Heidegger's Glasses: A Novel (23 page)

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Authors: Thaisa Frank

BOOK: Heidegger's Glasses: A Novel
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An astrologer will tell you when you’ve found enough.
Can we confiscate these letters?
When the time is right.
The last question came from a short, heavy man in front of the amphitheater, sitting between Himmler and Goebbels. He held two glasses of water, and every few minutes one or the other snapped his fingers, and the heavy man handed him a glass. At one point he stood up, and Goebbels jerked his sleeve—but it was too late. Hanussen had noticed him.
Can we answer all the letters in German? he asked.
Only if they’re written in German, said Hanussen. The dead can read, but they cannot translate. Never forget this.
Like Answers Like
should be your motto. And answer faithfully.
There was loud applause. Every member of the Reich, including Himmler, Goebbels, and the short, squat man went to the dais to greet Hanussen. Lodenstein had watched, fascinated by the folds in the heavy man’s face. Later, when he met Stumpf, he recognized him as the same person.
Dear Marek,
Letters are being passed all the time and prisoners have managed to bribe pens from guards. Even in this unspeakable place people write to each other constantly. God willing, I’m going to see you soon.
Love always,
Urajsz
Before Lodenstein came to the Compound, the SS officer who evaporated in Denmark told him the idea of answering letters from the dead had been the object of conversation for days after the meeting at the Palace of the Occult. But when Hanussen was shot, anyone who mentioned his name or referred to his ideas was shot too. It was mere luck that no one made a connection between Hanussen’s vision and the Thule Society’s obsession with answering letters written by the dead. Maybe Hitler had forgotten. But Lodenstein doubted Goebbels had: Goebbels remembered everything. And Goebbels condoned Stumpf’s post, knowing Stumpf was driven to answer the dead and didn’t care about keeping records. Stumpf’s appointment must have been Goebbels’s concession to the Thule Society, in spite of his disdain for the occult. And the motto
Like Answers Like
had come from him.
Now the man on the hunter-green bench retrieved every detail of Hanussen’s speech at the black and gold Palace of the Occult. He retrieved them from the jewel-like letters between the bricks, which he could now read. After he’d read everything, the walls stopped undulating, and Lodenstein came down from the ceiling and slid inside the man who looked just like him. He put his hands in his pockets and realized the letters of the alphabet weren’t in the wall but on a piece of paper. He stood up and felt his legs, his arms, the cramped enclosure. And when the little hatch opened again, he cleared his sandpaper throat and shouted the name HANUSSEN! in a hoarse voice—so loudly the face stepped back, and he heard keys drop to the floor.
HANUSSEN! he rasped again. Tell Joseph Goebbels that Lodenstein remembers Hanussen.
The hatch closed, the sound of the keys grew fainter, and Lodenstein was alone. He wondered whether he’d be shot for mentioning Hanussen, or grilled about the meeting at the Palace of the Occult. By the time the keys jangled again he was trembling, but the officer bowed and gestured toward the winding steps that led to the Mosaic Hall, and once more he was enveloped in crimson marble. He heard an accordion in the officers’ cabaret. It must be evening.
The officer led him back to the antechamber and opened an enormous door. Goebbels sat behind a desk, still propped up by books to look taller. He was exactly the way Lodenstein remembered him—a thin face with dark, heavy-lidded eyes—circles Elie once called
bizarre, almost romantic eyes
. The desk was piled with pamphlets, two copies of
Mein Kampf
, a tin of biscuits, a bottle of wine, a pitcher of water, and fluted glasses.
Goebbels waved away any mention of Hanussen and listened to Lodenstein talk about Stumpf’s visit to Heidegger. After he finished, Goebbels speculated whether he should kill Heidegger as well as Stumpf and every single Scribe, since who really cared about records concerning people who died? But what if, he continued, Heidegger was exonerated after the war and no one could find him? Then his murder might be discovered, and the Compound of Scribes would be brought to light.
While he talked, he drank water from one of the fluted glasses. After his third glass, he lit a cigarette.
I should have Stumpf hung, he said.
When the right times comes, thought Lodenstein.
Heidegger, too, said Goebbels. I have no idea why that woman bothers with him.
