She had recognized Eva behind the bar at German House. Their eyes met two days ago at the municipal building, and she regarded Eva with undisguised contempt. Then the woman in the little hat made a hand gesture, as if to say, “You’d best watch out, girl, or I’ll do it again!” And with that, Eva remembered. She was small. Everything itched. She had bug bites on her arms and legs, and she was standing in a walled yard and scratching herself till she bled. The air smelled sweetly scorched. There was a bed of roses in the garden, and the bushes were in full bloom. Yellow and white. A big girl in a striped linen dress stood in the middle of the bed, decapitating the roses. It was Annegret, and she was laughing, and Eva laughed with her. She started tearing off the blossoms as well. It was hard at first, but she got the hang of it. They pelted each other with blossoms, and then went after the buds. But then Annegret abruptly stopped and gaped at something behind Eva. She sprang from the bed like a rabbit, bolted across the yard, and vanished in a bush. Eva slowly turned around. A woman wearing a smock was approaching, and she had the face of a mouse—a furious mouse. She grabbed Eva’s upper arm and slapped her forcefully. Then again and again. That was when Eva noticed the scent of the torn roses beneath the smell of burning. She had been four years old at the time.

IN THE SCHOORMANNS’ THATCHED BRICK HOUSE, with a forged sign reading “1868” hung over the front door, Brigitte showed Eva to her room beneath the roof, a small, wind-warped space with flowered curtains, polka-dot wallpaper, and a single bed.

Brigitte smiled wryly. “You’re not married yet, after all.” She then added, in confidence, “Jürgen’s crazy, but otherwise he’s all right.”

She left to see to her husband, whom they had guided, still half asleep, out of the aircraft with their combined forces, but who was now waking up in earnest and crying out fearfully for his wife. She left the door open. Eva had a view of the dunes through the window, outlandishly barren and covered in reddish weeds. She spotted a strip of the North Sea, which was wild and rough on this side of the island. Jürgen carried in Eva’s little suitcase and came over to her at the window. She leaned against him, and he put his arm around her shoulders. She could feel his heartbeat, hard and fierce, as though he’d been running.

“Jürgen, should we go to the beach? Do you think we can already swim?”

“I’m sorry, Eva, I’m not finished with the contracts yet. And I’ve got to return them by telex today.”

“On a Saturday?”

Jürgen ignored the question and dropped his arm. “I’m happy you’re here,” he said, although he seemed almost angry as he looked at her.

“Jürgen, isn’t this a bit ridiculous, with the separate bedrooms? We’re adults. And engaged.”

“I’m not discussing this with you again. I’ll see you later.” Jürgen left. Eva thought about how he’d picked her up at the municipal building the day before. How he stood at his car and waved. How he slowly lowered his hand when he saw David walking beside her. She and David weren’t speaking, looking at each other, touching. Nevertheless, Jürgen must have sensed there was something that connected them, something he was excluded from. Eva saw how insecure it made him. Sad and jealous. Then why did he remain so unavailable? Jürgen continued to mystify her.

Eva went to the beach by herself. She had her towel and underwear in a floral cloth bag Brigitte had given her. Eva had put on her bathing suit under her dress. It was almost summery. A few white clouds billowed above, the blue of the sky saturated and heavy. The air smelled of little blossoms, and there was buzzing in the grasses. When Eva came out between the tall dunes and onto the wide beach, she took off her shoes. She wasn’t wearing stockings and walked barefoot through the sand to the water. She had never been on such a big beach. Although no small number of people were sitting or lying in the sand, running through the retreating waves, and some even throwing themselves in the water, Eva felt alone. She stopped and observed the formation and fall of the waves for a while, how the water piled up, how it approached and kept growing, till it finally collapsed, how it retreated, bright and glittering as it seeped away in the sand. Her father had grown up so close to these waters. And he was always telling stories about the dead, the drowned, those who had fallen victim to “Blanker Hans,” the turbulent North Sea. About the fathers of schoolmates who had been fishermen and never returned from the job, about the two children next door who had swum out too far. Once, when Eva was fifteen, they went to Juist on vacation; Grandpa Sea Lion had already been dead for some time, and they stayed with Aunt Ellen, her father’s sister. A few days before they arrived, a sudden storm capsized a pleasure craft. Eight people drowned, and all were recovered but a six-year-old boy. Eva, who had always loved swimming, didn’t want to go in the sea. She was afraid that something might touch her in the deep waters, that this boy might get caught between her legs, that his bloated face might appear before her in a wave. Her father responded that that wouldn’t be a bad thing, because then those poor parents could finally bury their child. Eva had been ashamed of herself for being so self-centered. Her father was a good person.

Eva kept walking till the first wave washed up around her feet. The water was cold as snow. She decided not to swim, but instead to walk. She went far and stayed by the water for a long time, the sun beating down on her face; at some point she headed into the dunes and followed the little rabbit trails here and there. She enjoyed wandering through this moonscape, when she was suddenly startled: a few meters farther on, there was something pale lying in the dark dune grass, a motionless body, and beside it a second, then another and another, like corpses, but then she saw them move. It was people exposing their naked bodies to the sun. Eva froze, spun around in embarrassment, and ran toward the sea. As she fled, she bumped into yet another person, this one dripping wet and coming up the dune from the water, his member bouncing merrily in all directions as he jogged. Eva burned with shame, and she covered her eyes as she stumbled past the man.

Brigitte was setting the table for dinner back at the house. A large window façade behind the dining area opened onto the dunes and the sea. Dark beams held up the low ceiling. In a redbrick fireplace, its inside blackened with soot, a little fire was burning—not for warmth, since the house had central heating, but for atmosphere. Eva was out of breath as she entered, and she gaped at Brigitte for a moment without saying anything. Brigitte looked at her quizzically.

“What happened?”

Eva stammered, half amused and half embarrassed, that there were people down on the beach who weren’t wearing any clothes or bathing suits. Brigitte waved her hand dismissively and continued arranging plates. Oh, that. It was the new fashion. Luckily you didn’t have to join in if you didn’t want to. Romy Schneider, the actress—surely Eva knew who she was? Well, she’d been here just once and had later said that it was just awful. That there was a naked ass floating in every wave. Eva and Brigitte looked at each other and laughed. Walther Schoormann entered in his undershirt; his chest appeared sunken. He carried a shirt that was clearly giving him some trouble, and he needed Brigitte. It wasn’t till she saw him up close that Eva noticed the pale red lines covering his shoulders like a net. Scars.

“What are you laughing about?”

“The nudists. Eva had an explicit encounter.”

“I apologize, Fräulein,” Walther Schoormann said. “Already active in May now, are they? Brigitte, that is cause enough for me to sell the house.”

Brigitte helped her husband into his shirt and responded, “Walli, we’ll discuss that later. After all, you’re walking around the place half naked yourself.”

Walther Schoormann ignored the comment and addressed Eva. “They say it’s because there’s nothing indecent about showing the world how God made them. Meanwhile, most of them are damn atheists.”

Brigitte buttoned up his shirt. “So are you!”

Eva couldn’t help but smile, and suddenly Walther Schoormann looked at her warily.

“Don’t you own a pub? A pub on Berger Strasse?”

Eva swallowed. “My parents do, yes, but farther up the street. Not by the train station.”

The old man narrowed his eyes. He did not appear reassured.

“It’s a restaurant, Walli,” Brigitte interjected.

Walther Schoormann considered this, then he nodded. “A person’s got to eat.”

That night, Eva lay on the narrow bed in her tiny room, listened to the sea, and thought about the naked man in the dunes. She had to admit that she’d been aroused by the sight—the man was attractive, healthy, and lighthearted. Eva thought about how badly she yearned to be in bed with Jürgen right now. She felt pleasant little waves rising from her vagina—as she respectfully referred to her privates in her mind—and she pushed her hand between her legs and closed her eyes. She saw the sea rolling toward her, gently murmuring. Jürgen embraced her, the water rose up her body, nice and warm… Suddenly Eva sensed that she was not alone. She opened her eyes. A dark figure stood in the middle of the room before the open door to the hallway. Motionless.

