Over the next weeks, I learn about Jewish tradition and lore during my early morning talks with Isaac. He speaks to me of fire-hurling archons, angelic scribes, and disembodied souls wandering the earth in misery—beings who seem to have been slumbering inside my imagination for years, ready for someone to nudge them awake.
When I tell him that, he says, “All the myths ever written are inside you—Adam and Eve, Noah and his Ark … If they weren’t, then all those ancient tales would simply shed their meaning, dry up and turn to dust.”
On a day when I’m overwhelmed by all his crazy notions, he tells me that when I get confused I should remember that all important lessons are written on glass. Especially those in the Torah. “You have to look below the surface for the deeper meanings that are inscribed on a lower level, sometimes in the faintest ink.”
“But why doesn’t the Torah make the deeper meanings easier to read?”
“Would you want to give up your secrets easily? No, you’d give them up only to people you trusted.”
“So who does the Torah trust?”
“Those who want to understand, Sophele, and who work at it—those who look in a mirror and who want to understand the mystery reflected back at them.” Munching on some leftover challah bread, he adds, “And another secret I’ll tell you is that the whole world around us is just like the Torah. We interpret everything we do and see. It’s how we make sense of the world. And the greater your experience and more sensitive your mind, the more truthful and wondrous your interpretations will be.”
Isaac and I always talk at his kitchen table, accompanied by the hissing of his old ivory-colored porcelain stove and its well-appreciated heat. One morning, after he’s given me my first lessons in the Hebrew alphabet, he takes away our coffee cups to prevent spills and puts down an old leather case in front of me.
“Open it,” he says.
I find vellum manuscripts bound together with fraying string, the topmost illustrated with a proud peacock whose magnificent blue and green tail is falling luxuriously over a Hebrew title scripted in brilliant gold.
Undoing the bow, he hands it to me with a generous smile. The manuscript feels as though it’s pulsing with life, probably because I’m so nervous. And its gold letters are so large and polished that I can see myself in them.
“The author wanted each reader to see himself in this book,” Isaac explains. “To be a part of it, in a way.”
“Is it a book of magic?”
“No, it’s the story of a young man and his family. His name was Berekiah Zarco. He was an ancestor of mine and he wrote this in the sixteenth century. He was a kabbalist from Lisbon. The last one, as it turned out.”
“What happened to him?”
“He moved to Istanbul after surviving a pogrom in Lisbon in 1506.”
“So your ancestors are from Portugal and Turkey?”
“On my father’s side. On my mother’s, they’re Germans.”
“Can you speak Portuguese?”
“Claro, mas falo melhor uma forma medieval ue se chama judeo-português ou ladino.” It’s the first time I hear the gnashing of Portuguese. “What’s that mean?” I ask.
“I said, ‘Of course, but I speak a medieval form called Judeo-Portuguese or Ladino better.’ In exile, the Portuguese my ancestors spoke got mixed with medieval Spanish of other Jews. It became a tsimmis, a big jumble.”
“Say something I’ll always remember … written below the surface of the glass.”
He touches his pipe stem to his cheek, pensive, then sits up straight and closes his eyes. Isaac is a sorcerer posing as a tailor, I think, and not for the last time.
“Abençoados sejam os que são um auto-retrato de Deus,” he replies.
“So what’s that mean?” I ask.
“It’s the very last line in the manuscript you’re holding. ‘Blessed are all of God’s self-portraits.’”
“God painted Himself?”
He laughs contentedly. “In a way of speaking, though the Torah says it differently. It says we were all created in God’s image—all self-portraits. And the animals and plants, too. The same laws of creation that determine how you walk and talk also determine the color of a pelargonium blossom, even the spiral arms of the Milky Way. And I’ll tell you something only a few people know …” he whispers. “The only way we can get any idea of what the Lord is like is by looking at ourselves and all the things around us. By listening, touching … by experiencing the world. You know what my papa used to tell me? ‘The only eyes and ears God has are our own!’”
