Ashes (15 page)

As I lay in the cool water of the tub, I wondered about my dream. Why was I naked in that alley? Was it something to do with the naked girls in the cabaret? But their nudity hadn't seemed bad when I saw them onstage in that living tableau of the Brandenburg Gate. It didn't seem dirty or shameful, just clever, although I would never want to stand up that way on a stage or even wear that scanty little skirt of Ulla's. Why in the name of God was I always feeling ashamed?

When I got out of the bathtub, I went into the parlor of the apartment and found a piece of writing paper. I began to list those terrible moments in recent weeks when I had felt dirty or shameful. Thus began my Diary of Shame. At this point it was just a piece of paper, but when I got back to Caputh I planned to copy it into a notebook.

The first item was the day on the Kurfürstendamm when the SA officer had called Rosa a vamp. He hadn't called
me
a vamp, and yet I felt ashamed for some reason. The second—well, here is my list.

1. SA officer on Kurfürstendamm

2. Beer garden in Caputh when boy sings “The Watch on the Rhine”—K's eyes

3. U doing it with K

4. K's spitting in our basin; K's toothbrush

5. “Heil Hitler” in the alley; alley dream. Paint squad boy

 

And after the list I wrote this:
I feel as though I am seeing things I shouldn't see. I feel that somehow I have stumbled into the wrong place, the wrong world. I am a peeper, a voyeur. . .

 

 

Rosa came back with me the next day to Caputh. She was going to be able to stay for a while. This was good news for Rosa and me and also for Rosa's mother, who would be busy taking care of Rosa's grandmother.

We took the noon train from the Alexanderplatz station. The train was always packed with people during the summer, and that day was no exception. We were in Caputh in time for lunch. Before we even walked into the dining room, I heard a voice, a high, shouting, strained voice. It was Hitler on the radio. When we came in, I saw that Uncle Hessie was there. No one greeted us, as they were all listening intently to the radio broadcast. Papa raised his finger to his lips. Mama had a grim look on her face. I went up to kiss her.

“Hardly good for the digestion,” she muttered, nodding at the radio.

“Unfortunately our radio seems to be able to pick up a station we don't ordinarily get.”

“Which station?” I asked.

“It must be from southern Germany, near Munich or maybe even Austria. He's so popular there. I doubt Berlin would put him on . . . at least, not yet!”

“Shush! Elske,” Papa said.

“Nothing new here. Heard it all before,” Hessie said in a scathing whisper.

Rosa and I sat down. Hitler's voice was so loud that even the water in the glasses seemed to tremble.

“Can't we lower the volume?” Mama hissed at Papa. She was clearly angry at Hitler for dominating our lunch. Mama thought mealtimes should be peaceful affairs; she never liked to have the radio on when we were eating. Papa held up a finger as if to say just a minute more. Now the voice was almost screaming.

“That conclusion is forced upon us if we look at the world today: We have a number of nations which through their inborn outstanding worth have fashioned for themselves a mode of life which stands in no relation to the living space—the Lebensraum—which in their thickly populated settlements they inhabit.”
Then there was a staticky sound, obliterating his shrill voice. Mama was about ready to jump up and turn off the radio when the broadcast became clear again. I noticed that the door to the kitchen was open just a crack and I could see a narrow slice of Hertha's face. She was so still, it was if she was hardly breathing.

I caught another glimpse of Hertha. A slight smile played across the wedge of her face just as Hitler spoke of securing the land for the German people. I felt something turn in my stomach.

Papa now jumped up from the table and turned off the radio.

“Thank God, Otto!” Mama exclaimed.

“I knew it, Hessie. What did I tell you?” Papa sat back down. His eyes were hard. I had honestly never seen such bitterness in my father's face.

“Knew what, Papa?” I asked.

“
Lebensraum
, living space. He goes on about it constantly in
Mein Kampf
.”

Hessie picked up his napkin and patted his lips almost primly. Then he carefully put it back in his lap. “I hate to tell you, Otto, but businessmen like those in Düsseldorf love Hitler. Who do you think arranged the Düsseldorf speech?”

“Who?” Papa asked.

“The steel magnate Thyssen, and Krupp, and many others. They are all financing Hitler. They think he's good for business.”

“Fools.” Papa nearly spat in his soup plate.

“But what does he mean by living space? He doesn't think there's enough room?” I asked.

“Exactly,” Papa replied.

“Hmmm . . .” I said, studying my napkin. Then I looked up and smiled. “Why doesn't he go talk to Professor Einstein?”

“Why in heaven's name?” Mama said.

“The universe is expanding. There's definitely room for everyone,” I replied.

At this they all burst out laughing, even Papa.

 

 

It had been raining when Rosa and I arrived in Caputh, and it continued for the next few days. Papa seemed distracted during this time. He went over to Einstein's sometimes as often as twice in one day. On the morning before Hessie went back to Berlin it was still raining, and I saw Hessie and Mama hunched under an umbrella, taking a lakefront walk. I think maybe Mama was telling him something—worries about Papa, the university maybe, Jewish physics. I wasn't sure.

The rain was a great disappointment not simply because swimming and sailing were out of the question but also because Rosa and I were eager to wear the new bathing suits we had bought at Wertheim earlier that spring, which we thought were quite glamorous. Rosa's was a wonderful aquamarine and mine was a deep pink. Most bathing suits were rather dreary colors. Ours were not the usual flannel or cotton but were made of a very sleek material and with shoulder straps that could be let down for tanning if the sun ever appeared again. But because of the bad weather we pranced around in them inside the house. Papa, who had to test some film, even took a picture of us scampering around on the lawn when the rain let up one day. We looked a bit idiotic, for it was cold and we were hugging each other to keep warm. Professor Einstein was off to one side in the picture, laughing at us.

