Elena woke up in the night, her heart pounding. Then she heard the noise again. It was someone moving quickly and trying to be silent. The soft sound of footsteps hurrying, then a gasp of breath.
She slid out of bed, put on the wrap that Zillah had lent her, and went to the door. She opened it quietly and looked out. The hall light was on and Zillah was standing at the top of the stairs, her hair loose around her shoulders. She was staring downward. She had not heard Elena’s door open. She was holding something, an armful of towels.
Eli’s voice came from below her. “Hurry. Maybe sheets would be better. We can replace them.”
“I’ve got sheets, too,” Zillah replied. “We’ll burn them if need be. It hardly matters now.” She started down the stairs awkwardly.
Without thinking, Elena went to her and took some of the towels.
Zillah swung around, startled. She was ashen pale. “Go back to bed!”
“I can help,” Elena replied. “Whatever it is, I can help. You don’t need to slip and fall down the stairs with that lot.”
Before Zillah could argue, Eli’s voice came from below. “Let her! We need her. What will she do? She’s a fugitive anyway. This can’t make it worse.”
Zillah let go of half the pile of sheets and towels, and Elena followed her down, carrying her share. They went after Eli into the kitchen. On the floor Jacob was kneeling with his arms around a young man covered with blood. The man’s upper body was naked and all the flesh raw. Elena had never seen anything so shocking. She stumbled as if her heart had stopped.
Zillah was looking at her. “That’s what we all look like when our skin has been taken off,” she said quietly. “If we help him, keep it all clean, he’ll be all right.”
Elena swallowed hard, trying to keep her stomach in place. The young man was conscious. The last thing he needed was hysteria. Or someone else’s horror. “What do you want me to do?”
“Antiseptic. It’ll hurt like hell, but if it gets infected, it’ll kill him,” Eli told her. “Unfold the sheets and pass whatever you’re told to. We’ve no time to waste.”
Elena obeyed. It was a nightmare of pain and blood, but the four of them worked on the young man with no words except instructions. Pass me this, take that. Fetch more water. Use the brandy. The pain cannot be helped. Now wash the floor. We can have no trace left.
The young man, whose name she never learned, slipped out of consciousness, for a merciful time unaware of the pain. Zillah checked every few minutes, but he was breathing regularly, although his pulse was erratic.
Elena met Jacob’s eyes once. He seemed to know what he was doing, as if he had seen it before. He worked silently, except for the requests for assistance.
Gradually, Elena realized what had happened. It was not an accident, as she had first supposed, perhaps a bad burn. The outer layers of the man’s skin had been deliberately removed, flayed. Such a thing had been outside her imagination.
She lost all sense of time. She was taken by surprise, and then fear, when there was a quiet, triple knock on the kitchen door, and Jacob went to let in two men. He greeted one of them by name.
“Is he ready?” the first man asked.
“Almost,” Zillah replied. “Five minutes.”
The other man glanced apprehensively at Elena.
“Wanted for shooting Scharnhorst,” Eli said simply.
One of them nodded with a bleak smile. The other stared at her for a long moment, then turned away, not unkindly, simply more concerned for the young man. He spoke gently to him, not in German. Elena took it to be Yiddish.
Ten minutes later they were gone, carrying the young man with them, and Elena was helping Zillah clean up the kitchen and remove all signs of blood. They washed the sheets that could be saved and burned the others. The first light of dawn was breaking when Elena went back to bed, exhausted.
Before she could fall asleep, there was a light tapping on her door. “Come in,” she said.
Zillah entered, a brown apothecary bottle in one hand, scissors in the other. “We need to change your appearance,” she said. “We’ll begin with your hair.”
When Elena woke in the morning, she felt stiff and had a pounding headache. She had been dreaming something terrible that she did not want to make sense of. She was in a strange room. A few cracks of light came through where she had not completely closed the curtains. She recognized nothing. There was a dressing table, and unfamiliar pictures on the walls. It was unique, nothing like any generic hotel room she could recall. What was she doing here?
Then she remembered the young man covered in blood, and the flesh beneath the raw wounds. She had been doing what she could, helping Zillah. She could remember Eli’s tense face in the kitchen light, full of pity, and struggling not to show his despair. He was trying to defend Zillah from what she already knew.
