The Prosperous Thief (5 page)

With his features now animated, Martin Lewin appears younger than at first sight. Indeed, he would be much the same age as Heinrik Heck, although there any likeness would end. Where Heini is large and blond, Martin is compact and dark. And there is a roughness about Heini that not even a new coat with a fine lambswool collar can disguise. Martin Lewin, in contrast, is all neatness and formality, from his clipped brown beard and dark-rimmed spectacles to the overcoat which drapes his small frame without a wrinkle. He bears a resemblance to the famous Dr Freud, younger of course, but with the same serious mien and tidy composure.

Martin Lewin is a businessman, or used to be back in the days when Jews were still allowed to work, a bookish silk merchant from Krefeld via Düsseldorf who still carries himself with the customary ease of more prosperous days. But times have changed. While Heinrik Heck from the Berlin gutter is facing the future with eager optimism, Martin Lewin knows there is no place for him and his family in the new Germany.

He raises an anxious face towards the British Passport Control Office. Here he hopes to find a new home for his family somewhere in the vast British Commonwealth. Perhaps England, or Scotland or Wales, even India or Australia. It doesn’t really matter, Martin has decided the Lewins will go anywhere.

His wife, however, has very different ideas. Renate Lewin does not want to be here at the British Passport Control Office; in fact, she does not want to be in Berlin at all, dashing from embassy to legation to specialist foreign office in search of visas. She wants to be home in Krefeld safe behind closed doors, with her husband, her daughter, her mother, and her silk-designing materials. But Martin has insisted: for their lives, he keeps saying, for their lives they have to leave Germany. Renate disagrees as she has for a number of years now, but even if he were right, she does not see why they have to emigrate so far. She might adjust to Paris or Amsterdam, but India and Australia simply do not figure on her map of the world. She has said as much to Martin, but he is among those who believe Hitler will not stop at Austria and the Sudetenland. Not only should Jews leave Germany, he is convinced they should move as far from Europe as possible.

‘I don’t want to live in England,’ she now says, pulling on her glove. ‘I don’t want to live anywhere in the British Commonwealth.’ She launches each word with a tug on the soft kidskin. ‘And I don’t want to live in Brazil or the United States either,’ a reference to the other visa applications Martin has lodged recently. ‘Please, Martin, reconsider.’

He shakes his head sadly. This is a man who loves his wife with a deep and passionate love, a man who is distressed by seeing her unhappy, a man who hates being the cause of her misery. But he has no choice. Renate refuses to see that Jews have no place in Hitler’s Germany; she says the Germans will come to their senses. But what senses are these, Martin wonders, given the Germans are happier and more productive than at any time since the war?

And besides, they have their daughter to consider. Only six years old but deprived of a normal childhood, Alice Lewin can’t go to school, she can’t even go outside to play with any guarantee of safety.

‘We have no choice,’ Martin says to his wife. ‘It’s not just a matter of our preferences. It’s Alice we need to think about.’

The mention of their daughter softens Renate as Martin knew it would.And while he is not fool enough to confuse a temporary lull in their differences with long-term compliance, at least Renate now enters the building without further argument.

Once inside they give their names and are directed to a waiting area. The room is crowded with men and women, young and old, and a number of children too. Renate and Martin are shocked to see children here. Alice is safe at home in Krefeld with her grandmother, protected as much as possible in these dark days from a country and people who wish her harm. But other parents are clearly less vigilant. There’s a baby cradled in its mother’s arms, a toddler holding tightly to a doll, and four other children, all much the same age as Alice, sitting silent and solemn next to their parents.

‘Perhaps there’s no one to look after them at home,’ Martin whispers to Renate.

But Renate will have none of it. ‘There’s no excuse for exposing children to this.’ She scans the array of people, all of them white-faced and watchful. ‘If parents won’t protect their children, who will?’

The woman with the baby is sobbing quietly, and now the baby starts to grizzle – not a normal baby’s complaint, more a quiet keening, a sound that might belong to any of the people gathered in this room.