That notion seems to halt all my thoughts, and we don’t speak for a while. He offers me some challah bread. A discovery—we can sit together without having to fill up the silence.
“Why is there a peacock on the cover?” I finally ask.
“Berekiah saw God most clearly in birds—in those creatures of light and air.”
“And what’s the title?”
“It’s called The Bleeding Mirror.* It’s about the pogrom in Lisbon. Berekiah gives his interpretation of what it means on the very last page. Two thousand Jews were murdered, you know.”
“So what did it mean?”
“Berekiah believed it was a warning for the Jews to leave Europe. Because the kings and bishops here would never let us live in peace … which is why he and his family moved to Istanbul.”
“But one of your ancestors must have come back to Europe.”
“Papa. While he was traveling through Germany, he met my mother. They fell in love, got married, and …” Isaac taps his chest, “a certain someone then came along. Though I can’t help thinking at times that there must be some greater significance to Papa’s returning to Europe.”
I put down The Bleeding Mirror gently and pick up the second manuscript, which has a flower designed with black ink on the cover—six petals within a wheel.
“Why is there no title on this one?” I ask.
“Look more closely, Sophele. All the contours of the flower are made with tiny Hebrew letters—a technique called micrography. A different petal spells out the title for each of the six manuscripts that make up what Berekiah calls his Six Books of Preparation.” Isaac points to the topmost petal, which is more darkly inked than the others. “This one here says The Book of Birth.”
“Why birth?”
“Birth is our first gate.” He opens his hand. “We enter the world. The Seven Gates of the universe are at work inside our bodies, of course.”
“And our second gate?”
He lifts up the second manuscript and points to the petal to the right of the one whose letters he’s just deciphered. “When a young girl like you first recognizes herself in a mirror, she passes through the Second Gate. She knows she is alive. So this manuscript is called The Book of Selfhood.”
“And the third?”
“That’s the gate you’re walking through at the moment. The Gate of Union. You are becoming a woman and you want to join together with another person.”
“What gate have you reached?”
“Me?” He laughs as though surprised and gratified by my question. “I’ve passed the sixth and am hurtling on my way toward the seventh like a comet.”
“So each of these manuscripts is about one of the Seven Gates?”
“Only the first Six.”
“What about the Seventh?”
“When I inherited the manuscripts, there was no text about the Seventh Gate. And my father didn’t remember there ever being one. Maybe it was lost, though lately I’ve begun to suspect that Berekiah didn’t write one—and for a very good reason.”
“Which is?”
“That any intelligent young girl like you who had access to the manuscript and who followed Berekiah’s instructions for reaching the Seventh Gate might be able to rise into Araboth. She could see what’s in store for the world and have a wish granted by the Lord. That could prove disastrous—even for God. I think that’s why Berekiah makes just two direct references to the Seventh Gate. Both of them are in his difficult-to-decipher code—deep under the surface of the words written under the glass. Though he may have written other things so far down that I haven’t been able to find them yet.”
“What’s he say about it?”
Isaac turns to the second-to-last page of The Book of Memory, which is about the Sixth Gate. “Here’s the clearest reference Berekiah gives the reader … ‘The Seventh Gate opens like wings as we begin our conversation. It speaks with a million bleeding voices and yet just one. Only he who hears the voices with the eyes of Moses may enter Araboth.’”
“It sounds a bit like a riddle.”
“It is in a way—the most important riddle in the world. And on the last page, there’s a bit more. Listen …‘On the arch of the Seventh Gate you shall write my final words, and you shall hold on tight to the silver winds of mesirat nefesh, and as you do the winds shall cease to cause your hands to tremble. The music you hear will be the souls speaking in Araboth, readying to greet you. Fear not the shadows that come to pursue you, because these shadows are light. And fear not how you shall be cast into the earth, because that fall is the ascent you have so long been seeking. Welcome the fires around you because they mean life for those who come after you.’”
