by Steven Uhly
Before she fell asleep she thought what a pity it was that Shimon had not come.
136
It was not the early light the sun cast across the sky from the east, even before it rose, that woke Lisa the following morning. Someone opened the door and entered her room with heavy footsteps. She opened her eyes and saw a large shadow draw near. She just managed to shift to the side before the shadow dropped onto her bed and lay still.
Shimon stank of alcohol and tobacco. He promptly began to sleep off his inebriation. His breathing was deep and regular.
Lisa gradually recovered from her fright and realized that he must have stumbled through the wrong door. She got up and took off his shoes. Then she dragged him by the arm as close to the edge of the bed as she could, to leave enough room for herself. She tentatively lay down beside him. His face was turned toward her, in the growing light she could see it in sharp contrast.
And so they lay, side by side.
How handsome you’ve become, Lisa whispered. She gave him a kiss on his sweaty brow, she took his hand and thought of the past, of snow, of corrugated iron huts and the games they had played without talking to each other. Diverse images that had been forgotten and now sailed through the space inside her, weightless and everlasting. She closed her eyes and went to sleep.
137
When Lisa awoke the following morning Shimon was gone. He had left behind a note, she could see that he was not used to writing in Latin script. In wonky, scrawly letters it read: Medusa, HaMasger Street, this evening, please come!
Anna had given her the note, a deep furrow above the bridge of her nose. They had breakfast and engaged in small talk. All of a sudden Anna looked at her intensely.
“Lisa, I’d rather you didn’t go to Medusa.”
“What is Medusa?”
“It’s a club. I presume there’s a concert taking place tonight.”
“Why do you want to dissuade me from going?”
“It’s . . . not a safe place.”
“You don’t want me to see Shimon, do you?”
“It’s not what you think. You can tell him what you like, although I think would be better for everybody if he learned the truth from me.”
“I won’t tell him a thing. But I do want to see him.”
Anna gave her a look she could not read. Then she nodded and changed the subject.
138
Medusa was a gloomy bar set between two low-rise box-like buildings on the six-lane HaMasger Street to the north of the inner city. A plain, iron door was the entrance into a basement, the name Medusa was written in charcoal on the wall above.
Shimon Sarfati and four other young men were singing on a small stage, “When I was younger, so much younger than today.” The band’s name was written in English on the bass drum: The Desperates. They wore white shirts and gray waistcoats. They all had the same haircut as The Beatles.
The small, square space was packed, people of Lisa’s age or a few years older, the noise was deafening, the smoke from countless cigarettes hung in the air like fog.
Lisa fought her way through to a long bar to the side of the stage, she began to sweat, people were shouting at each other to make themselves heard. She ordered a glass of water and watched Shimon. He was standing at the very front of the stage, sometimes he closed his eyes, sometimes they were open, focusing purely on the music. As he sang his movements were completely natural, as if oblivious to the hundreds of people watching him.
After a while Lisa noticed that a lot of women were clustered near the stage watching Shimon. She realized that he was perhaps not quite as immersed in himself as she had thought. He exchanged glances with the audience, gave a smile here and there, waved at somebody, pointed to someone else. The women seemed to know this.
Not a safe place, she remembered Anna saying. She felt stupid and naïve, but she did not move from her spot. I’ve only come here to see him again, no other reason. She knew that this was not the truth, but it dissuaded her from leaving Medusa straightaway.
There was a thunderous applause, which Shimon savored with a smile. He lit a cigarette as he announced the next song, and it was the first time that Lisa had heard him speak. Before the music started he reached for a broad round glass on a speaker behind him and took a big gulp. Then he sang a rock number in Hebrew. The rhythm was fast, the guitarist threw in some quick solos and Shimon moved as if he were standing not in front of a few hundred people, but thousands. Lisa realized that she knew all of his gestures, she had seen them time and again on television, they seemed to belong to the fixed repertoire of a pop singer. And yet there was something about Shimon that made everything he did appear unique, as if he were the original and not a copy. Lisa was so taken by this notion that she forgot everything else.
When the concert was over The Desperates’ fans stormed the stage, almost all of them heading for Shimon. The other musicians seemed used to this, they ignored it, packed away their instruments and left the stage.
Lisa made to leave the club, she had no desire to rush at him like one of his worshippers, and she did not want to spend any longer in this foul air. Maybe he’ll come home at some point, she thought.
When she was close to the exit a voice boomed from the speakers. “Lisa, wait!” it said in German. There was a brief silence, not a real silence, more like a dip in the noise level, but this dip was so deep that the place changed in an instant. Lisa turned and looked into Shimon’s eyes, he was watching at her from the stage. Many other pairs of eyes were fixed on her too, and for a brief moment Lisa felt as if she were looking at a photograph. Then the image moved again, the noise level rose once more, wiping the moment away. Lisa watched Shimon make his way through the crowd. When he reached her he said, “Come on, let’s go.” He simply put his arm around her shoulders, nodded to the bouncers and took her out into the street. It was dark and considerably cooler than in the club. Lisa shivered until she became accustomed to the temperature.
They walked along HaMasger Street, cars, lorries, motorbikes drove past, all seemingly in a hurry, and this hurry generated a noise that sounded like anger to Lisa’s ears. She noticed how tall Shimon was, a head taller than her. She felt secure and tried to resist this feeling.