The Lewins find two vacant seats against the far wall and there they sit waiting their turn. Fear, hope, desperation, all are running savage here, and a starched white tension, tight and still. Movements are smothered, the papers grasped in so many hands are checked and checked again, always surreptitiously. No one disturbs and yet everyone is disturbed. No one forgets for a moment that one family’s luck will be another family’s loss. People steal glances at the competition as if it could be determined by manner and appearance whose application will be successful. There is a background murmur of well-modulated German, and an occasional English phrase, but not a word of Yiddish. These Jews are quite a different type from those Eastern European Jews of Heini Heck’s experience. In fact, there is unlikely to be a pastry-cook anywhere in this room. Here are gathered secular Jews from Germany’s middle-class: doctors, lawyers, academics, business people, all of them indistinguishable from other Germans.

Martin takes them in. ‘They’re just like us,’ he whispers to Renate.

And just like Martin and Renate, they would have lived a comfortable German existence before the rise of Hitler. They would have eaten at restaurants and patronised the theatre and the opera, they would have enjoyed lives which Heini Heck could only dream about. These are well-educated people, discreetly Jewish and proudly German, yet in a few short years they have been reduced to circumstances worse than anything Heini has ever experienced. Heini has known hunger and violence, he has known neglect and poverty, but he has always known there was a place for him in Germany, no matter how menial. But not so today’s Jews, not so Martin and Renate Lewin: their very lives are being squeezed. Deprivation, humiliation, threats, violence, and what was distressing but tolerable even as recently as last year is now an ever-present and life-threatening danger. Martin sees his own fear and desperation reflected in the faces and demeanour of the other Jews in this room. It’s like being on the deck of a sinking ship with not enough lifeboats to go around.

Suddenly there is a shattering of the brittle air. A woman on the other side of the room is on her feet and waving her arms. ‘We were here before you,’ she shouts.‘We were here before you.’And turning to the elderly couple next to her,‘You saw us, I know you saw us arrive before them,’ and points with her fist in the direction of two girls, neither of them more than sixteen, making their way to one of the desks at the top of the room. The woman follows them, ‘They’re pushing in,’ she shouts, as she pushes past chairs, crushing toes and scraping shins. The toddler’s doll falls to the floor, the woman scuttles it yet presses on. Her husband lunges, but she’s too quick. He lunges again and this time he manages to grab her jacket, and with apologetic glances to the rest of the room drags her back to her seat. The woman’s voice is quieter now but still audible. ‘It’s not fair,’ she says over and over. ‘It’s not fair.’

And neither it is. Not this place, these queues, this Germany, this
Führer
.And not the laws against Jews, nor those countries that guard their visas like gold. Nothing is fair any more. And when one Jew makes a fuss twenty Jews suffer. Martin wonders if this woman has spoiled their chances. He looks around the room trying to read the faces. But whether spy or Jew is watching, it is impossible to judge.

Over the next two hours there are other outbursts, people for whom the fear or anger or confusion or the sheer unfairness of it all can no longer be contained. Martin and Renate sit locked inside themselves, both knowing it is safer this way. When at last their name is called, Martin approaches the desk alone. He has told Renate he will impress better with his English if he does not have to translate for her, but in truth he is afraid her antagonism to any place that is not Germany will spoil their chances. Yesterday with the Americans and the day before with the Brazilians she made no attempt to hide her lack of interest in their countries, nor her intention to return to Germany as soon as circumstances improved. Not wanting to jeopardise their chances with the whole of the British Commonwealth, Martin uses his unstable English as an excuse to talk with the official alone. Although it is difficult, in this the most crucial move of their lives, to be acting without her.

He has been told that a knowledge of English will help their chances, but as he talks with the officer, he learns their prospects are not good no matter how proficient his English. It was much the same story with the Americans yesterday. So many other German Jews are ahead of them in the emigration queues, people with skills and qualifications much more in demand than those of a silk merchant and his silk-designer wife. Their case seems so hopeless, and their lack of money makes it even worse. And such committed Germans are he and Renate that they have no contacts in Britain, no contacts anywhere in the world, no one to sponsor them or provide guarantees.

