Free Clara by Kurt Palka Page A

sat close together on that bench but far enough apart to also suggest a certain self-reliance so as not to lean too much on the other, as they would have said in the marriage vows of old. Behind them was the wall of a small clapboard house, a
heusele
with fine scrollsaw work around windows and eaves.
    EARLY IN THE NEW YEAR , Mitzi had another appointment with Dr. Caroline Gottschalk about her hip. Clara came along.
    “We’d better do it sooner than later,” Dr. Gottschalk said to Mitzi. She looked much like her grandmother, slimand fine-featured like Cecilia had been, and those same black and steady eyes and resolute ways.
    “Give me those canes and stand for me.” She held out her hand and looked at Mitzi over her glasses. “No. Let go of the bed. Let me see you stand on your own.”
    Mitzi stood, or tried to.
    “Now, take a step,” said Dr. Gottschalk. “Mitzi-dear. Look at you. How much longer do you want to wait? And wait for what?”

NINE

    IN OCTOBER 1934, three months after Theodor’s funeral, Mitzi had finally asked Cecilia for the name of the forger. She was washing Cecilia’s hair at the time, putting in a chestnut rinse because of all that grey suddenly.
    “What forger?” said Cecilia without opening her eyes. They were in the bathroom of the Leonhardt apartment, with Cecilia sitting on a chair and leaning back into the handwash basin.
    “Albert said you knew one. From the estate. Something about customs documents that he could … you know.”
    “Albert said that?”
    “He did. Lift up a bit and turn this way.”
    And so it began, Mitzi’s quest for a safe personal history. What she wanted was a new name, she said to Cecilia. And an ID card and a driver’s licence. Getting them might takea while and she wanted to be ready, for the day that everyone was whispering about.
    “Why?” said Cecilia. “This is not … what’s your real name?”
    Her name was Naomi Friedmann, she said. German Jews, her parents, both long dead. Raised by an aunt, she’d been; one Mitzi Schuster, from whom she’d learned her trade and taken over the business name. And David Koren had said that if the present government were to lose to the National Socialists and she wanted to stay here, she would need another identity.
    “You’re Jewish,” said Cecilia. She wiped away foam and squinted up with one eye. “Child, half the gifted world is: musicians, writers, composers, you have no idea. That’s why you’re so good at what you’re doing. You’re an artist at this, with an eye for the three-dimensional.”
    “Thanks,” said Mitzi. “Will you help me?”
    Cecilia said of course she would, and later that day she and Mitzi took a taxi to call on the forger. He lived in an apartment in Hietzing, on a narrow street not far from the little church there and from the palm house and Schönbrunn zoo, where peacocks screeched and monkeys threw peanuts at children.
    The forger took his time inspecting them through the spy lens in the door. He let them in, glanced past them down the stairway, then closed the door quickly behind them. He was a small red-haired man with unusual glasses that had layers of extra lenses attached. He led them intothe living room, which was filled with shelves of papers and books, and tables with special lamps and presses and photographic equipment.
    Cecilia came straight to the point and told him what Mitzi needed: a birth certificate, a certificate of baptism, an identity card, and a driver’s licence.
    “And all in a name that has a clear history,” she said. “A pedigree, Mr. Binder.” She spoke to him the way she had spoken to the staff at the estate, clearly and firmly. She sat forward on the wooden chair, her feet in high heels tucked back and close together, her shoulders straight, her chin up.
    “But I don’t do those, Madame Leonhardt,” said the forger.
    “Of course you do, Mr. Binder. What is your fee?”
    “My fee,” he said and looked at Mitzi with his pale eyes, with