Excerpt from The Slow Moment

Rebekah Anderson

December 1932

Oldenburg, Germany

Leni rides into the town square market and props her bicycle against the brick wall of the Rathaus where she has seen as many performances as she can afford. Posters for November’s election still hang around the square. The market is busy despite the snow and despite the employment crisis, which has now reached a new peak; she sees familiar faces around her, splurging for the holidays, even though no one is sure what will happen next, a willful faith or a sudden disinterest in the future, Leni isn’t sure.

Tonight is Franz’ Christmas party, and she can’t decide what to bring. It doesn’t help that this season always leaves her melancholy since she lost most of her family in and since the war, a slow attrition over the years until finally there was no more contact.

The clock tower in the middle of the square bongs once for the half hour. Her heels wobble as she sidesteps on the cobblestones, balling a canvas shopping bag in her hands. The smell of blood is in the air from the butcher’s stall next to her. Tonight at Franz and Catherine’s will be one of the rare opportunities for her to enjoy a ham or pork loin that they’ll serve. She hasn’t enough money to buy it on her own. She fingers the vegetables, her mind wandering to the architecture around her, the medieval looking town center, built by Danish princes when this section of Germany was still part of Denmark. It still awes her that she has come so far from home and managed to adapt to the colder weather, the colder people.

Thinking of home, Leni decides to make her grandmother’s borscht and fills her canvas bag with beets and other vegetables. She decides to spend the extra on a small package of stew beef and tucks it into her shopping bag.

At home, she flips on the radio, spinning the dial past news bulletins from the Reichstag in favor of Wagner or Beethoven and the other few left playing over the airwaves. When she first moved to Germany from Prussia, she listened to the radio to help improve her accent, but with the sentiments of the political climate, she can’t stomach it anymore. Her own records are gone now. She broke them with a hammer in the basement and piled them in the trash to make sure none of them would get her into trouble.

The rich and earthy smells from the pot on her narrow stove waft throughout the apartment as though steaming the rooms with flora. Leni has been thinking for days about what she might wear tonight, not that she has that much to choose from, but she wants the right mix. Comfortable yet dressed up. It is so confounding, socializing. She feels a friendly connection to Franz, has since they met when she first moved to town, but his wife Catherine makes her anxious and self-conscious and so do many of their friends. She considers staying home, but knows she should just do it, just go and be herself and smile or fake it if she has to. She has to interact with people some of the time.

She finds a skirt that isn’t too dressy but doesn’t make her feel stumpy and a blouse her mother gave her years ago, something worn but with an old fashioned style that makes it seem traditionally festive. She doesn’t want to be tugging at her hem or sleeves all evening. She fusses with her lipstick and tries to finger wave her hair. She finally gives up, wraps herself up in a heavy wool coat, winds herself with a home knit scarf and pulls a frayed, fur-lined cloche down over her ears.

The borscht is still hot, but she ties the pot lid to it with twine and wraps it in her shopping bag. She carries the parcel down to her bicycle alongside the apartment building and drops it carefully into her basket. It is cold, and the street cobbles look icy. She will have to be cautious to keep the tires from slipping and spilling her soup.

The briskness of the air sliding against her face as she rides and the warmth of the soup near her gloved hands as she grips the handlebars, give her a sense of merriment, finally. For the few minutes of her ride to their house, she is relaxed and calm, not nervous about feeling awkward once she gets there. The smell of warm dill and stewed beef that she trails through the neighborhood is like a gift she is giving to all the folks she passes, those on foot and those bundled in autos or even the occasional horse-drawn Kutsche. She better keep that feeling in mind when she arrives. She is delivering food after all, and in that she could take some pride and comfort and maybe shrink a little less in the corner knowing she has something to offer.

She turns down the narrow side street, paved with light purple bricks and recognizes their building, a dull white, almost cream color, from age. The surface has a sweaty gleam to it, the ice melting from the warmth inside. A bright green sign with the name of the street is screwed into the brick on the front of the building and next to it hangs an old gaslight, its frame made from molded black iron and sculpted into ornate gothic spires.

