Those Who Save Us Read online

  And so Anna is left with only her father, whose demands, once offered as an excuse, are certainly real enough. She thinks of Gerhard performing his morning toilette, wandering about the house in his dressing gown, clearing his throat into handkerchiefs that he scatters for her to collect and launder. She must trim his silvering beard daily, his hair fortnightly. His sheets, like his shirts, must be starched and ironed. She must prepare his favorite meals with no concern for her own tastes, the consumption of which Anna endures in a fearful stillness punctuated only by the snapping of Gerhard’s newspaper, Der Stürmer, and explosive diatribes about the evils of Jews. How Anna wishes he had died instead!

  Max pushes his rook across the board.

  Check, he says, and looks up.

  Oh, Anna. I’m sorry.

  Anna shakes her head.

  I didn’t mean to upset you, Max says.

  You haven’t, Anna reassures him, finally finding her voice. I’m just startled by how well you put it. It’s like being in a sort of club, isn’t it? A bereavement club. You don’t choose to join it; it’s thrust upon you. And the members whose lives have been changed have more knowledge than those who aren’t in it, but the price of belonging is so terribly high.

  Max tilts his chair back and considers Anna for a long moment, scrubbing his hand over his face and neck.

  Yes, he says. Yes, it is much like that.

  Then his chair legs hit the floor and he stands.

  Speaking of your father, he says, smiling, would you like to see how his dog is doing?

  Anna gazes sadly at him, disappointed by this return to more superficial conversation. But as Max beckons to her, she obediently gets up and follows him.

  After turning down the heat under the teakettle, Max takes Anna’s elbow and leads her to a door at the rear of the house, which Anna expects to open into a garden. Instead, she finds herself in a dark shed smelling mustily of straw and animal. She hears a thick, sleepy bark, and when Max lights a kerosene lantern, Anna sees that he has constructed a makeshift kennel here. Including Spaetzle, there are five dogs in separate cages, and Anna catches the green glitter of a cat’s eyes from the corner, where it presides over a heap of kittens. There is even a canary in a cage, its head tucked under its wing.

  Anna walks over to Spaetzle.

  Hello, boy, she says.

  The dachshund snarls at her. Anna snatches her hand from the wire mesh.

  I see his disposition hasn’t improved any, she observes.

  Perhaps it might, says Max from behind her, if you’d stop stuffing him with chocolate.

  Anna flushes. I told you, that’s my father’s doing—

  Ah, yes, of course, says Max. So you’ve said.

  Anna turns to see him smiling knowingly at her. Face burning, she stoops to peer at a terrier.

  So you are something of a veterinarian after all, she comments.

  Max doesn’t answer immediately, and when Anna is certain her color has receded she swings around again to look at him inquiringly. He is standing with his hands in his pockets, regarding the animals with an odd expression, both tender and grim.

  I’m more a zookeeper, he says. And not by choice. Not that I don’t love animals; I do, obviously. But these have been abandoned to my care. Left behind.

  Left . . . ?

  By my friends, by patients who’ve emigrated, to Israel, the Americas, whoever will have them. People I’ve known my entire life—gone, pfft! Just like that.

  Max snaps his fingers, and the canary lifts its head to blink at him with indignant surprise.

  Anna digs a toe into the straw.

  Circumstances are truly that bad for—for your people?

  Worse than you can imagine. And they are going to get worse still. The things I have heard, have seen . . .

  When he doesn’t finish the thought, Anna asks, And you? Why don’t you go as well?

  She looks down and holds her breath, praying that he won’t answer in the affirmative. But Max gives only a short, bitter laugh.

  What? And leave all this? he says.

  Anna glances up. He is watching her, his gaze speculative.

  Loneliness is corrosive, he says.

  Anna’s eyes film with tears.

  Yes, she says. I know.

  She thinks that she might be able, in this moment, to go to him and put her arms around him, rest her head on his chest; she wants nothing more than to be able to stay here with Max forever, in this simple dark place smelling of animal warmth and dung. But of course this is impossible, and the thought only serves to remind her of how late it is.