“Jürgen?” Eva asked quietly.

“You’ll never get me to talk!”

It was Walther Schoormann’s penetrating voice. He repeated the line. Eva shot up in bed and fumbled for the switch on her bedside table. Then the light went on in the hallway, though, and Brigitte appeared in the doorway.

“Walli, you went to the wrong room by mistake.” She gently led her husband out and closed the door. In the meantime, Eva had found the switch. Click. She turned on the light and stared at the slanted ceiling for a while. She turned over and studied the picture hanging on the opposite wall. A seascape. A ship was fighting its way through monstrous waves. Fish flew through the air. It’s obvious that won’t end well. Eva turned the light back out. She couldn’t sleep. She was thirsty. She had probably eaten too much of the “unspeakably delicious herring salad” Brigitte had raved about. She listened for movement in the house, then got up. She put on her fashionable new dressing gown, which she had bought specially for this trip, and tiptoed down the stairs to the kitchen, where she came upon Brigitte. She was sitting in the white-and-blue-tiled room on a wooden bench at the table, illuminated by the soft circle of light thrown by the hanging lamp, a half-drunk bottle of beer before her. She was not made up and her eyes were puffy, as though she’d been crying. Eva was about to leave, but Brigitte waved her over.

“Have a seat. Would you like a beer? We don’t use glasses at this hour, is all.”

“Agreed.”

Moments later, the women were clinking bottles. Brigitte said how much she liked Eva’s dressing gown. Then she unexpectedly began telling her about losing her entire family in an air strike on Dresden—her father, who had been home on R & R at the time, her mother, and her brother. She was twelve years old. Walther had been her father, mother, brother, companion, and lover, all in one. These days, though, he was often no more than a child. It felt as if she were losing her family all over again.

“It’s even worse for him. I try not to let it show, but he can tell how sad I am. For as long as I’ve known him, he’s wanted only one thing: to make me happy. Now he makes me a little unhappier every day. And he’s powerless against it. All that damn money, and it doesn’t do him a lick of good.”

Brigitte finished her beer and fell silent. Eva cleared her throat and asked why Walther Schoormann always repeated that same sentence. Brigitte replied that she knew almost nothing about his time in prison. But that he had been tortured. Brigitte got up and cleared the empty bottles into a little pantry off the kitchen. I was at that camp with my parents as a child, Eva wanted to say. She would have liked to tell Brigitte that for as long as she could remember, the smell of burning had nauseated her mother. To tell her about the incident at German House. About the destroyed roses. That they couldn’t possibly be the reason the main defendant, after all these years, was still so irate that he would spit at her mother’s feet. Eva would have liked to ask Brigitte what she should do. Whether she should talk or keep quiet. But Eva kept quiet now and got up from the table. The women said good night to each other in the front passage. Eva slowly climbed the stairs. With every step, it became clearer: she didn’t need any advice. For months, she had sat in a room with people who had lived and worked at the camp. For months, she had heard what happened at that camp, day and night. More and more words poured out of the witnesses’ mouths, their voices entered Eva and formed a choir inside her: it was a hell created and run by humans. And for months, she had heard the defendants assert that they hadn’t known a thing. Eva didn’t believe them. No one in their right mind believed them. Eva’s fear that her parents would make the very same claim—“We didn’t know a thing”—was debilitating. Because if they did, she would have to part ways with her father and mother.

Eva walked along the upstairs hallway toward her room, the floorboards creaking under her bare feet. When she reached the door, behind which Jürgen was sleeping, she stopped. She didn’t think it over, but knocked softly and entered the room. She could make out the contour of the bed beneath the open window. The sky glowed dark blue outside. She sat down on the edge of the bed. Jürgen was sleeping on his stomach, and she couldn’t see his face under his black hair.

“Jürgen?”

Eva stroked the back of his head, and he woke up, gasped, and asked sleepily, “Is it my father?” He turned over onto his back.

“No, but I don’t want to be alone right now.”

Silence. The curtain moved gently in the night breeze. Eva chuckled and almost laughed, because she could positively hear Jürgen thinking. Finally he lifted the blanket. Eva crawled in beside him. He put his arm around her. Jürgen smelled of resin, soap, and sweat. He felt around with his right hand for her braid, which she plaited every evening. Eva could feel his heartbeat even more forcefully now, almost as if his heart were beating in her chest. Something outside in the dunes shrieked. A bird?

“Was that a bird?” Eva asked.

Instead of answering, Jürgen leaned over, kissed her quickly and hard on the mouth, then lay down on top of her, tore her dressing gown open with both hands, pushed up her nightgown, pulled down her underwear, his pajama pants, thrust himself deeper between her legs, which she opened; he gripped his stiff member, maneuvered with it, swore, couldn’t find her, then did and furiously entered her. Eva held her breath. He moved a few times inside her, and it hurt her, then he groaned frantically, whimpered, and collapsed on top of her. For a moment he lay there heavily, sobbing quietly. Eva caressed the back of his head. He slid off her then and sat up on the edge of the bed. He rubbed his face with both hands.

“Forgive me, Eva.”

He was like a boy, brutal and helpless at once. She rubbed his back as she felt his semen trickle warmly out of her. As though her vagina were crying.

SISSI WAS COAXED INTO accompanying David. They strolled, almost like a couple, through the deserted holiday streets toward the Westend Synagogue, while David pontificated about the significance of Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks. Sissi linked arms with him; she was wearing her tasteful rust-red suit and a new hat, whose violet hue didn’t quite match. David often spoke about his Jewish faith as if he were reading from a book. Sissi wasn’t listening. She was calculating whether she could afford to send her son to middle school. He wanted to stay in school for another two years, so he could later apprentice as a travel agent. Meanwhile, Sissi could arrange an apprenticeship at the slaughterhouse for him immediately—and with eighty marks pay per month, at that. “I will never become a butcher! Over my dead body!” he had exclaimed in disgust. He wanted to sit in an office and sell trips to faraway lands—not wear a rubber apron and slop around in animal carcasses. Sissi could see where her son was coming from, but things would get tight financially. Her johns weren’t exactly increasing in number, although her experience did help offset the aging process. But how much longer would that last? David was explaining that Shavuot celebrated the day the Torah was presented to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai. By reading the Ten Commandments, one renewed one’s ties to the ineffable. Infants, small children, the elderly—anyone who was able to, should participate in this celebration. The faithful traditionally drank milk and ate dairy and honey.

“Because the Torah is like milk, Sissi! Milk that the nation of Israel drinks as eagerly as an innocent child!”

“Oh,” Sissi said. She finished her calculations and concluded that she would give it a try, even if it meant she’d need about a hundred marks extra every month. If necessary, she could pour drinks at Mokka Bar. She didn’t need much sleep.

In the temple vestibule, a throng of worshippers gathered for services. The walls were decorated with birch branches and colorful bands of fabric. The men wore festive yarmulkes, the women their best dresses and silk head scarves. It seemed the kids barely dared breathe, for all their finery. The mood was social and cheery. Rabbi Riesbaum, a serious man with sincere eyes who had helped David work through his many questions concerning faith over the past few months, greeted him warmly. He took quick stock of Sissi, then gave her a nod. David secured his purple yarmulke in place, and Sissi smiled and pointed at her hat and said that now they looked like twins. She moved toward the sanctuary, but David told her to take the stairs to the side. Women had to sit in a separate gallery. Sissi climbed a few steps and peeked into the space upstairs, where several women, girls, and young children were already seated. She hurried back to David and hissed, “You mean to say I’m supposed to go up there and stare at the wall?”

“It’s tradition.”

“That’s too much for me. I’m leaving.” Sissi turned and headed for the exit. David grabbed her arm.

“Please stay. You’ll like it. And there’s food afterward. Pancakes with yogurt. And cheesecake.”

Sissi paused. “Cheesecake?”