But Elena was safe, though only for the moment. They were Jewish, which meant that if they were not hunted already, they would be soon, and underneath the brave faces, they knew it.
They might argue that it would not really happen. That was what Eli had said. Did he believe that now, after last night? Or was he saying it to comfort his family, because there was nothing they could do about it, whatever they knew? It wasn’t practicing their religion that was the problem; it was blood heritage.
What time was it? She leaned over and picked up her wristwatch from the bedside table. It was just after ten! How could she have slept for so long, leaving everybody else to…what…carry on as normal, as if nothing had happened?
Elena got out of bed quickly. She had her own small bathroom where she could wash, then get dressed in the plain dress Zillah had given her. Apart from that, she had only the clothes she had come with, and her camera. She would have to buy clothing again. This was getting absurd, like a repeating nightmare that became worse every time it completed the cycle and started over.
She walked into the bathroom and nearly cried out when she saw her reflection in the mirror. Her hair was very blond, short. Who was that woman staring back at her? And then she remembered Zillah, the peroxide, hair covering the bedroom floor.
She went downstairs, trying to remember the way to the kitchen. The others must have finished breakfast ages ago. She would just ask for a cup of tea and perhaps a couple of slices of toast. And apologize for having slept so long.
As far as the rest of the day was concerned, she had no idea what she was going to do. No, she knew. She just did not want to admit it. She must leave this house. The Brownshirts or the Gestapo…or someone…would be looking for the young man, and they would come here. If they found her, God alone knew what they would do to Zillah and Eli. And to Jacob, if he was here. Being American would not save him. Elena had no other choice that she could live with.
The kitchen door was open and she saw Zillah inside, apparently alone. She knocked on the panel, lightly.
Zillah turned from the pastry she was making and smiled. “Good morning. I hope you slept after all that?” That was her only reference to the young man. “Jacob hasn’t arrived with the morning papers yet, but he shouldn’t be long. Would you like tea? Or do you prefer coffee? And breakfast?”
The benches and the floor were clean and bright, no sign of blood, as if last night had never happened.
“I’d love tea,” Elena accepted, walking farther in. The room was warm, perhaps from the sunlight, but also from the oven, and it smelled like clean cotton and new bread. It flooded back memories of Grandma Josephine’s kitchen a long time ago, when none of them even knew what war meant—it was something that happened to other people.
“Sit down,” Zillah said with a frown of concern. “You must be terrified, although you mask it well. I’ll get you toast. We have plenty, so eat as much as you wish.”
Of course, there would still be food restrictions in Berlin. She had not thought of that until now. How stupid of her. How self-centered.
She sat at the kitchen table, unable to help because she had no idea where anything was. “I’m very grateful indeed for—” she began.
“All right, now you’ve said it,” Zillah cut across her, but with a smile. “We know. These are hard times. Frankly, we’d help you even if you had shot that pig, Scharnhorst. But I believe you didn’t. I think you would be cooler about it if you had. And perhaps you would have prepared your escape rather better.” She met Elena’s glance for an instant and there was wry humor in her look.
“I would,” Elena agreed emphatically. “For a start, I would not have gone back to the hotel where I was staying. I would have hidden the gun somewhere and gone in a different direction. Not opposite—that’s too obvious. Perhaps sideways?”
Zillah looked at her, saw the harsh humor in her face, reflecting her own. “You’ll know for next time,” she said drily.
For the first time in hours, Elena laughed. “Trouble is,” she replied, “I would have to find another rifle. I imagine they are expensive. Perhaps I should steal one? And learn to shoot straight. I don’t even know how to hold a gun properly.”
“Good idea,” Zillah agreed. “When you are a good shot, you should aim at Herr Doktor Goebbels. He is the worst.” Her slight words had a passionate loathing behind them and a certainty deep as the bone.
Elena thought of the young man, but she understood that he would not be referred to again.
The kettle whistled and Zillah made a fresh pot of tea. A moment later she brought the toast, a tiny portion of butter, and homemade preserves.
Elena thanked her and ate hungrily.
Zillah watched her for a few moments, standing still, as if waiting to see if it was satisfactory. Even through the pleasure of the fresh food and the warmth of the kitchen, the tension remained. They both had to be thinking of the young man who had been lying there, just hours ago.
