Evergreen (60 page)

Mama! she cries, to a woman with a face like her mother’s; but the mouth is stern and no answer comes from it.

Papa! she cries, help me, oh, help me, Papa! He bends to her, he puts out his arms. But his face is Paul Werner’s face, sorrowful, pitying. He speaks; she cannot understand what he is saying. She strains to hear, but he melts away into fog. She cries: Papa! Father! She thinks, I am losing my mind.

She is frantic. There is a pain in her chest, it runs up into her throat, the pain is colored bright red. Is it possible to suffer like this and live? Somewhere her child is looking for her, crying for her; he can’t be far. But she has looked everywhere, running, running through shadow and striped shafts of light, and he isn’t here. Such loss she feels, such anguish. How will she live with such loss and anguish?

There are shadows on the ceiling and the beam of the hall light cuts across them, falling on her eyes as she turns her head toward Theo’s shoulder. She wonders whether she may have cried out during her dream, her nightmare. But no; Theo sleeps lightly and he hasn’t stirred. Whatever can have caused this? Safe here in her bed with her children asleep down the hall: what reason can there be for such internal strife?

It’s so cold; the winter air seeps into the house on nights like this. She doesn’t want to get up, but she has to. She creeps down the hall to Steve’s room, careful not to bump into anything in the dark, for he, too, sleeps lightly. She steps on his stuffed cat. He always goes to bed embracing it, but sometime before he falls asleep he throws it out of bed. He is a rounded hump under the blankets, lying on his stomach with his head pushed against the headboard. So soft, so small. Even the sound of his breathing, the breath of his life is so small.

On silent feet she goes back to her room. Theo has turned and in his sleep reaches out, his arm flung over her as she lies back into the warmth. She remembers that she didn’t go to look at Jimmy or Laura just now. But she knows that they are all right. Her cheeks are cold and sticky with the tears of her dream.

They came out of Carnegie Hall into a crushing wind and fought it toward the parking lot. Theo turned his face up into the cold. It felt bright as light, as clear and soaring as Verdi’s
Requiem
, which they had just heard, and which now and forever after would sing to him of a particular death.

A cluster of people waited at the corner to hail taxis or to cross. Thrusting through them, he glanced at a face; it vanished and then it turned and reappeared. He saw it clearly, hesitated for a second and was sure—

“Franz! Franz Brenner!”

“Theo!
Mein Gott!
I heard you lived in New York, I couldn’t find you—”

“What are you doing here?” And remembering Iris, “This is Franz Brenner, one of the finest lawyers in Vienna! We grew up together. Iris, my wife.”

Franz laughed. “Theo is too generous. And I’m too old to have grown up with him.”

“But we can’t stand here! Come, well get something to eat.”

In the light of the Russian Tea Room they searched each other’s faces.

“Theo, you look well! You must be happy, you haven’t changed.”

“And you—”

“Don’t tell me I haven’t.”

Franz had gone almost completely white. There was a deep crease on one cheek, a fold of flesh like a wound, which twitched when he spoke.

“What are you doing here?” Theo asked again.

“I’m here on business. Knit goods. But I live in Israel.”

“No law?”

Franz shrugged. “Israel is crammed with German and Austrian law degrees. They don’t mean much there. But tell me—”

“Order something, order a supper,” Theo interrupted. “We need time to talk! Or, listen, I have a better idea!” He felt the rise of his own excitement. “You’ll drive home with us. We live only an hour away. You can spend a day or two.”

“Ich kann nicht, ich fahre morgen ab
. Excuse me, Mrs. Stern, I’m not used to English yet. I studied years ago at the university, but I forget and start to speak German. What I mean is, I have to fly back tomorrow morning.” He leaned across the table. “So tell me what you do, Theo! You have children?”

“Two boys and a girl. And you?”

