Ashes (24 page)

 

R
osa stood there gaping at me as I turned and ran out of the schoolyard. I vowed I would never return to the Kaiser Frederick Wilhelm School. I ran around the block and stood in the shadow of a chestnut street on the corner, where I watched the SA men push Herr Doktor Berg into the back end of a van as I pressed the package to my chest. I knew neither Mama nor Papa would be home at this hour. This was Mama's day to go to the conservatory for a meeting with other pianists. They swapped music scores. I couldn't go home. I didn't want to be alone, and I didn't want to face Mr. Hell and be interrogated as to what had happened in school. I needed to talk to someone, some normal adult. I needed to explain all I had been feeling, and the terrible thing that had just happened in the schoolyard. Baba would most likely be at home writing her column. She had connections through the newspaper world, being a reporter. She heard things that others didn't hear. Hadn't Frau von Schleicher called her up that evening at our house during dinner to say that Hitler and Hindenburg's son were on their way to the Ribbentrops'? Maybe Baba would even know where they were taking Herr Doktor Berg. Or where Frau Grumbach had gone. And Miri Goldfein!

 

 

“What sort of a license plate has only two numbers?” Those were my first words when Baba opened the door.

“Gaby, what are you doing here?”

I started again to ask my question about the license plate, it was the plate I had seen on the back of the limousine Fräulein Hofstadt had been riding in, but I burst into tears.

“Come! Come! Let's get you some tea.” She folded me into her soft arms. “Now, now, dear, nothing can be that bad.”

“Oh, but it is!” I said, pulling my face away from her shoulder. My tears and runny nose had stained her silk blouse. “I'm never—never
ever
going back to school! I don't care what Mama and Papa say.”

She led me into the sitting room. The same room, the same sofa where I had sprawled in July reading
The Sun Also Rises
. The schoolyard story tore from me in jagged, sharp-edged chunks that seemed to leave gouges inside me from the very telling. When I had finished, Baba looked at me and did not say anything right away. When she did speak, what she said surprised me.

“About the license plate. I am sure it is Goebbels's.”

“Goebbels? You mean
the
Goebbels, Hitler's adviser?” My voice dropped. Joseph Goebbels was now the most important adviser to Hitler. He was the highest ranking in Hitler's innermost circle of counselors, although he had no official position.

“Yes.” She paused. “You're old enough to know. And now there is absolutely no reason you shouldn't know. Fräulein Katrina Hofstadt is Goebbels's new mistress. One in a long line. I am sure there will be more to follow. Or perhaps he has three or four right now. He is an infamous womanizer. His affair with your teacher has been going on for a few months. Your mother and father were very upset when they heard about it but they didn't want to disrupt your studies in the middle of the year.”

Fräulein Hofstadt's romance with Goebbels made it all clear to me now. It explained her increased power at the school, the whole thing with the BDM, the firing of Jewish teachers, the harassment of Jewish students. It all fit.

“And what about this list of books and the students who were reading them?”

“Ah.” Baba crossed one leg over the other, leaned back against the sofa pillow, and gave a sound that was halfway between a chuckle and a snarl. “Well, Herr Professor Goebbels holds an advanced degree in literature. In fact, last night I was at the annual Opera Ball and he was discussing
Hamlet
.”

I opened my eyes wide.

“Yes, you don't expect Nazis to be discussing Shakespeare, do you?”

“Well, now I understand why that is the play Fräulein Hofstadt is planning for the spring, and not Schiller's play about Joan of Arc,” I said.

“Oh, yes, you see, Goebbels now suspects Schiller for his radicalism, and he even feels that Goethe's works are not as patriotic as they should be. But he is determined to Aryanize Shakespeare. After all, Hamlet was a Dane, and he went to Wittenberg. Last evening Goebbels was expounding on the parallels between Hamlet being deprived of his rightful inheritance and Germany's losses because of the Versailles treaty. Shakespeare, he says, foreshadowed what was to come.” She snorted and continued. “So I don't think you need to worry, Gaby, about your parents insisting that you stay in such a school, because obviously you won't be receiving much of an education from Goebbels's mistress.”

I shook my head slowly in wonder. “But Baba how are we going survive this?”

Baba bit her lip lightly, “I don't know,
Herzchen
, I don't know.”

No one was home when I arrived at our apartment. I went immediately to my bedroom and untied the string on the package Herr Doktor Berg had given me. There were not two books but three. On top was
The Story of My Life
, by Helen Keller. That one he had confiscated the first term of the previous year. Then there was
The Call of the Wild
by Jack London. And the third was one I had never known about,
White Fang,
also by Jack London and the same translator as
The Call of the Wild
. Inside there was a note from Doktor Berg.

I stared at the letter for a long time after I read it. My hands trembled as I held the paper. I had always thought of Doktor Berg as so stern, which he was. But I saw something else now. He was not simply a harsh schoolmaster. He was noble, and he was very brave.

 

 

Baba was right. Mama and Papa seemed almost relieved when I said that I didn't want to go back to school. When I told them what had happened, they were not shocked. The same thing was happening at the university. Jewish students were leaving in droves. Jewish professors were being cut. The SA was a constant presence. Einstein's office had been rifled, and it was rumored that his apartment, now empty for almost two months since he had gone to America, had been searched as well. An SS officer had appeared in Papa's office that morning demanding to see his files. Papa chuckled sourly.

