An unexpected snowball struck his unyielding midsection without it making any appreciable difference to either his dignity or to his position on the pedestal. A boy of eight or nine or ten, his face set off by a crimson muffler, threw his arms skyward as he jumped into the air with triumphant abandonment.
How many years had it been since another boy had taken a similarly irreverent shot at that same pompous statue?
The car made a sure but wide right-hand turn. I saw fastened to the second floor of a neat corner structure an enamel street sign, BUHLSTRASSE. Just before the end of the block, the driver pulled to the curb, pointed a nicotine-stained finger to the side window and said, “Fier-und-sexig Buhlstrasse, fraulein.”
After the cab pulled away, I stood alone at the curb staring motionless at number 64 Buhlstrasse. I felt overwhelming awe. It was as though my religion had finally located its shrine. The house was as Anton had described it, a big house built of pale brown stone with a wide porch that wrapped itself around one half of the house, front to back.
That’s where the family once gathered on balmy Sunday afternoons to discuss ethical and philosophical questions such as man’s duty to God, but that was before Hitler came to power. After that Anton noted that the discussions seemed to shift somewhat more to the question of God’s duty to man.
The snow that had fallen so softly against the windshield of the cab felt considerably less gentle as it struck my face. I moved up the unshoveled walk, then up the steps. Centered against the golden oak door was a weighty brass knocker, but to the left of the knob was a bell. Do I knock or do I ring? What do Germans do? Which is more polite?
The indecision began acting as a magnet, calling forth all the confused fears and conflicting needs that had for so long wrestled my obsession to an enfeebled draw.
“But nobody’s going to stop me now,” I said, thrusting my finger against the bell to hear a two-toned chime shatter the quiet and echo through the stillness. I prayed to God that nobody would be home while at the same time praying that everybody would be.
Then as a pinlike pain pierced my heart, I told myself that I was absolutely, positively not having a heart attack. Dr. Kopelman would never permit it! As the spasm began to subside, an unexpected click at the door sent another quick stab against a chamber of my heart.
The door was opened by a man on the upper rungs of old age. His face was thin enough, lined enough, and his facial bones visible enough to have kept Roger happily clicking away for hours. He wore dark pants, a white dress shirt open at the neck, and a rust-colored cardigan. He greeted me in a courteous tone in German, not a word of which I remotely understood.
I answered him in English, which I hoped he understood. “I wish to speak please with Mrs. Reiker.”
“Ah, yes,” he answered, as though he were expecting me. “Won’t you please come in.”
This entrance hall was bigger than almost any Jenkinsville room that I had ever seen, and if Roger’s place was any criterion, than any room in Paris too. Covering the dark wood floor was an oriental rug of closely woven texture, but the design was the really interesting thing, comprised as it was of more figures and less geometrics than any of my grandmother’s.
“You are here in our bleak midwinter,” he said, helping me off with my coat. Right off, it struck me as strange that he would be helping me when he himself seemed so very frail that I felt as though I should be protecting him from all manner of things.
“Yes, sir,” I answered. “I guess I am.”
He spoke some words which were destined to be forever lost inside the closet where he had gone to hang my coat.
Over the hall table, there was a convexed mirror crowned by a carved golden eagle of great age. Even from this angle, I could see that there were many dark spots on the glass where bits of reflective silver had dried and flaked off over the years. I wanted to move directly in front of that mirror to try to determine whether age sharpens or softens images, but I didn’t. The old man would notice, would think I’m vain, would think I’m primping.
He closed the closet door. “In the fireplace a wood is burning,” he said, leading the way through the hall toward the back of the house.
“Yes, sir,” I answered, noticing for the first time that not only had my heart attack spent itself, but my vocal chords were more or less operational. Hallelujah!
This room, which was even larger than the entrance hall, was dominated by ceiling-to-floor, wall-to-wall books, and from the leather bindings I could guess that most of them weren’t even of this century. Did I know this room? I watched him remove the cast-iron fire screen to throw a couple of pine logs on the fire. Strange ... I had never before seen this room, but still I knew it.