Isaac’s voice is like none I’ve ever heard—deep and sure. As though every word he speaks might have the power to create life or destroy it. When he talks to me like this, it often even seems that the words between us have shed their usual veils and become as tangible and generous as the gleam in his eyes when I’ve understood him. When I think back to those days it seems as if the light coming in his kitchen window from the city that we both loved were telling us: Remember this time and this place, for you may never have this sense of discovery again.
And so sadness, too, filled our conversations on occasion—the sadness of knowing that our hours together would someday be only a distant memory.
“What’s mesirat nefesh?” I ask.
“Hebrew for the willingness to sacrifice oneself.” Isaac reaches for The Bleeding Mirror and opens it to the Preface. “Berekiah mentions it here. ‘The occult power of mesirat nefesh rests in the tradition among kabbalists to risk even a journey to hell for a goal that will not only help to heal our ailing world but also effect reparations in God’s Upper Realms.’” He lays the book down. “You see, Sophele, whoever desires to pass through the Seventh Gate must be willing to sacrifice himself.”
“Do Berekiah’s manuscripts tell you where the first Six Gates are?”
“Yes. He researched for years in the writings of other kabbalists in order to find them. The First Gate is in Paris, as I’ve told you. In the façade of Notre Dame.”
“But a cathedral isn’t for Jews.”
“All the gates were consecrated on the façades of churches.” He gives me a cagey look. “Putting them on synagogues might seem more natural, but that would have been short-sighted, because our temples have been destroyed so often by Christian kings. So they were consecrated where no one would guess, but where they’d be easy to find for anyone who knew where to look, and safe from destruction.”
“And the other ones?”
“The Second is at the Cathedral in Barcelona, the Third at the Cathedral in Worms, the Fourth at the Ambrosian Basilica in Milan, the Fifth at the Prague Cathedral, and the Sixth at the Church of Mary Magdalene in Lisbon. One must walk through each of these gates before trying to go through the Seventh. Unless … unless the aspirant is a sage, in which case he needs no geographical or physical help.”
“Have you gone through all the geographical gates?”
“Yes.”
“And the Seventh … don’t you have any idea where it is?”
“Berekiah gives a veiled clue that it was somewhere in southern Europe, perhaps Spain, but that it was destroyed and never reconsecrated. He could be wrong, however. Maybe it’s in London or Budapest, Rhodes, Dubrovnik …” He opens his hands as though presenting me with a gift. “Or perhaps even here in Berlin! In any case, one thing is certain—until it’s found, my only hope of passing into Araboth is in my own head.”
On a Friday afternoon when we’re not in the mood for Jewish studies, Isaac tells me more about the guests at his Carnival party, including Rolf, Heidi, Vera, K-H, Marianne, and Roman, the blind tightrope walker. It turns out that Julia—the Tunshan woman—is an expert on herbal medications, and she has her own shop next to the New Synagogue.
Nearly all of the friends he invited to the party were members of The Ring. By now, I’m convinced that one of them informed the editors of Der Stürmer that he was behind the shredding of swastika flags across Berlin. And told the Nazis that Georg was ready not only to take up arms but also to make public the names of party members who’d accepted Raffi’s bribes.
Isaac may suspect this, too, so I’m listening for doubt or mistrust in his voice as he talks of his party guests, but I hear none.
On my request, we go to visit Georg’s apartment on Schlesische Straße, a block south of the Spree and the brick, medieval turrets of the Oberbaum Bridge. “He could see both sides of the river from his bedroom window,” Isaac tells me, pointing to a fourth-floor, corner apartment. “He loved the view.”
As I gaze up, I see Georg dressed in Cesare’s scarlet cape, his eyes ringed by kohl. Was his murderer’s costume a conscious reference to his decision to start using violence against the Nazis?
“How many people are in The Ring?” I ask.
“About thirty.”
Too many to interrogate individually. Maybe I should begin by talking to Georg’s neighbors.
“I want to know more about how you’re planning to fight the Nazis,” I say.
