The German Girl

This chapter explains what really happened to Anna’s father. As a young child, she always expected him to return home “until one cloudy September day: the fifth anniversary of the fateful day on which Dad chose to disappear” (82). At a school ceremony, Hannah hears her father’s name called on a “list of the disappeared” (82) and understands for the first time that her father died five years earlier. When Anna comes home and tells this to her mother, she realizes “for the first time, he was really dead” (83). Anna tells the story of the day her father died. He left for work at 6:30 a.m., following his routine as usual. Anna’s mother was three months pregnant with Anna but hadn’t yet told him of her pregnancy. She was planning to do so that night; she had bought his favorite red wine for the occasion. Anna wonders “where he went when at 8:46 a.m. he heard the first explosion” (85). She imagines he went directly to ground zero to try and help. She imagines him carrying a wounded person to safety and helping firefighters and police officers in their rescue attempts. Although she likes to imagine that her father is still safe, she also admits that he most likely was “trapped in the rubble” (85). She says that both the city and her mother were paralyzed by the events. Her mother waited two days before reporting him missing. She resisted mourning and did not accept condolences. She quit her job, living off a trust set up by her husband’s grandfather. Anna believes withdrawal was the only way her mother could cope with both the pain of the loss and the pain of not telling him that he would be a father before he died.

Hannah learns that she is to begin packing for Cuba the next day. She meets up with Leo, who tells her “Khuba” is actually spelled “C-u-b-a” and that her father is alive (90). He will be returned to his family on the condition that his family “hand over the apartment building, all our other properties, and that we leave the country in less than six months” (91). Hannah learns some details about the price of her upcoming trip. For example, her mother paid 500 American dollars, in addition to the $150 for each permit, as a guarantee that they won’t seek work in Cuba. They also had to buy return tickets, even though it is known they will not be returning. Hannah’s father then returns home from the police station. He is gaunt and dirty, with a completely shaved head. Hannah and Leo run to Tiergarten park; Leo tells Hannah that Hannah’s father has sought lethal cyanide pills on the black market. “He asked my papa to buy three capsules for your family,” Leo says (95). The pills can be stored in one’s mouth and broken at any time for an immediate death. When Hannah returns home, she looks for these pills but doesn’t find them.

The next day, Hannah goes out to the buildings where Leo lives for the first time, near the school for the “impure” (98). What she finds there are people who look “lost, disoriented” (99). There is broken glass on the pavement, but no one seems to care. Windows are boarded up and covered in graffiti, which includes “six-pointed stars” (99). She does not find Leo or his family in their apartment. She’s told by a passing woman that they left in the night with suitcases. When Hannah returns home, she finds her father throwing away his writings and studies. Her mother is packing fancy dresses and is an energetic, euphoric mood. This tells Hannah that she is actually suffering.

Anna and her mother visit a woman who was on the St. Louis, “the transatlantic liner that took Aunt Hannah to Cuba” (105). They bring the photos that Hannah sent. The woman’s name is Mrs. Berenson and she lives in the Bronx. When they arrive, they find an old woman who still has a German accent. She is not very interested in Anna’s family but simply wants to see the photos. She scolds Anna when she gets too close to a replica of a building her family had once owned in Berlin, before it was destroyed by Soviets during the war. When she sees the photos, the old woman “seems delighted at the images: the swimming pool, the bathroom, the gym, the elegant women. Some people are sunbathing, others posing like movie stars” (107). The woman seems very happy until she finds one photograph in which “passengers were crowded at the rail on the side of the ship, waving goodbye. Some of them were carrying their children. Others had hopeless looks on their faces” (107). At this photo, the old woman begins to sob, and Anna and her mother leave the woman’s home. Anna speaks excitedly about her upcoming trip to Cuba with the photo of her father by her bedside.