  God in heaven, it’s hours past curfew, I have to go, Anna says, darting past Max into the house.

  In the kitchen, while Anna fastens her hat, Max holds her coat out like a matador, flapping it at her; then he helps her into it. His hands linger on Anna’s shoulders, however, while she fastens her buttons, and when she is done he spins her around to face him.

  Where does your father think you are? he asks. When you come here?

  Oh, it doesn’t matter to him, as long as his dinner is served on time, Anna murmurs. He thinks I’m at a meeting of the BdM, I suppose. Sewing armbands and singing praise to the Vaterland and learning how to catch a good German husband.

  And isn’t that what you want, Anna? Max asks. Aren’t you a good German girl?

  Before Anna can reply, he kisses her, much more violently than she would have expected from this gentle man. He drives her back against the wall and pins her there with a hand pressed to her breastbone through the layers of cloth, making a slight whimpering noise like one of his adopted dogs might in sleep. Anna clings to him, raising a tentative hand to his hair.

  Then, as abruptly as he initiated the embrace, Max breaks away and bends to retrieve Anna’s hat from the floor. He smiles sheepishly up at her and quirks his brows over the rims of his spectacles. His face has gone bright red.

  We can’t do this, he says. A lovely creature like you should be toying heartlessly with fellows her own age, not wasting her time with an old bachelor like me.

  But you’re only thirty-seven, Anna says.

  Max hands her the hat, one of its flowers crumpled on its silk stem. Then he lowers his glasses and gives Anna a serious look.

  That’s enough, young lady, he tells her. You know that’s not the real reason why this is impossible. For your own good, you really must not come back.

  Over Anna’s protests, he pushes her gently through the door and shuts it behind her.

  Anna stands on the top step, her hand between her breasts where Max’s was not a minute ago. She is too nonplussed by the speed of the encounter and what he has said afterward to rejoice over it. She stares into the garden while she waits for her pulse to resume its normal rhythm, watching fat flakes of snow filter so languidly through the air that they appear suspended.

  Naturally, Max is quite right. These evenings should come to an end before either of them get further involved, though the real obstacle—as Max has implied—is not that he is twice her age. The problem, not addressed head-on until tonight, is that Jews are a race apart. And even if Max is not observant, the new laws forbid more than Aryans visiting Jewish physicians: sexual congress between Jews and pure-blooded Deustche is now a crime. Rassenschande, the Nazis call it. Race defilement. It is like the poem Max read to Anna last week—how do the lines run? Something about a dark plain on which armies clash by night. She and Max are pawns on opposing squares, on a board whose edges stretch into infinite darkness, manipulated by giant unseen hands.

  But if Anna can’t recollect the poem in its entirety, she remembers how Max read it, with exaggerated self-mockery, pausing to glance ironically at her between stanzas; his little half-smile; the glint of mischief flashing like light off his spectacles. Anna laughs and runs her tongue out to catch the snow as she descends the steps toward the gate. Of course she will come back.

  3

  ONE MORNING IN MARCH 1940, ANNA WAKES WHEN HER father pounds on her be
droom door. She lies blinking and dis-oriented: What time is it? Has she overslept? Gerhard is never up and about before her. She turns her head to the nightstand clock, and when she sees that it is but an hour after dawn, she leaps from the bed, snatches the robe from the door, and runs into the hall. Gerhard is now nowhere to be seen, but Anna hears him crashing about downstairs.

  Vati? Anna calls, following the noise to the kitchen. What is it? Is something wrong?

  Gerhard is snatching plates from the china cabinet, holding each up for inspection before dropping it to the table.

  This, he says, waving a saucer at Anna, this is what’s wrong. Why is so much of the china chipped?

  Anna clutches her dressing gown closed at the throat.

  I’m sorry, Vati, I don’t know. I have been very careful, but it is so old and fragile—Gerhard tosses the dish next to its companions.

  Gerhard tosses the dish next to its companions.