The long black-framed windows of the shop that used to be on the ground floor are broken out and boarded up, words she can’t make out painted in black across the wall. She sees motion above and looks up. The top floor windows have black iron planter boxes underneath them, and just under the boxes, almost like shadows, dirty streaks from water, potting soil and plant matter have stained the wall. The panes are fogged over from all the people inside and radiator heat, and the shapes that pass in front of the glass are vague, muted blobs of color.

Leni rings the buzzer. She hears laughter and voices from inside and through the steamed-over windows sees Catherine bound down the stairs to let her in. She, of course, is dressed impeccably in a silk dress, her hair in perfect waves around her face, and Leni feels a sudden shabbiness. She holds out her pot not knowing what else to do with it.

“I brought borscht, I hope that’s alright.”

Catherine grins at her as though she thinks her adorable,.

The apartment is warm and mildly lit with holiday candles. The radiators ping and sizzle in corners. Even though the furnishing are not rich or new, Leni still finds the place inviting. She wonders how Catherine has managed to achieve this.

Leni looks around the room at the handful of familiar faces, her pot still gripped in front of her. She doesn’t really know anyone that well but recognizes most of them. All eyes appear trained on her at that moment, and she is relieved when Franz sticks his head in from the kitchen and calls her over. He has an oven mitt on one hand and a spatula in the other, but he puts his wrists on her shoulders and kisses her on both cheeks. She feels a flush burning up her neck and face and stammers a hello.

“We’re so glad you came, Leni.”

He takes her pot from her and sets it on the kitchen table, then motions to the other guests. “I believe you know everyone, except Catherine’s brother, Karl.”

There is a stand-up radio against a wall of the living room and an old sofa with a velvet blanket thrown over it as though to cover holes in the upholstery. Leni notices a lanky man in a brown suit sitting on the sofa. He lifts halfway as though to cross the room and shake her hand.

“Karl is down from Hamburg for the holiday,” Catherine tells her.

The man’s eyes are magnified by the lenses of his spectacles and float an inch from his face. He sits back down and nods to her, his mustache twitching into a smile. Leni feels a dread spill over her; they are hoping to set them up. It is an unmistakable sensation, but she hopes she is wrong.
Franz pours Leni a glass of cognac and pushes it into her hand.

“Leni, come sit.”

Catherine holds Leni’s arm and leads her to the empty side of the sofa, positioning her between herself and her brother, and then sinks the two of them into the soft cushions. Leni takes a nervous gulp of her drink, the heat down her throat, the heat in the room, the heat of her face all threatening to make her head swim. She feels a tight smile pull at the corners of her mouth and holds out her hand. From the vantage point next to him, she can see half his eye at its normal size and half blown up behind his glasses’ lens. She doesn’t know which to focus on, and her eyes travel around the room for a place to land.

On the tables and shelves are tiny shell sculptures that Catherine has made. She collects the shells and rocks from the beach on her trips to the North Sea and glues them together with pipe cleaners and paints them into animals with little shell feet, and shell wings and sometimes shell heads. They seem even more ridiculous in the heat of Leni’s embarrassment, tiny storks, frogs and owls littered around the room.

“Catherine tells me you like music.”

So this is how it’s going to be. It’s been years since she’s had to make banal conversation with a man who may or may not be interested. She takes another sip of her cognac and prepare to suffer through the requisite comments on her accent, no she’s not Polish, she’s German but grew up in Danzig. Yes, she’s glad Hindenberg won the election; no, she’s not in favor of the National Socialist party. Yes, she feels terrible for everyone who has left the country. It all feels so flat and forced when what she really wants to say is that she still misses her mother and her sister even though they’ve been dead for years, that she hasn’t been to bed with a man since her sister’s widower before she left home, that her father stopped returning her letters over a year ago. She wants to tell them these are the things that tug at her mind as she rides her bicycle around the countryside, but she smiles and simply says yes instead.