Page 14

Chapter Fourteen

Over the past several weeks, Hannelore Wolfe had been exploring the Avallon as thoroughly as diplomatic rules would allow. So far, she had found 199 snails.

According to the talk the children had all received upon check-in, the Avallon was known for them. Long-ago craftsmen had celebrated these small creatures by carving, painting, and welding six hundred snails into the Avallon’s trim, walls, and railings, and now, these small idols were the subject of an ongoing scavenger hunt. Youthful guests were to report their cochlear finds to the front desk, where this information could be traded for lemon drops. At the current exchange rate, Hannelore could have traded in her snail location list for seven lemon drops (twenty-five snails = one lemon drop), but she had made a personal resolution to wait until she had found all (six hundred snails = twenty-four lemon drops). Hannelore didn’t much like the taste of lemon. She did, however, like a job well done.

“We are going shopping,” Sabine said. “Put your Firlefanz down.”

Hannelore blinked up from her lists. She had many of them. She had lists of snail locations. Musical instruments in the hotel. Animals that had come with the diplomats. English words she had heard but didn’t understand. Menu items she liked; children she did not. She kept this last list hidden behind the others, as it was titled very strongly (“HATE LIST”), and she was sure she would get in trouble if her mother spied it.

She did not want to go shopping. When they first arrived, she had gone once to look around the glittering, endless shopping arcade. She’d found clothing stores, pharmacies, toy stores, and even a post office for mailing all of it home, if they had been allowed to mail anything. It was too much. Hidden speakers barked music. High-traffic carpets reeked of perfumed soap. Shoppers cawed to one another. Children, nothing like Hannelore, romped around.

No. She did not want to go shopping.

“She is not bothering me,” Friedrich said. He was at the desk in the Wolfes’ suite, Citizen lying on his feet, his pen moving swiftly across stationery. Beside him was a glass of apple juice the staff had brought him, unbidden, as well as a plate of biscuits. “She doesn’t have to go if she does not want to.”

“She does,” her mother said. “She is going to come with me and she is going to be very good. She can look for more snails on the way.”

Hannelore turned an imploring look upon her mother.

Sabine said, “We may not have another opportunity.”

Ah yes, the rumors of a possible exodus had managed to reach even Hannelore. Although she would have liked to swap suites because the mountain lion font on her room’s balcony frightened her, she was not otherwise excited to move again. She was better than she used to be, but a change of scenery always provoked her. Food tasted loud. Clothing sang at her skin. Perfumes screamed in living color. Voices braided during conversations, seeming to be in the wrong language no matter what was being said. Poor Behavior loomed inside her, waiting for an opportunity to explode out of her.

She would not explode. She would be good.

“Get your shoes,” Sabine said.

Hearing the steel in her mother’s voice, Hannelore climbed to her feet. She had to go into her room for her shoes, which meant she had to creep past the French doors to the balcony. Through them was a view of the gardens’ elaborate, deliberate shapes of boxwoods and holly, and beyond that, the mountains. And, of course, the mountain lion–headed font. Hannelore would have had to press her face right against the glass to catch a glimpse of it affixed to the hotel’s outside wall, which was exactly what she’d done the first night. In the gloom, she’d seen it move. On second thought, she could not remember if she had seen it move or just imagined how terrible it would have been if it had. Or how wonderful. Wonder, horror. Hannelore had a hard time telling feelings apart.

When Hannelore scurried back from her room, she heard Sabine telling Friedrich, “Please find out the truth while I am gone.”

There was a strangeness to her voice. Hannelore had noticed this happened sometimes with grown-ups. It was as if they were trying out the way someone else would say things, or as if their words got squished before they could get them out. At their posting in Brazil, she had created a list of times she had heard adults have strange voices, but it must have gotten lost because she had not seen it in DC.

“I will talk to Lothar,” Friedrich replied.

Shopping was every bit as dreadful as Hannelore had imagined. She had to count to keep herself good, especially when Frau Hof joined them, talking the entire time about the departure rumor. 579 seconds to purchase nylons (the store would only allow the women to purchase three pairs each). 411 seconds to buy nails (one box each, not including Hannelore). 550 seconds to find and buy rubber bands (“Get them while you can!” said this shop owner), 300 seconds to buy more soap than Hannelore could ever imagine needing, and an excruciating 1,111 seconds to purchase three pairs of shoes, with her mother and Frau Hof indecisively picking up one pair and then another, turning them over to examine the soles. Finally they spent 300 seconds purchasing a new winter coat for Hannelore, a fur-lined hat for Sabine, and a stole for Frau Hof.

The two women assessed their finds in the hallway. Hannelore could tell that her mother felt satisfied, a hunter with her skinned rabbits, exhausted but proud in her heels.

“Vitamin tablets!” exclaimed Sabine. “Wherever did you find those?”

Frau Hof replied, “I got the last one from the pharmacy counter.”

The two women broke off conversation to stare at a trio of Japanese women in the pavilion. The frisson of distaste between the trios was palpable even to Hannelore.

Frau Hof wrinkled her nose and said, in a very different tone, “Bis sp?ter, Frau Wolfe. Tell me if you hear anything about leaving.”

“Genau. Sp?ter.”