“I gave him the copies of the Belopolsky formulations of redshift lines for spiral nebulae and of course fifty pages of calculations. I then began a lengthy explanation of the possible mathematical inconsistencies between that and the Doppler-Fizeau effect. Needless to say, he got bored immediately and just took the papers.” Papa seemed quite pleased with himself. He then said that he would call my school the next day and tell them that I would not be returning. “We'll find a new school for you next year,” Papa told me. “Until then, I'll teach you at home.”

“What about Rosa?” I asked.

“Well, that's a decision that Rosa's mother will have to make,” Mama said.

I knew that Rosa's mother would not allow her to leave. Rosa's mother was somewhat timid about such things. She had been reluctant when Rosa had said she did not want to join the BDM. She'd never let Rosa leave school.

Papa had promised that he would try to find out where they had taken Doktor Berg. “Another one for my list,” he said with a sigh, and from inside his vest pocket he withdrew a piece of yellow paper.

“What list, Papa?” I asked.

“List of people—friends, friends of friends—who have been suddenly taken away by the SA.”

That evening after dinner I started reading
White Fang
. I finished it at midnight. I closed the book and turned out the light but, still propped up in bed against my pillows, I stared into the night through the frost-rimed windowpanes. I thought of the two men from the book, Bill and Henry, alone in the Canadian wilderness.

Somehow the book, the words of Jack London, and my thoughts about Doktor Berg began to entwine. I wondered where he was right now. Where had they taken him? What might he be doing this very instant? It was cold out tonight. Was he shivering? He had been wearing just a light suit jacket, no overcoat, no gloves. Had they not even given him time to get those things? I knew so little about him. I had not even known he was Jewish. I wondered if he was married. What would his wife think if he didn't come home after school? I started to cry silently.

The book Doktor Berg gave me was a tale about men, dogs, and wolves. It was supposed to be just a made-up story—a story that took place in the north country of Canada, in a region called the Yukon. In the beginning, two men and their dogs are out in the wilderness being tracked by a pack of starving wolves. One by one their dogs are devoured by the wolves. And at night the wolf pack begins to press in on their campsite, their eyes gleaming. They creep closer and closer on their bellies, just outside the rim of firelight. The she-wolf “slinks” in a lovely “peculiar, sliding, effortless gait,” her eyes wistful with hunger but not affection. My own eyes grew heavy. “‘It's a she-wolf,' Henry whispered back to Bill, ‘an' that accounts for Fatty an' Frog. She's the decoy for the pack. She draws out the dog an' then all the rest pitches in an' eats 'm up.' ”

The face of the she-wolf with her red-hued fur bristling with frost loomed in the night. The fur became creamier, blondish, falling in soft waves, finger waves. It was a slow transformation until the wolf head became that of a beautiful woman, a human face of pure malignancy. Fräulein Hofstadt. Two fangs slashed the night.

I woke up with a silent scream tearing through me. I was gasping. But there was another sound coming from the bathroom. A horrible retching noise. I was confused. Had I been dreaming? Yes, it was a terrible dream, a nightmare but I was hearing this other animal-like sound. Then a sob.

I got up and went to the bathroom. The door was open just a crack. Ulla was on her knees.

“Ulla!” I whispered. “Ulla, what's wrong?”

“I'm pregnant.”

Each day mankind and the claims of mankind slipped farther from him. Deep in the forest a call was sounding, and as often as he heard this call, mysteriously thrilling and luring, he felt compelled to turn his back upon the fire . . . and to plunge into the forest. . . . But as often as he gained the soft unbroken earth and the green shade, the love for John Thornton drew him back to the fire again.

- Jack London,
The Call of the Wild

 

 

 

 

“W
hat are you going to do?” I asked Ulla. “I don't know.” Ulla drew back from the toilet and flushed it. She remained sitting on the tile floor. I sank to the edge of the tub and looked at her.

“You have to tell Mama and Papa.”

“I know.”

“Have you told Karl?”

“Sort of.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know, I said I had missed my period. But this happened once before and it was nothing, so maybe . . .”

“Will you get married?”

“I guess. Karl really wants to. I mean, in a way, Karl is happy, or at least he was when I thought I might have been pregnant a while back. As I said, I haven't exactly told him this time.”

“Why would he be happy?”

“I don't think he really wants me to go to Vienna to the conservatory next September.”

“Oh” was all I could say. I was trying to imagine how she could go to Vienna with a little baby. Or maybe I could help take care of the baby after school.

Suddenly we began hearing sirens. The blare grew louder and louder, the long shrill blasts scoring the night.

“What's going on?” Ulla stood up suddenly.

We looked out the bathroom window. There was a red glow in the sky. I heard Mama and Papa coming from their bedroom down the hall. The sirens were becoming louder.

“Clean yourself up,” I whispered. “I'll go find out what's happening.”

I went out into the hallway and nearly slammed into Papa, who was putting his winter coat on over his pajamas.