Of course I did! It was in this room that the war had first started for Anton. For this is the library of Professor Erikson Carl Reiker and so this would make this old man—Strange, but he seems so much older and more fragile than the father Anton had once described.
I wondered if the old man also remembers that night seventeen or eighteen years ago, back in the spring of ‘33. Your son remembered it. He told me how he was awakened by something; he didn’t know what. But he followed the light downstairs to this very room where he found you, his father, with your head resting on that very desk.
You told your thirteen-year-old that he should go back to bed, that everything was well and that nothing was wrong, but then almost in the next breath you began speaking of your own grandfather who so many years before had been president of this very university. Pointing to the books in those mahogany cases, you said that many of them were written because your grandfather believed that a president’s job was to promote scholarship and to encourage publishing.
“But our current president,” you had told Anton, “with his ‘let’s all join the Nazis before the Nazis destroy us’ mentality, would be just as comfortable burning libraries as he would be in building them.”
I watched the old man carefully pull the fire screen closed before patting the backrest of a leather fireside chair. “Come sit down and warm yourself.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said, in unison with a mahogany mantel clock somberly chiming out the morning hour of eleven.
“She shall be coming down momentarily,” he said, turning to look at the clock. “She has been teaching for three consecutive hours and by this time of day she looks forward to a cup of tea and a bit of quiet.”
I rummaged through my brain for a clue to just what it was Mrs. Reiker taught. I remember Anton had spoken of her vitality, warmth, and even her beauty, but what was it she taught? Math? Foreign languages? Ballroom dancing?
As I heard myself say that I was in “no great hurry,” I heard voices along with footsteps coming down the stairs. Then a dark-haired woman of about twenty-five or so entered the study followed by a somewhat younger bearded man carrying a violin case.
Right off, I tried to discover what it was that I didn’t like about her. She certainly did nothing to me except frighten me by the way she displayed her superiority like a trophy. And, anyway, when was Mrs. Reiker coming down?
“Hannah, this young lady—” He turned abruptly to me. “Forgive me, but I have forgotten your name.”
“Patty Bergen,” I said, feeling a sharp sting of guilt for allowing him to take responsibility for remembering a name he had never heard.
“Ah, yes, of course, Patty Bergen has been waiting to see you.” Then he turned to me. “I am sorry, but I do not remember so well anymore.”
I protested that “knowing me,” I had neglected to introduce myself. Hannah then with exceptional presence introduced me to the departing young man whose name I heard, but never mastered. My resources were all focused on wondering if I had heard the professor right. Did he think I came this distance to see her? To see Hannah? At the door was it even remotely possible that I said “Miss” Reiker instead of Mrs. Reiker? Or is my southern pronunciation of those two words practically indistinguishable?
“You wish to speak with
me?” Hannah was asking.
Why did she think I wanted to talk with her? I didn’t. I only wanted to speak with her mother. With Mrs. Reiker!
Hannah looked at me in a way I didn’t like. In a way that suggested I needed prompting. “You are interested,” she was asking, “in studying the violin?”
Why don’t I just say it? Say that there’s been some misunderstanding. Say that I know it’s been completely my fault, but may I please speak with your mother. May I please speak with your mother is the only thing I have to say. And what is so unspeakably frightening about that?
“I’m sorry for any misunderstanding that I may have caused,” I heard myself say. “But I came here today to speak with your mother ... Mrs. Reiker.”
Hannah looked as though she had been given a shaking. I turned to look at the old man in time to see him seem to crunch forward and inward, but it was Hannah who spoke. “My mother is dead. She died of a stroke last June.” She had moved to her father’s side to lay her hand across his wrist. “I regret having to inform you of this.”