David smiled. “Cheesecake and the Ten Commandments. That’s what this is all about.”

Sissi hesitated, then turned and somewhat reluctantly climbed the stairs. David entered the sanctuary, which was now so familiar. A few men nodded amiably in greeting. But he still felt like a fraud.

Upstairs, behind the wall, Sissi listened to the prayers and songs and reading from the Torah with the other women. She listened to the foreign language. The cantor sang in Aramaic,

To Sissi, the melody sparked an image of a withdrawn child singing to himself as he played. She didn’t understand the words, but she was well acquainted with the Ten Commandments. She thought every last one was right. Sissi had an uncomplicated relationship with God—he left her alone, as she did him. She had observed nearly all of the commandments her entire life. Only she hadn’t been able to honor her parents. She had never met them.

“YOU’RE GETTING A DIVORCE?!”

Annegret almost choked on her meringue cake. She was sitting with Doctor Küssner in the Hausberg Schänke beer garden outside the city; every last seat was taken. They had driven there in Küssner’s car, because Annegret wouldn’t dream of lifting a finger in her free time. Their table was loaded with cups and small coffeepots as well as two plates of cake, although Doctor Küssner didn’t like sweets. The neighboring tables were occupied by howling or hungrily snacking children, courting couples, and sweaty, thirsty hikers. They were surrounded by lively Sunday afternoon activity, but Annegret had frozen.

Küssner regarded her and said, “I’ve already spoken several times with Ingrid. She is starting to accept it. She’ll stay in our house with the children. You know I’ve never liked this ugly city. And it keeps getting uglier. I’ve been offered the opportunity to take over a practice in Wiesbaden. It’s a beautiful old house. Art Nouveau, with a big yard. Nice area, only cultivated people. Well-behaved children, friendly parents. I’d like to live and work there together with you.”

Annegret chewed and swallowed, then set down her cake fork and stood. “Excuse me for a moment.”

She maneuvered her way among tables and chairs. She entered the dim taproom, where just a few older guests had come to escape the sun. She followed the sign pointing the way to the restrooms, along an unventilated hallway, across a small courtyard, and down a long flight of stairs into the basement. The restroom had three stalls, one of which was luckily unoccupied. Annegret went in, lifted the toilet seat, and abruptly vomited half-chewed meringue and cream into the bowl. She yanked the toilet chain and the water gurgled, but the meringue remained afloat, and she flushed again. The white chunks hung in the water like little icebergs. In the meantime, a woman had come out of one of the other stalls.

“Can I help?”

“No, thank you.”

Annegret wiped her mouth with a handkerchief, standing before the spotted mirror. She took her lipstick out of her purse and redid her lips in a slightly garish shade of orange. She began to tease her hair with a comb. She poked around her hair with the handle of the comb for a long time. Finally she let her hand fall.

Hartmut Küssner sat upstairs in the beer garden and regretted nothing. He had been afraid of this conversation, almost more than of that with his wife. He worried it would feel wrong to map out their shared future. But that hadn’t been the case. On the contrary. As he watched Annegret return—luminous lipstick reapplied, her white-blond hair more cottony than ever, fat and combative in her spring dress with the large floral print, yet her eyes so full of fear and vulnerability—he knew at that moment that he loved her. That he wanted to provide for her and take care of her for the rest of his life. Annegret sat down across from him and began to eat her cake again almost immediately.

“I’m sorry,” she said, with her mouth full. “You’ve made a mistake, Hartmut. I won’t be going anywhere with you.”

“It’s in Wiesbaden-Bierstadt.”

“Doesn’t matter where. Or living with you. I’ve never been anything but clear with you. We’re having an affair, and that’s it.”

“It’s true, you’ve never said anything to the contrary. But I don’t care.”

Annegret looked up. She couldn’t help but laugh at this unassuming, balding man without a single wrinkle, who was demonstrating such unexpected power. Annegret put down her fork.

“I already have a family.”

“Where you’ll die an old maid?”

“Well, not so sure about the ‘maid’ bit.” Annegret smiled wryly. “No is my answer. So what are you going to do, Doctor Küssner? Kidnap me and lock me in the basement of this sensational Art Nouveau house in Wiesbaden-Bierstadt?”

Doctor Küssner pulled a pair of sunglasses Annegret had never seen out of the breast pocket of his jacket and put them on. “Maybe.”

Annegret laughed, but it didn’t sound genuine.

THE FLIGHT BACK FROM the island was, as Brigitte put it, “unspeakably bad.” They had taken off into black clouds, because the pilot initially saw it as an exciting challenge, then flown through heavy rains that turned into a storm. The little airplane shook so badly that even Jürgen discreetly clutched his seat a few times. Furthermore, Walther Schoormann’s morning sedatives weren’t working, which did not become clear till they were already in the air. He feared for his life, but thankfully did not start thrashing about; instead, he babbled incessantly. They could only catch the occasional fragment or word, but the topic was clear: communism as the sole enduring humanist social system. Eva listened and gave in to the shaking; she was the only passenger who wasn’t scared, as though all feeling inside her had died.

When Eva opened the door to the apartment above German House later, she instinctively expected Purzel to jump up around her as she entered. Instead, Edith came out of the kitchen. She took her daughter’s wet coat. “What’s this weather you’ve brought with you?” she asked in greeting. She usually reserved this line for strangers. She didn’t await a response, either, but immediately started telling Eva that Stefan had dug Purzel up again the day before. Her father, who wandered out of the living room and looked like he’d been sleeping, explained that Stefan had discovered he was missing two of his best soldiers, which he needed to maintain “sufficient troop strength” against his friend Thomas Preisgau. Stefan hadn’t considered this at Purzel’s burial. Stefan was sitting at the kitchen table, doing his homework. He hugged Eva and reported at length about Purzel’s current condition—about his eyes, which were just gone, and about the “beastly” smell. Stefan held his nose at the thought of it, while their mother returned to the stove, where she was preparing lunch, a stew of vegetable and meat leftovers thrown together from Ludwig’s kitchen. Eva liked this dish—“big pot in a little’n,” Ludwig called it—but didn’t have much of an appetite and just poked at her food. She told them about the sprawling beach on the northernmost island in the North Sea, prompting gruff commentary from Ludwig, ever the Juist patriot. That beach was man-made. “They dump sand there from China when the tourists aren’t looking!” Over coffee after lunch, Eva gave them their presents. She had bought Annegret some East Frisian tea and a big bag of rock candy, which she set aside for later that evening. Her parents unwrapped a blue-and-white tile, which depicted a young couple ice-skating, painted in delicate brushstrokes. They were overjoyed, and Eva noticed how tired they both looked. Stefan got a blue captain’s hat with a pom-pom plunked on his head by Eva. He beamed and dashed into the hallway. He saluted before the mirror and marched back and forth.

“Left, right, left, right, attention!”

“Stefan, it’s a captain’s hat!” Eva called to him.

Stefan took a moment, then cried out, “All hands on deck! Pull in the lines! She’s taking on water at the stern!”

And as a ship threatened to sink in the front hallway, Eva and her parents sat in silence at the kitchen table, Edith and Ludwig both resting their hands on the waxed cotton tablecloth. The rain Eva had brought with her from the island beat against the kitchen window. Eva took another sip of her coffee, which had gone cold and tasted stale. She placed her hands on the table as well. Don’t speak. Don’t move. Hold your breath till it passes and no one will come to any harm.

