Heidegger's Glasses: A Novel

by Thaisa Frank

  Everyone should go to trouble to find roots in the past, said Heidegger.

  Exactly, said the Commandant.

  To Das Volk, said Heidegger, raising his glass.

  Well put, said the Commandant.

  The Commandant cleared his throat, and Heidegger took a paper from his ski suit. It was covered with dried soup and strands of potato peels.

  Did you write this letter? he said.

  Asher looked at a letter he was sure he hadn’t written. But he saw his own signature. Had he written it in his sleep? The letter was about poetry and the mystery of the triangle and the word to distance as in I distanced myself from the controversy. He never would have written such a letter. Yet his signature was there. And the wrong answer could get him shot.

  I can’t say, he said.

  For God’s sake, said Heidegger. I need to know. Because if you wrote this, the whole world has gone mad.

  The Commandant laughed. Let’s drink to that, he said. The sanity of the world depends on who answered a letter.

  You don’t understand, said Heidegger. This man was my colleague. He brought Leibniz to the modern age. The two of us think.

  I don’t do that anymore, said Asher.

  You mean you did write the letter?

  At this point three shots rang out. The Commandant walked to a gramophone and put on a Mozart piano concerto in C Major.

  I’m sorry for the commotion, he said, turning the handle of the gramophone as though it were a meat grinder.

  Well did you? said Heidegger.

  What? said Asher.

  Write the letter.

  It’s been so long.

  But you can’t have, said Heidegger. You have a remarkable mind. Believe me, he said, turning to the Commandant. You have no idea who you’re talking to. It’s not just a question of whatever little thing you might have read in school about whether trees make a noise when they fall in the forest. This man understands Leibniz.

  The Commandant raised his fists to either side of his head and pulled his hair. Then he poured Asher more brandy.

  You can talk freely here, he said to him. You’re a privileged person. Believe me—he addressed the SS officer—this man has been given everything. And he makes wonderful glasses.

  I know, said Heidegger. I always go to him. And I never got the last ones he made.

  Well, now he makes glasses for officers, said the Commandant. And they’re very pleased with them. He has every assurance of continuing.

  Every assurance of continuing could mean is just about to be shot. Asher wondered if his status as a philosopher made his death deserve a witness like Heidegger. The SS officer seemed to share his mistrust because he said there was probably one thing Asher wasn’t sure about at all and this was being able to go on living.

  No one gets that anymore—not even me, said the Commandant.

  There were more shots outside the window. The Commandant turned up Mozart.

  You see? he said. I can’t even ask for quiet.

  Then why did you bring me here? said Heidegger. We’re in a room with a fireplace, and my friend looks like a ghost. There are gunshots outside, and we can’t even hear. This whole place is tilted.

  How could anything be tilted? said the Commandant. We’re in a pleasant room. We’ve just made a toast to the past. There’s no place that’s safe to talk anymore.

  I can think of other places that are safer, said the officer.

  Where? said the Commandant. That ridiculous alpine hut where this pontificator lives? Or the street in Holland where they wiped out twenty people for hiding two fugitives?

  No one spoke. The phone rang, and the Commandant didn’t answer. When the ringing stopped, he said:

  I understand you gentlemen have matters that are best talked about in private. So we’ll leave you in peace. Help yourself to brandy.

  He left with the officer, and Asher faced Heidegger alone. The Mozart concerto intensified his sense that he was in Freiburg: his wife had played this piece many times. But he kept himself from lapsing into a feeling of well-being and looked carefully at the man sitting opposite him. Was this really Heidegger, or someone pretending to be? And would a philosophical discussion be a prelude to death?

  But this person was so bulbous in his ski suit—indeed it seemed as though the chair was about to extrude him—Asher decided he was really Martin Heidegger.

  Martin, he said, leaning over and touching his shoulder, you came all this way.

  I had to, said Heidegger. You didn’t answer my letter.

  I never got it.

  But why did you leave in the first place?

  To make glasses.

  Did you ever make mine?

  Yes, but I don’t know if you got them, said Asher. Don’t you remember I told you to find another optometrist?

  I thought you were joking.

  I wasn’t.

  The Commandant stuck his head in the door and wanted to know if they’d finished their conversation. Heidegger said not at all. The Commandant disappeared, and Heidegger fell silent. Then he said:

  What were we laughing about when you first came in?

  I can’t remember, said Asher.

  Something about but it was worth it, said Heidegger, looking around as though he could find the joke. But it had vanished beyond the walls. So he reached for something else.

  Did you know I’m not teaching anymore? he said.

  You told me, said Asher.

  I miss it, said Heidegger.

  But you said you were writing.

  Not every minute of the day. And it’s hard to escape mortality without teaching.

  I thought not trying to escape was the highest calling, said Asher.

  It is, said Heidegger. But no one can do that all the time. The hut is darker than it used to be. I can even smell the darkness.

