“Ah, of course.” He crossed the room in three great strides.

Benita smiled brightly at Clotilde.

Franz rejoined Benita at the door with the valise. “Frau Fledermann and I are betrothed,” he announced, almost fiercely, taking her arm. And for a moment, they—Benita, Herr Muller, and Clotilde—all stared at him gape-mouthed.

Clotilde was the first to speak. “Congratulations!” she said shyly.

“Thank you,” Benita said, smiling broadly at Franz, surprised at the enormity of her own happiness.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

EHRENHEIM, JUNE 1950

The photograph in the newspaper made Ania look frightened, and Carsten proud and foolish.

“You were right,” he announced bitterly. “It would have been better not to invite that photographer.”

“No, no,” Ania lied. “No one looks at those pictures anyway.”

A month had passed and, so far, this seemed to be true.

But each night she had terrible dreams. In these, she was no longer on the march. She was a girl, in her father’s house. Ania, Herr Doktor Fortzmann would say in his stern, sonorous voice, it is vanity to think you can change fate. She would wake in a sweat, her feather bed soaked. And when she saw her own dim reflection in the mirror, she mistook it for a ghost.

Married life was not very different from her life as a tenant. As a paying boarder on Carsten’s farm, Ania had grasped his intentions early. He was certainly not flirtatious—God forbid! Even the idea was alarming—but he was solicitous. And her responsibilities were already those of a wife: cooking, cleaning, ironing his shirts . . . So Carsten’s unadorned offer of matrimony had not come as a surprise. And once she agreed, there was no sense in abiding by old-fashioned traditions of propriety. Neither of them was religious. Neither was a virgin. And for both, their union was a utilitarian arrangement. Carsten favored swift, silent encounters with no pretense of romance. They slept in separate bedrooms, but from the first day of their engagement, he had maintained a regular schedule of visits: Tuesdays and Fridays. He had not deviated from it once.

Which explained why, at the start of her marriage, she found herself undeniably pregnant. Five months along, the village doctor confirmed with unsubtle amusement. Herr Kellerman will certainly be pleased. He grinned.

But Ania was not amused. Denial had shielded her from the fact for as long as possible—her cycles had been irregular since the war and she had convinced herself she was too old to have children. Meanwhile, her belly grew round and she was hungry all the time. There was a flush of fat on her cheeks. Her pregnancy was too far along to escape.

Even so, she tried. She rode the wagon over rutted fields, scrambled up ladders and jumped down from the odd places the hens laid eggs, initiated a rigid program of bitter teas and scalding baths. She did not tell Carsten the news. But the baby was stubborn. It clung to her like a barnacle; she imagined its tiny fists grasping the soft tissue of her womb. It was determined to survive.