The German Woman by Paul Griner

Author:Paul Griner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Back in bed he picked up a heavy leather book from the stack on the bedside table. It fell open to a page marked by a slightly charred German cigarette card, a picture of Bobby Box fleeing his own drawing.

“Oh, I’m glad you found that!” she said with evident pleasure, and turned it in her hands. “Marie’s. She was going to fill up a Stefan Mart book with them. Do you know them?”

He hadn’t heard of them.

“Great fun. Marie had most of them. The book was ruined much later.”

She took the card and went to sit by the window, where she lit a cigarette. “When I left, I gathered everything I could. I don’t know why I took what I did.” She gestured at the room. “Most of this is from my mother’s house. My brothers died in the last war, my father too. And she died before I came back. The last of the line, I’m afraid. But some of this I’d shipped far earlier, from Germany.” She flipped the card. “I wish I had the entire book this came from. It was the only picture book we could afford, after the war. We bought it with vouchers from cigarette packs.”

“And these?” he said, pulling out a journal, its pomegranate-colored leather spine dry and cracked. “Did these get shipped early on too?”

“Yes.” She smiled. “But they’re private.”

“Sure they are,” Claus said, and opened a page and began to read aloud: “‘In 1915, outside Danzig. A house with a hundred and twenty clocks.’”

When he looked over at her, expecting a smile, her anger surprised him.

“Kate,” he said, and snapped the journal closed. “I’m sorry. I only want to find out about an earlier you.”

“I can tell you all you need to know,” she said, taking the journal and slipping it under a pile of books.

He ran a thumb down the book spines, thinking that his social skills had grown dull; he should have known not to presume. “Trollope,” he said. “Quite a collection.” She didn’t respond, and when her face turned scarlet, he said, “I’m sorry. Did I say something wrong?”

“Time for full confessions, I guess. It seems to be a day for them.” She stubbed out her cigarette. “They’re stolen.”

“Stolen stolen?”

“Not pinched, if that’s what you mean. I found most of them blown into the streets after raids; picking them up didn’t seem like stealing. Especially since they were about to get ruined by the firemen’s hoses. Do you think me horrid?”

He laughed, unsurprised; civilization’s thin veneer. He’d been guilty of peeling it back too, and that she told him at all meant she forgave him the misstep with her journal. His turn. “I have a collection of pipes. My two favorites are real Turkish meerschaum, which I discovered beneath an uprooted tree, the site of some former alehouse, probably. Those aren’t stolen at all. But the others I’ve found in the streets.” He’d gathered them throughout the city, labeling where he’d found each one: Bethnal Green, the Guards’ chapel, Madame Tussaud’s.

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