The interview is brief and dismal. The Lewin application is placed with others in a tray and Martin walks back to his seat. Everyone watches, everyone is trying to read the result in his face. One man actually speaks: ‘The English,’ he says in English, ‘it helps?’ Martin shrugs, who knows what helps? And takes Renate by the arm and together they leave the building.

Back in the fresh air, he feels as if a thresher has plunged through him; all wilt and dust, he’s never felt so useless nor so weak. And when a couple walk past on their way into the building, the man familiar from the press and obviously someone of distinction, Martin feels a further slackening: with people like that applying for Britain, what chance do they have?

‘We’ll be all right,’ Renate says.

If only it were true, Martin is thinking. If only merely wishing for something could make it happen, there would be no Hitler, no Nazis, and German Jews would not find themselves outlawed in their own country. It would be so much easier if he could talk with his wife, properly talk about the current situation. But she refuses, and sometimes quite violently; in fact, if it were any less important, Martin would have given up trying a long time ago.

He glances across at her, she is looking more relaxed than she has since their arrival in Berlin, and he decides to let things settle for the moment. He steadies himself with a few deep breaths, he doesn’t feel strong but will pretend and, linking his arm through hers, steps into the street. He knows they should contact Erich, Renate’s brother, but with no good news to report there seems so little point. Besides, they discussed all the options last night with him and his wife Dora, and again over breakfast this morning, and for now Martin wants no more talking. He feels such futility as if he and all the Jews in Germany are trapped in a maze to which there is neither entry nor exit, all of them in a haphazard scampering while Nazis take potshots at them from strategically placed watchtowers.

With a couple of hours to spare before their train to Düsseldorf leaves, they decide to spend it in the Tiergarten. After three days in Berlin clogged with official buildings and official people, with every waking moment dogged by the struggles of staying in Germany and their struggles to leave, and spiking it all the unaccustomed strain between them, there is every reason to revisit a place that has in the past provided them with so much pleasure.

They cross the road and enter the park. It is a mild day with autumn in full splendour. The sun is shining and the air is crisp and golden. The paths are full of promenading people chattering and laughing as if the world has not changed. And brilliantly coloured leaves lifting in the gentle breeze and fluttering through the air like exotic butterflies. Martin plucks one from Renate’s hair and slips it into his pocket.

The park provides a buffer between them and the world outside; Martin feels himself loosen and Renate too. They walk the paths in a slow sauntering beneath branches deeply black against a pale mauve sky. And carpeting the lawns, leaves so richly red that if you were not there to see, if you could not bend down and place them so bright against the white of your skin, you would not believe such colour possible. Martin finds himself wondering where they might be next autumn, and immediately a single, urgent plea: not here, anywhere, but not here.

They remain in the southern section of the park, brushing easily against each other as they walk, an arresting couple with her grace and height and his perfect neatness. They wander past lakes and the river and numerous mounds of dirt made by burrowing beasts, and once even the pale flash of a rabbit. And at last, in this russet and gold place they feel themselves ease back together again. They continue deeper into the park. No traffic penetrates here, just the rustling of leaves, the scrape of their shoes on the gravel, the occasional shout from distant children.

‘It’s not so different from our first visit,’ Renate says, recalling their honeymoon of ten years ago. She leans in closer, touching her face to his neck.

A little further on, in a sheltered area by one of the smaller paths, they notice a man asleep on a bench. He’s ragged and filthy and even at a distance they can smell him.

‘So Hitler hasn’t put everyone back to work,’ Renate says looking at the man.

‘Jews and derelicts, who would have thought we’d have so much in common?’

It’s a poor joke and the spell is immediately broken. Martin’s face is grim as he checks his watch, and though they have plenty of time, they make their way back across the park and directly on to Zoo Station. With their pleasures so few and fragile these days, Martin should have thought before he spoke – though Renate appears undisturbed, her brow is clear and her hand on his arm is relaxed. She seems to see what he sees but somehow manages to dispatch the fear more easily. He looks around at the crowds and traffic and so many Nazis, far more than in Düsseldorf or their own town of Krefeld, and feels so exposed.