“No children. I lost Marianna.… But I married again, a widow with grown daughters. I have a pretty good job. The living is hard there; still, it’s home to us now. But you know, I heard—a grapevine, do you say? I heard you were in New York. But there was nothing in the New York telephone book. Did you know it was worth a fortune in Europe in those days, a New York phone book? You might find the name of a relative in it—a third cousin of your grandfather, maybe—or any name of any stranger who would send you, out of human pity, the papers that would save you from the fire in Europe.”

“I only lived in the city a year. I had a room here when I first came, in ‘46.”

“Ach, so! Well, Liesel learned that you—”

“What did you say?”

“I said that Liesel had learned—”

Theo sat up. “God almighty, what did you say? What Liesel are you talking about?”

Franz was astonished. “Why, Liesel your wife, of course,” he murmured.

“Franz, Liesel is dead.”

“I know, I know that.”

“She died in Dachau with all our family. It’s not decent to speak of her! Don’t you know any better? We never mention her name!”

Franz’s face was still. His steady eyes didn’t blink. He said: “She didn’t die in Dachau. I thought you knew. I thought the committee, the people in Tel Aviv, had informed you.”

“Damn you, Franz! Damn you! Will you talk, or shall I shake it out of you?”

“Theo! Theo!” Iris laid her hand on his arm. A man at the next table turned quickly and looked as quickly away.

“I don’t know now where to begin,” Franz pleaded. “Dear heaven, I—”

Something went wild in Theo. “Begin at the beginning. Or you’ll never get on that plane tomorrow. What do you know?” And as Franz glanced toward Iris, “She can hear it! Damn you, I want to
know!”

Franz looked down at the saltcellar. “I met Liesel in the winter of ‘46 in Italy. I had tried to get to Palestine but the British had turned us back. So I was preparing to try again, waiting for an old tub willing to run the blockade. There were a few hundred of us, some who’d lived through the camps, some who’d hidden out with false papers.”

“She—had false papers?” He was charged electrically. He thought his head would explode; he thought he was dreaming; he thought he was going to be sick.

“No, no false papers.”

“What then?”

Franz raised his eyes. “Theo, she’s dead. That I know, I was there. What’s the use of all this? Let it rest as it is.”

Theo trembled. “I have to know. Or you won’t get on that plane, I tell you!”

Franz sighed. He took a deep breath, like a child beginning a recitation before the class.

“Well, then. They came. It was the very first week after the
Anschluss
. The Germans came to the house for the family. It was strange, they thought their influence would help them, but it was just the opposite. Other people, those who were not so important, many of them had time to get away.

“So they came. It was early in the morning, cold and raining. The baby was sick with a fever. She begged them not to take him out into the weather. And they told her she could leave the baby behind if she wished: ‘You can take him or leave him here alone in the house. It’s your choice,’ they said.

“As they were leaving, one of the soldiers knocked a painting off the wall. His superior was angry: ‘Don’t wreck things! It’s a first-class house and well be needing it!’ So they knew they wouldn’t be coming back.

“They rode with two men in S.S. uniform. The baby screamed all the way. He had not yet had his bottle that morning.”

Iris caught her breath. She began to cry.

“Stop it!” Theo said furiously.

“After a few days the baby developed pneumonia and died. Then for a while the others were together in the camp, before they were separated, sent to Poland. Ah, Theo, you know all this! You know how it happened! The whole world knows, even the ones who don’t want to know.”

“Go on!” Theo said.

Franz’s gaze went back to the saltcellar. “The old people, they went quickly to the ovens. The young and strong were put to work. So she—there was a workshop where they made belts and gloves, leather things for the army. She worked there a long time …” He swallowed, resumed in an even drone, “Then, some long time after, I don’t know how long, it might have been a year or perhaps
two, yes, it could even have been longer—I don’t remember exactly—”

“Never mind
when
. Just say
what
. Go on!”

“Well, then, you see, one day some officers, some higher-ups from the Gestapo, came in. They were looking for, you know how it is, they were looking for girls. Pretty girls, blondes who looked Aryan. For the headquarters father front.” Franz was silent a moment. Then he looked up, afraid. “They took them away and stamped their arms: For Officers Only.’”

