Those Who Save Us (9 page)

11

DESPITE TRUDY’S TENURED POSITION, HER AFTERNOON seminar, Women’s Roles in Nazi Germany, is in the basement, the bowels of the university’s History Department. At the beginning of her course, Trudy routinely refers to the classroom as the Bunker—
Hi, folks, and welcome to our lovely Bunker!
—trying to alleviate first-day awkwardness and take the temperature of her new class. If it is a nice humorous batch, the quip earns a few smiles, even muted chuckles. More often, though, the students just sit stone-faced, extravagantly unimpressed by this feeble attempt to win them over. Trudy supposes she can’t blame them. There really is not much to laugh about in the prospect of spending an entire semester in a cramped windowless room, beneath light grids that resemble old-fashioned ice-cube trays, in little orange chairs better suited to midgets than the average undergrad.

Truth be told, however, Trudy likes her classroom: the safety of being underground, the warmth of all those bodies packed together. This is her domain, where for fifty minutes three times a week she is in complete control. Where history is documented and footnoted, confined to text. Comprehensible, if only in retrospect.

As she does at the start of each class, she snaps a fresh stick of chalk in two and stands rubbing her thumb over the rough edge, surveying her captive audience. It is a chocolate box of personalities; at this stage in the semester, Trudy knows each student, if not by name, then by trait. The quiet girl who arrives early and does crossword puzzles with obsessive zeal. The brilliant sophomore with the cobweb tattooed on her face. The two boys—Frick and Frack—who always sit poised for escape near the door, as identical in movement as twins though they are not related; if one is sick or absent, the other is also.

How are you all today? Trudy asks.

She waits with her eyebrows significantly raised until she gets a few incomprehensible responses. This is typical. The class runs at four o’clock, a bad time, the doldrums. Her pupils are sluggish, their circadian rhythms demanding naps, their stomachs requiring dinner. They blink at their feet, owlish and surly; they slouch in their chairs, doodling in their notebooks—flowers, hearts, intricate geometric configurations—drawings that, as far as Trudy can make out, have nothing to do with the material at hand. At the moment, her eyes grainy from lack of sleep and her difficult drive, Trudy wants nothing more than to join them. Especially as today’s subject, a survey of German women as to what they did during the war, hits a bit close to home.

Yet somebody has to be the teacher here, so Trudy glances down at her notes and lectures as animatedly as she is able. She talks, pauses, asks whether there are any questions, applies her squeaking chalk to the board, but all the while she feels a growing humidity beneath her turtleneck. Flop sweat. Every professor is prone to it, gives an ill-received lesson on occasion, and Trudy, no exception, knows there is no shame in it. But each time it happens inspires the same panic as the first.

She pushes her damp bangs from her forehead and looks at her watch, which she has unstrapped and set on the lectern. Only ten minutes left, thank God.

Trudy bounces the chalk in her palm. So in the final analysis, she says, what did you take from today’s reading? What point, if any, is the author trying to make about the way these particular German women acted during the war?

Silence.

Trudy frowns out at her students. Once they get going they are usually a talkative group, flirtatious even, which makes their apathy today all the more galling. Perhaps it is not her fault; perhaps they have fallen prey to Thanksgiving Syndrome, too much sleep and food at home, dread of upcoming exams. Trudy decides to prod them a little.

Come on, people, she says. Participation is part of your grade, you know...What did you think of Frau Heidenreich saying that the Jews brought the Holocaust upon themselves? Were you surprised that she still thinks this, even today?

Silence.

Is her attitude typical?

Silence.

Did anybody
do
the assigned reading?

Silence. Then, from the rear, a phlegmy yawn that sounds like a marble rattling in a vacuum cleaner hose.

Ms. Meyerson, Trudy says. If you must insult me in this fashion, please cover your mouth. I am tired of seeing your tonsils.

Some titters from the class. So they
are
awake, Trudy thinks.

Sorry, the offending student mutters. It’s just that—Just that what?

Of
course
the anti-Semite was typical, the student says, scowling ferociously at her notebook. All those women were antiSemitic. They were, like, part of the whole war machine. They were the perps.

Excuse me?

The perpetrators.

