Ashes (7 page)

By the time I came back from the courtyard garden with the trays of the begonias that had offended the color scheme, I expected that all would be ready for us to go to Caputh.

“But Mama, you see it all works out for the best,” Ulla was saying.

“It is not for the best that you flunked your exam!”

“Ulla flunked!” I gasped.

Ulla turned and gave me a withering look. “Yes, I flunked my literature exam. This is not the end of the world. I'll just retake it in three weeks. I'll study very hard. So it's all for the best that I am staying here.”

“Did you flunk it so you could stay home?” The question just popped out before I could stop it.

“Don't be an idiot!” she snarled.

Mama was now shaking her finger at both of us. “Gaby, you stay out of it. Ulla, make yourself useful and call up to find out where the car from the Institute is.”

But Mama and Papa did not seem that upset about Ulla flunking her exam—perhaps because it was not so bad compared to the rest of the day's events, which I had apparently missed while I was in the gardening digging up begonias. You see, almost as soon as Uncle Hessie left, Papa turned on the radio. It was blaring with the news that indeed the SA was back in business! And not just the SA but the SS that Himmler headed. The Old Gentleman, Hindenburg, now truly a puppet of von Papen, had lifted the ban on the SA and the black-shirted,
Schutzstaffel
, or SS.

If these events seemed to some to happen quickly, to stack up on top of one another with a frightening speed in the space of a single afternoon as we waited to go to Caputh, to me there was this awful slowness as if we were marching, dragging inexorably but steadily toward doom.

 

 

That afternoon as we waited for the car, I called Rosa twice to say good-bye and figure out exact dates when she could visit me at Caputh. She said that her mother was as worried about Papen as she was about her grandmother who had recently been diagnosed with a heart condition.

There is an old notion that when a person falls from a great height, his or her life flashes before him in the seconds of the fall. But I don't believe that “flash” is the right word. I believe it is a long, drawn-out affair. Think how slowly those seconds must seem to pass as every scene of one's life and its inevitable end are perceived.
Lento! Molto adagio
.

Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he'd got to be a slave, and so I'd better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss Watson where he was. But I soon give up that notion . . . .

So I kneeled down [to pray]. But the words wouldn't come . . . It was because my heart warn't right; it was because I warn't square; it was because I was playing double. . . . I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie-I found that out.

-Mark Twain,
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

 

 

 

 

B
y now it was late afternoon and we were ready. Our bags were downstairs, including half a dozen boxes of books—mostly Papa's, but some were mine—and at least two boxes of Mama's music. There was a hamper of food so we wouldn't have to go out and buy anything for our first night's dinner. I was just planning a third good-bye call to Rosa when Papa came up and said he needed to call the office at the Institute again. The car that was supposed to pick us up had still not arrived despite Ulla's earlier call, when the person she spoke with said it would be right over. It wasn't a long drive to Caputh—an hour in light traffic. Hertha had already left on the train that morning to prepare the house.

Papa dialed the phone number and was speaking to someone from the Institute. He nodded into the receiver while Mama stood by listening, trying to make out the entire conversation from his end.

“Yes. Problems you say? Did the car break down, Frau Hagen? Not that you know of, eh.” He turned to Mama, shrugged his shoulders, and opened his eyes wide as if confounded. “Well, can you connect me with Professor Haber, kindly.” There was a long pause and Papa grimaced. I noticed a ruddiness flush his cheeks. “Not available, you say,” he snapped. Mama sighed. “All right. Thank you for your efforts. Good-bye.” He slammed down the phone.

I could tell that Papa was really upset. I couldn't help but wonder if the car not coming was something to do with “Jewish physics.”

Just the two words “Jewish physics” seemed crazy enough. Now, after Papa's talk with Uncle Hessie, there were two more words: “white Jew.” I didn't quite understand these terms. Papa was a gentile scientist and member of the Institute, but it seemed as if there were just as many Jewish members as gentiles—Einstein, Max Born, Lise Meitner, Fritz Haber. And yet it wasn't as if Papa looked at gentile stars and Einstein looked at Jewish stars. Stars were just stars. And Lise Meitner studied isotopes. Were there Jewish isotopes that she studied and gentile ones that Max Planck studied? I knew there were scientists at the Institute that Papa said might look at things this way. Philipp Lenard was one, I think. I had heard Papa say that Lennard was very critical of Einstein's approach to relativity, which he claimed “offended common sense.”

In the end, the car from the institute never came, but good old Uncle Hessie sent his own Mercedes Benz and his chauffeur, Marcel. Hessie followed in his super sport touring car, the SSK Count Trossi model. Since he was helping transport us to Caputh, he would stay a few days with us at the lake. He came often throughout the summer.

We said good-bye to Ulla, who promised to call every other day. It all felt a little odd to me. This would be my first summer ever at Caputh without Ulla. We shared a bedroom at the lake cottage, and she joked that I could have it all to myself and keep it as messy as I wanted. Ulla was a lot neater than I was.

I got to ride with Uncle Hessie, which was much more fun than going in the big Mercedes, and it was big. The model was called the Grosser-Mercedes 770 and it seemed like a salon or parlor with its gray upholstery and little silver rosebud vase. But the SSK sports car was made for a jolly good time. The top came down and Uncle Hessie and I both got to wear goggles. That's how fast he drove!

“There is a scarf in the glove compartment for your hair if you want it.” He reached over and popped it open. I took out a peach-colored chiffon scarf with flowers on it.