“Oh,” I said, trying to make some sense of Hannah’s words. For some reason, I saw that bronze statue which had been struck midsection how many times? By how many snowballs? And for how many years? Does there ever come a point when even the invincible will crumble from the cumulative effect of too many snowballs?
I turned back toward Hannah and the old man and I could see that they were both, in somewhat different ways, struggling to right themselves. This is not my fault. Not one bit my fault. Grief this great is just like any other combustible. Sure, sure it is, but who asked me to go running around waving a blazing torch? I simply can’t do this to them. Simply cannot place them under any more stress.
I took a step toward them and then I took another step. “I’m so very sorry,” I told them, as I searched for eye contact. Then I said goodbye as I walked from the library back into the great hall.
Instantly the old man was behind me, taking my coat from a wooden hanger and saying that the next time I am in the neighborhood he would be honored to have me visit.
That’s when it struck me that my being here had some significance for him, too. I took his hand. “I don’t know if I’ll ever again be in this neighborhood.” But I had to avoid his eyes, had to avoid seeing the sorrow that I knew was there.
“My wife would have liked you.”
“... Your wife would have liked ... me?”
“She brought many foreign students, English-speaking students like you to our home, but, of course, she liked some more than others.”
“Yes,” I answered, far more interested in learning why Mrs. Reiker would have liked me than in correcting the professor’s assumption that I was a student.
But his head moved in a sudden way that indicated he was already off on another tack. “Please kindly tell them all at the English-speaking alliance ...” He stared down at the rug as though he too had just become fascinated by the lack of geometrics. “... not to send any more students to fier-und-sexig Buhlstrasse. Tell them please that Frau Deborah Reiker is dead.”
Without warning, I found myself embracing him, trying to give him the comfort of a moment of closeness. Then quickly and wordlessly, I broke away. Out the door, down the unshoveled walk and into the street. I moved quickly along the curb, demanding that my brain and body be consumed by both the exertion and the concentration of an unaccustomed run.
29
WHEN I ENTERED room 515 of the Hotel Göttingen, my breath was as shallow as it was quick, and my forehead, in spite of the freezing outside temperature, sprouted miniature bubbles of perspiration. I dropped my coat and my jacket on the bed, and kicked off my shoes before pulling a train schedule from the satin side pocket of my suitcase. Ah, yes, here it is: A train leaves Göttingen at 4:10 P.M. arriving in Paris at 10:55 P.M.
I figured that I had time for both a bath and a nap. The bath might thoroughly cleanse me, but I doubt if a two-hour sleep could even begin to penetrate the depth of my fatigue.
Behind the hotel’s large front desk was a black-suited man who looked as though he had been trained since infancy to provide impeccable service to others. After placing a key inside a numbered cubby, he greeted me. “Fraulein?”
“Finif-eins-finif,” I said, sliding my room key across the dark marble-topped counter. “I’m checking out now. May I have my bill, please?”
He nodded ritualistically before entering a small connecting office. When he returned, he produced a statement embossed at the top with a tricolored coat of arms. That was the first thing that struck me. The second thing was the balance which came within a very few marks of decimating all that was left of my worldly wealth. The bill came to roughly twice the balance that I had estimated.
Then just before panic overtook me, I caught the error. “Sir, there’s a mistake on this bill.” I pointed to the offending line. “You have charged me for two nights, but I have only been here one night.”
For a few moments he bent low over the statement before returning upright to point with his entire hand to the old Roman numeraled clock behind the desk. “I regret that there is no mistake, fraulein. The hotel’s check-out time is eleven o’clock which you have exceeded by more than four hours. Therefore we are required to bill you for an additional night.”
“Well, I didn’t know that! Why wasn’t I told that?”
“You were, fraulein. The information is so posted inside each chamber. The inside door of each chamber.”
“Yes, well, but not everybody can read German—it’s not a very popular language, you know.”
“Our sign is posted in four languages, fraulein. German, French, Italian, and English.”
