Free The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa Page A

peninsula belonging to no one. It could also be uninhabited, and we would be the first settlers.
    We would start from scratch and make Khuba into an ideal country, where anybody could be blond or dark-haired, tall or short, fat or thin. Where you could buy a newspaper, use the telephone, speak whateverlanguage you wished, and call yourself whatever you wanted to without bothering about the color of your skin or which God you worshipped.
    In our watery maps, at least, Khuba already existed.

    I always thought there was nobody more courageous and intelligent than Papa. In his prime, he had a perfect profile, Mama said: a Greek sculpture. Nowadays she no longer celebrated him. She no longer ran to his side when he came back tired from the university, where they held him in high esteem. Her face no longer lit up as it used to when they called her “the learned doctor’s lady” or “the professor’s wife” at society events where she looked divine in her pleated ball gowns created by Madame Grès.
    “No one can touch French dressmakers,” she boasted to her fans.
    Papa loved to see her like that: happy, sensual, elegant. The gift of mystery so many film stars cultivated seemed to come naturally to her. Anyone seeing her for the first time could not rest until he or she had been presented to the ethereal Alma Strauss. She was the perfect hostess. She could talk expertly about the opera, literature, history, religion, and politics, and without offending anyone. She was the ideal complement to Papa, who, wrapped up in his own ideas, sometimes bewildered people with incomprehensible scientific theories.
    He’d changed. His suffering, and the concern he felt about finding a country that would take us, had devastated him. This invincible man became even frailer than the leaf from the most ancient tree in the Tiergarten that Leo had given me and which I kept in my diary. Papa had a fresh complaint every day.
    “I’m losing my sight,” he told us one morning.
    I watched him die little by little. I realized this and was prepared. I would be an orphan who had lost her father and would have to look after a depressed mother who never stopped weeping over her days of lost glory.
    I had no idea how to overcome the inertia all three of us fell into when we met at home. We were not getting anywhere. I was unable to predict the path we would take, but I could sense a surprise was in store for us. And I hated surprises.
    It was time for us to make a decision. It didn’t matter if we made a mistake and ended up in the wrong place. We had to do something. Even if it meant going to Madagascar or to Leo’s Khuba.
    And I kept thinking to myself, Where is Khuba?

A nna
New York, 2014
    M om says my great-aunt is a survivor, like Mr. Levin. She must be full of wrinkles and spots, with sparse white hair, and be hunched and stiff. Maybe she can’t walk, or uses a stick, or is in a wheelchair. But her mind is sharp enough, and she has a very special sense of humor and a gentleness mixed with a touch of bitterness that has captivated Mom. She was surprised after she talked to her. Mom says she speaks very clearly, slowly and carefully, and that her voice makes her sound younger than she really is. She switches between English and Spanish with no problem. Mom is sure we’re not going to find a crushed old woman.
    “She’s so calm and serene,” she says, as if thinking out loud. “She’s not sad, Anna. She’s resigned to her situation, but she wants to meet you. She said she needs to.”
    To me, Cuba means nothing. When from my bedroom I hear Mom chatting to Mr. Levin about our trip, they always talk of a country where everything is lacking. But I imagine a desert island surrounded by furious waves, swept by hurricanes and tropical storms. A tiny dot in the middle of the sea, with no buildings, streets, hospitals, or schools. Nothing—or, rather, emptiness. I don’t know how Dad could have studied there. Perhaps that’s why he ended up in