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pressure of the gazes of the cellar’s denizens as the infant begins to wail in earnest. She coos ineffectively and tries to readjust her hold, but to no avail. The child’s crying is like an air raid siren. Only her mother-in-law’s intervention ends the ordeal.
“Tsst,”
the old woman clucks caustically as she drops her sewing into her basket in exasperation. “For pity’s sake, hand her to
me
,” she commands, and plucks the child from her daughter-in-law’s grasp. “Honestly, there are times when I think it’s a
blessing
you never had a child of your own. It’s obvious that you don’t have a
whit
of maternal instinct,” she announces.
    And there it is. The dirty truth out in the open for all to know, like soiled linen hung from the windows. Sigrid clutches the strap of her air raid sack, feeling her face heat even in the cold. “Yes. Quite a blessing,” she agrees, glaring at the whiteness of her knuckles.
    Her mother-in-law, however, carries on, oblivious. The baby has calmed immediately in her no-nonsense grip. “I see your new duty-year girl has gone missing again. What is she up to this time?” she demands curiously of Frau Granzinger. Sigrid shifts her eyes to see Granzinger grimace, then wave off the thought.
“Don’t ask,”
she groans. “It’s too ridiculous.”
    “Don’t tell me,” the multiple-chinned Marta Trotzmüller chimes in mischievously. “Don’t tell me that she’s got a bun in the oven
already
?” Granzinger’s previous girl turned up pregnant by an SS man from a Death’s Head Company, and was whisked off to a Fount of Life home in the Harz Mountains.
    “Who knows
what
she does.” Granzinger sighs. “You know, in the beginning she wasn’t so bad. A little moody, perhaps. A little mürrisch, but at least competent in her work. She could change the baby’s diaper without fuss, and wash a dish without leaving bits of schmutz along the edges like the last one did. And she could manage bedtime without argument or tears. So I thought maybe finally I’ve had some luck. But then suddenly she starts to evaporate. I send her out with the shopping bags, and she disappears for hours, and comes back with no explanation. The queues were long, is all she says. The trains were slow. That’s all. And when I raise the roof about it, she just stares. It’s really too incredible. I hardly see the creature,” Granzinger complains, perfecting her frown. “Except at supper, of course. She always manages to find her way to the supper table.”
    “Maybe she has
better
things to do than change diapers,” Marta Trotzmüller suggests with ladled nuance, but the joke is wearing thin.
    Frau Granzinger only shrugs. “I suppose she thinks so. But I swear, when I was her age, I would never have
thought
of disobeying my elders. It simply would not have crossed my mind.”
    “You should get rid of her.
Complain
,” Mother Schröder insists. “For God’s sake, Lotti, they awarded you the Mother’s Cross. You shouldn’t have to put up with such insults.”
    “Yes,”
Marta Trotzmüller agrees fervently. “That’s right! An insult. That’s what it is, all right. You should complain to the Labor Service officer.”
    “Exactly so,” Mother Schröder agrees, as if it is all too obvious. “If looking after your children doesn’t interest her, perhaps she’d prefer a year in the Land Army. Have them stick a pitchfork in her hands and let her muck out a stable before she sits down to the supper table,” she insists. “That’ll cool her engines considerably, I’ll wager.”
    Sigrid thinks of the girl occupying the seat beside her in the cinema.
Please, Frau Schröder. Say we came here together
. Oddly, she has some inclination to defend the girl from this onslaught from the kaffeeklatsch. The same inclination, perhaps, that has caused her to tell a lie to a security policeman. A stranger’s impulse to step in and protect a child from a bully? Perhaps, in the end, she thinks, that’s