When she finally told Carsten, he was both delighted and embarrassed. He never spoke of the pregnancy by name and made no changes to their daily life—except for the conjugal visits, which immediately ceased. Ania did not tell anyone else. Let Carsten and Doktor Schrenke, the old gossip, spread the word.

In the evenings, Carsten liked to sit with her in the parlor—an uncomfortable, dark room with nothing but the fire in the brazier to recommend it. They listened to the news on the radio and he forced himself to read the Bible, self-imposed penance for a man who never went to church. As he read, his lips shaped the words. Ania sat beside him in the reclining armchair he had given her as a wedding present, darning socks and half hearing the news.

Sometimes Wolfgang ventured into their little cocoon with a question about schoolwork. Unlike his brother, he was a terrible student. He hunched over his books like a man flinching from a blow. The softer subjects were of particular difficulty—the vague but cautionary parables of history, the dense imaginative formulations of literature. He could not wait to work full-time on the farm and genuinely enjoyed making the rounds with his stepfather, learning how to stack the baled hay, when to hose down the pigs, where to reinforce a fence. He didn’t even mind Carsten’s finicky and exacting commands. Next fall his official apprenticeship was set to begin. Yet Ania always felt a twinge of sorrow at the sight of his dark head bowed over his schoolwork.

He was her mistake, poor child, born at a time when only wickedness was being ushered into the world. He was the product of her hungry, ration-fed womb and thin, insufficient breast milk. As a young mother, she had not had time to care for him. When he was sick with scarlet fever as a toddler, she had tied him to the bedpost on a leash to quarantine him. Carsten’s farm was her way of making amends.

“Here is something for you,” Carsten said from his armchair one evening, extending an envelope with Frau Ania Kellerman written across the front. The baby hiccupped in her belly.

“Thank you,” Ania said, her heart suddenly pounding. She did not recognize the address—a street in Momsen. But the name—R. Brandt—took her breath away.

She sat rigidly still, terrified that Carsten would ask her about its sender. The torrent of chemicals in her womb made the hiccupping stop.

Thankfully, Carsten was engrossed in a seed catalog.

Ania resumed her mending. The minutes sagged. The pages of Carsten’s magazine rustled. It was weaning season, and outside the mother cows bellowed for their calves. Across the pasture, in the barn, the calves cried back.

When enough time had finally elapsed, Ania excused herself.

Behind the closed door of her room, she tore open the envelope.

Inside was a thin sheet of airmail paper, the script written in a shaky but familiar hand.

Ania? it read. Do I recognize you?