A drum roll, a tympani, a clanging together of garbage can lids heralded the start of a new day. Dr. Felix sat in his office on New York’s Upper East Side. He surveyed the loving photographs inscribed to him that beamed down from the walls. Beside him, his little dachshund, Schatzie, sat soberly, her jowls grizzling and quivering as she waited for her master to feed her just one more lump of sugar before the day actually began. “Hush, mein Liebchen,” said Felix, reproving the dog, and at the same time stroking the folds of her flesh, so silky, furred with a fringe of black and white hairs. Schatzie licked his hand.
Felix surveyed the crumpled papers he held, papers taken from under Herbert’s mattress, reading and rereading them. “Knight to a2,” he read. “Pawn 3 to d5.” He threw the papers down in frustration. “Aach!” Chess moves! That was all they were! Herbert planning out chess moves, playing against himself, as always. And for that, Felix had risked discovery. He was fed up. And yet, what if this was code? “Hmmm, Schatzie. What do you think?” The dog nuzzled Felix’s hand with a spongy, plush nose.
Every day for the past week, Felix had sat in his office, waiting for the children. And each day, in mounting frustration, he read and reread the papers he had salvaged from Herbert’s cot, trying to find the secrets that lay within the careful handwriting. But it was to no avail. Felix sighed to himself and put the papers back in the little upper drawer of the desk, locking it firmly and putting the key in his pocket again. He offered the dog another sugar lump, and Schatzie, groaning slightly, struggled to her feet and wagged her stump of a tail.
In the examining room and in the entryway that led to it, photographs of children looked down at Felix and his current patients. Their sweet little faces and unblinking dark eyes stared out at the world. “For my beloved Uncle Felix.” “To Felix with all my love,” “Dear Felix, how will I ever forget you?” The words were written again and again over the bottom of the photographs, usually in elegant upward loops, sometimes with a trailing line beneath the sentiments. The handwriting on the pictures was like flowers, decorating the elaborate costumes of the children, the white dresses, the silken curls, the little boys in suits, sailor or otherwise, the girls in white lace dresses with intricate sleeves and wide sashes. All stared soulfully out of the silver frames that guarded them, watching Felix at work every day as he cared for children, the children of America. “The children of America,” thought Felix. But they were in truth very like the children of Europe, for they were, most of them, the same children. Only less elegant, less graceful, less courteous. For these were the children of Europeans in America, those who had managed to survive. And a sorry lot they were.
Felix scratched his bushy head, where the gray hairs sprouted like Struwwelpeter’s. He consulted his watch yet again, taking it out of the pocket where it lay and screwing his monocle to his eye in order to regard it better. He had the impression time stopped here in New York. The apartment was silent, the floors creaked on their own, and pipes hissed. But Felix was lonely. If it were not for Schatzie, he realized, he would have given up long ago. He tried not to think of Marthe, and of what had befallen her. It was his own fault. His father had warned him not to marry a Jew.
Marthe’s father had been a doctor, Felix’s teacher. And Marthe had been beautiful and rich. “Rich,” thought Felix sadly. So he had married the daughter and gotten the father’s practice as well. Until the war: Hitler, and everything had changed. Felix tried not to think about Marthe, but the more he tried not to think of her, the more she came into his mind. Finally, he saw himself pushing her away and leaving Vienna, where he had spent so many happy and lucrative years. Felix, leaving the day after Marthe had been taken, had packed hastily. From the medical practice, he took only the photographs, but there was a special trunk of research equipment, microscope and slides and jars, which he packed and took with him as well.
Scooping up Schatzie, Felix had stood beside the train that was to carry them both away from Europe. Mentally, he made a photograph of himself at that moment. In the foreground, he placed the large trunk. Next to it in the station, Felix himself, a small man, with Schatzie squeezed, unprotesting, under his arm. In his eye, the monocle glared, a manic disk. Felix bit down fiercely on his cigar, and with his free hand, he fingered the gold watch, the one Marthe’s father had given him when he had entered practice with the older physician. Then the train came; the doors opened, and Felix and Schatzie had to be helped in. It was only then that emotion overcame him, misting the monocle, which he removed, putting it into his vest pocket, where it rested beside his stethoscope for the rest of the long journey.
