A Parachute in the Lime Tree by Annemarie Neary

smeared a little on the back of his hand. Another, then another, until at last he had it as he wanted it.
    He poised his brush over the canvas and made a series of vertical lines in the air, flicking the tip back as though trying to remember how it was done. Soon, he was smoothing a layer of red onto the girl’s naked body. He painted out the birthmark first. When Elsa was younger, Mama used to tell her God had marked her out as special. Papa’s brush was more honest. Next her concave chest went, with its small walnut nipples, the thinshoulders and the lower body all disappeared under a layer of red paint. She stayed until it was over and even though he must have known she was watching him, he said nothing. By the time he had finished, a new red dress glowed on the easel.
    Papa didn’t get up the next morning. Mama made him a tisane and Elsa saw in her eyes that she blamed her. When he did get out of bed a week or so later, he insisted on putting the altered picture on the wall, in that most honoured position over the fruit bowl that he and Mama had bought in Venice on their honeymoon.
    ‘How kind of the Professor to give us all such a charming gift. A most thoughtful farewell.’
    Elsa could detect no irony. Mama looked at him with a kind of desperate love.
    He threw himself into an orgy of letter writing. In address books, diaries, he underlined everyone who might be of use. Former colleagues, people who got out in the years he’d spent clinging on to the clerk’s job, academics who once cited his papers and now didn’t even reply to his letters. People in France, England, America. There was something about Madagascar. Just as suddenly, his furious optimism seemed to fizzle out and he went back to bed.
    Then came the night Mama had predicted and Papa said would never happen: the synagogue in flames, a fury on those with the wrong names. The glass was shattered and once that went, almost everyone was within their reach: Herr Goldmann for one; the old man gone, his door in splinters, the shop a tangle of coloured yarns like a shredded tapestry.
    A whole day passed and still the Frankels remained untouched. Elsa put it down to the painting. She decided that it had absorbed all their hatred. The harm they might do was trapped there in the slashes and stabs of paint that made up the girl’s face. For the first time, she understood their fervour for magic images, now that she had one of her own.
    All night long, men and boys paraded up and down Zweibrückenstrasse and there was always the chance that the painting would fail them. Elsa watched from the attic window. She knew now that blood or no blood, somewhere Oskar was amongst them.
    Next day, Beate walked out the door, her bag rattling with Frankel silver. The girl in the red dress disappeared too. Overnight, she was overcome by thick crimson daubs, all trace of her obliterated. Papa sat back in his chair to observe his work. Elsa went to the piano. She played Scarlatti with the shutters closed.
    At dinner, Papa took out his medal and propped it up on the table in front of him, leaning it against the pepper pot. Iron Cross, First Class. Won for gallantry in the war against France and England. He peered at the medal as he ate, barely pausing to draw breath between one mouthful and the next. When he had finished, he picked it up and tossed it up and down in his palm. Later that night, Papa was in the garden. When everyone had gone to bed she heard him digging, and the medal was never seen again.
    Not long after the loss of Papa’s job came the news that the money in his Sperrkonto had been confiscated. Even though Mama begged him not to, he wrote a letter of protest to the Gestapo, headed it ‘Polite Request’. There was no reply. Money began to run short, then very short. He was desperate to see what the post brought each day and took to standing outside embassies in the hope that someone from somewhere would give them a visa. Eventually, it was Mama who made the