“Well, I certainly didn’t see—at least, I didn’t notice your sign, honest!”
“Nevertheless.”
“Nevertheless what?”
“Nevertheless I am still required to bill you for the second night.”
I tried to think, but I couldn’t—the ancient mahogany clock’s strident, every-second sounding was interfering with my thoughts.
“Required to do it?”
He nodded smartly. “Required policy of the Hotel Göttingen. Those are my orders.”
Not only were the clock sounds harshly metallic, but its carvings were grotesque. Like so many severed heads captured in wood at the moment of beheading.
“What did you say?”
“I said, fraulein, that I am only following the orders of the management.”
“Following orders? ... That’s what she said you’d say.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“... Told me that at The Skyway one day ... said you people didn’t care about wrong ... didn’t care about right. Only orders ... said you all were very big on following orders. I didn’t understand then, Grandmother, but I understand now. And you were right! Germans take orders from anybody—a young waiter wearing gold braid on his red jacket!”
“Fraulein, this is no conversa—”
“I want to ask you about that waiter—he wasn’t really a waiter, only an acne-faced busboy wearing a red jacket. If he told you to find Jews, you’d be real quick to run out and do that, now wouldn’t you?”
“Pay your bill and kindly leave this hotel!”
“You are the taker of orders, not me! That’s what you told everybody at Nuremburg. I was only taking orders. You remember saying, I was only taking orders?”
“Fraulein, please. You are causing a disturbance.”
“Please? Are you begging me? Toby, Miera, their husbands and all of their children gone. And all you can say is please ... PLEASE!”
“Stop that! I’m telling you. Keep your voice down. Our guests require quiet.”
“What do I care about your guests! I don’t care about your guests! I care about Judah. I care about who gave the order to find Jews! And just who was it that gave the order to behead Judah?”
“Please, please. People are watching. I will telephone the manager ... maybe an exception.” He bac
ked into the connecting office, slamming the door behind him.
“COME BACK HERE!” I screamed at the door which I heard being bolted from the inside. “COME BACK HERE, DAMN YOU, AND TELL ME WHO MURDERED THEM!”
But when the only answer that came back was the mocking tsk, tsk, tsk of the severed-head clock, I picked up the heavy desk inkwell, and with all the strength of inflamed self-righteousness, sent it crashing through that plate glass face. I watched with freshly liberated enjoyment as thick globs of black ink streamed downward to totally obliterate numeral VI.
I lay on my back on a long hard bench and thought how strange it is that the Germans have just as lousy jails as the Arkansans. With all that experience the Germans have had incarcerating people (not to mention all those final solutions) wouldn’t you think that they’d have learned how to run a really good jail by now?
But if I wanted to be completely fair about it (and I don’t believe that I did), I’d note that besides this bench, there is also a cot covered with a brick-colored expanse of rubber sheeting. I wondered if the sheeting was there to keep the mattress clean or was it there because it was already filthy. I averted my eyes because I didn’t like the idea of knowing for certain.
Metal struck metal with enough force to startle a reaction from within me. I looked on the other side of the bars to see a cop with enough gold braid on his shoulders to impress the Gestapo.
“Fraulein, we have located among your possessions a return railroad ticket to Paris.”
Someday I’m going to have to learn how to respond to a statement that tells me exactly what it is that I already know. In Jenkinsville, folks are all the time saying, “You shore can say that again,” or for a little variety, “Now, ain’t that the living gospel,” but somehow both of those phrases seem more appropriate to Jenkinsville than they do to Göttingen.
“There is a late afternoon train to Paris, fraulein. Would you care to be on the 4:10?”
Who knows what I want? Or, in fact, did I want anything? Or did I want nothing? Nothing to hurt, nothing to be taken away. Not ever. Maybe nothing is too big a deal and way too much to ask for, anyway. But will somebody please tell me what’s a person to do when they’re too afraid of life to live and too afraid of death to die?