“Oh, it's beautiful!”

“Do you know who that belongs to?”

“Who?”

“Josephine Baker.”

“No!” I exclaimed. Josephine Baker, the American singer and dancer, was one of the most famous entertainers in Europe. I had heard that Uncle Hessie was very, indeed
very
good friends with her. Although just a few years before she had danced in an infamous nude revue, she somehow was not considered just an ordinary, vulgar chorus girl. She had become a symbol of erotic Berlin and yet was never considered crude. Naughty, yes. But lewd? Smutty? Never! That was most people's opinion, including Baba's. But I doubted Mama and Papa had ever gone to see her. Einstein had—with his wife, Elsa, no less! But I could hardly believe that I was about to wear the scarf of the Creole Goddess, the Black Pearl. Those were nicknames that celebrated Josephine Baker 's exotic beauty.

“Are you sure she won't mind?” I asked as I finished tying it over the straps of my goggles. I felt fabulously glamorous.

“No, of course not. She left for Paris three years ago and swears not to come back until the little corporal and his ‘naughty boys,' as she calls Hitler and the SA, are gone.”

First Josephine, now Vicki
, I thought.
Who's next?

We headed south, down the wide avenue of the Aschaffenburger Strasse. But we had only gone a block and were at Bayerischer Square when I heard Uncle Hessie sigh. The leather seats of the sports car were so deep that I could not quite see what had provoked this sigh. I rose up a bit to tuck my knees under me just as Hessie began to slow the car. Like sludge running from a river's mouth, hundreds of SA were moving through the street. I didn't know how our car would get past them—traffic had nearly come to a complete stop. Flags with swastikas stippled the air. It was a parade! The men wore high black jackboots to the knees. Above the top of the boots, their brown pants flared absurdly so that it appeared as if the men had wings attached to their hips. No wonder they called the stiff-legged march
der Stechschritt
, the goose step. They looked like a bunch of stupid geese coming down the street. As we got closer to the parade, the stomping boots were deafening. It was as if the pavement groaned beneath them.

“Not to worry,
Liebchen
.” Hessie patted my knee. I scanned the spectators on the sidewalk. Their faces were wreathed in some sort of anticipation. I couldn't help but remember Hertha's words: “Now there might be a chance.” Was this why they were cheering? This chance they all anticipated. The rambunctious boys, as Hertha had called them, were thickening into knots on the streets.

We soon had to halt, as many of the Brown Shirts seemed to have broken away from the parade formation and were now wandering through the street. Some of the geese appeared quite wobbly and I could see they carried beer steins.

“
Mein Gott!
Are they drunk, Uncle Hessie?”

“As I said, not to worry, dear.” He patted my knee again.

A young, smooth-faced SA approached the car with his friend. He slapped the hood hard with his hand. His eyes were sliding about in a frightening way. A string of foam from the beer threaded down his chin.

“So you like my car!” Uncle Hessie said brightly.

“Yes, yes!”

“Won't find a red Commie having one of these, will you?” Uncle Hessie said. The fellows were obviously drunk, and I sensed that the situation could turn ugly in a split second. Maybe Uncle Hessie was pretending to share their opinions. I knew he'd never really say something like that.

“
Nein, nein!
” the SA trooper replied.

“But maybe a Jew,” said his friend. He cocked his head at Uncle Hessie.

“Ah, maybe a Jew,” Uncle Hessie said. “And if it's a Jew, I would sell it to him. Perhaps you've heard of the PAW.”

I had no idea what the letters PAW stood for.

“PAW?” The man wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

His friend, who was not quite as drunk, leaned forward. “PAW. Yeah, I think I've heard of that.”

I was beginning to get a glimmer of what Hessie was up to. He was going to use these louts to get us through the blocked street with nothing nasty happening.

“Of course you have heard of it, my good man!” boomed Uncle Hessie. “Prussian Auto Works. I am the president.” I blinked. Hessie wasn't the president of anything. He had never worked a day in his life. He was now slapping his motoring coat as if searching for something. He reached for an inside pocket. “
Aachh!
Left my card at home. But hey, would you boys like a ride?”

“A ride?” The seriously drunk one staggered.

“I know you're not quite in shape to drive, but hop on the fender, boys. I'll give you a ride to the next intersection.”

They did, and so we made our way through streets jammed with SA, two Brown Shirts clearing a path for us, one on each forward fender like hood ornaments, waving and shouting their disgusting slogans about death to Jews, Communists, and on and on, and then breaking from the slogans and lurid rants to join in the scattered choruses of the SA's favorite song. It was called the “Horst Wessel Song” and was being broadcast more often on the radio recently.

The two SA men slid off the car when we arrived at the next intersection. Hessie pressed on the accelerator and shifted into a higher gear. His face was grim. From the corner of my eye I could see the small throb of a pulse beating in his temple. Neither one of us looked back. There was a sign indicating the direction to Potsdam and thus Caputh. We were going out of Berlin, to the country, away from all that, the brown sludge of the flooding river, the stomp of jackboots. There was still beer slobber from the SA men on the roadster. Hessie drove faster as if to dare the wind to clean it. The landscape flowed by. I put my head against the back of the seat and tipped my face up toward the sun.
I am going away.
I kept telling myself.
I am going away!

I briefly wondered what Herr Doktor Berg had done with my books, if he had read
The Call of the Wild
. I was just about to ask Hessie if he could get me another copy when I heard his rather high but sweetly scratchy voice carrying above the rush of the wind.