The Last Days (10 page)

The physical resemblance between brother and sister was shocking. It was as if Friderike was in the next room. Lotte didn’t want to give up without a fight. She went back into the lounge.

When she stepped into the room, the men didn’t break off their conversation. Her presence didn’t disturb them reminiscing about a past from which she was excluded. She brought them tea and they thanked her, yet however warmly they did so, it seemed as though they were speaking to someone else. They were in Kapuzinerberg now and it was Friderike who was pouring them refreshments. Lotte observed her husband. His face had changed. His disposition had changed. His posture was straight and the tone of his voice was more assertive. He had transformed back into the married man whom she’d met seven years ago. Siegfried Burger had come into the house and Friderike (née Burger) had gained a foothold in the lounge. Siegfried had sat down on the worn leather armchair and Friderike was standing behind him. Lotte felt like a third wheel. Her heart skipped a beat when she heard her husband enquire after his ex-wife. When he asked Siegfried whether he missed his sister, he added in a choked voice that he missed her too. She took a step in the direction of the corridor. Pretending not to have heard Stefan’s question, Siegfried held Lotte back. He announced that he had brought a letter with him
that, he said, turning to face her, “will make you happy”. Lotte’s rage subsided. The letter was addressed to “Stefan and Lotte”. Siegfried read it out loud. It began with a protracted passage in which Friderike related how happy she was to be in New York and free at last. How she had narrowly avoided being arrested along with her daughters at the port in Marseilles. She said she felt good in New York. She no longer felt nostalgic about Austria. She had been campaigning for the United States to enter the war on Britain’s side, but these days she spent most of her time at the Bureau of Immigration on Ellis Island. She had regained her faith in the future in that New World, where people looked and spoke to you without hatred. As Siegfried read those sentences out, Lotte noticed a trace of disappointment flicker past Stefan’s eyes. Happy… without him? Siegfried interrupted his reading and, addressing Lotte, said: “This is the part that’s going to interest you…” He resumed reading the letter. Friderike had hosted Eva Altmann—Eva, her niece!—for two weeks, having found her in a youth hostel. Eva and Friderike had had a marvellous time; “that young girl is wonderful,” the letter said. They had gone to Coney Island, strolled along the beach at Long Island where they had taken their first dip in the ocean: “Rest assured, dear Lotte, that I am looking after her and that we will one day experience again those marvellous moments together.” Lotte felt a jolt of happiness. Then she felt a violent pang of pain. Her gaze drifted off to the world outside the window. Evening was fast approaching and a mist was settling over the town and the valley. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from that dismal scene. The image of happy crowds strolling the streets of New York had taken over her mind. Was the world really divided between people who were happy and those who were cursed?

T
HEY LED A PEACEFUL LIFE.
Compared to the rising pile of corpses, it was a relatively normal existence. The news of calamities only reached them sporadically. Their fate was sealed and their eyelids were nearly shut. Nothing would ever come and clear the piles of corpses away. They would no longer live in fear. Silence would reign all around them. They had built a lonely world for themselves. Each day, they set themselves the task of forgetting. They no longer listened to the radio, didn’t read the newspapers, avoided their friends and allowed the telephone to ring off the hook. They rarely opened their front door and left their post unopened. They didn’t write any more letters, took no trains and left the house as little as possible. Their entire life played out between those whitewashed walls. It was a closed world, where it was often difficult to breathe and the air felt like dust. They too would revert to dust. They never raised their voices, never lifted their gaze, their souls were no longer familiar with either joy or distress. Their hearts had simply stopped beating. They lived their life as if they were ghosts. Sleep eluded them. The world’s miseries no longer reverberated in their ears. The memory of their loved ones had evaporated. Oblivion was their only companion. They no longer participated in the world. They were no longer Jewish, no longer Austrian, no longer German. They had cheated destiny. Their fortress was impregnable. They had won.

But one day a rumble would fill the air. Darkness would streak the sky. Sirens would blare out. The earth would be blown apart. Giant aircraft with swastikas on their wings would drop their bombs. The earth would be set ablaze, houses would burn and the streets would be strewn with mangled bodies. Armoured infantry would fire their cannon across Rio’s bay. Thousands of soldiers would spill out of ships and swarm over Copacabana beach. The Wehrmacht would march along the Avenida Rio Branco. The generals would take over city hall. They would post their decrees on the walls of each avenue and those of the
favelas
. The SS would disperse throughout the city in small detachments looting palaces and homes. The window displays of department stores would be covered with yellow stars. They would order exiles to register with the authorities. They would insist on taking a census of native Jews. They would enact the racial laws. Then the hunting season would start. First they would imprison all the German refugees, after which they would move on to noteworthy local Jews before starting to round up families. Black-shirted men with machine guns in hand and rabid dogs frothing at the mouth on a leash would burst into schools looking for Jewish children. Once Rio had been cleansed, the SS would advance farther north along the highway. Petrópolis would be their first port of call. They would seal off Avenida Koeler and begin their manhunt. They would easily track him down to 34 Rua Gonçalves Dias. They would break down the door. They would point their guns at them and force them to leave the house. They would make them climb into a curtain-sided lorry. They would then drive them down into the valley, just like they’d done with those women and children in the forests of Poland. In the little jungle close to Teresópolis, they would put a bullet in his head. After that it would be Lotte’s turn.