DAVID WAS NERVOUS. He had slept poorly and looked unwell. The blond man noticed it the moment they said good morning in the auditorium. He would have liked to put a hand on his shoulder. Instead, he remarked snidely that David’s big day had finally come. They had finally reached Defendant Number Four. David responded so earnestly, however, that the blond man regretted his comment. He still hadn’t managed to figure out what connected David to this defendant—the Beast. To the prosecution’s dismay, the defendant was still at liberty. His request for deferred arrest had been renewed three times for health reasons. Over the next few days, fifteen former prisoners were scheduled to speak about what had occurred in Block Eleven. Six came from Poland and would be dependent on Fräulein Bruhns’s interpreting. Eva showed up at the municipal building that day as if nothing had happened. She greeted Fräulein Schenke and Fräulein Lehmkuhl, and they commiserated over the dearth of fashionable weatherproof clothing. It was still raining outside, as the cold snap dug in its heels. Inside the overheated foyer with its foggy windows, the reporters seemed agitated, besieging the attorney general, prosecutors, and defense attorneys, eavesdropping on each other, and fighting loudly over the use of the pay phones. Two even started tussling and had to be separated by a hall attendant. The reporters felt certain that new atrocities would come to light, which meant good numbers. Seats in the gallery were hard-won too. Defendant Number Four’s wife, the faded beauty, had taken her spot in the front row, her bearing even more erect than usual. She wore a strikingly elegant suit and had carefully done her hair and makeup. Eva regarded the woman from across the auditorium and mused that she was like a one-time opera singer who had played all the major roles—Ophelia, Leonora, Kriemhild—without ever feeling a thing in her heart.

Silence fell in the room, the judges entered, and the first witness was called: Nadia Wasserstrom, who had worked as the personal secretary to Defendant Number Four at the camp. The ferret face remained impassive as the woman, on crutches, slowly approached the witness stand. Eva helped her into the chair and then translated what the woman could remember. As Nadia Wasserstrom began to speak in a clear Polish, without hesitation, without searching for words—and Eva reproduced the sentences in the same rhythm, without the help of her two dictionaries, detecting meaning and placing pauses—Eva sensed that something had changed. She tried to discern what it was, while she translated testimony that the defendant, who led the camp’s political department with the rank of SS-Oberscharführer, had arbitrarily ordered people shot—and shot them himself—at the Death Wall, men, women, and children. He invented a type of swing, from which prisoners were hung upside down from the backs of their knees. The defendant then questioned them in this defenseless position and beat them with rods and whips, many to death. During these descriptions, Defendant Number Four tilted his head occasionally to the left or to the right. He waved at his wife once, who gave him a quick smile. The chief judge rebuked him and asked what he had to say about the accusations; his attorney—the White Rabbit—replied, after rising, “My client denies these accusations without exception. He was simply performing interrogations as ordered.”

During the lunch break, Eva stayed seated in the hall. Was she getting sick? She was sweating and wiped a handkerchief over her brow. She took a small bottle out of her briefcase and unscrewed the top. Peppermint water, which she had kept among her things since her fainting spell, and which had helped her stave off nausea on a number of occasions already. She sniffed at it, expecting the sharp, refreshing scent, but she couldn’t smell anything. Her nose must be stuffed. Maybe she really was coming down with the flu. David hadn’t left his post, either. He stared over at the empty defendants’ tables, at the seat of the defendant, who was currently sitting with the other defendants at a table on the far side of the cafeteria next door to the auditorium, protected from spectators and reporters by a police guard, eating his lunch.

Nadia Wasserstrom’s testimony continued after the break. Eva translated. “A very young man, a German Jew, was once beaten to death by the defendant. It was September ninth, ’44. I recall it so clearly because he fainted in my office before the interrogation. From hunger. One of the female wardens had given me a piece of cake. I gave it to him. Then the defendant called him into his office for the interrogation. Two hours later, the door opened. The young man was hanging from the swing. He no longer looked like a human being. His clothes were gone. His buttocks, his genitals—everything was swollen, bloody, open. He was just a sack, a bloody sack. Another prisoner came in then and dragged him out. I had to mop up the blood.” Eva could see the image before her eyes, she was standing in that outside office, registering every detail, the facial features of the deceased, the open door to the office, the red trail leading to the swing. She caught every last detail, yet still felt blind. She looked around the courtroom as though searching for something, and met the blank gaze of the defendant’s wife. Eva started, because it was like looking in a mirror. She now knew what was different about today: she no longer felt anything.

David stood up and leaned over to the blond man’s microphone. He spoke into it, which wasn’t actually allowed, and asked, “It was his brother who had to carry him out. His younger brother, wasn’t it?”

Eva glanced at the blond man, who gave her a terse nod. She turned to Nadia Wasserstrom.

“Was it his brother?”

“That, I don’t remember.”

“I present you with the following, ma’am!” David insisted, holding up a document. “You stated as much on January tenth, two years ago, at your first interview with the prosecution’s investigator!”

Eva spoke softly to Nadia, who shook her head.

“She must remember!” David exploded. “Ask her again!”

“David, sit down!” the blond man hissed.

The chief judge spoke into his microphone at the same time. “I do not consider the question material to the witness’s testimony.”

The blond man grasped David by the shoulder and pushed him back into his seat. David sat down reluctantly and ran his hands through his hair, then stood up and charged across the auditorium, through the seated spectators, up the steps to the double doors, and out of the room. Eva noticed that even the defendant was watching David’s departure. Then he said something to his attorney, who rose: his client wished to make a statement. The chief judge turned toward the ferret face and made a gesture. Granted.

The defendant stood and stated, in a soft voice, “I was not even at my office that day. We were celebrating our commandant’s birthday. He had invited approximately twenty officers on a boat tour of the Soła, followed by lunch in the officers’ mess. You may ask my wife, right over there. She joined me that day too. Or the adjutant here. He was there that day with his wife as well.”

The chief judge turned to his associate judges. They conferred briefly. The defendant’s wife was then called forward. She introduced herself and began to describe the day in question, slowly and exhaustively. Eva and Nadia Wasserstrom had moved to sit on the prosecutors’ side. She translated quietly for the witness, who listened carefully and never took her eyes off the defendant’s wife. The faded beauty remembered many details, but mainly recalled the shared lunch in the officers’ mess. They’d had roast pork. With mashed potatoes and cucumber salad. Finally, the wife opened her purse and pulled something out.

“This photograph was taken over dessert. Would you like to see it?”

Nadia, meanwhile, said to Eva, “Then it happened on a different day. A different date. But it happened. Just on a different day.”

But Eva didn’t hear her, although the witness was speaking directly into her ear. Eva looked at the photograph in the wife’s hand. She was certain her father was pictured there. Laughing among the sated officers and their wives. But Eva didn’t care.

WHEN ANNEGRET LEFT City Hospital that afternoon and hurried through the rain toward the streetcar stop, Doctor Küssner was waiting for her. As on their first evening together, he’d been leaning against his dark vehicle, then stepped into her way as she passed. His coat was soaked—he’d clearly been waiting for some time. She had been avoiding him in the ward for the past few days. He now grabbed her arm and steered her toward his car so forcefully it would have attracted attention had Annegret attempted to free herself from his grip. He put her in the passenger seat, slammed the door shut, and sat down behind the wheel. Annegret feigned scorn and asked if he was following through with his plans to abduct her. Doctor Küssner ignored the question and informed her that he had moved out of his house. “How is that any of my concern?” Annegret snarled. He retorted that it was high time she shook the unhealthy attitude that nothing ever concerned her. Outside the car, Nurse Heide walked past in her shapeless raincoat and heard loud voices. She glanced through the windows, which were beginning to fog up, and recognized the two quarreling. She considered her long-held suspicions confirmed and happily made her way home. Human depravity had proven itself yet again!

Doctor Küssner had started crying in the car, awkwardly but authentically, which Annegret could barely stand.

“What the hell is this? Do you think you can pressure me like this? Or are you bawling because you regret it? I told you from the start—”

“Shut your trap!” Küssner hissed, uncharacteristically uncouth. He wiped away his tears and stared at the rain streaming down the windshield. “I’m sad because I’m hurting my wife. I’m sad because I won’t be living with my children anymore. Yet it’s still the right thing to do.” Doctor Küssner sat up, turned the key, and started the engine. He turned on the wipers, which cleared their view of the street, passersby, and other cars’ headlights. “We’re driving to Wiesbaden. I’d like to show you the house.”

Annegret reached for the door handle. “I don’t want to!”

But Doctor Küssner turned on his blinker to enter traffic. “I love you.” It was the first time anyone had ever said that to Annegret.

