Frisch was talking, and the whole room was quiet. “It’s time to fortify the wall,” he said. “Time to shore it up.” They’d go west. They needed to repair the Westwall to keep the Amis and the British out. Six hundred and thirty kilometers of ditches and pillboxes and cement to keep out the enemy tanks, and they needed to get them ready. The efforts were already under way in places, but there was much more to be done. The work wouldn’t be easy. Long hours digging and hauling dirt and rocks and laying down wire, but they weren’t little boys in knee socks anymore. No, they were soldiers now, and their country needed them. They’d be in towns near Karlsruhe mainly, and a few would go even farther. They’d stay for ninety days at least, depending on how fast the work went, and they’d be paid just like soldiers. They’d get their eighty marks.
Georg looked at Müller and Graf and all the boys across the table. He heard what Frisch was saying. He heard every word, but it wasn’t until he saw their faces that he understood. The youngest boys set their hands on the tabletop. They pounded their palms against the wood, and there was a strange light in their eyes. A shout went up in the room, and the boys stood together in a single motion. They rose from their chairs. They threw their arms around each other’s shoulders, and someone in the back shouted. “Finally,” he said, “we’re finally going,” and Frisch stepped back and let them celebrate.
3
Ilse was waiting at the milk stand the next morning, her eyes ringed in blue. She had grown as sleepless as Etta in recent years. “Look how old we are,” she would say, and they laughed at how true it was. Etta stood behind her and watched the stragglers come. They had finished their breakfast dishes and were coming with their pitchers and their shopping bags. Maria Keller was there and old Frau Schiller and Hansi Bollinger and Hilde Zeister, who’d never married because no one had asked her. They all stood around like soldiers and waited for their milk.
Ilse took Etta by the elbow. “How is Max? God bless your boy. I hope he’s well.”
“He’s sleeping,” Etta told her. “He’s been sleeping since yesterday evening, and I don’t want to wake him.”
Ilse nodded. “Let him rest. Sleep is better than food for him.”
A few other ladies stopped to say hello, to pat Etta on the shoulder and congratulate her because her boy was home. Our best to Max, they told her. Thank God in heaven he’s back. Bring him by, bring him by so we can see him, and they were happy for her and sad for themselves and they went back to their places in line.
“They took the Hillen boy.” Ilse spoke in a whisper, and Etta had to lean in closer so she could hear. “At four in the morning they came and took him from his bed.” Nobody knew where he was now. Poor Ushi, poor Ushi who cried for her boy all morning on her steps. Why take Jürgen, why take him, with his sweet face, and Etta just shook her head.
A group of six German League girls passed by just then. They wore crisp blouses and dark blue skirts and the lucky ones had climbing jackets nipped tight at the waist. Ilse stopped talking when she saw them.
“It’s turning,” Etta said, watching the girls. “It smells like more rain.”
“It’s come early this year,” Ilse agreed. “I could tell from the crows, how they gathered on my tree.”
“The earwigs came in August this year and not in October,” Regina Schiller said from the front of the line. Her hands shook, but not from the cold. She had the shaking disease just like her mother. “It’ll be stormy this winter. There’ll be no place to put all the snow.” She shuffled toward the stand.
The German League girls cut through the line, and they were worse than the HJ boys, how they behaved. They pushed their way through without apology, and one of them stepped hard on Etta’s foot. They walked in a bubble. They laughed and nudged each other, and their legs were pink from the chill. They should be in school. They should be learning their lessons, but they wore uniforms instead and walked along the streets. They were organized into squadrons and groups and battalions. Disciplined as cadets. They cleared fields and ran around the track and went to the depot to sort through donations, the old coats and scarves and silverware and all the wool the ladies had made from unraveling socks and sweaters. They had a shine in their eyes, those girls, and they walked past the old women and gave them no greeting. “You’ve got no manners,” Etta said. She said it in a low voice so nobody else could hear. “Your mother didn’t raise you right.”
Ilse was at the barrel now. She set her pitcher on the table, and Etta stood behind her. Farther back the ladies had begun to barter. Eggs exchanged for a single square of chocolate, fresh churned butter for tea bags, sausage links for colored wool. Deprivation made them hard. They’d saved and skimped and worked for years, and all they had now was ration coupons and runny milk and what they could get from their families up in the hills. All their frugality had come to nothing. They should have married farmers. They’d be eating then and their pantries would be full, and still they contented themselves. Things could be worse. Thank God they weren’t in the city, thank him twice over, because that’s where the bombs fell. Emmerich was gone and thousands dead, Emmerich and Kleve, and these cities were far away but what difference did a few hundred kilometers make when the enemies flew their planes across the country from one side to the other.
Etta tapped Ilse on the shoulder. “I want to have a klatsch.” There were more reasons to mourn than to celebrate, but she wanted the ladies around her table again. There had to be at least two cakes for the table in better days. Two cakes and coffee and real black tea and, once the cakes were gone, a bottle of bocksbeutel wine or fruit liquor to keep the conversation going. The good tablecloth came out and the silver serving pieces, and all the ladies sat together and drank from dainty cups. They knew whose husbands drank or chased the cleaning girls in town, whose boys had brought home unsuitable girls or no girls at all. They knew which houses were messy and which ones loveless and which ones strapped for cash, and still they drank their coffee and talked of other things.
Ilse turned around. She looked at the line behind Etta. They were all the way to the butcher market already, and soon they’d be turning the corner. They stood in their walking boots and their thick stockings, and all around them the air went damp and the first drops began to fall.
“All the ladies can come,” Etta said.
“I don’t know.” Ilse squinted. “People might talk.” The old woman filled Ilse’s pitcher, careful not to spill. She brought it back to the table and took Ilse’s green rationing ticket and her money, and her hands shook the whole while.
“Let them talk.” Etta set her empty pitcher down. There wasn’t anything wrong with having a klatsch even now when food was scarce. It was the company and not the pastries that mattered. It was having the ladies round her table. “I’ll make my cake.”
Ilse tilted her head. She was tempted now, Etta could tell. Ilse was quick with the serving knife. All bones and no meat, and still she ate more than the other ladies, and when it came time to bring the sweet liquor out from its cabinet, she jumped from her chair to fetch the bottle. What a sweet drop, she’d say, setting her hands across her belly. “People might talk,” Ilse said again now, but her voice had turned doubtful, and Etta smiled then because she knew.