  Nothing to be done, nothing to be done, he mutters.

  He yanks open the icebox and thrusts his head inside, strands of silver hair hanging over his forehead.

  Leftovers, he says. Carrots and potatoes. Half a bottle of milk. Half a loaf of bread— Is this all there is?

  Why, yes, Vati, I haven’t yet gone to the market today, it’s far too early, so—

  Gerhard slams the door closed.

  There is nothing in this house fit for a chambermaid to eat, let alone decent company, he says. You must go immediately. Get meat. Veal or venison if they have any. Vegetables. Dessert! You must spare no expense.

  Yes, of course, Vati, but what—

  Gerhard charges from the room, leaving Anna staring after him. She has been an unwilling student of her father’s erratic behavior her whole life, alert as a fawn, calibrating her every response to his whims. But nothing in Gerhard’s mercurial moods has prepared Anna for his invasion of her territory, the kitchen; if asked prior to this, Anna would have said that Gerhard might not know even where the icebox is.

  Anna!

  Coming, Vati.

  Anna hurries into the house and finds Gerhard standing in the downstairs WC.

  Why are there no fresh handtowels? he demands, shaking a fistful of linens at her.

  I’m sorry, Vati. I laundered those just last Sunday—

  This is appalling, Gerhard says. They must be done again. Starched. And ironed.

  He throws the towels at Anna’s feet.

  Yes, Vati, she says, stooping to collect them. I’ll do it as soon as I get back from the—And where is my best suit?

  In your closet, Vati.

  Pressed? Brushed?

  Yes—

  My good shoes? Are they shined?

  Yes, Vati, they’re upstairs as well.

  Humph, says Gerhard.

  He comes out into the hallway and glowers about, hands on hips, at the entrances to the library, the drawing room, the dining room, at the chandelier overhead.

  After you go to the market, you must ensure that everything in this house is spotless. Spotless, do you understand? No pushing dirt under the rugs, Miss.

  Why, Vati, I would never—

  Gerhard rakes a hand through his thinning hair. In his atypical dishabille—he is still in pajamas—he reminds Anna of a big bear disgruntled at being awakened too soon.

  Where is my breakfast? he demands.

  I’ll get it right away, Vati.

  Very good, says Gerhard.

  He pinches Anna’s cheek and strides off in the direction of his study. A moment later Anna hears him burst into song, a snatch of the Pilgrim’s Chorus from Wagner’s Tannhäuser, bellowed at the top of his lungs.

  Anna sneaks back upstairs and dresses hastily, then returns to the kitchen and adds to the bread a boiled egg and some cheese that has escaped her father’s notice. Putting this on a tray with a pot of tea, she brings it to Gerhard’s office.

  Ah, thank you, Anchen, he says, rubbing his hands. That looks lovely. Even as you do this morning, my dear.

  Anna sets the food on her father’s desk and retreats to the doorway. She has learned to be wariest of him when he is smiling.

  Will there be anything else? she asks, eyes on her shoes.

  Gerhard slices the top off the egg and eats it with a mouthful of bread.

  We will be having guests for dinner, he says, spraying crumbs onto the blotter in his enthusiasm, very important fellows on whom I must make the best possible impression. Everything, down to the last detail, must be perfect. Do you understand?

  Anna nods.

  Gerhard flutters his fingers: dismissed. Anna walks from the room as quickly as she can without actually running, leaving Gerhard to hum and mumble as he chews.

  Tulips, he calls after her. Tulips are in season, aren’t they? If you get to the market fast enough, you might be able to get a few bunches . . .

  Anna patters rapidly down the staircase, pausing only to grab her net shopping bag and coat from the rack near the door. Safely out on the drive, she looks back over her shoulder at the Elternhaus, her childhood home: such a respectable-looking place, with its heavy stone foundation and half-timbered upper stories. One would never suspect its owner to be so volatile. Anna glances at the window of Gerhard’s study and hurries down the road before he can throw it open to shout further instruction.

