The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa

I’m sure you remember them, ” I whisper to my father so that Mom won’t hear. “ There are documents, bank statements—but not a single photo. I thought I would find another photo of you. I’ll keep your cuff links and glasses in my bedside drawer. ”
    At the bottom of the box, I find a blue envelope. I open it carefully: inside is a small sheet of paper the same color. It’s Dad’s handwriting: an undated letter addressed to Mom. Suddenly I think I ought to mention it to her before I read it, but then decide not to. She gave me what she had kept packed away for twelve years, so it belongs to me now.
    All at once, I feel hungry; it’s always the same when I’m nervous . I need to calm down, because I’m about to read one of your letters. I don’t want to discover any secrets; there are more than enough secrets awaiting us in Cuba.
    I’ll read it for you, Dad. So that you’ll remember Mom, who never forgets you however many years go by.
    Ida my love,
    Today is the fifth anniversary of our life together, and I remember as if it were today the moment I first saw you, in the back row of that autumn concert in Saint Paul’s Chapel at the university.
    You were speaking Spanish with your students, and I couldn’t stop looking at you. You became lost in the music, and I can still see how you flicked your hair behind your ears, and I could see your beautiful profile. I could have traced it with my fingers, from your forehead to your eyebrows, nose, lips, cheeks.
    You still remember the concert, the music, the orchestra. I remember only you.
    I never tell you I love you, that you’re the best thing that has ever happened to me. That I enjoy your silences, being beside you, watching you sleep, wake up, having breakfast with you on the weekend at sunrise. Have I ever told you that those mornings together, when sometimes we don’t even say a word, are my favorites because you are by my side?
    You came into my life when I was resigned to the fact that nobody would accept my solitude. One day we must travel the world, lose ourselves among other people. Just you and me. Promise?
    Ida my love, I’ll always be here for you.
    Louis

H annah
Berlin, 1939
    T here were mornings when I woke up feeling as if I couldn’t breathe, days when I sensed a tragedy was coming ever closer, and my heart began to beat wildly. Then very rapidly and suddenly, it seemed to stop altogether. Was I still alive? One of those days was a Tuesday. I hated Tuesdays. They should have been erased from the calendar. As soon as we got to Khuba, Leo and I would decree: “No more Tuesdays!”
    When I woke up, my body was feverish, but I didn’t have a cold or any pain. Papa, with his tie in its Windsor knot and already holding his gray felt hat, took my temperature. He smiled and kissed me on the brow:
    “You’re fine. Come on, get out of bed.”
    He stayed with me for a while, gave me another kiss, and then left me in my room. The sound of the front door slamming startled me. Now it was just Mama and me in the apartment. Abandoned.
    I knew I didn’t have a temperature and that I wasn’t ill, but my body refused to get up. I had even lost all desire to go out and meet Leo to take photographs. I had a premonition but could not say of what.
    That day, Mama was wearing light makeup but not her false eyelashes. She had on a dark-blue long-sleeved dress that gave her a slightly formal look. I put on the brown beret she had brought me from her last trip to Vienna and shut myself in my room with the atlas, hoping to find our tiny island, which still had not appeared.
    We were on the verge of going somewhere. Papa couldn’t continue keeping our final destination a secret. I was ready to accept anything. Nothing more could happen to us: we were living in a state of terror in an as-yet-undeclared war; I didn’t think many things could be worse than that.
    Leo said Papa had even bought a house in Khuba.
    “If we’re not staying there long, why will we need