Kirsti Johansen Number The Stars Quotes

Kirsti sighed as Annemarie went to the breadbox in the kitchen. “I wish I could have a cupcake,” she said. “A big yellow cupcake, with pink frosting.” Her mother laughed. “For a little girl, you have a long memory,” she told Kirsti. “There hasn’t been any butter, or sugar for cupcakes, for a long time. A year, at least.” “When will there be cupcakes again?” “When the war ends,” Mrs. Johansen said. She glanced through the window, down to the street corner where the soldiers stood, their faces impassive beneath the metal helmets. “When the soldiers leave.

The days of September passed, one after the other, much the same. Annemarie and Ellen walked to school together, and home again, always now taking the longer way, avoiding the tall soldier and his partner. Kirsti dawdled just behind them or scampered ahead, never out of their sight. The two mothers still had their “coffee” together in the afternoons. They began to knit mittens as the days grew slightly shorter and the first leaves began to fall from the trees, because another winter was coming. Everyone remembered the last one. There was no fuel now for the homes and apartments in Copenhagen, and the winter nights were terribly cold. Like the other families in their building, the Johansens had opened the old chimney and installed a little stove to use for heat when they could find coal to burn. Mama used it too, sometimes, for cooking, because electricity was rationed now. At night they used candles for light. Sometimes Ellen’s father, a teacher, complained in frustration because he couldn’t see in the dim light to correct his students’ papers. “Soon we will have to add another blanket to your bed,” Mama said one morning as she and Annemarie tidied the bedroom. “Kirsti and I are lucky to have each other for warmth in the winter,” Annemarie said. “Poor Ellen, to have no sisters.” “She will have to snuggle in with her mama and papa when it gets cold,” Mama said, smiling.