  Once the house is out of sight around the bend, Anna repins her hat, which she has crammed onto her head at a crazy angle in her haste, and slows her pace. This is her favorite part of the day, these hours devoted to her errands, the only time she has to herself. During the journey into Weimar and back, Gerhard and his requirements are conspicuously absent, and Anna dawdles along indulging in her own daydreams. Until recently, these have been of the vaguest sort, centering primarily on the day Anna might escape her father’s house to live with whatever husband he has chosen for her. Gerhard has exposed her over the past few years to a variety of candidates, but in Anna’s mind the face of her spouse remains indistinct. Not that she has cared much who he might be or what he will look like, as long as he is quiet and kind. Nor has Anna ever thought of other aspirations, attending University for instance; what for? None of her peers would ever consider such a thing. Kinder, Kirche, Küche: children, church, kitchen; this is what all German girls hope for; this is what Anna has been raised to be. Her future is not for her to decide.

  But lately her reveries have assumed a different, more concrete form. Given the war—the girls being requisitioned for agricultural Landwerke, Anna’s potential suitors commandeered by the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe—who knows what might happen? And there is Max. Perhaps, if things continue to worsen as he says, Max will leave after all—and take Anna with him. They could go to a warm place far away from this senseless strife, somewhere he could set up a small practice and they could live simply. Portugal, Greece, Morocco? Anna pictures them walking along a beach in the morning, talking while the fishermen set out their nets. They will linger in a café over lunch. They will eat strange fruit and fried fish.

  This pleasant picture evaporates as Anna nears the center of Weimar, where she realizes that Gerhard’s fitful humor seems to have communicated itself to the world at large. The weather itself is nervous, sullen fat-bellied clouds racing across a slaty sky, and in the market in the Rathaus Square, where Anna exchanges ration coupons for venison and vegetables, merchants and customers alike are cross and short-spoken. Nobody, it seems, will meet Anna’s eye. Not that there are many people about; the streets are as quiet as if the city has been evacuated while Anna slept. Has there been bad news of the war? Anna clamps a hand to her hat, which the wind threatens to tug from her head, and recalls Max’s observation that his charges become restless before any change in atmosphere. Perhaps her fellow Weimarians are responding in kind to a drop in the wartime barometer.

  Anna ducks beneath the snapping Nazi flag over the doorway of the Reichsbank, taking shelter in the vestibule while she thumbs through her ration booklet. If she and Gerhard forgo sweets for the rest of the
week, Anna calculates, she will have just enough to cajole some sufficiently impressive pastry from Frau Staudt for tonight. Anna steps once more into the raw afternoon and hurries back through the Square toward the Jewish Quarter. By now she too is uneasy in her own skin, wanting only to finish her shopping and return to her warm kitchen.

  The Quarter also seems deserted—that is, until Anna spots Herr Nussbaum, the town librarian, standing on the sidewalk in front of his house. And this sight is so strange that Anna stops in her tracks, thunderstruck. For the elderly librarian, whose fussy vanity doesn’t permit him to appear in public without the hat that hides his bumpy skull, is stark naked. He wears nothing but a large cardboard sign hung from his neck with a string, pro-claiming: I AM A DIRTY JEW.

  Anna would like to look away, but she can’t help gaping at Herr Nussbaum’s poor flabby old man’s buttocks, the white tufts on his back. Before this, the closest she has come to seeing a man unclothed is a childhood glimpse of Gerhard in the bath, his limp and floating penis reminding her of a wurst casing half-stuffed—an observation that, when repeated to her mother, earned Anna a lashing and an hour in the closet. This current spectacle so offends Anna’s sense of the rightful order of things that she cannot believe it is real. She looks wildly about to confirm whether anyone else is seeing it too. There is Frau Beider-man across the street, but the seamstress scuttles in the other direction with a businesslike air. Aside from her, there is only Anna and the naked Herr Nussbaum, standing with his hands cupped over his genitals against a luminous backdrop of shivering cherry trees, like a refugee from a dream.