Elena put down her toast and turned to Zillah. “What Eli said last night…he knows it’s not true, doesn’t he? He has to know now…except it’s not the first time it’s happened…is it? You knew what to do…”
Zillah blinked, the tears suddenly flooding her eyes. “No. But this time was worse. It’s becoming harder to believe this persecution is just a temporary madness. Medicine, banking, art, the sciences, music—all the things that bring wealth and prestige to a nation—will not save us…” She trailed off, unable to finish.
Elena knew what she had been going to say. “And Hitler feeds people’s resentment,” she finished. “Because it is the real wealth of the nation. It’s what people admire and envy. No one wants to believe so much of the best part of their culture was contributed by someone else.”
“We are not someone else!” Zillah said between her teeth, but she did not look at Elena. “We are Germans!”
Elena realized her own clumsiness. She felt the heat rise up her face. “I’m sorry. But they need to blame someone, someone different. It doesn’t matter if it makes sense or not! People are capable of believing anything they want, to justify what they feel. And of believing what they need to be true to justify what they are doing.”
Zillah stared at her. Finally, she whispered, “I know that. But Eli still has hope. I need to believe he’s right. I need to.”
Elena said nothing.
“At least I need him to believe that I do,” Zillah amended.
Elena could think of nothing to say. She was choked by emotion for this proud, gentle woman who had offered her hospitality at such great addition to her own risk. She shouldn’t have said what she did, and she couldn’t take it back. She ate another bite of the toast, and another.
She had just finished and was insisting on washing the plate when Jacob came in, carrying several newspapers. He wished them all good morning, looking at Elena carefully but showing no surprise at her new appearance. He put the papers on the kitchen table, then made himself a cup of coffee, glanced to see what Elena was drinking, and made coffee for Zillah as well.
Zillah broke the silence at last. “What do the papers say?” she asked.
“A lot about Scharnhorst, of course,” he replied, setting her coffee beside her and bringing his own to the table, opposite Elena. He seemed to be watching her closely. Normally it would have irritated her, but now she found it comforting.
“Anything about who shot him?” Zillah countered.
“An unknown person, believed to be English,” he replied. “And either a woman, or someone dressed as a woman.”
“They can’t tell the difference?” Elena said with a ghost of a smile.
“Covering themselves,” Jacob replied with a shrug. “In case they catch some poor man and decide to pin it on him. They’ll look like fools if they don’t get anyone at all. Hardly German efficiency. They can’t afford to have people think you can shoot the vermin and get away with it.”
“I am a German,” Zillah asserted grimly, then smiled at him, to show she had no ill feeling.
He looked back at her without a shred of humor. “You are a German Jew,” he replied. “If you don’t know the difference by now, God help us.”
“Not that again, Jacob, please,” she said quietly. “I know what people are saying, and I fear there is some truth in it.”
“Even after last night?” he said. There was anger in his voice and he was struggling to keep it gentle toward her.
“Eli still thinks they wouldn’t be so…so self-harming,” Zillah said, looking down at her plate, as if she did not want Jacob to see her eyes. “We are a big part of German society. We have contributed far too much—we still do—for them to do anything more than make a lot of noise and exercise the basest of cruelty now and again. It will be unpleasant, but we’ve survived unpleasantness before.”
“You sound like Eli,” he said grimly.
“Of course I do. I’m his wife. But I’m glad someone killed Scharnhorst, whoever it was.”
Jacob waited a few moments, eating his slice of bread and sipping at his coffee, still too hot to drink comfortably, his eyes on Elena, watching to see how she would react.
“Have you learned about the un-German books?” he said at last, directing his question to Zillah.
“The what?” She looked at him incredulously.
“The un-German books,” he repeated.
“For goodness’ sake, what is an un-German book? If it is printed in German, then it’s German, isn’t it? So, you mean something translated from another language? It’s a big world out there, and some of the best literature, the very best, comes from other languages.”
“Un-German thoughts and ideas,” he explained, intense contempt in his face. “The works of such French barbarians as Gide, Emile Zola, Marcel Proust; American barbarians such as Jack London and Ernest Hemingway; Englishmen like H. G. Wells; and native traitors to German thought like Marx, Freud, and Einstein.”
“Ridiculous,” Zillah said with a mirthless laugh.