I’m hoping that Isaac hears in my voice—and sees in the determined way that I don’t turn away from his questioning eyes—that I’m not simply curious. We’re friends now, and friends need to protect each other … That’s what I want him to understand in a way beyond words.
Glancing down at his watch, he mumbles to himself, “Almost time to go.” Looking at me in a beseeching manner, he says, “Sophele, would you mind coming with me to an appointment I have? I’d like to talk with you along the way.”
Amidst the sliding and shifting of the underground, Isaac talks to me about The Ring as if I’m his equal. And from now on that becomes his way with me—to speak to me as if I’m adult enough to understand his full range of emotions and thoughts when we’re alone and to be more elusive when we’re in the presence of Vera and his other friends.
I learn right away that destroying Nazi flags, though symbolically important, was just a sidelight to The Ring’s more pressing work.
“Our efforts have to do with the military build-up Hitler has called for,” Isaac whispers to me as we pull out of the Alexanderplatz Station. “He’s going to need vital minerals and metals from overseas, and know-how, too.”
“So you think he’ll become Chancellor.”
“The signs are pointing in that direction.”
We talk in hushed tones, because the carriage is filled, though that doesn’t stop some of the riders around us from trying to eavesdrop—this is, after all, the busybody capital of the world.
“So we’re preparing the ground to ask key foreign governments to deny Hitler the raw materials he’ll need,” Isaac explains to me.
“An embargo?”
“Yes. We’ve recently started presenting our point of view at various embassies, though it hasn’t been easy. Very few ambassadors will see us. Even those who should know better … the British and French, for instance. They think that Hitler is not the threat we know him to be. They’re certain he’ll be restrained by the other political parties.”
Do words whispered far under the surface of a city take on special meaning? I soon begin to see what he meant about the shattering of our world. “So you think Hitler isn’t going to be gone in a few months? And that there’ll be a war?”
“Unless a great many of us act now to prevent it.”
Twenty minutes later, Isaac hooks his arm around mine as we pass through the chilly shadows cast by the linden trees in Savigny Platz. I feel privileged to be walking beside him. To the west, the sun peeks through some clouds just above the roof of a handsome brick building under a curtain of thick ivy. It is still only early December—not even winter—yet Berlin is already making its descent into an unforgiving darkness.
Our destination is the Portuguese Embassy at Kurfürstendamm, 178. Isaac has told me that each member of The Ring has been assigned at least one embassy. The Portuguese and Turkish ones were the obvious choices for him, since he’s fluent in both languages. Roman has been given Italy, and Vera, who grew up speaking Spanish with her mother, chose Spain. Rolf and Heidi have taken Holland. Before he died, Georg had made visits to the English, French, Polish, and Czech embassies, since he was conversant in all those languages. He had been given some friendly—but off-the-record—responses, particularly by the English cultural attaché.
Might he have been murdered because the Nazis learned he was having some success?
“What will Hitler need from Portugal?” I ask Isaac as he purchases tobacco at a kiosk on Kantstraße. He points up to the S-Bahn tracks, which are above ground here. “To make steel for train tracks and weapons Hitler will need wolframite ore. Portugal is where Germany already gets it, and he’ll need as much as they’re willing to sell him. If war breaks out, he may also try to use Lisbon and Porto as bases for his operations in the Atlantic.”
“And the Portuguese Ambassador … has he been friendly to you?”
Isaac makes an irritated puffing sound. “So far, I’ve spoken only with his assistant for trade. I’m meeting with him again today. He thinks the Nazis have some fine ideas but that they go too far when it comes to the Jews, and I’m supposed to be grateful for that concession. You see the ignorance I’m up against? So I’m trying to educate him about the consequences of Hitler’s policies. At the same time, I’m working on his Turkish and English counterparts.”
“So you’ve taken over England from Georg?”