“You don’t know me.”

“What do knowing someone and loving them have to do with each other?” Küssner stepped on the gas, and at the same time, Annegret opened her door. She heaved herself out of the moving car. Küssner hit the brakes.

“Are you insane?!”

Annegret rolled her ankle and roared that he was a selfish pig, just like every other man, and threw the door shut. She limped away in outrage. Doctor Küssner honked twice, loudly, then sped off. He was furious too. He soon calmed down, though, and drove by himself to Wiesbaden, where he signed the lease agreement for the thriving pediatric clinic, the rental contract for the Art Nouveau mansion with its overgrown lawn, and dreamed of a shared future with Annegret.

Annegret entered the apartment above German House. Her ankle barely hurt anymore. She was tough.

“Anyone home?” There was no reply. Annegret hung her wet raincoat on a hook and headed straight for Eva’s room. She went to her desk, opened the second drawer from the top, and pulled out one of the blue notebooks inside. She lay down on Eva’s bed, fumbled in the pocket of her black stirrup pants for a fruit candy, which she popped into her mouth, and began to read: Women and children were first led into the “Showers,” followed by the men. In order to trick the victims and prevent panic from breaking out, signs were mounted, indicating the way to the “Bathroom” or “Disinfection Room.” Five to seven hundred adults and children in a given arrival group would be forced into a space barely a hundred meters square. Zyklon B was dumped into a wire mesh contraption, then released into a wire mesh column through a hatch in the roof. Screams could be heard outside the gas chambers at first, then the sound of the voices changed into a buzzing, like in a beehive, till everything went quiet. They all died within five to fifteen minutes. After airing out the gas chamber for thirty to forty minutes, the Sonderkommando, a special prisoner work unit, had to clear out the corpses. They had to collect the dead people’s jewelry, cut off their hair and extract their gold teeth, separate babies from their mothers… Annegret closed her eyes. She thought of little Martin Fasse. She had managed to control herself since his death. She didn’t even carry around the syringe anymore. The one filled with the brownish liquid that made the children weak, feeble, and fatigued. Annegret fell asleep, and her half-finished candy slipped out of her mouth and onto the pillow. The opened notebook fell onto her belly. This was how Eva found her when she got home. She gaped at her sleeping sister, grabbed the notebook, and shook her by the shoulder.

“What do you think you’re doing in here?!” Annegret blinked and came to, then sat up. Eva was fuming. “What were you thinking, prying through my things?!”

“I’m not prying, I’m reading.”

“Annegret, what’s the big idea? Why would you do that?”

With a wave of her hand, Annegret got out of bed, the mattress creaking, and stepped over to Eva’s wardrobe, which had a mirror on its middle door. She fixed up her white-blond hair, picking at it with her thumb and index finger. “I find it engaging.”

Eva looked at her sister in the mirror. She must have misheard. Annegret continued, “You know, it’s like at the hospital. Patients are always trying to outdo each other with their stories.”

“These aren’t stories! This happened.” Eva was aghast.

“Everybody wants to be the one closest to death. Among our parents, those whose child is sickest are the most revered. And if the kid dies, well, they get the gold crown.”

“What the hell are you saying?!” Eva felt dizzy, as if she were in the middle of a bad dream where trusted people did atrocious things. Annegret turned and stepped up close to Eva. Her breath smelled of sticky raspberry candy.

“I mean, Eva, you’re not exactly dumb yourself. It’s just common sense that they’re all lying through their teeth. It was a labor camp—”

“Hundreds of thousands of people were systematically murdered there.” Eva looked at her sister, whom she had known her entire life.

“They were criminals, so of course they wouldn’t get kid-glove treatment,” Annegret continued, unimpressed. “But the numbers that are being thrown around, those are nonsense. I did a rough calculation, myself, once. I happen to know a little bit about chemistry, after all. Do you know how much of this Zyklon B stuff they would have needed to kill all those people? They would’ve had to receive four truckloads every day—”

Eva walked out on Annegret midsentence. Annegret followed on her heels and continued to explain that this alleged mass extermination wasn’t even logically possible. Eva went into the living room and opened the cupboard. She pulled out the manila folder and opened it. She thrust the top sheet in Annegret’s face.

“You drew this.”

Annegret fell silent and looked at the pointed roof, the slanted door and disproportionately large windows, at the two girls in braids and the smokestacks in the background. She shrugged, but Eva could clearly see little beads of sweat form on her sister’s brow and her face turn white.

“Those two,” Eva said. “That’s us. We were there, Annegret. All of those people died right next door to us. We were there, and you know it.” The sisters looked each other in the eye. Eva began to cry, then to sob. Annegret looked increasingly perturbed, as though someone had woken her from a long, comatose slumber. She took a step toward Eva, like she wanted to hug her. Then the front door opened and they heard their father come in.

“Man, oh, man, is it coming down out there. I’m ready for you, Noah!”

Annegret yanked the drawing out of Eva’s hand and began to rip it up. Ludwig and Edith appeared in the door. Ludwig was standing up straighter than usual.

“Notice anything different about me?” he asked jovially.

Edith, on the other hand, immediately sensed something was amiss. Her eyes wandered from Annegret, who was tearing the paper into smaller and smaller bits, to Eva, who was rubbing her face. Her cheeks were blotchy, and her updo had come loose. Then Stefan burst into the room.

“Daddy’s wearing a crosset!”

“It’s called a ‘corset,’ little one. And I could get used to this. I think it’s already helping!”

“Hush, Ludwig,” Edith interjected. “As for you, sweetheart, off to your room now.”

“Why?! Were you crying, Eva?”

“Yes, because of Purzel.” Eva swallowed and pulled herself together.

Edith pushed Stefan out the doorway. “Time to practice your dictation. Scoot! Otherwise no pudding later.” Stefan puffed out his cheeks and shuffled to his room. The other four didn’t move. Even Ludwig was getting worried now.

“What on earth is going on? I have to be in the kitchen in half an hour.”

There’s nothing left to lose, Eva thought, and she said, “What was it like, Daddy, to serve up full bellies and happy hearts to those murderers?”

At that, Annegret pointedly let the scraps of paper flutter to the floor and left the room.

Ludwig sat down at the dining room table. The room was silent but for a gentle knocking on the window whenever the wind blew rain against the panes. Edith crouched down on the carpet and gathered the scraps into her cupped hand. Eva looked at the painting on the wall and tried to remember the cows’ names.

“What would you like to know, Eva?” Ludwig asked.

“A VISITT TO THEE ZOOO is some-thhhingg for thee whole fam-i-lee. We lookk att thee an-i-malss andd fen-ses pro-tecctt us from the dayn-ger-ouss an-i-malss.” In Stefan’s room next door, Annegret was practicing a dictation with her brother. She stood beside him and read the practice text out loud, excessively enunciating each word. Stefan was stooped over his notebook, writing slowly and making lots of mistakes.

“Fences, sweetie. Fences with a ‘c.’ Next sentence: ‘We can see goats or horses anywhere, but where else can we see the lion’s impressive mane or the tiger’s bright fur?’ Question mark.”

“IT WAS A HAPPY TIME,” her father had said. This sentence echoed in Eva’s mind as she stood in the streetcar and held onto one of the hanging straps with her right hand. She was on her way to the public prosecutor’s office. Her parents had still been talking about their time at the camp when the phone in the front hallway rang. It was Fräulein Schenke. There was an urgent telex from Poland that needed translating. Despite the late hour, the streetcar was crowded. Eva stood hedged among the breathing bodies and didn’t feel their touch. She saw her father sitting before her at the table, his posture better than usual. Her mother, hands clasped behind her back, leaning against the cupboard. “It was a happy time,” her father had said. Because this position was the first where he was allowed to bring his wife and daughters with him. They lived together as a family for the first time, in a big house, provided for and protected. It wasn’t till some time had passed that they began to understand what was going on at the camp. The guests in the mess were officers, upstanding folks. Not all of them, of course—some drank too much. The director of the political department? The one with the ferret face? Polite and unassuming. He sometimes asked for leftovers. For the prisoners who worked in his department. No, they didn’t know what he did during office hours. No, the SS people didn’t talk about their work at lunch. Eva’s mother had said that she never even went into the camp. She tended to the household, did laundry, and cooked. She took care of her daughters. Yes, she had to close the windows. It smelled awful when the east wind was blowing. Yes, they knew that bodies were being burned there. But they didn’t learn till afterward that people were being killed in gas chambers. Not till after the war. Why didn’t he request a transfer? He tried twice. No luck. Yes, well, he did indeed join the SS, even before the war. But only because he felt alone, because he was so often separated from his family. Not because of personal conviction. Eva had asked why the main defendant spat at her mother’s feet.

