Free Ashes by Kathryn Lasky Page B

something we called grubbies that were a kind of small salmon, and silver bass, which were not quite so common, but delicious. We had fish for dinner four nights out of five.

    When I was not sleeping late, sailing, swimming, or fishing I would read. In Caputh I could read my books not stuffed into my school textbooks. I read them “naked” as I thought of it—wherever and whenever I pleased. Mama even let me read at the breakfast table and during lunch and sometimes during dinner if there weren’t guests. I read everyplace—the hammock, the bathtub, the ice-cream shop in the village—everyplace except on my boat Ratty , for one really must tend to business on a sailboat, even when not racing. I sometimes wondered about the two books Herr Doktor Berg had confiscated from me. I hoped he hadn’t lost them.
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    For Mama, doing as she pleased meant practicing the music she never got to teach to her students. She loved early music that was made for the virginal, a musical instrument similar to a harpsichord but invented in the Middle Ages. Of course her second greatest pleasure was working in the garden. She would often work out there late into the evening, if there was enough moonlight. She called these times her stealth attacks on garden invaders. Like some kindly witch, she would steal out into the night with her strange potions—diluted laundry bleach, squashed garlic, baking soda, and something called elixir of bergamot. Apparently it worked wonders in vanquishing aphids, one of the worst garden pests. Mama was not dependent only on chemical warfare, however. She was a strategist as brilliant as any general or statesman. Forget von Hindenburg and his triumph at Tannenburg. She was more of a Bismarck, the superb diplomat-engineer who united Germany through political maneuvering and war. She figured out strange alliances between plants and insects. Put nasturtiums next to tomatoes and the flowers will drive off aphids. Grow basil near asparagus and get rid of the beetle that devours the stalks.
    Papa’s garden in the summer was the night sky, unpolluted by city lights. He especially relished the moonless nights. He had several telescopes that he would wheel out onto the lawn to gaze at this night garden that bloomed with the ancient brilliance of stars embedded in other galaxies, of planetary nebulae, those last dying gasps of gas blown off from withering stars. When it was cloudy, Papa would go over and have an evening smoke with Einstein.
    One morning a few weeks into the summer I went fishing hoping to catch a silver bass but instead only got a half dozen of the little grubbies. I was walking up from the lake to the back kitchen door to deliver the catch so Hertha could clean the fish when I heard the sound of the radio. The announcer ’s voice crackled through the screen kitchen window into the calm of the morning.
    â€œStreet gangs, apparently including some SA members, went on a rampage. . . .” There was a temporary blast of static, but then the voice resumed clearly. “Last night, destroying a large part of the Jewish section . . .”
    I stopped and listened. Through the screen window I could see Hertha calmly preparing a pie crust. I knew it was a pie crust simply by the rhythm of her shoulders as she rolled out the dough.
    â€œThe blaze, thought to have been fueled by petrol, was so hot that the fire brigades could not get close enough without great risk for several hours. . . .”
    I simply could not walk into the kitchen at this moment. I set the fish on the wooden worktable where Hertha usually cleaned them and began to gut them myself. I had seen Hertha and Papa do this countless times. I had always thought myself too squeamish to slit open their bellies and scoop out their intestines. Get over it , I told myself. The newscaster finished his report on the synagogue and then moved on to a report about the Frankfurt beer festival. I slit the pale pink