“Yes, though my English is an embarrassment.” He gazes up as if asking forgiveness from God. “Every time I go to the embassy, I sweat buckets because I’m petrified I’ll make some terrible gaffe. But I’ve no choice. We need to set the stage for an embargo.”
“Maybe you should invite the Portuguese cultural attaché to a meeting of The Ring, so he can see how strongly all of you feel about the Nazis …”
Isaac nods appreciatively at me. “I thought of that, Sophele, but I think that Vera and some of the others might just scare him off.”
A couple blocks before our destination, Isaac stops talking. His eyes grow worried, as if he’s reached an impasse within himself. On the sidewalk in front of the Portuguese Embassy, he takes my head in his hands and kisses my cheeks. “Thank you for coming with me. You won’t have trouble getting home by yourself, I hope.”
“I could find my way home blindfolded. But are you all right?”
“I confess, Sophele, there are many things I may not be capable of doing. If Georg were still here, this would all be easier.”
As Isaac starts away, he looks so tired and lost that I realize what ought to have been obvious to me—even confident adults can sometimes be the most fragile of creatures.
The next day I return to Georg’s apartment house. My knocking on every door soon pays off; a tiny, elderly Lebanese man named Habbaki tells me that although he heard no quarrel during the days prior to the murder, on the evening before the body was found, a truck was parked outside. Mr Habbaki, who lives below Georg’s apartment, invites me in and pours me a cup of mint tea from a tall silver pot. Clutching a red silk pillow over his lap, as if for protection, he says, “Georg and a couple of his friends carried a round table up the stairs and into his apartment. They came in and out a few more times, but I didn’t look to see what else they had with them.”
“Could you see the faces of his friends?” I enquire.
“No, it was already dark. But there was a gigantic man wearing a black headscarf and cloak. My goodness, he must have been nearly seven feet tall.”
It’s not hard to figure out who that must have been. But was it just a coincidence that Georg received new furniture the day before he was murdered?
Early that evening, I visit Isaac, who has already changed into his fraying pajamas. When I tell him about the giant who helped Georg move his furniture, he narrows his eyes to suspicious slits.
“How do you know all this?” he asks.
“I talked to Mr Habbaki, Georg’s neighbor.”
“Sophele, the Nazis do not like snoops whose fathers are Communists. You better stick to portraits. Much safer.”
“The Nazis have much more dangerous Berliners to spy on than me—as you well know. So were you one of the people taking furniture into Georg’s apartment?”
He crosses his arms over his chest as if he’s not going to tell me anything. He seems to have reconsidered his trust in me. I’m hurt, which is why I speak more harshly than I intend when I say, “So you and Vera helped Georg. Anyone else?”
“Sophele, I know you’re annoyed, but I worry about you.”
“Everybody is always worried about me. You, Mama, Papa … The only one who lets me get on with my life is Hansi.”
“So what makes you think there’s a connection between Georg’s furniture and his death?”
“Nothing. For now, it’s just a curious fact.”
“Good, then you can stop snooping.”
“I can’t.”
“You can and you will!” he bellows like a tyrant.
He has never raised his voice to me before. I’m awestruck. And near tears. “Sorry, Sophele,” he says, gazing down glumly. “But now is not the time …” His voice cracks. He rubs his pipe stem across his lips—a gesture of distress.
Someone else is dead, I think, terrified it may be Vera. “What’s happened?” I ask desperately.
“Sit with me and we’ll talk.”
He leads me into his kitchen. Once we’re seated at his table, he says, “I’ve had some bad news.”
The words tumble out of him: Heidi has had a miscarriage and was rushed to the hospital, where she became gravely ill. She had to have an operation a few days ago because her hemorrhaging might have caused her to bleed to death.
“But she’s okay now?” I ask hopefully.
“Yes.”
He tries to smile and reaches for my hand. I love the warmth of him, and his ease with me. And I realize that being with a pajama-clad, pipe-smoking Jewish sorcerer and talking with him about adult matters is my refuge from my life. Even Georg’s murder serves—in some perverse way—to take my mind from Tonio’s delight in Hitler, my mother’s disappointment in me, and all I’d like to change. Though now I have another, much more substantial, reason to want to find the murderer—protecting the most unusual person I’ve ever met.
