After the dessert cordials had been cleared away and the men left for the billiards room to smoke cigars, she had been left alone with Johanna who very delicately avoided the topic of her time at Auschwitz.
Anna politely responded to the rather mundane conversation, consciously making the effort to smile at her mother in law and nod her head when it was appropriate. She felt as if her role in their charade was just to sit quietly and look pretty. But She wanted more, she owed it to her parents, to her people to make a difference. To help. To do something, anything.
Her heart had broken with the miscarriage, and she had been unable to properly mourn her child. A daughter, just as she had predicted. Everything had been taken from her. Gunter was her one constant, but even he refused to talk about the child that could have been. She knew it worried him that she had continued to knit little booties in the evenings, but she couldn't stop, it was an almost manical obsession. It was the one thing she seemed to have control over. The stress of living the lie weighed heavily on Anna, and she quietly excused herself from Johanna's company and retired to her and Gunter's room.
Anna slouched against the door after she had shut it, letting out a deep sigh of frustration. "We should be doing something! Not just eating dinner with murderers." she whispered. She kicked off her shoes and walked across the plush carpet and into the en suite bathroom. Turning the knob she turned on the hot water and shrugging out of her dress slipped into the steaming water.
This would relax her, she just needed to calm down. Gunter was sure to have a plan. Surely they were destined to do more than just watch as the Nazis murdered her people, her Germany! Anna added bath salts to the water then sunk down further into the rising water. As the bubbles rose around her she could feel the tension in her lower back releasing. Sinking below the surface to wet her hair, Anna held her breath. Marveling at how quiet it was under the water, how peaceful.
She felt the burning in her lungs, but could not bring herself to surface. She thought about her mother and father, hoping that they had died together and quickly. Instead of being seperated and dying slowly of starvation in a disease ridden camp.
She could just see them being herded into the stinking cattle cars, clutching each others arms as they were pressed on all sides by other people. She could almost smell the stench of fear and urine that pervaded the poorly ventilated cattle trucks. Hear her mothers whispered prayers as the train jerked forward, carrying them to a unknown fate worse than death.
Anna sat up with a gasp, rivulets of water dripping down her face as she sucked in a great gulp of air.