  You should write about that, said Asher.

  I already have, said Heidegger. What else is there to say?

  But Asher didn’t want to explain. He’d lost the marrow of friendship during Heidegger’s visits to his shop. And whatever was left had been destroyed by what he’d seen at Auschwitz. So instead of elaborating, he leaned forward and said:

  Martin, I hope you understand that your interest in man’s awareness of mortality has a different kind of meaning in a place where just wearing the wrong pair of shoes can get you shot.

  I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  I’m amazed you don’t, said Asher. I’m amazed you don’t know that people here are forced to remember their mortality in the most horrible conditions. And no one ever asked them if they wanted to think about it in the first place.

  How am I supposed to know about things like that? said Heidegger.

  The rising timbre of his voice made the Commandant open the door.

  Have you gentlemen come to a conclusion yet?

  Heidegger said they hadn’t, and the Commandant left. Heidegger stood by the fireplace.

  What’s the real reason you didn’t answer my letter? he said.

  I told you. I didn’t get it.

  Don’t they mail letters here?

  No.

  I’ve never heard of anything so stupid. Letters should be mailed. That’s what they’re for.

  The Commandant opened the door.

  You’re shouting, he said. We don’t allow that.

  I don’t care what you allow, said Heidegger. You can’t even deliver a letter.

  The phone rang again. The Commandant pulled his hair. When the ringing stopped, he turned to the SS man and said:

  He’s making a nuisance of himself. The next thing he’ll be yodeling. And the Jew’s heard too much. So take him where you came from, or we’ll deal with him some other way. But whatever you decide about the Jew, this alpine asshole has to go. And understand you’re on your own. All I can give you is a Kübelwagen to the station.

  The SS officer nodded, and they shook hands. The Commandant looked sadly at Heidegger.

  I’
d like to have him shot, he said. But after the war they might make him a national treasure.

  He has immunity, said the officer dryly.

  Indeed, said the Commandant. And I happen to have some good news for you, he said turning to Heidegger. You and your friend can talk in peace.

  Where? said Heidegger.

  On the way to the train. Without this damned noise.

  I can’t leave without my son, said Asher.

  My God, said the Commandant, pretty soon you’ll be asking for caviar. What’s his cellblock?

  Asher told him. It was different from his.

  You inmates, said the Commandant. Every night’s a talkfest, and we keep working.

  He opened the door, collared a guard, and shouted:

  I’ll send you to the front if you don’t get me this prisoner in five minutes.

  Then he swallowed brandy from the bottle, not passing it to anyone else.

  Nothing has gone the way we planned, he said. I told them not to make any noise for once, but they never listen. Those fucking disorganized transports.

  There was a huge map of Germany on the right side of the fireplace. The Commandant walked to it, unmasked a vault, and began to pull out food. Asher saw enormous hams, bottles of champagne, cases of wine, gargantuan rounds of cheese, heavy blocks of chocolate. The Commandant pulled randomly, threw everything into a duffel bag, and shoved it at the SS man.

  Take it. Take it all, he said. And keep the fuck quiet about this.

  Then he opened the door and yelled: Where’s that goddamn kid in the cellblock?

  The cellblocks were far away from the officers’ quarters, but within minutes the guard brought in a boy. He was thin, with shrewd blue eyes like his father. The Commandant threw him a coat.

  You’re about to travel, he said. Put this on.

  Daniel’s face went white.

  Put it on, said the Commandant. You’re going with your father.

  Asher looked at his son. For over four months he’d been a shadow, reaching for food by the barracks in the dark. Now he was in a warm room, not unlike the room he’d grown up in, with music his mother once played. Who knew what would happen? Who knew where they were going? Still, Asher mouthed the words: you’re safe.

  A door opened. A Kübelwagen appeared. They entered a snow-covered field without searchlights, guards, or fences. Asher had a vague sense that he was part of something that was never supposed to happen. But all he could see was his son.

  Heidegger grew small as the train gathered speed, and Lodenstein watched him disappear. He was alone in the station, illuminated by one light from the platform shelter. Heidegger paced back and forth, jabbed the snow with his walking stick, and lectured to the dark, still without glasses. Eventually he became a speck, and then the station disappeared. Lodenstein turned back to the car, which was mysteriously empty. Perhaps the Commandant had ordered it that way, so no one could hear Heidegger’s rants or see two skeletons from Auschwitz. With Heidegger gone, only Asher and Daniel were left, asleep in near-darkness. For a moment Asher woke up, and Lodenstein handed him sausage. He shook his head and went back to sleep.