Now in Manhattan, a new life, an empty life. But the doorbell rang, signaling the arrival of the first of the children. It was tonsils; Felix already knew that. “Come, Schatzie.” He sighed, putting the dog down. He went down the long hall to the large carved door, opening it slowly. Schatzie lumbered behind him. “Guten Morgen,” Felix said, opening his door to the small patient, who stood solemnly beside its mother.
“Oh, Herr Doktor, we are so grateful!” The mother, upon seeing Felix, immediately began to gush with relief.
“Not at all, dear lady, not at all.” Felix forestalled her with a warning gesture. He moved closer to the little boy, who was just his height. “Well,” demanded Felix suddenly, lifting one bushy eyebrow, “have you been a bad boy, hmm?”
The little boy shrank back, clutching his mother’s hand tightly. “Noooo,” he ventured tentatively.
“No, Uncle Felix,” said Felix, immediately correcting the child. The boy complied. “Good,” said Felix, leading the way into the examining room. “Komm, Schatzie,” Schatzie trotted behind obediently. The child and his mother followed.
Felix staggered suddenly. “Ach,” he cried. “Bad child, bad child! What have you done to Uncle Felix?” The boy cringed, but the mother smiled down at him indulgently. “Don’t be afraid, Hans,” her smile seemed to say.
“You see, you are breaking my leg!” cried Felix to the child in a fierce voice. “Now it is I who am sick! Are you going to fix my leg, hmm?” Hans pressed back against his mother, all of his own physical suffering forgotten as he contemplated the figure of this contorted man, sagging to the ground, clutching Hans’s body and gibbering, tongue lolling, as he staggered against him.
“Now you must help Uncle Felix, bad boy,” Felix said. “Ach, ach, how it hurts!” Felix fell on the floor of his examining room, his leg cramped against him. Schatzie nuzzled her master’s prone body, bewildered. She licked him a couple of times. Hans watched this, his round eyes even rounder. “It hurts!” Felix cried. “Now, Hans,” he commanded the boy, “you must help your poor old Uncle Felix.” He stretched out a hand to Hans, who, terrified, refused to take it. “Come, you bad boy,” Felix cried. “It is you who broke my leg. Now you must fix it.” The boy, pushed forward by his mother, tentatively touched Felix’s arm. “Ach!” Felix sprang to his feet, and before the surprised eyes of the child and his mother, he bounded about the room, although still managing to drag one leg behind.
Suddenly, he swooped down upon the boy. “Now open your mouth!” he commanded. “Say ‘Ahh.’ ” Felix set the child upon the examining table, screwed his monocle to his eye, reached for the stethoscope, took out a tongue depressor, and peered down the child’s throat, all in one motion. He appeared to thrust his bushy head all the way into the boy’s gullet.
“ ‘Ahhh,’ ” said the boy, as if his life depended on it. “ ‘Aaah.’ ”
Felix snapped the tongue depressor in two and went for the child’s ears. All this happened so quickly that Hans never thought to utter a sound. Felix threw Schatzie a sugar cube and reached for the stethoscope that dangled around his neck. He took out his gold pocket watch and counted to himself, breathing in a stentorian fashion. “Bad boy, bad boy!” Felix said to himself. Schatzie licked his pant leg.
“Now, Hans,” Felix said briskly when he had finished, “you will be a good boy from now on, hmm?” He bent down and pressed his nose against Hans’s, fixing the child in his gaze. “No more troubles for Mutter, hmm?” Hans, terrified, nodded.
“That’s better,” said Felix, straightening up. “First you will take my medicine. You will be good, and then you will give me a nice picture. Ja? A nice picture for my walls.”