Over the next weeks, however, my difficulties keep adding up and tugging me away from Georg’s death. Worst of all, as we enter into the new year of 1933, Rini and I have a rancorous quarrel, breaking months of giggling solidarity during which we’ve managed to keep politics at a distance.
Our troubles begin when we read in the Morgenpost about Albert Einstein and Erich Maria Remarque fleeing Germany, which prompts me to tell Rini—in a voice of supreme authority—that the two men might have acted hastily. Standing together in our schoolyard, I tell her, “I think they should have stayed and fought.”
“Who do you think you are to judge them?” she snaps.
I immediately know she’s right and already regret my words, but I play dumb and ask, “What do you mean?”
“If Remarque thinks that Nazi threats against the Jews and Communists are real, and that staying here would only get him arrested, then who are you to disagree with him? Maybe you ought to pay more attention to what the Nazis aim to do to people like him.”
“I do pay attention. I have since I first heard Hitler on the radio!”
“Though you no longer seem to mind him so much. Maybe you and Tonio both think the Jews are only pretending to be scared of the Nazis because we secretly run the world from a New York command post.” She raises her hand above her head and jiggles invisible strings. “I’m an evil puppetmaster controlling all you do and say, right? Me and the Rothschilds!”
I reply harshly to her, in part because she seems to want to misunderstand what I’m saying. And her mentioning Tonio has brought up my dread that I’ll have to choose between him and her someday. Also, I hate her implying that Papa—as a Communist—could be in imminent danger, and that he might have to flee Germany. I’d decided by then that never voicing my fears about my father will help to keep him safe.
Back and forth our quarrel goes, and we’re both too hotheaded to consider that we’re inflicting permanent wounds. “I’m sick of you being a Jew!” I conclude, which isn’t true; if anything, I’m jealous of her for having already learned some of what Isaac is teaching me.
“Coward!” she screams.
Right again, but she gives me a contemptuous look and runs off before I can either apologize or curse her, leaving me alone with my guilt, which quickly becomes a vow never to talk to her again unless she apologizes. The alchemy of dishonesty.
Right afterward, Greta Ullrich—who has made it well known that her dentist father has decided to no longer fix Jewish cavities as his contribution to the Fatherland—comes marching up to me. Her hair is always braided in perfect plaits, as though she were a milkmaid who gets inspected every morning by the Bavarian Braiding Union. I’ve never forgiven her for once telling Dr Hildebrandt, the headmaster, that she’d seen Rini smoking on school grounds. Instead of Greta Ullrich, Rini and I call her Gurka Greulich—meaning repugnant snitch; gurka means pickle but is slang for tattletale.
“Good for you, Sophie!” she tells me, smiling brightly. “We’ll show those Jews their place.”
“Gurka, if you don’t shut your damned mouth, I swear I’ll cut off those braids of yours and stuff them up your Bavarian behind!”
Gasping, she runs back to her group of gawking idiots, all of them with that wholesome, empty look of girls bred for a proper marriage, and they start whispering about me as if I’m scandalous. Which compared to them, anyone who looks as if she’s from Berlin must be.
* * *
Tonio soon adds to my worries, since he insists on bringing up my virginity every time we’re alone, pestering me like a hungry fly. Cede to his wishes or lose him—those seem to be my only options. And when he pleads in the softest voice a boy could ever have, clutching my hands in his lap as if he understands how difficult my choice is, I begin to doubt that I can resist much longer. And question why I should.
Once, while we’re kissing in my room, he whispers, “When I’m inside you for the first time, we’ll be pledged to each other forever.”
I know a boy will say just about anything to get between a girl’s legs, but that forever is the word I’ve been waiting for. And that we is clever, too; it implies we’re on the same side.