“And why was his wife so hostile? What have they got against you?”

Edith had replied that they didn’t know, and Eva’s father had repeated the line. “We don’t know.”

The telephone had rung in the hallway. When Eva returned to the living room after the short call, and explained that she had to go to the office, her father had looked at her and said, as though making his final point, “We had no choice, child.”

Eva got out at the stop near the office building. She could not remember ever having been so tired in her life. It was all she could do not to sit down on a park bench, never to rise again. Eva took the elevator to the ninth floor, rang at the glass door, and Fräulein Schenke appeared on the other side to let her in.

“So, are you going to join us later at Boogie’s?” Eva shook her head, but Fräulein Schenke continued. “Lehmkuhl’s coming, Miller, and that other clerk… what’s his name again, the one with those unbelievably long lashes?”

“Herr Wettke,” Eva replied.

“Right.”

At that moment, the light blond-haired man appeared in the hallway, and he rushed toward Eva, his face visibly tense. He handed her a thin piece of paper, the printing slightly smeared. A telex. Eva skimmed the brief message and translated its content.

“The journey has been approved by the highest authority. Visas are being issued for all individuals requested.”

For a moment, the blond man looked as if he wanted to embrace Eva, but then he gave her a quick nod and shook her hand with unaccustomed warmth.

“Thank you.”

“Was that it?”

“Yes, that was it. But it was important. It’s in regard to the on-site inspection. We’re going to Poland.”

Eva understood then. After various defendants first claimed that they couldn’t have seen or known this or that, because their office was located elsewhere, and after recurring assertions that the map of the camp was flawed, the prosecution—led by the blond man—had made a motion for a visual inspection of the camp. The defense had been against it, arguing that there were no reliable diplomatic ties between Germany and Poland, and that organizing a trip of this nature behind the Iron Curtain would be too involved. The blond man had persisted, though, and appealed to the highest levels of government in Bonn and Poland. To him, today’s telex represented the greatest success in the trial thus far. He looked happy.

“Will I be joining?” Eva asked quietly. “Or is there someone there who can translate for you?”

The blond man then gave her a look, as if just recognizing her now. “Could I have a quick word, Fräulein Bruhns?”

Eva was surprised by his familiar tone. She followed him down the corridor to his office. He offered her a chair and stood by the window, his back to the courtyard below, out of which the city’s next new high-rise was climbing into the night sky.

“Your fiancé came to see me.”

Eva sat down.

The morning after their return from the island, Jürgen had turned up at the public prosecutor’s office. David Miller had opened the door for him, and they’d given each other a once-over. Their dislike was mutual.

“Fräulein Bruhns isn’t here today,” David said.

“I know; I’d like to speak with the lead prosecutor.”

David hesitated, then made an exaggeratedly servile hand gesture. “If the gentleman would care to follow me.”

David went first, and Jürgen followed him down the hallway. He eyed David’s hair, which was too long in the back, his wrinkled suit coat, and his inappropriate footwear, which looked like athletic shoes. What a slovenly fellow, he thought. At the same time, he had to acknowledge that there were surely plenty of young women impressed by David. Eva, for example. David knocked on the open door to one of the offices and waved Jürgen in. The blond man, in shirtsleeves, was crouched on the floor by the wall; sunlight was beating in through the window, and he had taken off his jacket. He was sorting documents into different-colored folders. Order forms and delivery slips for Zyklon B.

“The people who signed these are all dead. We’re still missing those damn driving permits!” the blond man said to David as he entered.

“You have company,” David responded and left.

The blond man offered Jürgen a seat and waited expectantly. Jürgen removed his hat and explained.

“I am Fräulein Bruhns’s fiancé.”

“I see.” The blond man had been searching for his cigarettes under the papers on his desk. He offered Jürgen one from the pack. “What is this regarding, Herr Schoormann?”

Jürgen had felt badly. But it was too late.

EVA SAT OPPOSITE the blond man and listened as he told her, “He said that the work is taking too great a toll on your nerves, and that your nerves are not terribly stable as it is. He requested that we release you from your duties.”

Eva felt as if she were falling to indefinable depths. She was stunned. “He never discussed this with me. And I’m not going to stop! I’m a part of this trial! I provide the voice for these people.”

The blond man made a placating hand gesture. “Unfortunately, he holds the decision-making power in this case. As a governing authority, we would be liable to prosecution, ourselves, if we continued to employ you against the wishes of your future husband. I am sorry.”

Eva looked at the blond man and wanted to say something, but she just shook her head mutely. She felt nauseous. She stood up and left the office without a word. She rushed down the hallway, which seemed to go on endlessly, and ducked into the ladies’ room. Fräulein Schenke and Fräulein Lehmkuhl were both standing at the mirror, getting ready for an evening at the Boogie Bar. They glanced at Eva, who looked miserable.

“What happened?”

Eva fished the little bottle of peppermint oil out of her purse and opened it. This time the sharp smell shot straight into her forehead, her eyes teared up, and she coughed.

“That pig!” she finally said.

“Which one?” Fräulein Schenke snorted, penciling in her eyebrows.

“Your fiancé? Schoormann?” Fräulein Lehmkuhl asked. “If you don’t want him anymore, let me know.”

Eva stepped up beside the young women and looked at herself in the mirror, at her friendly face crowned with the prim hairstyle. Then she plunged both of her hands into her updo, pulled out the bobby pins one by one, undid the hairband, and shook out her tresses. She let out a desperate, enraged howl, like a battle cry by someone who’s still practicing. The two girls exchanged a bewildered look, then Fräulein Lehmkuhl grinned.

“So you are coming with us?”

Three hours later, Eva was dancing in the middle of an enormous black metal bucket where someone was stirring powerfully and relentlessly with a big metal spoon. Someone who—Pastor Schrader was convinced—made all the decisions. It was so loud that Eva couldn’t think. It was so full that she didn’t know where her body ended and another began. The air she breathed in was the air others had breathed out. Her breath was breathed in by them. She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah! She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah! She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah. With a love like that, you know you should be glad! Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeeahh. Eva was drunk and loved the feeling of Herr Wettke spinning her around this cauldron filled with colorful black people and white people. Eva occasionally caught a glimpse of David Miller, who was sitting on an elevated bench along the wall of the metal bucket, necking with Fräulein Lehmkuhl. Then Eva herself was sitting beside him, without knowing how or when she got there. Or what had become of Fräulein Lehmkuhl. “Where’s Fräulein Lehmkuhl?” she yelled into David’s ear. David shrugged—he was drunk too. He was celebrating his big day, after all. The Beast had been arrested earlier! The court had finally lifted the “deferred detention for health concerns.” He sadly hadn’t gotten to see the ferret’s face. After fleeing the courtroom, he raced to the synagogue. He sat down in the sanctuary, which was empty at that hour. He waited for Rabbi Riesbaum. He might have been able to confide the truth to him. The truth about himself, about his brother. About his family. But after a little while, he’d caught his breath, calmed down, and left. David watched the dancing people, the American soldiers, the civilians, and bellowed into the din, “That was my brother the Beast beat to death! And I had to carry him out! They had gassed my parents as soon as we arrived!” Then he felt Eva’s head fall heavily on his shoulder. She had fallen asleep. Or fainted. He sighed and lifted her off the bench.