Brazil, land of the future?

The housekeeper announced a visitor. A man in a dark suit with a thin, misshapen chestnut beard and a black hat on his head came into the lounge.

“Rabbi Hemle, Henrique Hemle.”

His handshake was firm, his gaze was thoughtful, intense and affable. The man must have been in his forties, but his features were lit by a boyish spark. His voice was gentle. In a fluent, elegant German he explained that he had made the trip from Rio specifically to meet his host and apologized for the intrusion, hoping that he hadn’t arrived at an inappropriate time.

Stefan shook his head and replied that he wasn’t worth such a journey.

“The journey had been long overdue,” the rabbi said. “I had already travelled once to hear you speak and catch a glimpse of you. That was back in 1923, in the wake of my bar mitzvah. My father, who was one of your devoted readers, had taken me to the theatre to see a performance of your play
Jeremiah
. You know, I’ve always asked myself whether I was inspired to become a rabbi by hearing Jeremiah’s voice. You had put these words into your hero’s mouth—and forgive me if I’m misquoting you here: ‘He may not sleep who watches over the people. The Lord hath appointed me to watch and to give warning.’ Isn’t that the sort of leap of faith a rabbi makes?”

Other words spoken by the choirs in
Jeremiah
came flooding through Stefan’s mind, words that he’d put in his characters’ mouths more than thirty years earlier.

How had he been able to write that in 1916?

Henrique Hemle, the chief rabbi of Rio, said he was originally from Hamburg. He had fled the Reich in 1935 along with his wife and two children. Hamburg, he contemplated, had no doubt been cleansed of all its Jews, maybe Hemle’s family was dying of cold and hunger in the east, just like all of Berlin’s and Vienna’s Jews. Or maybe—as the BBC had reported on 30th November—Hemle’s family had been among those five thousand German Jews executed at Kaunas in Lithuania as soon as they’d left the trains. Maybe Hemle’s family had been lucky and been cooped up in the large ghetto in Minsk, previously occupied by Belarusian Jews, all of whom had been executed, down to the last one, in order to make room for those lucky German Jews. Stefan didn’t ask after Hemle’s family. It was the golden rule that everyone had abided by ever since the news had spread that Germany and Austria were in the process of becoming
judenrein
. Nobody asked questions any more. Everyone preferred to remain in the dark. They sought relief in ignorance and uncertainty. They knew. The families that had been driven out of the Reich had been expelled from the land of the living. They walked through the timeless woods, wandering, side by side, surrounded by anguished cries, hordes of fraternal
spectres
, all of whom were pale, naked and tormented, as they marched firm-footed and with dignity towards the darkness, doleful shadows walking in the freezing air, trembling in the fog, women leading the way as they held back their tears, watching their children vanish into the realm of endless pain, letting the
fingers of their little loved ones slip out of their grasp, saying their goodbyes without opening their mouths, spilling torrents of silent, invisible tears, the endless grief of mothers looking on as reality unfolds to reveal an infinite grey expanse, an ocean of heaped-up bodies, the place of lovers’ rendezvous and family reunions. The next world.