“You’re driving me crazy,” I tell him, rolling my eyes.
“Sophie, you don’t know what it’s like for a boy. We have needs that you don’t.”
He puts my hand over the bulge that’s rising down the leg of his trousers. “See, I’m always ready and you’re not.” He presses himself into my hip and moans. “I ache all over when I’m like this.”
I push him off and after he stops pouting, we start reading car magazines side by side on my bed. Much safer. And he’s recently figured out a way to include my adoration of Dietrich and Garbo into his automotive reveries …
Holding up a photo of a big blood-red car, he says, “Sophie, do you think Greta would prefer a 1932 Deusenberg Brunn Torpedo Phaeton or …” Here, he picks up a glossy picture of a sleek convertible. “… a 1929 Hispano Suiza H6B?”
The car names mean nothing to me, of course, but I can tell in an instant that Garbo would go for the Phaeton—much classier. I point to that one.
“How about Marlene?” he enquires, his face so earnest that I have to suppress a giggle.
Tonio and I go on like this—our feet playing together on the end of the bed—until we’ve decided on cars for Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Norma Shearer, Willy Fritsch, Max Schreck, and creepy but captivating Gloria Swanson, who, in Tonight or Never, wore the most gorgeous gowns I ever saw.
Tom Mix and his horse Tony are the hardest to match, but we end up choosing a 1932 Ford Tudor with a trailer at the back. Lon Chaney has been in his grave for two years but Tonio and I still pick out a pink and yellow roadster for him.
Tonio also lets me speculate on what Jewish stars like Groucho Marx would want their chauffeurs to drive. And yet there are signs his kinship with the Nazis is growing deeper … The worst is that he gives me Hitler’s autobiography, Mein Kampf, to read when I refuse yet one more time to give up my virginity. My boyfriend is so enraptured by his prophet that he really believes that Hitler’s sacred words will convince me to open my legs. In short, he thinks I’ll fuck him for the Fatherland! (Little do I know that this is not so crazy as it sounds. Millions of girls will be pressured to do just that over the coming years. Even the lucky ones who aren’t forced to slog their way through Mein Kampf. After all, Germany’s soldiers need their rations.)
While I’m walking the tightrope between my choices, President Hindenberg—who has been doing his own balancing act between political parties for several months—closes his eyes, prays for kind treatment in future history books, and names Herr Hitler as Chancellor, then disappears back into his hole. After the initial sense of panic both Papa and I feel, the announcement on the 30th of January comes as a relief, in the way of all political catastrophes that are expected; after weeks of nervous anticipation, the worst has finally happened, and now at least we will be able to see how disastrous—or prosperous—life will become. “We can now clear away the dust and rubble and start over, with the workers leading us forward!” Papa says confidently, certain that the little man who shouts will soon vanish, though he’s pushed back the date of his demise until the beginning of 1934—a year away.
Isaac sees things differently. “Hitler won’t want to lose the element of surprise, so we’re in for some fast changes. As for your father’s beloved workers, our Chancellor will be only too happy to send them to the front as cannon fodder when he’s ready.”
Hitler has sworn an oath to uphold the constitution, however, and only two Nazis are in his cabinet, so it’s just possible that Isaac’s worries will prove unfounded and life will go on much as it has over the last decade.
I never admit it to anyone, but a shadowy part of me is also a bit glad to see threatening changes in our government, since I want Rini to pay for abandoning me. That I regard Hitler’s opinions about the Jews as nothing but slanderous lies makes my betrayal of her even easier in a way, since I don’t feel tainted by his viciousness. Not that I truly want anything bad to happen to Rini and her family or any other Jewish people, of course. Oh, no, I’m one of the good Germans.
As part of the nation’s celebrations, deaf storm troopers march through the Brandenburg Gate alongside their hearing comrades, carrying upraised torches past our new Führer. They are unable to hear the tens of thousands cheering around them, of course, but they are grateful for the chance to feel united with such a massive, exuberant crowd. Seizing a chance for inclusion at any price is a powerful temptation to someone born deaf. At least, that is what Marianne assures me the next time I see her.