In the elevator, the operator asked which floor they were going to before obediently falling silent. The operator’s stillness was uncomfortable; it reminded Hannelore of the mountain lion–headed font. Hannelore distracted herself by drawing in the air with her finger, sketching a portrait of Citizen only she could see.

The operator’s head moved slightly. She seemed to want to say or ask something.

Sabine gently pressed Hannelore’s hand down. Then, as the door opened, she told the operator, “I appreciate your discretion,” and tipped her.

As mother and daughter were walking down the hall alone, Sabine asked, “What do you think about possibly staying in America, Hannelore?”

An easy question, an easy answer. Hannelore had liked her room in Washington, DC, and she already knew what the train journey would be like.

“What if you had to stay here alone for a while, and wait for our return?”

Hannelore turned a betrayed face to her mother.

Sabine said, “Germany has been at war for longer than America, Hannelore. It will not be as easy. There will be many conveniences we will have to do without once we get there. That is why I was buying those shoes.”

Hannelore stared at her mother’s feet. The shoes had not been in her size, or Hannelore’s, or her father’s.

Sabine seemed to guess her thinking. “But they had the best soles.”

Hannelore knew her mother wanted her to understand something without having to spell it out, but Hannelore didn’t want to understand. She lifted her hand to continue the drawing in the air. Her mother seized her wrist.

“Hannelore,” she hissed, “don’t. I’m trying to talk to you about something important.”

The physical contact was so unusual. It was as if both Hannelore and Sabine became different people through it. Sabine, someone who would grab someone; Hannelore, someone who would be touched. They both looked at Sabine’s hand on Hannelore’s skin. Slowly, Hannelore understood that this contact was because Hannelore had done a Poor Behavior without even realizing it. She was supposed to want to stay here in the hotel by herself. Other girls probably would have realized this. Hannelore, who could not tell horror and wonder apart, had mixed things up. With her free hand, she hit herself.

“No,” Sabine said. “Do not start that.”

The Poor Behavior demanded punishment, though, so, even as Sabine used Hannelore’s wrist to propel her toward their suite, Hannelore kept hitting the heel of her other hand against her temple. Each time she did, she groaned, “ Ahh .” Her mother fumbled with her key at the door while trying to keep Hannelore from sinking to the ground.

“Not again,” her father said, from the other end of the hall. He strode quickly to the door and unlocked it for Sabine, then helped bundle Hannelore inside, all the way to her room. “What happened?”

Sabine just let out a helpless little sound.

Friedrich sounded angry as he caught the hand Hannelore was using to hit herself. “Stop this at once.”

“Friedrich, don’t, it’ll just—”

Hannelore’s ahh s became AHH s. Her body went rigid. Her father released her wrist, but she just sank to the ground and carried on hitting and squalling.

“You only made it worse,” Sabine said.

“And you are an expert? Curse that meddling general manager; I knew she would not understand. They took Otto’s barbiturates.”

“I hate when he uses them anyway.”

Friedrich leaned in close to Sabine. “Do not mistake me: I don’t like it, either. But Lothar is on his way here. Is this what you want him to see of her?”

Fear rippled from her mother; anger rippled from her father. Neither of her parents seemed to realize that Hannelore was doing this for them. Again and again, she hit the heel of her hand against her own temple, punishing herself for the Poor Behavior. When they didn’t acknowledge her, she got louder. She knew she was not supposed to draw in the air. She knew she was supposed to want to stay here in America by herself. She wanted them to know.

Miserably, she hit herself.

Her parents had drawn into the sitting room, where they spoke in low, urgent voices; Hannelore heard snatches of it.

Sabine said, “—we should do it my way.”

“ Your way sees us blacklisted. Lothar says—being too skittish—”

“—the consequence for misplaced optimism—”

“Don’t hector me!”

“She is my daughter, too—”

“—Lothar has heard her sing; she is the only way they will get what they want.”

“And after they have gotten what they want?”

“Sabine, I don’t know. Stop asking me questions. I do not know. I do not know.”

Ich weiss es nicht.

Hannelore rolled onto her side. As she did, her cheek squelched on the mat in front of the balcony doors. She smelled the metallic scent of the hot springs. The mineral water coated her face. Calm coated her, too, as thorough a sensation as the surprising joy she’d experienced when she pressed her hand into the damp moss on the first day. Calm. And control . She was quite suddenly put in mind of that woman she’d seen the first day, June Hudson, the general manager who had vexed her father. It was as if she could not stop remembering how it had felt to see her. The way it had felt to think, A woman can look like that? I could look like that?

“Hannelore, are you done—oh, what is that?” Crouching, Sabine started to touch the doormat but recoiled. “Get up from there; Friedrich, I think the door is leaking or something has been spilled.”

But what if, Hannelore thought, no one had spilled anything? What if the mountain lion had poured words out of its mouth in a language that only she could understand? What if Hannelore was not meant to be terrified but delighted? Wonder, horror. One of the most difficult challenges about this world, Hannelore thought, was how tightly feelings were entwined. It was so difficult to choose the right one.

A gentle rapping sound made her mother freeze.

Her father opened the door.

“Lothar,” he said, “we were expecting you.”