Hans looked around him and above, as far as he could see, to the grave and smiling photos of children looking down at him.
“Of course,” Hans’s mother said encouragingly. “Of course you shall have a picture.”
“And you, you must get dressed,” said Felix to the child. “And then you shall sit in my nice room outside with Schatzie and wait for Mutter, hmm?” Felix looked significantly at the far corner of his office, far from the examining table, where a large screen cut off the final third of the room. The ceilings were high, with decorated moldings at the top. Paint was peeling, and the radiators muttered. But the room was nice and warm. Hans wondered vaguely what was behind the screen. Felix snapped his fingers and Schatzie emerged from the corner, wagging her entire fat body. Deftly, Felix pulled a dog candy from out of a sleeve, and with the other, he plucked a lollipop from Hans’s ear. He held the lollipop in the air. “You see, this has been the problem all along!” he declared. “Bad boy, why do you not tell Uncle Felix you hide candy in your ear!”
Hans’s mother clapped her hands with delight, as if to encourage the jollity, and Hans managed a wan, unwilling smile. “Bad boy, bad boy,” chanted Felix, and he gave the child the lollipop.
“Schatzie, come!” he commanded, snapping his fingers once more, and the dog waddled heavily toward the waiting room. “Hans!” The child walked obediently behind the dog, casting reluctant backward glances at his mother as he went. “Mutti will only be a little while,” said Felix. He looked significantly at Hans’s mother, at the screen that hid the couch with the silken cover, and motioned the child out. “Sit, Schatzie! Sit, Hans!”
Hans’s mother was already unbuttoning her coat, fumbling with the too-small buttonholes. “Now, Hans,” warned Felix, “if you are a bad boy, Uncle Felix will know.” He raised his voice suddenly, sharply. “Sit,” he commanded. Both Hans and Schatzie sat on the little sofa outside of the examining room, next to the umbrella stand, their round eyes looking up at Felix as he wagged a reproving finger at them both. Hans put the lollipop in his mouth and tasted it carefully. He put his other arm around the dog.
“The child will be fine, dear woman,” Felix said to Hans’s mother, carefully shutting the large oak door to his office. Hans’s mother made an imploring gesture toward her son, but Felix raised one gnarled hand as if to forestall her words. “Come with me, dear lady, now,” he commanded, leading her behind the screen. “It is only a question of medicine,” he said. “The child will be fine, I assure you.”
After Hans and his mother had left, Felix sat down once again at his big desk to make a few notes for himself. He scribbled hastily, blotted the paper quickly, and unlocked his desk drawer, placing the note inside. Once again he pulled out the papers he had stolen from Herbert’s cot, then held them up to the green-shaded light, as if light would reveal what understanding could not. But he could make no sense of the notes. “P5, k3,” he read. Felix snarled, flinging the notes back into the drawer. He shoved them into the back and locked the desk again.
When the doorbell rang this time, he was quickly remaking the couch at the end of the room. He smoothed the silk cover, plumped up the pillows, and readjusted the Chinese screen that separated his sleeping quarters from his office. He moved Schatzie’s pillow farther away under the window and plumped that as well. “Come!” he said to the dog, patting the pillow. And Schatzie obediently waddled over to her bed, where she settled herself with a grateful groan. But not for long. The old dog struggled to her feet, jowls jiggling as she watched Felix’s departing figure, and followed him, smiling to herself, as he went to answer the door. It was his next patient.
Outside the front door, Maria stood, bundled to her ears, next to her mother. “Aaah!” cried Felix, as if in complete surprise. “And what do we have here, hmm?” He bent down toward the girl and scowled. “Why do you bother Uncle Felix, hmm? Have you been a bad girl again?”
Maria, who had been feeling alternately hot and cold, weak with fever, drew back. Felix looked up at Maria’s mother. “So?” he said.
