One Eye Laughing, the Other Weeping (8 page)

All of a sudden there was someone banging so hard on our door that the walls were shaking worse than the building. No one moved and no one spoke. Milli came out of her room to see what all the banging was about and right before she got to the door it burst off its hinges, came crashing to the floor, and all these horrible men streamed into our apartment.

Some of the men went right over to our piano and began pushing it toward the balcony window. Then they pushed it up and over the railing and it landed on the streets below with a horrible crash.

Everything was happening at once.

They dragged Daddy and Max out into the hall and down the stairs. Then they started toward Milli who screamed, “I’m just the maid, I’m just the maid. I’m not Jewish like them. I’m just like you, Heil Hitler, Heil Hitler,” and she pointed to Mother who was sitting next to me on the couch, trembling. “She’s the one you want. She’s the rich Jewish bitch.” Milli’s face con-torted, her mouth twisted into a senseless grin, and her eyes gleamed as if she were possessed.

Obeying Milli’s command, the men turned around and looked at Mother.

One of them pulled her off the couch so violently I thought her arm would come off, but the other said, “Wait.”

I recognized him when he first came in but he averted his eyes when he realized who I was and where he was. He was the policeman Daddy had taken care of! The one who broke his arm and cut his eye. His cast was off and his eye had healed but it was him. I remember because Daddy wouldn’t even let him pay and the man said he didn’t know how he would ever thank him, and now here he was, dragging my mother into the streets.

For a moment I thought he was going to let us go, but the other one told Mother to put on her “fine Jewish jewelry” and her “fine Jewish furs.” He kept calling her “rich Jewish bitch” over and over and grinning just like Milli.

I jumped up, hoping to go with Mother. I didn’t want to be left alone, but the other man pushed me back onto the couch and said if I was smart I would stay put.

Mother came out wearing her blue velvet gown,

diamond necklace, emerald earrings, and ermine cape. They dragged her, too, out into the hall and down the stairs.

I was all alone, except for Milli, but I didn’t even know if she was still in the apartment.

There was shouting from the hall and the sound of heavy boots going up and down the stairs.

I didn’t know what to do. I just sat there, too scared to move or call out.

I must have fallen asleep although I tried my hardest not to, because the next thing I knew I heard voices. Familiar voices.

It was Daddy, Mother, and Max.

They looked filthy and frightened and Mother’s blue velvet gown was badly torn and her jewelry and furs were gone. But there was no blood. No one was hurt. They were all alive.

I gave each of them a big hug. I had never hugged Mother before. I never realized how small she is. She isn’t any taller than me and she looked different. Something
was
different. It was like I was seeing her for the first time. Like a mask had fallen from her face revealing someone I didn’t know very well.

Daddy spoke, although he looked as if each word

was costing him dearly. He said everyone should go to bed.

I hoped Max would come to my room and explain everything the way he did when I was younger. Fortunately, after only a few minutes, there was a soft knock and he entered holding an ashtray in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other.

Outside they were given buckets of water and toothbrushes and told to clean off the pro-Austrian slogans from the sidewalks. They did as they were told, but after a while they realized that it wasn’t really wa-ter, it was some kind of paint stripper, and their hands began to blister.

The acid burned their fingers and hands, but every time they stopped one of the men kicked them and told them to continue while people stood around watching, laughing, and shouting “WORK FOR THE JEWS, WORK FOR THE JEWS, AT LAST THE FÜHRER HAS MADE WORK FOR THE JEWS!”

Then they were told to form two straight lines and spit in each other’s face. One man refused and they immediately poured gasoline all over him and lit a match. The man tried to give in, he screamed that he would do it, but it was too late.

I thought they were all together because they were all together when I saw them, but Max says that he and Daddy were taken down the street as soon as they got outside and never even
saw
Mother. She was sitting in the downstairs foyer when they got back and didn’t say a word then about what happened and hasn’t since.

I wonder if the Duchess is right when she tells Alice that everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.

FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 1938

Richard came back from Mrs. Svoboda’s with Mother’s blue velvet gown untouched. Mrs. Svoboda said it would be better if Mother took her dresses else-where because she no longer serves Jews.

MONDAY, MARCH 21, 1938

Someone wrote
GET OUT JEWS
in big, big letters all over the blackboard in Sophy’s class, and Mr. Erickson didn’t even erase it when he came in — he just taught the class and left it up there for all to see.

TUESDAY, MARCH 22, 1938‌

Ernst Resch and his friends are wearing Hitler Youth badges on their shirts now.

Mrs. Thompson is keeping a sharp eye on them but she hasn’t as yet said anything.

I wish Sophy was in my class, then I wouldn’t feel all alone.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 1938

Daddy has had the front door lock repaired. He’s put in a double lock, even though we all know that won’t do us any good.