Lodenstein supposed he meant Elfriede Heidegger but didn’t ask. He folded his hands, which felt like dry wood, and waited while Goebbels looked to the left, to the right, at a fresco of Hercules on the ceiling, and at his desk. He shuffled papers and picked up a photograph of his wife and five children—a perfect family and a perfect wife. He drank more water and pushed a glass toward Lodenstein, who lunged for it. It hurt to swallow.
Goebbels watched him drink with a look of contempt. Then he said:
People have visited Auschwitz before. And Heidegger won’t talk because of his wife. He’s a ludicrous country bumpkin, and I’m sure she knows it.
Lodenstein stared at the glass.
Never mind, said Goebbels, who’d once hugged Frau Heidegger at a meeting for housewives and had been delighted to see her again when she’d come to his office.
He leaned back in his chair, looked at the ceiling, stared at Lodenstein, and looked away. Then he slapped a hand on his phone, called Auschwitz, and asked if the Jew named Asher Englehardt was still alive. Ten minutes passed while someone looked up his number.
These are strict orders, Goebbels said into the phone. Have him make glasses for the officers. And give him enough food and a place to rest during the day. What do I mean? I mean he’s a lens grinder, and the officers’ clinic has made a mess of that. Better for them to have new glasses than pick through piles of Jew-glasses. And be careful of his son.
Heil Hitler!
He hung up and looked at Lodenstein for the first time.
You can take Heidegger to Auschwitz, he said. And deal with the consequences. But you’ll have to stay here—no getting a room at the Kaiserhof or messing around. And you’ll go to Auschwitz with Heidegger in the dark—I mean true dark—on a night when there isn’t a moon.
Lodenstein pointed out that every month there was only one night with no moon, and a trip to Auschwitz took two days.
Don’t split hairs with me, said Goebbels. And not a word about Hanussen.
Then he crawled to the top of his desk and looked down at Lodenstein. His eyes became slits, and if pupils could manipulate the world, they would have flattened everything in the room, including Lodenstein.
Blackmailer! he said. Naval scumbag! Pervert! Asshole head of a hovel!
His voice rose to emphasize his point, creating a circle of dramatic air. Lodenstein let him go on. He had no choice. He also hoped that if Goebbels spit out his venom, he’d never take revenge, and the Compound would remain a strange, safe haven in the middle of a failing war.
When Goebbels finished, he crawled back to his chair, sat on his pile of books, and rang a buzzer.
This is Obërst Lodenstein, he said when an officer appeared. Give him the best food, the best wine and—he winked—the best women.
Lodenstein gave the Nazi salute and followed the officer down the crimson hall to the cabaret, amazed that his legs were holding him up. A woman in a tight black bodice was playing the accordion, and an officer was singing “Lorelei” into her ample bosom. Lodenstein sat near the door and ate venison and potatoes. He left the cabaret, went to his room, and threw up.
Soon he was in bed—vast, unfamiliar, much larger than the bed he shared with Elie. He fell into half-sleep and woke when he heard rustling outside his door. He was afraid Goebbels had sent a woman. But when he opened the door, he found an envelope filled with everything he’d surrendered, including the white rose, which still smelled of Elie’s perfume. He slept with it for almost two weeks. Then Heidegger arrived on a moonless night, and they set off by train for Auschwitz.
Dear Gretchen,
I need to see you.
Don’t worry. No one can find out. Friends will keep us safe. I look for you by the gates. I look for you by rocks. I need to talk to you, see your face, feel your arms, kiss you. Come quickly.
Love,
Paul
Asher Englehardt, a terse man with shrewd blue eyes, had been surprised to be pulled from a job lugging rocks in the snow.
Over here! said a guard, grabbing him by the shoulder.
Nobody stopped working because they would get shot, as Asher was certainly about to be. He put down the stone, thinking at least he wouldn’t be lifting something that weighed almost as much as he did, and stepped from the line. An Unteroffizier was standing next to the guard, and an Unteroffizier often meant a hanging—worse than a swift bullet near the red brick wall of the jail. Hangings happened in the evening when the whole camp assembled for roll call. Daniel would watch him die.
The Unteroffizier motioned Asher to his Kübelwagen and drove along the unpaved road. He was so pleasant Asher assumed he wanted to put him at ease since panic made it hard to cooperate with a noose. They drove to the camp through the side entrance, rather than the main gate where Asher saw
Arbeit Macht Frei
every morning when he left for work. Instead of going to the jail, they went to a small room in the officers’ quarters where another officer brought soup, huge slices of rye bread, and beer. It was the first table set with food Asher had seen in over four months.

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