Free The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa

else we could go. I hoped it was a long way from the Ogres.
    “The rain has eased; let’s go.” Leo set off down the stairs without giving me time to catch my breath. Heaven knows where he wanted to go now.
    We came out into the main square dotted with puddles. We went to wait for a tram, and Leo bent down and began to draw in the mud: a tiny, round island beneath an outline he said was Africa. He had made a map out of water and mud. Then he drew a city beside another puddle.
    “This is where our house will be, by the seaside.” He took my hand, and I could feel how dirty and wet his was. “We’re going to Khuba, Hannah!”
    His face fell when he realized he hadn’t managed to make me as enthusiastic as he was.
    “What are we going to do on this island?” was the only thing I could think to ask him, although I knew he wouldn’t have an answer.
    The possibility that we were leaving was becoming increasingly real; that made me nervous. Until now, we had been able to cope with the Ogres and with Mama’s crises. Just knowing we would soon be leaving made my hands tremble.
    Suddenly Leo began talking about marriage, having children, living together, but he hadn’t even told me if we were engaged. We’re so young, Leo! I thought he should at least have asked me, so that I could accept; that was how it was always done. But Leo didn’t believe in conventions. He had his own rules and drew his own maps in water.
    We were going to Khuba. Our children would be Khubans. And we’d learn the Khuban dialect.
    While Leo was crouching to draw at the exit to Hermann Tietz’s, a woman carrying a hatbox jumped and fell into the middle of a puddle, obliterating our map on the spot.
    “Filthy kids,” she hissed, glaring at Leo.
    I peered up at her from the ground. She looked like a giant with fat, hairy arms, and her fingernails were scarlet-painted claws.
    I couldn’t bear how rude everyone was. Good manners were disappearing with each day that passed in a city where everyone was intent on smashing windows and kicking anybody who crossed their path. Good manners were no longer necessary. Nobody spoke anymore; they all shouted. Papa complained that the language had lost all its beauty.For Mama, the German pouring from the loudspeakers all over the city had become a vomit of consonants.
    I looked up and saw that the skies were about to open. A gray mass of clouds, heralding a storm. All around us, people were running toward the Brandenburg Gate to watch the parade the loudspeakers were announcing. Today was a holiday: the purest man in Germany was fifty.
    How many more flags could the city bear? We tried to reach Unter den Linden but couldn’t force our way through. Children and young people were thronging along windows, walls, and balconies to see the military procession. They all seemed to be screeching, “We are invincible! We will rule the world!”
    Leo poked fun at them, imitating their salute with his right arm, once again bending his hand upward to signal “Stop!”
    “Are you crazy, Leo? These people don’t take that kind of thing as a joke,” I said, tugging at his arm. We launched ourselves into the crowd again. Now the odyssey would be to get home.
    A deafening noise came from on high. An airplane streaked overhead, and then another, and another. Dozens of them filled the Berlin sky. Leo suddenly turned serious. As we were saying good-bye to each other, a detachment of mounted cavalry rode past. They stared at us in amazement, as if to say, “Why are you here and not at the parade?”
    The first thing I did when I arrived home was to look for the atlas. I couldn’t find Khuba on the pages showing Africa, or in the Indian Ocean, around Australia, or near Japan. Khuba did not exist, it did not appear on any continent. It wasn’t a country or an island. I was going to need a magnifying glass to examine the smallest names, lost in the dark-blue blotches.
    Possibly it was an island within another island, or a tiny