Mr. Pisk no longer comes — Daddy shaves himself in the morning and makes his own breakfast and I get ready for school the same as usual, only Milli’s gone. Nobody knows where she went — all we know is that she’s gone. I went into her room for the first time since that night and the only things left were mine. Just my toys, dolls, and books remained on the nearly bare

bookcases. It was like she was never here.

FRIDAY, MARCH 25, 1938

Each day we hear stories, one more horrible than the next.

Mr. Heller’s store was broken into and the cash register smashed with a hammer. There are Jewish stars painted all over the windows, and Mrs. Heller has to stand outside every morning with a sign hanging from her neck saying
DO NOT BUY FROM US
.
WE ARE JEWS
. She says only Jewish customers come in now, and she doesn’t know how long they can go on like this.

Mr. Friedman told Max that people come in with their children and allow them to take any candy they want now, and they tell them that they don’t have to pay because the store is owned by Jews.

They came to Mr. Blumenthal’s apartment the same night they came to ours and as soon as they knocked he just opened the window, shouted a warning to any-one standing below to get out of the way, and jumped eight floors to his death, leaving Mrs. Blumenthal to care for herself and their three children.

The worst is the little Eckstein boy, Jakob. When they came to take his father away, Jakob ran to him and held onto his leg. Mr. Eckstein tried to shake him

off but little Jakob just held on tighter, screaming, “Daddy, don’t go, Daddy, don’t go.” Then one of the Nazis grabbed him by the hair and threw him backward so that he hit his head on the corner of the bed so hard that he died that very instant.

It’s all right to do anything you want to someone if they’re Jewish.

Everything
has changed.

People who were friendly neighbors and shopkeepers only yesterday now proudly wear swastikas on their lapels and, when they pass you on the street, ei-ther make a mean comment (but not loud enough so that you can hear what they are saying) or just look the other way as they walk on by.

People are such cowards, really. At heart, people are cowards.

Now they think they’re better than we are simply because they are not Jewish. What a world — just
not
being Jewish is enough to make you feel superior.

I never thought about being Jewish before all this started. I mean, I knew I was Jewish but that was all. What makes us Jewish? Am I Jewish just because Hitler says I am? When I walk down the street, people don’t look at me because I have blond hair and green

eyes. They don’t think I’m Jewish, they think I’m Aryan.

We don’t go to synagogue, not even on the really important holidays — and even Sophy’s parents go then.

“Three-day Jews,” Daddy calls them, because for three days a year they are religious and then, after that, nothing.

Max is the only one who acts like he’s Jewish and that’s just because he’s a Zionist.

Daddy says it doesn’t matter if there’s a God or not. He says that too many people spend too much time worrying about what they’re going to do when they get to heaven and too little time considering what they’re doing right here on earth.

I asked Sophy if she believes in God and she said she does. I asked her what she imagines God is like and she said she thinks He is a very, very old man who lives way up in the sky watching what is going on all over the world and keeping an eye on everyone.

I’m not sure about any of this. I’m not sure there’s someone watching over everyone. How could there be someone watching over everyone? Christians? Jews? Nazis? Viennese? Germans?
Everyone
? Is the same God

who’s watching over me the same one who watches over Hitler?

Sophy prays every night that God will come down from heaven and save us. I wish I could pray for that, too, but I just can’t. If He can do something about all the terrible things that are happening, why doesn’t He? Maybe there’s a God and maybe there isn’t. Maybe everything happens by accident, like two balls collid-ing in midair — who can say for certain what will oc-cur after they make contact? Maybe people just like to think there’s a God because it makes them feel better.

I’d like to feel better, too, but not if it means fooling myself.

I spent all day pretending I was Alice and no one could tell.

“‘For it might end, you know,’ said Alice to herself, ‘in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?’ And she tried to fancy what the flame of a candle looks like after the candle is blown out. . . .”

MONDAY, MARCH 28, 1938‌

This morning, as I was leaving for school and waiting for the elevator, I heard Hermann Danzer’s mother saying good-bye to him and reminding him to “Stay away from the Weiss girl — don’t talk to her. It’s too dangerous.”

Now I am so dangerous — like I carry some kind of disease — merely talking to me could kill you.

Maybe, I thought, I could run up to Hermann at re-cess, yelling at the top of my lungs, “Hermann, Hermann,” and then fling my arms around him and say how brave it is that his family has invited mine for din-ner even though we are Jewish, and then watch him squirm.

Maybe I would go all over Vienna. Go around purposely scaring people by pretending to recognize them and talking to them and touching them like they were old friends and watching them flee in horror.

TUESDAY, MARCH 29, 1938

Sophy and I went to the cinema. I didn’t want to go but Sophy made me. I like to go to the cinema so I can

forget everything that’s happening now, but it was a bad idea. We sat near Katty and Pauline, who are in Sophy’s class, and as soon as we sat down they got up and moved to the other side of the theater.

I told Sophy that’s the last time I’m going.

Fortunately, the Nazis haven’t been able to stop me from reading yet.