“She is sick,” Maria’s mother replied. She clutched her neck, drawing her scarf more tightly around herself. “So we must come. I take the morning from my job. Herr Doktor, I implore you!” As Felix ushered them into the front hall, toward the little sofa and the coat stand, Maria’s mother fought back tears. “Aach, I am worried!” Maria, in a swirl of light and sound, hardly noticed this exchange.
“My dear lady,” said Felix skillfully. Maria’s mother pulled herself together. “And your husband?” demanded Felix, changing tone.
Maria’s mother shook her head. “David…,” she began, but did not finish. Both looked quickly toward Maria. But the child stood stiffly in her little coat and shawl about her head, pale and slightly swaying.
“It is secret, hmm?” Felix barked.
Maria’s mother nodded, her own pale face closed. “And now, of course, we have no money,” she added in a low voice.
“Calm yourself, my dearest Ilse,” Felix said in a low, commanding voice. He snapped his fingers, and Schatzie waddled forward. Almost absently, he gave her another sugar lump. “These are difficult times. We must be calm.” He bent down to unwrap the shawl from Maria’s head. “And with me”—he looked up at Maria’s mother—“you know it is never a question of money. How much do you need?” he asked in a low voice. Maria’s mother made a demurring gesture. “We shall see,” murmured Felix, “We shall see.” He straightened himself halfway. “And from David, there is nothing?” Maria’s mother shook her head. “Ja. Secret,” muttered Felix, half to himself. “Secret, this David. Nothing.” Maria’s mother stiffened. “Now, now, dear lady,” Felix said authoritatively, “We must be calm. These are difficult times.”
He bent once again to Maria. “You see, bad girl, how you upset your mother!” he shouted into her ear. “You are a bad girl! And now Mutti is crying. Bad girl!”
“Calm yourself, Ilse,” he whispered again to Maria’s mother. He motioned to the couch outside his office door. “We must have self-control. Sit here with Schatzie. I take the child now.” Maria’s mother sank onto the sofa, exhaustion rimming her eyes.
Maria cast behind her a look of despair as Felix took her by the hand and led her into the office. Was she again to be alone with him? A terror seized her heart. “Mama!” she tried to whisper, but no words came out. Looking at her mother on the sofa, Maria realized that there was no help to be had there. Docilely, she allowed herself to be led. Felix closed the big oak door.
“Now,” he said, “you bad girl! First we look at your ears, hmm! And then we shall look at Mutter. And then, if you are good, I give you a candy.”
Maria looked at the photographs of the children that covered the walls from floor to ceiling. “Would you like to be in a photograph?” asked Felix. “Perhaps today we take a photograph. But only if you are good. Ja?”
Felix suddenly fell to the ground in front of Maria, doubled into a fetal position. “Ow ow ow!” he yowled. “You see, bad girl, how you hurt Uncle Felix! My leg!”
Felix grimaced as he thrashed on the floor. Maria stood there, gravely watching him. She swayed with dizziness. “What have you done?” cried Felix. “You broke my leg!” Seeing that Maria did not respond, Felix sprang again as briskly to his feet.
“Come,” he said, “now we fix Uncle Felix’s leg.” Hobbling, he led the child to the examining table and lifted her on. “Bad girl, undress for Felix,” he demanded, pressing his bushy brows against her face. Maria was hot with fever, but she felt his still-hotter breath against her. She forgot entirely that her head hurt. Her head, her ears, both seemed bands of ice. Felix took off her clothes and surveyed her small, undernourished body. Maria felt the draft across her chest, but, alternately, warm air rose from the radiator in Felix’s room.
“Now,” breathed Felix. Once again, he raised the stethoscope to his ears and fastened its huge unwinking eye to Maria’s chest. He listened, concentrating, and Maria forced herself to leave her body and float up to the molded ceiling, where, she noticed, a huge stain like a map had emblazoned itself.
“Breathe,” commanded Felix sharply. Maria surveyed the happy children, all in white, like angels, who regarded her from Felix’s wall. “To my dear Uncle Felix,” she read in large graceful writing across the bottom corners. The other children looked out at her seriously, as if to give her courage. Maria listened for sounds of her mother outside, but the room was entirely silent.