“Please don’t tell Dr. Goebbels that, Zillah,” Jacob said, his voice suddenly grating. “This is the peak of his achievement, so far. All the works of these people, among hundreds of others—even Helen Keller, for God’s sake—are to be collected up and burned, to protect the German soul from their polluting influence.”
Zillah stared at him, as if unable to decide now whether he was joking, exaggerating, or just plain wrong. She was not yet prepared to think that he could be right. “Nonsense,” she said at last. “You shouldn’t go around saying things like that, even to me. Not everyone understands your rather twisted sense of humor.”
Jacob bent his head, elbows on the table, and ran his fingers through his thick hair. For a moment there was complete silence in the kitchen, except for the ticking of the clock on the mantel above the oven. Finally, he looked up.
“I’m not joking, Zillah. God help us, I’m totally serious. They’re going to do it tonight. Fires in every major city in Germany. Here it will be in the Opernplatz, between the opera house and the university. I’m going to watch from the shadows, the darkness at the edge, which is where I imagine a lot of us will be from now on.” He looked across the table at Elena. “It’ll be midnight, so you could come and watch it, with your camera, if you like. It will be a signal moment in history. You should record it for the future. The suicide of the German intellect. It might be quite a spectacle, or it might not. Odd to think that a sudden shower of rain could save the soul of a nation…for one more night.” His voice was angry and Elena could hear the edge of despair in it.
Without thinking whether it was appropriate or not, she reached across and touched his hand. “A temporary insanity,” she said quite clearly. “Other people have copies, in probably every country in Europe, or America, at the very least. You can’t kill an idea by burning a book.”
“You can kill a nation’s ability to read it,” he said, searching her face as he spoke. “And please don’t go out alone, and not at all in the daylight. The neighbors here are pretty good, but your description is all over the place, and it takes only one person to report it to get the Gestapo here.”
“I know,” she said very quietly. It hurt to say it. The only thing that would help would be to stay here. “I can’t stay here. I’m endangering everybody.”
“We’ll get you out, but not yet.”
“Yes, as soon as I can leave without being seen, and making it worse. They’ll be looking for that young man. They mustn’t find me, or they’ll take you all.”
“I’ll find a way. Just stay here and stay inside!” There was an edge to his voice. Was he angry because he had no idea how to help? Or because she was right, her presence in Eli and Zillah’s house was endangering them all?
“I can’t stay,” she repeated. “If I get caught, it will be hard, but if you are all caught, it will be far worse. I know that, and so do—”
It was Zillah who interrupted her. “Do you think we have never sheltered anyone before, or that we won’t have to do it again? We do this for ourselves, because it is right. We each have to fight against the darkness in our own way. You will do it with photographs. Jacob does it with words. Eli and I do it by seeing that you have that chance. You have to stay alive to tell the rest of the world what is happening, and what is going to happen.” She gave just the shadow of a smile. “You are no use to anyone dead in some execution chamber, shot for a crime you did not commit. Empty self-sacrifice may feel like a noble thing, but it is self-indulgent, and we can’t afford it. We need weapons that will work. Go with Jacob after dark and watch the books burning. See what Hitler and Goebbels are trying to do, then go home and show people. Not just the facts; make them feel the pain…and believe it. Don’t let this waste go unseen. Build a fire in the mind that nothing can put out.” As if suddenly exhausted, she stood up and returned to her cutting board, chopping carrots for the pie she was making.
Elena did not argue. She would do what Zillah said. She would build that fire and make it hot enough so no one could deny it, or she would be killed trying.
Jacob left and took with him the film that Elena had already taken of the assassination. He had it developed by a friend with a dark room, but only the negatives. Prints could come later. She would not carry bulky prints easily, and anyone could look at, and almost certainly confiscate, them. But if left undeveloped, the film could be exposed and the impressions wiped out.
“You have some good ones,” he told her, handing them back. They were in the sitting room, talking quietly. It was after six, and Eli would be home in minutes. “There are a couple I’d like to buy from you, to go with my article when I send it back to New York. I might even get it in the Times.” He looked at her questioningly.
“Don’t be ridiculous!” she said in amazement, and saw him blink, as if she had made to strike him. “You can have anything you want!” she added. “You saved my life. You are still saving it. Don’t you think that’s worth something?” She gave a sudden wide smile. “And I’d rather like to get my photographs into the New York Times.”
