and seemed to be working on pulling out the stitching. Sister August did not move for more than a minute. She sat breathing in, out, in, out, as the children, the cabaret group, and even Hanne herself wondered if she was for the Turkish slipper.
“Thank you, Hanne,” she said eventually, and swallowed twice in quick succession. “Now, would you invite the actors into my study for tea?”
The bruises that had covered Hanne’s entire body when she arrived had long since faded. And although she was still thin, she didn’t look consumptive anymore. But there were still dark half-moons beneath her pale blue eyes, and her chipped front tooth meant that she seldom smiled. It was the damage that you couldn’t see, however, that Sister August worried about.
On the day she arrived, Hanne Schmidt, with dry eyes and a flat tone, had confessed that her father had spent the rent and bought her the clothes and the makeup and the shoes for a musical act, which she had performed in a local beer palace. But when the money didn’t roll in fast enough, he suggested she perform little extras with the customers after closing time as well.When she refused, he hit her. Or touched her. Or threatened to tell her mother. Eventually her mother, who worked all day in a factory, found out anyway. Nobody slept that night. As soon as the trams started to run, her father packed his bags and left. Her mother, deserted, broke, and with four children to feed, drank a bottle of rye vodka and took the easy way out.
“How old are you?” Sister August had asked.
“Almost twelve,” she had replied.
The girl had stood up and was on the point of leaving when Sister August suggested what might happen to her if she did. She spared her no details; she read out articles in the evening paper that chronicled murders, rapes, and dismemberment and then suggested that she should reconsider. Hanne Schmidt, who was by that time visibly flushed in her heavy coat, sat down again.
“What about my father?”
Sister August carefully folded up the newspapers before speaking.
“God punishes the wicked.”
Six months later, as the cabaret group, still in their costumes and greasepaint, filed out in the direction of her office, Sister August rubbed her face with her palms. She wished she still believed it was true, that the good were rewarded and the bad punished.That morning she had received a letter from the office of her order requesting that she come immediately to discuss her position. She had been at St. Francis Xavier’s for seven years. She knew that in that time the orphanage had become a major drain on the order’s limited resources. It was time, her Mother Superior wrote, to move on.
anne. Wernher Siegfried heard the name. So it was not her. He scanned the room once more. And then he saw a girl he had missed before, a girl in the back row with dark hair pulled tightly into two pigtails, her eyebrows clenched, and an expression that he recognized as matching the one on the face of the actress in the boat-house all those years before, when he had declared his undying love. This must be the girl who could be—he paused to check himself— his daughter.
“Please come this way,” said the red-eyed nun who ran the place. “The tea will be getting cold.”
As she poured him a cup of tepid English breakfast, the actor, writer, and occasional director offered to teach the children once a week, no charge. Sister August told him she would have to think about the idea carefully. She was not so naïve as to believe he wanted to do it out of the goodness of his heart. He must have another agenda. But when he went on to suggest that it could lead to a performance by the children, which could be the centerpiece of a fund-raising event, she saw that maybe this was just what she needed after all. If she could indeed raise a considerable amount of money, maybe this would prove to her order that her calling was there, in Berlin.
“But aren’t you busy?” she
“Thank you, Hanne,” she said eventually, and swallowed twice in quick succession. “Now, would you invite the actors into my study for tea?”
The bruises that had covered Hanne’s entire body when she arrived had long since faded. And although she was still thin, she didn’t look consumptive anymore. But there were still dark half-moons beneath her pale blue eyes, and her chipped front tooth meant that she seldom smiled. It was the damage that you couldn’t see, however, that Sister August worried about.
On the day she arrived, Hanne Schmidt, with dry eyes and a flat tone, had confessed that her father had spent the rent and bought her the clothes and the makeup and the shoes for a musical act, which she had performed in a local beer palace. But when the money didn’t roll in fast enough, he suggested she perform little extras with the customers after closing time as well.When she refused, he hit her. Or touched her. Or threatened to tell her mother. Eventually her mother, who worked all day in a factory, found out anyway. Nobody slept that night. As soon as the trams started to run, her father packed his bags and left. Her mother, deserted, broke, and with four children to feed, drank a bottle of rye vodka and took the easy way out.
“How old are you?” Sister August had asked.
“Almost twelve,” she had replied.
The girl had stood up and was on the point of leaving when Sister August suggested what might happen to her if she did. She spared her no details; she read out articles in the evening paper that chronicled murders, rapes, and dismemberment and then suggested that she should reconsider. Hanne Schmidt, who was by that time visibly flushed in her heavy coat, sat down again.
“What about my father?”
Sister August carefully folded up the newspapers before speaking.
“God punishes the wicked.”
Six months later, as the cabaret group, still in their costumes and greasepaint, filed out in the direction of her office, Sister August rubbed her face with her palms. She wished she still believed it was true, that the good were rewarded and the bad punished.That morning she had received a letter from the office of her order requesting that she come immediately to discuss her position. She had been at St. Francis Xavier’s for seven years. She knew that in that time the orphanage had become a major drain on the order’s limited resources. It was time, her Mother Superior wrote, to move on.
anne. Wernher Siegfried heard the name. So it was not her. He scanned the room once more. And then he saw a girl he had missed before, a girl in the back row with dark hair pulled tightly into two pigtails, her eyebrows clenched, and an expression that he recognized as matching the one on the face of the actress in the boat-house all those years before, when he had declared his undying love. This must be the girl who could be—he paused to check himself— his daughter.
“Please come this way,” said the red-eyed nun who ran the place. “The tea will be getting cold.”
As she poured him a cup of tepid English breakfast, the actor, writer, and occasional director offered to teach the children once a week, no charge. Sister August told him she would have to think about the idea carefully. She was not so naïve as to believe he wanted to do it out of the goodness of his heart. He must have another agenda. But when he went on to suggest that it could lead to a performance by the children, which could be the centerpiece of a fund-raising event, she saw that maybe this was just what she needed after all. If she could indeed raise a considerable amount of money, maybe this would prove to her order that her calling was there, in Berlin.
“But aren’t you busy?” she
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