Affixing a large beak to his head, Felix thrust this beak into Maria’s ears. She heard only the sound of his heavy breathing, and the sharp, cold metal hurt. Felix said nothing. After a while he withdrew the cold beak. “Say ‘Ahh,’ ” he commanded, thrusting a tongue depressor into her mouth. Maria gagged. “Bad girl. Say ‘Ahh,’ ” said Felix again. She smelled his shaving lotion.
“ ‘Aaah,’ ” she managed, terrified.
Felix held her wrist and seemed to count to himself. “Lie down,” he commanded. Maria lay down, her small, thin body shivering. She felt ashamed of her illness, ashamed of giving so much trouble. Felix said nothing. He pressed his large bushy head to her chest. He listened. Maria listened, too, but for what, she did not know. She smelled his oily hair. His hair tickled her. Once again, she left her body, floated on the ceiling near the water stain, the map. Felix held his breath.
“Now,” he said, almost to himself. “What have you done, bad girl?” He took Maria’s limp little hand and placed it near his own leg. “You see what you have done?” Maria felt a lump, a huge swelling on the front of Uncle Felix. “You see how it hurts?” he hissed. Maria felt such pity for him. Rocking back and forth, Felix pressed Maria’s hand against his lump. “Be still.” With his other hand, he held her so she couldn’t move, fixing her with a stare. She tried not to look at him.
Maria pictured her mother sitting in a shaft of white light outside the examining room, the dachshund at her feet. Maria hated her mother. She knew there would never be help for her there. She broke out into a sweat. Suddenly, tenderly, Felix was next to her. He held her hand, stroking her forehead. Maria felt obscurely grateful to him.
Felix moved away, and then as quickly he came toward her again, holding something fine between his fingers. Pinching her flesh, he injected something into her, withdrew the needle, and wiped her skin.
“Get dressed,” he said. “Mutti is waiting.” He adjusted her clothes, tenderness in his hands as he buttoned her sweater.
He led Maria, who was in a sort of swoon, out of the office. As he opened the door, Maria’s mother stood up. “The child will be fine,” said Felix. “She will be good. Won’t you?” he said sharply, addressing the almost fainting girl. Wordlessly, Maria nodded.
“The child needs vitamins. You bring her to me each week. After that, we shall see.”
Maria shrank back onto the sofa. “I give her the injections, you know,” said Felix, standing above both mother and child. “It could be quite serious, this difficulty with the ears. We must take care.” Maria’s mother nodded, holding her daughter’s hand. “We do not want to operate,” Felix said more softly, as a warning.
“Is that not so?” he suddenly cried, stooping down once more to Maria’s level. He pinched her cheek. “Abracadabra,” he recited, beetling his brows at her. Deftly, he plucked a sugar cube out of thin air and tossed it to Schatzie, who snapped it up immediately with a satisfied smacking sound. “Ah, what have we here?” cried Felix now, And he held one immaculately cuffed wrist near Maria’s ear. Suddenly, there was a lollipop. “Bad girl, you hide this from Uncle Felix!” he exclaimed. Maria’s mother smiled, the first smile since they had entered.
“Now,” said Felix to Maria, “I want you to sit here with Schatzie and rest while I talk to your mama. Don’t move,” he warned her, fixing her with what Maria knew was a special glance.
“Just wait, my darling,” said Maria’s mother gently. “I won’t be long.” As she got up to follow Uncle Felix, she was already unbuttoning her coat.
“Come, my dearest little girl,” said Felix, extending his hand to her. “You shall see, all will be well. You must not worry about the money when I am here to help. And the child will be all right, you shall see.”
“Wait for me, darling,” Ilse said. “Just sit there. There’s a good girl. I must have a little talk alone with Uncle Felix now.” Maria leaned her head against the back of the couch, and with one hand she began to stroke the sags and folds in Schatzie’s neck. She held the lollipop in her other hand. Maria decided never to talk to her mother again.