He relaxed into a smile as well, then held out his hand.
She shook it, quite solemnly.
“And I’ll come with you to the book burning tonight,” she added.
Elena and Jacob set out a little before eleven. She wore the dress Zillah had provided, and her few other clothes and personal belongings were in a bag over Jacob’s shoulder; she was carrying her camera case. There was no need to cover her hair now that it was blond and short. And she had used Zillah’s dark brown mascara to color and increase her eyebrows. Before leaving the house, both Jacob and Zillah agreed that the change made her almost unrecognizable.
They walked most of the way, stopping now and then as if merely strolling. The evening was fine and the streets were still busy. There was a kind of excitement in the air, the anticipation of some event not to be missed.
Elena looked at the people they passed and wondered what they were thinking. Was this blind excitement or fear of what the future held? Could she not tell the difference in herself? Could any of these young people? Walking arm in arm, as she was doing with Jacob, whom she had met only yesterday, and yet with whom she felt so comfortable already.
As they walked, he described his home in Chicago, and then the very small apartment he shared with another journalist in New York. He and Elena spoke in German, so as not to stand out if anyone was close enough to catch a word here or there.
“It works quite well,” he said ruefully. “We’re seldom home at the same time. And when we are, he cooks, so that’s an advantage. He enjoys it, and I express my appreciation. I’m not sure if I offer any service in return, other than emptying the garbage and doing the occasional errand. Hardly skilled.” It was self-deprecatory, but he said it with such amusement that it felt entirely natural.
She told him about her own small flat in London, taken simply in order to be independent of her parents. “I don’t know that I want to be untidy,” she said. “But I want to have the freedom to be, if I feel like it. My mother is a perfect housekeeper. Or that’s the way it looks to me.”
They talked a little about family. It was easy and seemed a natural thing to do. It kept them from thinking of why they were here, how they had met, and the danger all around them. Above all, it stopped them from remembering last night, and the young man whose name they were safer not knowing. They laughed at memories, and in sharing them suddenly realized how precious were family holidays, minor triumphs and disasters, jokes that were only funny because they had all laughed.
They passed Brownshirts in twos and threes, and they tried to look as if they barely noticed them. They spoke to no one else, except the occasional “good evening.” There were already a number of people gathered around the open space, paved in granite and covered with sand, where the books were to be burned. It was dark, and the buildings were huge shapes blocking the sky. People were almost indistinguishable.
Elena looked around as inconspicuously as she could. When the fire was lit, she would be able to see faces. It was still too early. But from what she could make out of clothes, angles of bodies, casual attitudes, most of them seemed to be young.
“Students,” she said quietly to Jacob. “Burning books? Are you sure?”
“Yes. They’re going to destroy the old world of ideas and create a new one.” He was staring straight ahead, and it was too dark for her to read his expression. He kept hold of her, his hand on her arm, as well as linked through hers.
Would this be a solemn occasion? Or a celebration, like the English remembrance of Guy Fawkes and the saving of Parliament from being blown up?
Who would bring all the books? Or would it really turn out to be only symbolic? Perhaps half a dozen books, or one edition of each book they disapproved of?
There was a growing tension in the air. Nervous laughter. The odd shout of something lost in the darkness.
Jacob looked around him uneasily. “I think this isn’t such a good idea…” he started.
She gripped his arm more tightly. “We’ve come this far…”
“I mean it. It could get nasty. Let’s go back.” He pulled her very slightly.
“No. Nothing’s happened yet. I want to see if it really does, or if it’s all just talk. I want pictures.”
“Of what? Burning papers and books?”
“No, of people, their faces, what it means to them,” she said quickly. “They’re symbolically getting rid of the past, with its good and bad; starting something again.”
He gripped her arm more tightly. “Elena, I mean it. It was a mistake to have come. We should leave before it gets nasty…”
“It’s not nasty, just stupid,” she argued, refusing to be pulled away.
He hesitated. “Well, if it turns ugly, you’ll come…”
“Yes, I will. I promise,” she agreed quickly, not looking at him but still watching the thickening crowd.
They did not have long to wait. The book-burners arrived in a cavalcade of cars and trucks laden with boxes and piles of loose books, and more thrown on top haphazardly.