Theo started fiercely, scraping his chair. A glass of water overturned and spilled across the table.

“Please, Theo, you don’t have to listen anymore,” Iris whispered. “Mr. Brenner, Franz, there’s no sense in this, it’s enough.”

Theo sat down. “Franz, don’t make me pull it out of you. I want all of it, every word you can remember. And Iris, shut up.”

“She told me, she said that the person who saved her sanity had been a prostitute, and this girl—she came from Berlin—this girl said to the others, ‘Listen, they’re not touching
you
, not
you
, you understand? It’s only flesh, skin. If you were made to clean filth with your base hands, you wouldn’t despise your hands afterward, would you? You wouldn’t cut them off. So this is the same, these are filth, swine, shit.’ Excuse me,” Franz said to Iris.

So she closed off her mind and lived waiting, waiting for the Germans to lose the war.…

“The doctors came regularly to examine them for diseases. Cold, hard men they were. She—Liesel—was astonished that doctors could be such. She had thought always of doctors as different. She had been, so she said, so ignorant of the world, had known so little about human beings.

“One day a man came in who recognized her, a lawyer, Dietrich, from Vienna.”

“I knew him, he was a bastard. One of the first to jump on the bandwagon.”

“He recognized her because he used to play in a string
quartet that met in somebody’s house. Her parents’, I believe.”

“My parents’. It was my father’s Tuesday night music group and she—came in sometimes to play the piano.”

“Well, he remembered her. And shortly afterward she was put back in the factory. Because of him, of course. She thought it was an act of mercy. She was still innocent, even after all that. Of course it was because the war was ending and a lot of these torturers were suddenly becoming ‘humane.’ They hoped that some wretched survivor might put in a good word for them when the judgments were handed down.

“Anyway, we met in Italy. She didn’t know me at first; I had lost sixty pounds.… For a minute I didn’t know her either … she had got old. One would have thought she was well over thirty—but somehow she was still—still lovely. Even those monsters couldn’t destroy all of that.…

“We waited for weeks in Genoa. They kept coming, the walking corpses with skin sores and shaven heads who had crawled across Europe, out of hiding, out of the camps, and now were fleeing from the Russians.… All they wanted was to get out of Europe and never see it again. The group with which I spent my days was waiting like me to get to Palestine. We spent the few pennies which we got from the Joint in cheap cafés. You could sit forever, as one did—does still, I suppose, in Europe?—over a glass of wine or a cup of coffee. We sat in the sun and tasted the feeling of not being terrified, the feeling of being alive. And we talked about the future.

“Some of us persuaded Liesel to go with us. We thought you were dead, you see. There were so many rumors in those days. At all the places where people like ourselves were gathered, whenever a newcomer arrived there would be questions and comparing of notes. People carried lists, with dates, names and addresses: have you seen, or heard, of So-and-so? A man came who had heard from someone who had been in one of the camps where French Jews were sent that you had been rounded up in Paris, and that
you were dead. Later somebody else confirmed it; he was certain he had seen you among the contingent that went right after the fall of France.

“There was no reason not to believe it. After all, everyone else was dead, her parents, brothers, child; why not her husband also?

“God above, the bravery I’ve seen! The patience, the will!” Franz stopped. He stared at the wall. And began again:

“Then, I remember, a terrible thing happened.… There was a doctor in the group that was waiting for the ship, an older man who had suffered like the rest of us and, like the rest of us, was overwhelmed at the absolute miracle of having survived. He was very steady, very firm and kind, talking to people who weren’t doing so well emotionally, encouraging them with so much hope and wisdom—he was a rod and a staff. And suddenly one day while we were sitting there—I remember I was eating a pasta; I couldn’t ever get enough to eat at that time—all of a sudden this strong man jumped up from the chair and ran across the square. There were some
carabinieri
standing, chatting with a shopkeeper, and the doctor grabbed one of their guns and started screaming, simply went berserk there in the sunshine on the square. They wrestled for the gun, and the doctor was shot, shot and killed. Lying there on the ground, our kind, wise doctor.