Ah, says Trudy. So, German women were perpetrators. And you know something? I agree with you, to a degree. Many of them were. But was it entirely their fault? Were they not products of their culture—which as we’ve seen was rabidly anti-Semitic—as much as you or I are? Might they not have been forced into doing what they did by the war? Don’t desperate times call for desperate measures?

Silence. A bead of sweat trickles down Trudy’s ribcage.

All right, she says, walking out from behind her lectern to stand in front of the class. Let’s try it this way. Let’s make it personal. Let’s say . . . you’re an Aryan German woman, circa 1940, 1941. About the age most of you are—twenty, twenty-one. Your normal life has been rudely interrupted by the war. Your husband is off fighting for the
Vaterland,
or already dead. Perhaps you have a small child to care for. And suddenly the Jews in your community start disappearing. Maybe you see it happening, maybe—as many of these women claimed—you don’t. But you hear the rumors. You gossip, as women do. You know. And you know too that the price of resistance, or helping Jews—hiding them, feeding them, whatever—is death. What do you do?

Now they are listening.

The right thing, somebody calls.

Which is?

Well,
duh.
Helping the Jews, obviously. Any way you can.

Oh, come on, scoffs another student. That’s, like, so naive. It sounds good, but like you’d really help if you knew you’d die for it. But not just, like, die. Be tortured first. And they’d kill your kid too.

I’d still do it, insists the first.

No, you just think you would, argues the second. It’s easy to say you’d do something when you’re just, like, sitting here in your chair.

You see? Trudy interjects. It’s not so simple, is it? Most of us are drawn to this time period thinking it was a war of absolute good versus absolute evil—qualities rarely found in their purest form—and that’s true. But don’t forget that history isn’t just a study in black and white. Human behavior is comprised of ulterior motives, of gray shades.

Every face is uptilted toward Trudy, attentive, even rapt. In the front row, a pale boy is nodding.

In her excitement at having snared their attention, Trudy continues: Now, let’s take our hypothetical situation a step further. You’re still the same young woman, but the tide of the war is starting to turn. There’s no fuel. You’re cold. Rations are increasingly scarce. Your child is starving before your eyes. You’re bombed every night by the British. The enemy is advancing, and all anyone talks about is how the Russians will rape and kill you when they arrive. But then, suddenly, you have a chance to be protected. By a, a high-ranking officer. An SS officer, even. What do you do? Do you use what you’ve got, as a woman, in the time-honored fashion, and become his . . . his mistress, say?

Somebody snorts.
No,
she says.

Not even if it means a better life for you and your child?

No, the student repeats. That’s just
wrong.

Yeah, says another student.

But—

All you have to do is hang on until the war is over. Most of them survived, didn’t they?

Well, you know that in hindsight, says Trudy. It’s easy enough to say now, but—

Being the guy’s mistress, that’s, like,
proactive
evil. It’s as bad as turning in the Jews.

But you’re not
thinking ,
says Trudy, thumping the lectern in frustration. Or rather, you’re not putting yourself in that woman’s shoes. Aren’t there some situations in which the ends justify the means . . . ?

She falters and puts a hand to her throat, which is suddenly tight. The key to being an effective teacher, Trudy has always thought, is to believe in what one is saying. Now she can’t look the student who has challenged her in the face.

Trudy shuffles her notes, coughs into her fist.

Excuse me, she says hoarsely. Long day.

Professor Swenson? somebody asks.

What now? Trudy thinks.

It’s five-fifteen.

Oh, says Trudy. Thank you. Sorry about that, folks...All right, get out of here.

The room erupts with activity as the students begin shoving their binders into their backpacks and pulling on their parkas. Trudy claps her hands.

Don’t forget to read the Goldhagen for next time, she calls.

As they file out, abruptly boisterous, Trudy turns to erase the board, scolding herself under her breath. What on earth was she thinking, bringing personal material into the classroom? She has broken one of her own cardinal rules: unlike many of her colleagues, who lace lectures with anecdotes of their families, travels, weekends, Trudy believes that a certain distance is necessary to maintain proper authority. She brushes in irritation at the chalk dust sifting onto her shoulders—teacher’s dandruff—but succeeds only in leaving a wide white swath on the dark wool. Trudy swears anew. She almost always wears black, and she shouldn’t.