Eva came to in the summery evening air outside the Boogie Bar. David had her coat draped over his left arm and held her up with his right.

“I’ll hail a cab for you.”

David led her to the edge of the street and kept an eye out for a glowing yellow roof sign among the passing cars.

“Thank you,” Eva said weakly. Then she remembered something. “What were you just saying about your brother?” Eva lifted her head and tried to find David’s face, but everything was spinning, and she couldn’t catch it.

Then David threw up his arm and waved. “Taxi!”

The car pulled over, and David deposited Eva on the backseat. He placed her purse in her lap, tossed her coat on the seat beside her, and told the driver, “Three-eighteen Berger Strasse.” David shut the door before Eva could even say thank you. He watched the taillights as the taxi drove off and thought that Eva had looked different today. He couldn’t put his finger on it, though. Then he popped up the collar of his jacket and trudged off. To Sissi’s.

The taxi driver, an older man, wanted to have a conversation with Eva. He tried making eye contact in the rearview mirror.

“You want to go to German House? They close soon. In any case, the kitchen is already closed.” Eva looked at her watch but couldn’t make out the time. The driver continued, “Is that place worth visiting, the Boogie Bar? Full of Negroes, isn’t it? You girls need to be careful around them.”

Eva leaned forward then and said she wanted to go somewhere else. She gave the driver the address. The driver repeated it, puzzled, then switched on the blinker, turned the car, and didn’t ask any more questions. The fancy address had silenced him.

THE DOCTOR WAS PAYING Walther Schoormann a visit. He’d had a seizure. He and Jürgen had been talking about their new range of products over dinner, in particular about the washing machines. Should they offer installation packages or not? Would it be worth partnering with plumbing companies and charging a percentage? Walther Schoormann resisted the idea of making money off the workers. He spoke out against it. There was no argument—on the contrary, Jürgen agreed with his father. Walther Schoormann then toppled from his chair, like a candle from its holder. He began to convulse on the carpet, kicking forcefully in all directions. It looked as if he were possessed by a demon. Jürgen couldn’t bear the sight and had to leave the room. Brigitte, together with an astoundingly calm Frau Treuthardt, cleared away everything that might injure her husband and waited for the fit to end. The doctor had prepared her for something like this. After three minutes, it was over. Walther Schoormann was now lying, exhausted, in the expansive bed in his room. He looked fearful but alert, and was discussing with the doctor whether he should spend the night in the hospital. They ultimately decided that the doctor would stay at the house a little while longer.

“But a word of warning: I charge by the minute, Herr Schoormann.” Everyone laughed. Then the doorbell rang, and they all looked around in surprise. Who could that be, at this hour? Jürgen went to see.

He could immediately tell that Eva had been drinking, and as he steered her quickly down the hallway, he called toward the master bedroom, “It’s Eva. She… she was in the area.”

Jürgen closed the door to his room behind them and studied Eva—who stood swaying slightly before him, her hair down, makeup smeared, and eyes glazed—with a mixture of revulsion and desire. “Sit down. Would you like something to drink?”

“Got any gin?”

“I think you’ve had enough.”

Eva collapsed on the wide sofa. “You’re right, I have had enough. Jürgen, I’m breaking up with you.”

Jürgen instantly felt sick. He tried hard not to let it show. “I see. And what has brought about this decision?”

“You! You’ve brought it about! How could you go the office behind my back like that? I will not be treated like a child. I decide for myself, where, when, and how I’m going to work. I’m in charge of myself, and myself alone!”

Not everything came out clearly—Eva was slurring slightly and stumbled over some of her words. But she was very serious. Jürgen could see that.

“You’ve fallen in love with that Canadian.”

Eva looked at Jürgen and swore indistinctly. “That’s the only reason you would get, isn’t it?” she said. “You’re so shortsighted!” She struggled with the word “shortsighted,” which came out sounding more like “shoresighed.” But she was furious, sad, and absolutely decided. “You know, Jürgen, what I need is a friend. And I’ve realized that you aren’t one.”

“Well, I am your future husband.”

“Which means what? My lord? My master? I have to do your bidding?”

“When we met, you told me you were happy to be led.”

“Depends on who’s doing the leading. It would have to be someone who’s mature and knows himself. Not a boy like you!”

“Eva, where is this insolence coming from?”

Eva did not respond, but instead pulled the engagement ring off her finger, with some effort. She set it on the glass coffee table with a distinct click and got up.

“Besides, I could never live in a house that reeks of chlorine like this!”

Jürgen was afraid now. He approached her and tried to take her hand. She dodged him.

“Is this because of what happened the other night?”

Eva almost laughed, then growled, “Please, I’ve experienced worse.”

Jürgen flinched, and Eva almost felt badly for him, but she did not take back what she’d said. Jürgen made one final, fittingly pathetic attempt.

“I just wanted to protect you. I can see how this trial has changed you.”

“Yes, thankfully.”

Eva took her purse from the sofa, her raincoat from the back of the chair, and teetered slightly as she left the room. Jürgen followed her to the front door. He was quiet, then suddenly dashed in front of her in the hallway and blocked her way, his back to the door.

“You’re not leaving!”

Eva looked into Jürgen’s eyes, dark green and flashing deep in their sockets. She looked at his black hair, which by this hour was a bit mussed—he had two devil horns. He had once come close to hitting her. Today, though, all she sensed was his desperate fear of being left. She could have cried, but instead she said, “I wish your father all the best. And please give Brigitte my warm regards.”

Eva reached past Jürgen for the front door handle. Jürgen looked at the floor, then stepped aside and let her pass. The door snapped shut. Brigitte appeared in the hallway and looked at Jürgen curiously.

“What did she want?”

But he went to his room without answering.

ONE DAY IN LATE SUMMER, when especially fat black flies were buzzing against the closed windows, the little girl and her big sister were allowed to join their mother at the hairdresser’s for the first time ever. The big sister didn’t want to go, though. She stamped her foot, and when her mother tried pulling her out of the house, she clung to the door frame with both hands. She was screaming like a small child, although she was nearly nine years old. Then she bit her mother’s hand, and her mother slapped her. But she also no longer insisted she come along. The little girl turned around in the doorway one last time and tapped her temple at her sister. She couldn’t begin to understand her behavior. After all, they were going to get their hair curled and would smell like flowers afterward, like fancy ladies did. The little girl was excited as she walked down a dusty road, holding her mother’s hand. The apples were turning red on the trees, but would still give you a bellyache if you ate one. A group of men in striped suits came walking from the other direction. They were led by three soldiers. One of them greeted her mother by lifting the cane he was carrying. The men in the suits were thin, with big eyes and funny haircuts under their hats. They need to go to the hairdresser’s too, the girl thought.

“Don’t look over there,” her mother said. The girl was spooked by the men, who wouldn’t look at her and moved as if there were no one at home inside. The girl and her mother reached a red-and-white gate. Her mother had to show a piece of paper with a small picture of herself glued on it, then she had to sign something. The girl craned her neck and looked down the endless fence. She wondered why there wasn’t a single bird sitting on the wire. They passed through the gate and walked toward an archway that had something written on it. The girl already knew the letters A and E, because they were in her name.

“A-e-a-e,” she spelled out loud. They passed under the archway.

The light blue room smelled of soap. A man in a white coat lifted the girl into a chair and spun her around a few times. Like a merry-go-round. And like a magician, the man made a comb and pair of scissors appear in his hands.

“I want curls,” the girl said.

The man responded in a foreign language and pointed at a sink. The girl was scared, because having her hair washed hurt her eyes. But the man led her to the sink. He turned on the warm water and let it run through the girl’s hair; he rinsed and lathered and rinsed. He was careful. Not a single drop of water touched the girl’s face, but she kept her eyes shut tight the entire time.