Before Felix could close the heavy door between the waiting alcove and his examining table, Maria caught one more glimpse of the cold white table upon which she had lain, and the big yellowed screen that guarded the far corner of the room. She could no longer see her mother. But she saw her mother’s scarf, and then the good black wool coat as it was flung over the upper part of the screen. Maria closed her eyes. Felix shut the door with a heavy, muffled sound.
Maria wondered if her mother and Uncle Felix were talking about her in there. If so, what were they saying? Was she going to die? Terror gripped her heart. She felt sick and light-headed. Perhaps she was already dead. She looked around her, still feeling the dog’s warm, jowly skin, and then she saw the many faces of children. They all seemed to love Uncle Felix so. Maria knew she hated him. Perhaps she had died and gone to heaven with the other children. Maria thought that heaven was a place of love and forgiveness. Had these children forgiven Uncle Felix? Maria knew, from her dispassionate, detached position now, that these children, all of them, were also dead. Otherwise, how could they express such love and gratitude? Maria watched herself be dead. Her hands and feet felt cold, but she did not move. She sat there, waiting, waiting, until the big oak door opened once again. Her mother emerged, laughing, talking to Felix as she adjusted her coat and scarf.
“Ah, dear lady, it is I who am grateful,” said Felix as he ushered her out. He put something into her hand. Maria’s mother put her hand quickly into the coat pocket. Maria’s mother took the little, cold, dead hand of the dead Maria and the dead child floated whitely out of the office. Before too long, they were on the street, and the cold air burned against Maria’s face. She was dead; she did not want to feel the air. She did not want to smell the cold, sooty, greasy smell of it as it entered her nostrils. Dead people were cold, Maria knew, and so it was all right to be cold. But not to smell things.
Felix shut the heavy decorated door after they had left. He was ready once again to make his notes. His next little patient would be coming soon, after Felix had his nice lunch of thick bread and butter and sausage, and after Schatzie had her bowl of dog food.
“Come, my darling,” said Maria’s mother, walking more quickly, happily. There was a spring in her step, a careless hopefulness. “Now we go home. And I make you a nice lunch. Philip will be waiting for us,” she went on cheerfully, babbling into the unlistening ears of Maria, who tried to shut out her mother’s hateful voice. “Won’t that be lovely, a little soup? And then I must go to work. But soon you will be in your nice bed with your nice books. And you will feel much better.”
Maria’s body burned, but she shut herself off from herself and floated up into the sooty sky. There, assembled with all the little children in white dresses, she looked down at her mother with pity, as if from a great height. From now on, she would be dead. But she would still sit in judgment on her mother and others. And when God came on Judgment Day to ask her opinion, she would tell God what had really happened. In her mind, however, God and the SS were confused. Maria knew she must never tell anything—ever—to anyone. Or else they would all—her whole family, including even little Philip—be put into the camps. And then they would die in the ovens and become smoke. Black smoke, streaming out of chimneys. She thought of little Philip burning, his small body twisting, shrieking. She could never bear that, not even if she herself were tortured. Maria knew that life was a test, a test of courage and silence. She had always understood that, although her parents had tried to shelter her, perhaps, from this understanding. But she knew something from the whispers around her, the mutterings of the walls, the imprecations of the elevator girl, and the absences of her father. She knew from the furtive fear of her mother, from the huddled penury of their lives, and from the sense of being always in hiding, even here in New York.
Maria thought only her grandfather could match—in fact, surpass—her in cunning secrecy. She was brave; she would save her family one day by her silence. They were all in her power, Maria knew, her power and God’s. For if she said only one word of what she knew, the Nazis—or God—would find them all instantly, smoke them out like a helpless nest of mice.
No, Maria would never tell anyone anything, not even God, whatever happened to her. Not even her father. Where was he? It was a secret. Maria resolved to be dead at least until her father came back. Then she would hold his hand ever so tightly. But still, she would never tell. She would practice being dead as long as she could.