  And now a porter appeared and asked Lodenstein if he was thirsty. He ordered lemonade, and the porter seemed startled—no one ever drank lemonade in winter. But he brought it to him quickly—the SS uniform impressed him—and Lodenstein gulped it down, wishing it would go to his blood like an instant transfusion. He felt empty, like a bag of flour that’s been pummeled and pounded, and neither he nor the train seemed quite real. He’d had to listen to Heidegger’s rants since leaving Auschwitz and was more than glad to see him exit at the last stop—barreling off the train, gesturing with schnapps, still pontificating. Lodenstein couldn’t believe Asher had slept through the whole thing. But now everything was quiet, and the train rumbled through the dark with a soft, comforting rhythm.

  The lemonade reminded Lodenstein of summer, and he wished he could slip back into a summer childhood, where the only evidence of war was trenches he built with his friends. At dinner, his mother had fits about his muddy shoes, and his father tried to convince him that deciphering codes was far more exciting than battle. But he couldn’t slip away into anything because the past three weeks felt ground into his body like glass.

  He was seared by his memory of the cell, where he’d floated to the ceiling, and Goebbels’s eyes and the Commandant’s hair -pulling and gunshots and blood on the snow—all of which he’d endured to save Elie Schacten’s life.

  For a moment, his actions seemed opaque, as if he were watching someone he didn’t understand. He looked carefully at Asher and Daniel, who were close together, as if carved from a single stone. They seemed like an ordinary father and son on the verge of starvation. But they weren’t just a father and a son. They were two more fugitives on the way to the Compound.

  Lodenstein kicked the duffel bag the Commandant had given him, then realized it had enough food for almost two weeks. La Toya could make soup from the sausage. The chocolate would delight Dimitri. Everyone would enjoy real coffee. He understood Elie’s excitement about bringing extra loaves of bread, an abundance of ham. He’d always worked to keep the Compound safe—written ridiculous letters to Goebbels, been civil to Mueller, who probably wanted him shot. He’d even let Stumpf make Scribes imagine Goebbels because it would soften his rants. But bringing food to the Compound and helping cope with hunger—this was new. He’d started to think like Elie.

  Yet in truth, he could hardly remember her. She was a haze of blond curls and tea-rose perfume. He imagined reaching for her in the dark, telling her about being thrown in jail, and talking to Goebbels. And then about the shots at Auschwitz and Heidegger’s rants on the train. He was holding her while he talked. And she was listening. But whom would he be telling this to? The Elie who flirted with officers? The one who’d once known Heidegger? Or the Elie he made love to under the grey quilt? He’d always tried not to think about what Elie did to get what they needed on forays. He tried to make whatever she did outside the Compound into motes that barely touched her. Elie did too: he could feel her shaking them off with her coat when she came back.

  Lodenstein kicked the duffel bag again. Daniel and Asher made whimpering noises in their sleep. It was the whimpering of people who’d been beaten, abused, and didn’t know if they’d wake up the next day. Yet the sound annoyed him, as did the odor of sausage from the duffel bag and the warm air in the train.

  He walked between the cars and looked out to the snow and pines. Now and then he saw a house leak light from blackout curtains just like cracks in Hanussen’s globe. He supposed the train had crossed from Poland into Germany but wasn’t sure. He could be anywhere.

  Before he’d left, Heidegger had shoved Mikhail’s letter at him, and he was still holding it—a catalyst in this absurd chain. It had traveled from the Compound to the Black Forest, then to offices in the Reich and to Auschwitz. It had been stolen, crumpled, shoved into a soup tureen. It was creased and blotched with dried soup. It looked as if it couldn’t survive another journey.

  Lodenstein raised the letter to the light and tried to read it, but the words made no sense at all. Indeed each letter of the alphabet looked like a tiny person in Hanussen’s theater. Some were crowded in the middle, others were alone at the end of the aisle. But a few tumbled into a string of words:

  The triangle is the most paradoxical of human situations. It is the secret of all covenants and a cause of betrayal. Indeed, it’s a great challenge to the human heart because it has the power to create incredible good and cause incredible grief, as well as induce states of ecstasy and lunacy. Making a triangle with integrity is in the service of God.

  He found the letter bizarrely true, as well as ironic, because the letter was the essence of betrayal. By Elie. And by the Solomons, whom he’d trusted. It was the reason he’d traveled to Berlin, seen Goebbels, gotten thrown in jail. It was the reason he’d taken Heidegger to Auschwitz and heard gunshots accompanied by Mozart. It was the reason
he’d trashed his room and for all the fights he’d had with Elie. It was the reason for everything. This letter would never get an answer. It should never have been written in the first place.

  He opened his hand and let the letter loose. For a moment it was pinned to the car by the wind. Then it fluttered in the dark until the train gained distance and it disappeared.

  FUGITIVES

  Dear Grandma and Grandpa,

  I have been here for just a week and already I am filling out my clothes. There are woods to play in, lots of snow, and a special place where they keep rabbits with long hair. I even get to feed them. There is plenty of water and a lot of interesting people. It was a long journey to this wonderful place. It’s the best place in the world.