Inside that warm sea around the storm troopers are many who only a few months earlier had referred to Hitler as nothing but a house painter wearing his brush on his upper lip. Now, they’re bright shiny new Nazis dreaming of glory—seemingly overnight, our Führer has adopted millions of them. And Tonio is among them. In fact, when he comes home after the celebrations, he rushes up to our apartment like a child who has discovered Roman coins while digging in his yard and tells me in my room, “The giant black Mercedes the Führer was riding in—it was magnificent!” He’s so electric with glee that he jumps up to touch the ceiling. “Sophie, a while back you asked me what the most beautiful thing I ever saw was. It was Hitler in that car!”
So God is an ambitious Austrian thug in a Mercedes. Who could have guessed?
K-H attends the same Berlin rally, but with his own weapon of choice, snapping dozens of pictures of deaf friends who have apparently changed into fervent Nazis. He’s imagining his exhibition: The Day the Deaf Lost Their Sight. Each time his shutter snaps, he feels as though he’s vibrating with the power that keeps us all alive—what we feel when we know we are accomplishing an important task beyond the scope of anyone else. This sense of being useful is also a powerful emotion, especially to a man made to feel during his childhood as if his deafness was shameful.
It’s a storm trooper with a German shepherd on a leash who tells him to stop taking pictures. Reading the man’s lips, Karl-Heinz replies, “I’m a photographer—it’s my job.”
Does the Nazi take exception to the deaf man’s mispronounced vowels? Or maybe he suspects that this photographer beginning to focus on the crowd again—without authorization!—is really a Jew only pretending to be deaf.
“Karl-Heinz is missing,” Isaac tells me the next morning when I come to his apartment.
Marianne is sitting on the sofa at the back of the room, breast-feeding little Werner, now six months old—a red-cheeked pasha. “Sophie!” she calls out, her face brightening, and she reaches out a straining hand to me.
I rush to her, grateful she hasn’t forgotten me, and kneel down so we can embrace. Her scent of terror is overpowering. Her trembling seems to enter into me.
Werner is dressed in green flannel pajamas with blue sleeves, and a fire-colored collar.
“A gift from Vera,” Marianne tells me. “I think she may want Werner to grow up believing he’s a tropical bird.”
“He’s cute as can be,” I tell her, enunciating carefully so she can read my lips. Werner has soft tufts of blond hair and light brown, glowing eyes. And he’s wearing a satisfied expression, as if he’s an emperor who has just finished a banquet. He’s an infant who’ll be photographed a thousand times by his papa. And pampered by the tallest aunt in Germany.
“That child is always eager for milk!” Isaac exclaims. He’s going to have a big Prussian belly.”
“Shush!” Marianne says, waving off his good-natured laughter. She’s wearing a giant silk robe—black, with red stripes—that tumbles to the ground in luscious folds.
While Werner is feeding, Isaac tells me about K-H not coming home the night before. For her sake, the old tailor speaks cheerfully, but we’re all thinking about how opponents of Hitler have disappeared over the past year and never been found. Others, like Georg, have been murdered. His is the name we are all thinking of but dare not say.
Isaac brews a fresh pot of coffee. The cold winter light slanting through the windows seems drawn to Marianne, leaving me in shadow. The miracle is that I don’t resent her for being so beautiful.
Isaac is of the opinion that a Christian ought to go with her to report Karl-Heinz missing or the police might treat her badly. And someone who can hear, in case she needs to make a phone call. But who can they ask to accompany her at seven-thirty on a winter morning?
I volunteer my father, and as we’re discussing alternatives a knock comes on the door. Answering it, I’m caught completely unprepared for Vera. Gasping, I instinctively lift Werner between us—my protection against being clobbered for having failed to accept her gift of a jacket. It might be funny in other circumstances, but she’s not laughing.