“I was very moved by your reply to my invitation,” the rabbi continued, “to celebrate the day of Yom Kippur with us at the Great Synagogue in Rio. You apologized by saying that ‘to your great shame’, you did not have a religious upbringing. You shouldn’t feel ashamed, Mr Zweig. That was the way things were done at the time. We were Germans first and foremost, Austrians first and foremost. In those times, we simply followed in our fathers’ footsteps. Our fathers were great builders and soldiers for both the Second Reich and Hindenburg. It was our misfortune to place all our hopes in progress and emancipation rather than in God and our ancestors. You know, my father, who was an eminent professor at the University of Hamburg, one day confided in me that, like many others Jews at that time, he had been tempted to convert to Christianity. I inherited my faith from my grandfather, who taught me to read the Torah and to believe in God, go figure why religion seems to skip a generation… I’m not here to lecture but… you see yourself as far removed from your Jewish identity, and I’m aware of your fierce opposition to Zionism as you abhor all forms of nationalism. But let me tell you something, down in the depths of your soul there is something in you that is rooted to our Jewish traditions. Your
Jeremiah
is steeped in Jewish culture. What about Mendel the bookseller? Look at your friend and mentor Freud. Freud didn’t hesitate in stripping us of our only heroes, and turned Moses into an Egyptian with his essay on monotheism, breaking our only idol at the same time
that our synagogues were being burnt down. Even in your darkest hours you didn’t commit such a sacrilege. You instead gave us an inkling of hope, brought our old epics to life with
The Buried Candelabrum
. I’m not that naive you know. I know that there isn’t a single rabbi left alive in Germany, or for that matter in Poland and Ukraine. The Jewish world is being annihilated. In a year or maybe five, you and I, my dear Mr Zweig, may very well be among the last survivors of the tribe of Israel. That’s why we need to fight—even if we’re tempted to rejoin our loved ones, even if we feel ashamed that we’re free to breathe while they are left gasping for air. The great Reich won’t have a moment of peace so long as there is still a single rabbi left alive to read the Torah and wear his tefillin and tallith—even if that rabbi is ten thousand miles away from Berlin. They will want to come looking for him and will dispatch an entire army to do so. They claim that the Reich is slowing its advance through Russia in order to kill Jewish children—may God watch over those innocent souls. So imagine Goebbels finding out that Zweig is still alive and wielding the German tongue better than anyone… If you’ll forgive this piece of advice, don’t keep yourself inside this prison. According to our tradition, man defines himself first and foremost according to his relationships with others. We measure one life in the light of another. I’m not asking you to open yourself up to God, it is undoubtedly a bad moment to choose to put your faith in His hands given that He seems to have been increasingly turning His back on His people. Only allow me to speak to you as a rabbi, renew your relationships with people—there we have it, this is the reason behind my visit, please come and take part in the Passover Seder. The Pesach this year will have greater resonance than any Pesach before. This old story we’re going to read on the night of the Seder, that story about the Pharaoh ordering the execution of
all our firstborn sons, is the same tragedy our European martyrs are living today. Come and share our meal of bitter herbs and matzo bread and hear the Haggadah. Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Eliezer will tell us the story of our wandering, bondage, misery and death. They will teach us that the darkest hour is just before the dawn. You and your wife need to hear those words. Come and pray, even if you aren’t a believer. The sadness that afflicts us is too much for one man to bear, even if that man is the great Stefan Zweig… Well, there we have it, I won’t inconvenience you any longer, but… promise me you’ll try to make it.”

He replied that he would do his best. He accompanied rabbi Hemle to the front steps. When it was time to close the door on him, he recalled some more words from his
Jeremiah
:

Above Petrópolis, the sky was no longer a bright azure. It was the middle of the tropical summer and a swarm of black clouds had unleashed a heavy rainfall. It felt as if they were breathing water. It no longer resembled anything like Baden and Sommerdigen. The air didn’t smell sweet any more, the days were clammy and stultifying, while the nights were like being inside a furnace. Lotte spent most of her time gasping for air, going from the bed to the veranda, then opening and shutting the window, oppressed by the lack of air. She refrained from leaving the house lest she get caught in the rain, and whenever she surmounted her fears, she found herself smarting under the brunt of the storms. She would linger in the middle of the deserted street, as if paralysed, churning over the thought that just like trees attract lightning, she was a magnet
for unhappiness. She felt cursed, punished for her errors, she had sinned in London, she had got involved with a married man and stolen him away from his wife and the Lord was now unleashing His wrath on her. She had sinned, she had fled from the war, tempted to cheat her destiny, abandoned her nearest and dearest to their unhappiness. She hadn’t shared the bread of suffering with them. O the almighty Lord who turned ungodly women into statues of salt. Petrified, she lingered under the storm. She had entered into a covenant with this man, and this same man was afraid of everything except God’s wrath. She had turned her back on her people while her loved ones tried to keep one another warm with their bodies in the freezing Polish cold—and there she was, with no one to hold her hand, having accompanied a man who sought escape and exile, seeking the peaceful bliss of enchanting dawns. The Lord is the only refuge, the Lord who blessed our forefathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Lord who shielded us from tyrants and the revenge of oppressors, the Lord who helped those who believed in Him. Her sin was too great and the transgression unforgivable. Anguished and exhausted, she went back into the house. She swore she would never again brave the elements. Over the course of the following days, she meandered around the house, haggard and with lacklustre eyes, running short of breath at the slightest effort, uncommunicative, not daring to add to her unhappiness, letting her body speak for her instead, expressing herself with coughing fits. The physician was summoned at all hours of day and night. The pills had stopped working. He injected her with a drug he’d concocted himself and which he said would heal her. He looked for a vein and pricked her flesh in vain again and again, tightening the tourniquet. Her veins continually slipped from under his fingers, running away from the needle, and, having reached the end of his tether, the
doctor, contrary to all logic, injected the solution into her anyway. Instead of coursing through her veins, the drug collected into a burning cyst on her arm. The doctor left on a reassuring note, the drug was now in her body, wasn’t that what mattered in the end?