 

 

Mostly during this rainy spell Rosa and I devoted ourselves to preparing for the new school term. We were excited about the new curriculum, the library, and most of all about Fräulein Hofstadt.

“You know,” I said, “Ulla told me that Fräulein Hofstadt likes to give surprise quizzes where we have to stand up and recite a passage in class.”

“Really?” Rosa said.

“Yes.”

“Oh dear, I'm terrible at that.”

It was a dismal afternoon when it was not, as the expression goes, raining cats and dogs. Instead, it was a softer rain, which I called raining kittens. I looked out the window and saw no promise of the sun.

“We might as well start practicing. I think I could do part of ‘The Old Dream.' That's a pretty simple poem of Heine's.”

“Try it,” Rosa urged me.

“Well, first I have to get
The Sun Also Rises
out of my head, since Heine is very different from Hemingway.” I had finished it, but Baba lent me her copy, and I had started to reread it. I closed my eyes tight. “All right, I'm ready.”

“I'll count to three, then you can start,” Rosa said.

“This isn't a track meet, Rosa. I'll just start.

“There!” I said.

“That's it?” Rosa exclaimed.

“It's the first stanza. That really wasn't too hard. The trick is to find a poem with a really simple rhyme scheme. Then it's much easier to memorize.”

Rosa and I decided to try to memorize at least ten passages or poems. I still kept rereading
The Sun Also Rises.
It was a very sad book. Something had happened to Jake Barnes in the Great War so he couldn't do it with a woman. That must have been what Baba meant when she said “Let's just leave it at ‘or something' ” in reply to my comment “You mean there might be sex or something?”

The problem was that Jake was in love with Brett Ashley, but she couldn't fully love him back because she liked sex so much. All this made me think a lot about Ulla and Karl. I liked Jake. And it was not just that I liked him more than Karl, I suspected that in the long run despite his wounds, maybe Jake was more of a man than Karl.

He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once

-Albert Einstein,
“The World as I See It”

 

 

 

 

T
he sun finally peeked out. The air cleared, and yet there always seemed to me a point around the end of vacation when summer grows slightly stale. The July thirty-first election hadn't helped the mood. Hitler gained a few seats in the Reichstag, just as we'd feared. Rosa and I were both anxious to get back to school. School seemed safe somehow. Nonetheless, the sunny weather justified wearing the new sleek bathing suits, so we went out sailing in
Ratty
. Our intention was to sail to a nearby beach and actually go swimming in these new suits, causing what we imagined would be a wild sensation.

There was very little wind, and our progress toward the beach was achingly slow, so we began to practice reciting our Schiller and Heine verses in anticipation of Fräulein Hofstadt's class. We were both determined to make the highest marks. The sails flapped languidly, and the day was very hot. We drifted in toward the public beach hoping the water would get shallow enough for us to drop our anchor and swim. From off the shore the beach looked like an encampment, for there were clusters of the huge wicker beach chairs with their hooded tops that people could rent. It was customary for the families on German beaches in the holiday season to fly their city flag. So there were of course several from Berlin, and a couple from Leipzig and Dresden, as well as some from Frankfurt. In addition to the wicker encampment there were sand castles, and they too were flying flags.

The scene looked so festive and cheerful it took Rosa and me a minute to actually register what we were seeing from our gently rocking little vessel. A breeze suddenly sprang up, and like some terrible rash we could see amidst the city flags the
Blut und Boden
, the blood and earth colors of the swastika, its broken arms in their deadly right-hand spin snapping in the fresh wind. In front of one cluster of wicker beach chairs, half a dozen children, young enough to wear no clothes, were marching about with their arms raised toward the sky, crying in their singsongy little voices “Heil Hitler.” Then a mother came out from under the hooded beach chair. She was large—very tall and fleshy. Her skin was a coppery rose color from a summer of beach tanning. She had stuck a small Nazi flag at a jaunty angle in the coronet of white braids that were wound on top of her head. She picked up a naked child, put him on her shoulders, and began leading the march. He took the flag from her hair and started waving it. The woman's voice sailed out across the beach as she sang the opening lines of the “Horst Wessel Song.”

Yes, the flag is truly high
, I thought, as I saw the little naked boy atop his mama's shoulders.

“Don't drop the anchor,” I said to Rosa. Rosa turned to me. Her eyes were grim, and then she looked back toward the beach. I saw her shoulders drop and she shook her head ever so slightly in disbelief.

At just that moment a teenage boy's face broke from the water 's surface not five feet from the bow. Rosa and I both gave small yelps.

“Don't leave, girls. I'll tow you ashore!”

“We don't want to go ashore,” Rosa called back in a steely voice.

I pulled the tiller toward me,
Ratty
caught the breeze, and we slipped away. Now, this was the odd thing: When the teenage boy surfaced, I saw in my imagination the face of the singer from the beer garden. But Rosa saw another face.

“Those square yellow teeth.” That was all she said. And that was the only time the incident in the alley in Berlin with the painting squad was ever referred to by either one of us.

We were reluctant to land on any of the other beaches, and for the rest of the afternoon we sailed aimlessly about until the sun set and we made for our dock at the cottage.

The incident on the beach became the next item in my Diary of Shame, which was now listed in an old, unused notebook of Mama's she let me have.