His name was Jaschinsky. Eva remembered now. Standing at the shattered sink in the camp’s former hair salon, Eva remembered him. He’d been a prisoner—once, during a later visit there, the sleeve of his white coat had ridden up, and Eva had noticed the tattooed number. She pointed at it, and he read her the numbers out loud in Polish. Eva repeated them, in order not to forget. At her next visit, she wanted to show Herr Jaschinsky that she had memorized the numbers. But he wasn’t as friendly as usual that time. He normally had two helpers, two young women, who swept up the clippings and put ladies’ hair in curlers. One of them had a funny face, a nose that swooped upward. She wasn’t there that day, though. Herr Jaschinsky washed Eva’s hair and got soap in her left eye. He didn’t notice. Eva typically would have cried at that, but for some reason, she kept quiet. Later, though, when it was time to crimp her hair with the curling iron, he pressed the hot metal against her scalp. It hissed and smelled of burned hair and skin. Eva shrieked. Her mother yelled, and Herr Jaschinsky apologized. With tears in his eyes. Eva’s mother never took her back.

Eva involuntarily touched her fingertips to the spot above her ear, where the oblong scar was covered by her hair. She was ashamed of her childish bawling. What was that momentary pain compared to everything those people had been forced to endure here? A figure appeared in the open doorway to the salon.

“Where have you been? We need you outside. We’re at Block Eleven.”

Eva followed David Miller out onto the camp street.

The day before, Eva had been the one woman among twenty-four men to arrive there by way of Warsaw. The group included six representatives of the defense, the chief judge and his two associate judges, the lead prosecutor, five other prosecutors, David Miller, and two reporters, among others. From the airport, the travelers rode seven hours in a rickety bus on poorly constructed roads. By the time they reached the town that had given the camp its name, it was already dark. They retired to their rooms in a simple lodge on the outskirts. There was very little talking. They were all tired and watchful at once. Eva moved into her small, sparsely appointed room. On the narrow bed was a folded towel of an indistinct pale color and so threadbare that one could almost see through it. That towel’s probably been in use since the camp was running, Eva thought. She got into bed, turned out the light, and tried to comprehend where she was. On location. She listened to the brave ticking of her travel clock and assumed she wouldn’t sleep a wink. But she soon drifted off and the night passed in dreamless sleep. A rooster crowing woke her the next morning, even before her alarm. She went to the window and looked out at the yard behind the inn, where the rooster was bustling about with his hens. Beyond the fence was a marshy meadow, and the horizon was lined with rows of trees—poplars—whose leaves glowed yellow in the morning sunshine. At breakfast, where the whitewashed chill of the dining room suggested a newly built clubhouse more readily than an inn, the men from the defense sat together. The White Rabbit was opening and snapping shut his pocket watch even more than usual. On the other side of the room, members of the prosecution were gathered around the light blond-haired man. David sat there quietly, withdrawn, and didn’t touch his food. The chief judge sat alone at a table and paged through documents as he ate his bread. They look human without their robes, like fathers and sons, husbands and friends and lovers, Eva thought as she sipped the weak coffee. After breakfast they walked to the entrance of the main camp, past single-family homes, where children wearing knapsacks came out on their way to school, and past workshops busy with activity. Conversation, lively at first, quieted and then petered out entirely. They met three Poles at the gate, older gentlemen in dark coats; one was a representative of the Polish government; the other two, employees at the camp memorial site, who would be guiding their tour. Eva translated for the chief judge, whose face no longer looked like the man in the moon from up close, but ordinary. “We would like to gain a comprehensive understanding of the conditions at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the concentration and extermination camp.” The guides looked at them almost pityingly at this request. Together with the delegation, Eva walked under the lettering of the archway and into the camp. Many photos were taken, both by the two reporters and one of the prosecutors. The White Rabbit was busy with a tape measure, pacing off the space between individual blocks with one of his colleagues. He noted distances and vantage points. He hoped to prove the courtroom map of the camp unusable. Eva translated the guides’ remarks and looked around without recognizing anything. Until they entered one of the two-story brick buildings on the camp street.

“The camp registry office was located in these rooms. And here was a barber shop. SS men and their wives had their hair cut here for free by inmate hairdressers.”

The men took a brief look around the light-blue-tiled room. Eva, though, stayed behind, studied the clouded mirrors and dusty swivel chairs and remembered Herr Jaschinsky.

She now followed David toward Block Eleven. He was practically sprinting, and Eva could barely keep up. The group had disappeared around a corner, and for a moment they were alone on the camp street.

“David, wait…” Eva caught up and linked arms with him. He gave her a quick sidelong glance.

“How do you feel about the fact, Eva, that we can just walk down this street? As free individuals?” He didn’t wait for a response. “What did we, of all people, do to deserve this? I think it’s obscene.”

He freed himself from her, turned to the right, and disappeared between two brick buildings. Eva followed him. The men from the delegation were standing there before a brick wall. They appeared ashamed, at a loss. Eva approached, and the blond man turned to her. He asked her to please explain to their guides that unfortunately, no one had thought to bring a wreath. Eva saw that a few flowers and grave candles had been placed by the wall, as well as two wreaths, one of which had a Star of David on its ribbon. Eva translated, and one of the guides made an indistinct gesture. The chief judge announced that they would observe a moment of silence. Eva noticed the White Rabbit discussing briefly with his colleagues. Ultimately, however, they too bowed their heads, folded their arms, or clasped their hands, and recalled everything they had heard from the witnesses over the past months, about what those people saw with their own eyes. They were silent and thought about the people who were forced to stand before this wall, whose naked bodies were marked with large numbers, to aid in the identification of the executed at the crematorium. They were silent and thought about the twenty thousand men, women, and children who were shot here for no reason.

Although the visitors began speaking again as they walked on—through Block Eleven, through the Beast’s interrogation room, through the infirmary, where the experiments were performed, across the grounds where people lined up for roll call, where people were broken, shot, and beaten, to the barracks, where the people were penned, and where they died of sickness and hunger—the moment of silence continued within them. Not one remained unmoved. The sky was cloudless, as though nothing should go unseen. “Beach weather,” one of the reporters said, and took more photos. One of the guides led them into a wooden barracks. They slowly walked down the long middle passage, flanked to the left and right by the three-level wooden bunks on which the people tried to sleep, find a little peace, gain strength, lying there in turns, tightly packed beside each other, on top of each other. By one of the beds in the back, the guide crouched down and pointed to the niche above the lowest bunk. They all leaned in and looked over his shoulder. At first, Eva didn’t understand what there was to see, other than a rough wooden wall, which must have let in the freezing cold during the winter. But then she peered at where the guide was pointing and noticed the faded writing on the wood. Someone had written on the wall, in Hungarian, “Andreas Rapaport, lived 16 years.” The guide read aloud the inscription, and the visitors, who had clustered around the bunk bed, softly repeated the name and remembered how the witness had told them about Andreas Rapaport, who wrote his name in blood on the wall—and who lived only sixteen years.

Eva left the barracks and began to cry. She couldn’t stop. The guide came to her and said, “I’ve seen this many times. You can know every last thing about Auschwitz, but being here is something different altogether.”

David hung back in the barracks by himself. He stood by the plank bed where Andreas Rapaport had lain. Then he knelt on the floor and placed his hand on the wood.

That afternoon, after a lunch break that Eva would later find impossible to recall, they toured the extermination camp, which was two kilometers from the main camp. Eva had packed one of her blue notebooks, to record her impressions that night, back at the lodge, in an effort to get them out of her head. But after she and the others spent hours walking the grounds, along the rambling gatehouse with its distinctive tower in the middle, straddling the train tracks; after they followed the same final path the people took from the ramp; after they stood under the same trees in the birch forest where the people spent the final moments of their lives; after they, like those people, heard the birds singing in the treetops, under a cloudless sky; after they saw the entrance to the chamber, after they grasped the irreversibility; when Eva saw David and the blond man standing close to one another, motionless; when she saw the defense attorney, the White Rabbit—who, like the rest of them, had been utterly humbled—help the chief judge sit down on a tree stump; when she saw the men cry, Eva knew that there were no words for this.