The German Girl

Hannah says that she still has a destiny and she plans to choose it: “I can decide where I go, where I aim for. I can be whoever I like, abandon everything and start over, or end things once and for all. That is my sentence. I feel set free” (325). Hannah wanders her house and garden one last time, thinking about Anna. She sees Diego crying out the window. They have both just lost Anna. She descends Paseo, heading toward the Malecón wall. She has with her the small indigo box that Leo gave her the last time she saw him, as they were being pulled apart on the deck of the St. Louis. She says she is dreaming. She opens the box and finds not only Leo’s mother’s diamond ring but also a yellow cyanide capsule. It is out of date now, but Hannah says she no longer needs it. Her mind drifts. She says, “I raise the capsule to my lips—the last thing you touched with your still-warm hands—as if I were kissing you” (331). She sees Leo as a 20-year-old man and kisses him. They hold hands. They fly over the Malecón seawall and over the bay. They are 12 again. There is a blast of the ship’s siren. They are on the deck of the St. Louis, in the same spot “from where we first caught sight of the city” (332). Hannah says, “And this time, I can say to you Shalom” (332).