In the car headlights, Elena saw several trucks with rostrums, each one hung with swastikas, with speakers to immortalize the event in words that would reach every newspaper by the morning. Who would it be? Hitler himself? Is that why there were so many people? And there were more now than even two or three minutes ago, more all the time, still coming.
Elena moved even closer to Jacob. The scene was vivid, like a nightmare in primary colors, almost obscene. Squads of students marched beside the slow-moving vehicles. There must have been hundreds of them, with more flooding in to join them. They waved banners and sang Nazi songs, full-throated, almost as if they had been hymns.
People beside Jacob and Elena surged forward, shouting as well, carrying them against their will. Jacob tightened his arm around her and she clung to him, buffeted and even bruised. He was right, this was growing nasty. She clung to her camera as well, adjusting the lens by feel, taking picture after picture, with little time to focus before it moved and was lost. She went through the whole roll of twenty-four, rewound the film into the canister, and threaded a new roll.
Many in the crowd wore caps of different colors—red, blue, green, purple—flashing brightly in the headlights for a moment, and then lost again. They were accompanied by a band of officers from the dueling corps wearing immaculate white breeches and blue tunics and looking absurd in the light of the flames. Their high boots had spurs on them! It was nothing like she had imagined, and yet there was undeniably an exhilaration about the event. Elena could not take her eyes away, except once or twice to steady her camera and make sure of the focus.
Someone tipped a pile of books onto the sand and immediately another person poured liquid over them and they caught fire in a quick, hungry blaze. Other people put more books on, and more. The pyre mounted until the glare of it lit more faces than she could count. There was no end to this. Thousands of people were gathered here, all around her, shouting, cheering, cursing the traitors to the nation who had written such filth, such blasphemy against the great German mind and soul.
It was an ecstasy of destruction. The power of it caught her up, the beauty and the brightness of the flames. She was barely aware of the rising heat. She found herself shaking, dry-mouthed, wanting to be part of it, swept up in spite of herself.
What was happening to her? This was madness! She continued to take pictures, although she wanted to wrap her arms tightly around herself, as if holding on, in case she should fragment into pieces.
The burning continued. The supply of books seemed endless. The flames never died down. They must have come from shops, libraries, schools, even private houses, perhaps handed down as treasures from the first printing. Some would be silk bound, some leather bound, many gold- or deckle-edged. They contained the beauty and ideas that had lit the minds of men and women for centuries, civilization’s communication from the past, across the present, and into the future, all burned to ashes.
Elena could not pull herself away from the destruction. A few yards distant from her, to her right, she saw people. She saw movement. She could not tell whether they were men or women, but she photographed them as they were capering almost like puppets being jerked by their strings. Their faces were pale, gibbering mouths misshapen as they gaped open, eyes in the reflected flames mere black holes in their heads, red-socketed. They were filled with an insane ecstasy as they watched the leather, parchment, and paper burn, the passion, intellect, and hope of generations destroyed in one single night.
A man let out a squeal of joy, his face bright with the lust for destruction. Another whirled around like a dervish, his pale coattails flying. She caught what could be a perfect picture of the movement, frenzied, hysterical. They seemed, in the red light, to be a distortion of humanity, not insane, but demonic.
They were young: students of thought and belief, of philosophy. How could they have come to this? Was the distance really so short, the divide between sanity and madness so fragile? Is there anything in the imagination so terrible as that which once had been beautiful and, even while you watched, had slipped beyond all reach into ugliness? She could see it through the viewfinder. But had she caught it?
She had finally had enough. She lowered her camera and turned and buried her head on Jacob’s shoulder. She wanted to run, but she had no strength and the crowds hemmed her in on every side.
Hatred and jubilation throbbed in the air, like the pulse of music.
She felt Jacob’s other arm close around her and for minutes that she could not count they stood in the bedlam of sound and heat and held each other, as if they would drown alone.
This, then, was hell, not physical pain—although that might come—but the knowledge of something that had once been human having lost itself.
And yet she must acknowledge it. This was the face of the future, and she must photograph it now, while it was naked and unmistakable. She pulled away from Jacob and raised her camera again. She frowned, held it steady, and went on taking portrait after portrait of unreason.