Professor Swenson?

Trudy looks to the ceiling, praying for patience, then turns. Yes, she says.

There is a girl waiting on the other side of the lectern, cracking fluorescent gum. She is a freshman, Trudy knows, but she can never remember this student’s name and therefore mentally refers to her as the Pretty Girl. And she is, with her wide blue eyes and pink cheeks and long blond hair, a combination that should be a cliché but instead adds up to simple perfection. Trudy has sometimes resented the Pretty Girl, not for her looks per se but because they have led Trudy to form precisely the subjective opinions a good teacher should never harbor: the student is so pretty she must be dumb; she is spoiled, used to getting what she wants because of her appearance; she would make an excellent poster child for the
Bund deutscher Mädel,
the League of German Girls. She is the last person Trudy wants to talk to just now.

What can I do for you? Trudy asks.

The girl braves a quick glance at Trudy. She wears glitter makeup, Trudy sees, a constellation of sparkles scattered across her rosy face.

I just wanted to tell you? the girl says to her sneakers. That I’m finding this class, like, really fascinating?

Why, thank you, says Trudy. That’s the best thing a professor can hear.

She gives the Pretty Girl a cursory smile and makes a show of gathering her notes, tapping their edges against the podium to align them before putting them away. Her longing for the safety of her own home, to be in a hot bath washing off the residue of this afternoon’s embarrassment, is so acute that her skin itches.

But the Pretty Girl persists, keeping pace with Trudy as she walks from the classroom.

My grandmother was in the war? she says. She was hidden by a Catholic family, passing as a Christian? She was a— a whatchamacallit, a submarine?

A U-boat, Trudy supplies.

Yeah, a U-boat, the girl says, popping a small neon-green bubble.

Trudy looks sideways at her.

You’re Jewish? she asks.

Half, says the Pretty Girl. My grandparents were Hungarian Jews? I’m half-Jewish.

I see, says Trudy. Well, please give your grandmother my best regards.

I would, says the girl, but she’s dead.

Oh. I’m sorry.

But I wanted to ask you? I’m still not getting something. Like, it makes sense when you explain it, you know,
historically,
but I don’t get how those women could have done all those things. Like what you said about the SS officer. Or just not helping, pretending nothing was happening. How do they, you know, live with themselves afterwards?

That’s a good question, Trudy says. Denial, I suppose. Or . . .

She stops walking. She is thinking of the kitchen of the farmhouse, filling with black smoke. Where was Anna? Making a desperate grab with a dish towel for the pot forgotten on the stove? Or lying on her marital bed upstairs, eyes closed? Waiting for the heat to tighten her skin, letting her know that flames had claimed this room as well?

Professor Swenson, are you all right?

The girl’s quick touch on her arm, light as a cat’s paw.

Trudy gives her head a brusque shake.

Yes, she says. I’m fine. Thank you.

They are standing in the hallway now, next to a radiator that hisses and clanks. Somewhere overhead a janitor whistles a popular tune. Other than this, the building is quiet in the forlorn way busy places are when the people who normally occupy them have gone.

I haven’t been particularly helpful, have I, says Trudy. Was there anything else you wanted to ask?

I guess not, the Pretty Girl says.

She hoists her backpack more firmly onto her shoulder and trots off, breaking into a run a few meters away. At the door leading to the parking lot, she turns and yells, Have a good weekend!

You too, says Trudy.

The door wheezes shut after letting in a few whirling flakes of snow. Though now free to leave, Trudy stands in the fruity synthetic wake of the girl’s shampoo, looking thoughtfully after her. How she envies the young woman, not for the obvious reasons but because she has a family history she can talk about and be proud of. A history somebody has related to her firsthand. A history she
knows.

A nebulae of instincts coalesce, and from the brilliant vapor of their collision an idea emerges. Takes cogent shape. Grows. For another minute Trudy is paralyzed by its logic, its persuasive simplicity—why hasn’t she thought of this before? Then she pivots and jogs up the nearest stairwell. She has to find Ruth before her sudden conviction deserts her.