Over the next month, there were many things that kept bringing my mind back to Willi and Trudi Bauer. After hearing their feeble explanation on Lebensraum, how awkward it was, and how nervous they seemed, I found myself focused on little else.
First, there were the visitors, all of whom seemed so uncomfortable to be discovered there on the landing outside the Bauers’ apartment. Who always seemed to avert their eyes whenever Emma and I stepped out. In the following weeks, we encountered two more of them. “Customers,” Trudi Bauer had sighed wearily, “they come at all hours.” They both looked so awkward and fidgety and unhappy to be discovered there. They didn’t have the look of customers to me.
Then, there was Emma’s use of the word I’d heard. Lebensraum. And the Bauers’ nervous and uncomfortable explanation for what it was Emma must have surely meant. It wasn’t just the word, but Emma picking up that they had called it “the future.” Not any future we would want any part of, they were quick to defend themselves. But where else would that have come from? I even took the opportunity to ask Emma about it again, when Mrs. Shearer had stepped out to do some cleaning. “Are you sure that word was Lebensraum, honey, and not something else?”
“Yes, Daddy, you already asked me,” she said. “Lebensraum. But don’t worry, I haven’t used it again.”
“That’s good, peach. That’s good.”
I even questioned the building’s maintenance man, a large, hulking lug named Curtis, from Minnesota or South Dakota or somewhere, who lived in the basement apartment, as he was outside having a cigarette on the street. I had bumped into him once or twice, and the conversation had never gone further than the Yanks or the weather. He never looked very happy in his job. At some point, I took a risk and asked him about Willi and Trudi. How nice they were? How long they’d lived in the building?
“For as long as I’ve been here,” he said. He had a kind of a “home-country” Scandinavian accent I couldn’t place. “All I know is that they’re good, decent people. Always treat me well. Nothing to spend your time on. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have this drain to fix,” he said, pointing to an outside runner that had backed up. “Happens every fall.”
“Sure.” I thanked him. He seemed like a pretty square guy.
And then there was the time the following week when I was sitting in the Old Heidelberg again on Third Avenue having a coffee. I’d just left Emma for the night, and was at a table at the outside café, the weather being unseasonably warm, paging through the afternoon Sun (reading of the sinking of the American destroyer the Kearny in the North Atlantic by a German U-boat, many calling it an act of war), yet a part of me was keeping an eye on the street for Liz, in the silly hope I might catch a glimpse of her as she came home. I’d noticed the bags from the A&P where she shopped for groceries, just down the street. Some good things had happened for me and I wanted to tell her. I’d found work grading the occasional paper for Otto Brickman. Really, all I wanted to tell her was how great I thought Emma was, and to be back in her life.
Next to the Old Heidelberg was another café called The Purple Tulip, with an outdoor café as well. Before I went away, the place was one of those spots that hosted local meetings of the German American Bund and had speakers there all the time spouting America First and pro-Nazi propaganda. Now the Nazi flags were gone, of course, but everyone knew it was still a place you could have the right conversation over a beer.
It was going on seven and I hadn’t seen any sign of Liz. I was just about to get up and leave—I thought maybe I’d catch a show at the Orpheum down on Eighty-sixth—when I suddenly spotted her across the street in her beige coat, heading home. My heart springing to life, I jumped up, and for a moment, thought I would rush over and intercept her. I reached in my pocket and threw a few bucks on the table.
But then she went up to a man who was waiting on the corner. A nice-looking man in a brown suit and hat. They kissed on the cheek. There’s someone I occasionally see, she had said. He works for an advertising company. Suddenly I realized how foolish it might seem, having to explain who I was. Or maybe she already had, and it wasn’t so complimentary. So I just stood there. He took her arm and they headed downtown on Third Avenue and I sat back down in disappointment.
My gaze drifted over to the café next door, and it seemed to fall, like a heavy weight drawn by gravity, on the face of someone sitting barely ten feet away, in a brown pin-striped suit, legs crossed, a cigarette in an ashtray.
At first, of course, I had no idea who he was. Casually sipping his coffee. His eyes lifted and for an instant we locked on each other, two people I was sure who had no idea who the other was. Like happens to anyone a thousand times in the city.
Until suddenly through the fog it dawned on me precisely where I’d seen him before.
And this time my heart came to a stop.
It was the first man I had seen on Emma’s landing. At the Bauers’ apartment door. When we were heading out for ice cream and I had taken Trudi Bauer’s letters from her to mail. His long, gaunt face and deep-set eyes and the mole on his chin brought it all back for me. A customer, she had called him. He had tipped his hat to Emma and me. And here he was at The Purple Tulip, a place popular with the pro-Nazi crowd, not even a week after the Bauers had had to explain away their use of a word associated with the Nazi cause. A tremor ran down my spine. He glanced my way one more time. This time I averted my eyes. It was simply too much of a coincidence to believe. I had no idea if he had recognized me. If he was on his way to the Bauers’? Or if he somehow lived in the neighborhood. No, My meeting ended early, I recalled him saying. But I was sure it was him. Though there was no crime in it, of course. Any of it. It was a public place, the same as any restaurant on the street, and normally it wouldn’t have aroused a second thought in me, except for how the Bauers had been occupying my mind lately.
I averted my eyes back to my paper.
Did he recognize me?
A minute or two later it became moot, as the man stood up, tossed a bill or two on the table, took hold of his raincoat, and made his way out of the café, never even looking my way. At a lull in the traffic he crossed the street mid-block and turned down Eighty-eighth. Toward where the Bauers lived. Where Liz and Emma lived.
My heart continued to pound until he finally turned the corner and disappeared.
I felt no more nervous than if I’d discovered a Nazi spy.