They came to a large building site protected by a picket fence. Behind it soared skeletons of columns, walls and floors, poured-concrete steps led upward. Shimon looked for a particular spot, finding it he wrenched a broad slat from the fence.
“Come on!”
Lisa hesitated. Without any lighting the building site beyond was indistinct, scattered all over the place were objects she could only grasp the outlines of.
“I come here often,” Shimon said. “I’ll guide you.”
Overcoming her reluctance, Lisa slipped through the hole in the fence. Shimon followed her and replaced the slat. He took Lisa’s hand and led her to the stone steps.
They climbed to the seventh floor and stood on the roof. Shimon drew Lisa almost to the edge. Letting go, he pointed at the city far below, an unevenly illuminated expanse of land that seemed to extend in all directions. Only in the west did the lights end abruptly, that was where the sea began. Distant sounds floated up to them, engines, car horns, sometimes a human voice. A night bird flitted past noiselessly. The sky above was full of stars. The city appeared like an enormous spaceship, making its way through the universe alone. Shimon was spellbound by the view of nighttime Tel Aviv. After a while he turned to Lisa.
“Welcome to my home! I hope you like it.”
Lisa did not know what to say. Shimon smiled.
“When I woke up this morning I was holding your hand.”
Lisa nodded. “I know.”
“But you were asleep, weren’t you?”
“Yes, I was asleep.”
He turned away and then back to her. “Why did you come to Israel? Why did you look for my mother?”
Lisa stared at him. She wanted to say, Because an S.S. commander had a subordinate who was lured to his deat
h by a Pole, and the commander was your father and the subordinate was called Karl Treitz and the Pole was called Piotr and death was my mother. Instead she swallowed, then said, “I wanted to see you all again.”
He nodded as if the answer was adequate. Coming closer, he said, “When I woke up this morning the first thing I saw was your face. I thought I’d died and beside me lay a sleeping angel.” He was not smiling, he was staring straight into her eyes, she could not look away, his eyes were soft and warm and completely open, like the eyes of a child. He came even closer, he put his arm around her, she did not resist.
139
Heinrich had not been expecting a letter like this. He waited two days before showing it to Lena. They were sitting in their cramped kitchen having dinner, little Michael asleep on her arm. She read the letter through twice. Then she let her hand drop and looked at her husband.
“So are you going to accept?” she said.
“Not a chance!” Heinrich said. “You do understand that, don’t you?”
Lena gave him a thoughtful look.
“Of course I do. But times have changed. There aren’t people like your father there anymore. And the pay is almost double—from day one.” Her eyes were now imploring him.
“Think of your family!” she went on. “We want Michael to have a little brother or sister. The past is history, leave it be! Now it’s all about the future.”
Heinrich reported for work one week later. When he showed the letter at reception a young man, four or five years older than himself at most, took him down long corridors to the head of personnel.
Herr Strobl sat in a small office behind a narrow metal desk with a gray protective coating, surrounded by shelves brimming with folders. He was smoking a cigarette, the round spinning ashtray in front of him was full of butts. He had a thick handlebar mustache, his dark, straight hair was neatly combed. Side parting. Herr Strobl gave a brief smile and pointed to a chair, Heinrich sat down.
“You can start straightaway, if you like.”
Heinrich gave him a baffled look.
“Don’t you want to . . . assess me or test me or something like that?”
“Already done, long ago. That’s why we wrote to you.”
“But you know nothing of my abilities as . . . well, as an intelligence officer.”
Herr Strobl smiled indulgently, he took such a big drag on his cigarette that it glowed brightly.
“Now don’t go getting the wrong idea! You’re not the only relative we employ. At the moment we’re doing this to keep as many posts as possible in our budget. If the people at the chancellor’s office get the impression that the B.N.D. has more than enough staff, they’ll get rid of jobs, and the president doesn’t like that.”
Heinrich stared at Herr Strobl. Tentatively he said, “This is a joke.”
Herr Strobl puffed on his cigarette and shook his head.
“It’s no joke. You wouldn’t believe the kinds of people we have here. Hairdressers, sales assistants, taxi drivers—all relatives of those who are or were employees. Most of them from Bavaria.”
“But why don’t you look for qualified staff?”
“Too time-consuming. We’d have to run checks on them all, and on all their relatives too. We’ve already done that on people such as you.” He shrugged. “It wasn’t my idea.”
“So what do I have to do?”
“You’ll stay with me in the personnel department, we’ve got a position that needs to be filled by the end of the year. It’s all red tape, You won’t even realize you’re working for the B.N.D. And the salary—well, that’s why you came, isn’t it?” He grinned and took another puff of his cigarette, the ash now so long that it fell on Heinrich’s personal file, Herr Strobl brushed it away with a flick of his hand. Then something else occurred to him.
“Just one question, Herr Scholz. Here it says your sister, Gudrun Kruse, had, well, a complicated childhood. He looked up and raised his eyebrows.”
Heinrich hesitated before saying, “She suffered terribly as a result of our father’s past.”
Herr Strobl raised his eyebrows. “Jog my memory, would you? The records relating to V-9245 are missing. I assume his file was removed before I took over this job last year.”
“Are you a relative too?”
Herr Strobl gave a broad grin. “A nephew. I’m a graduate, which means I’m the boss here.”
Heinrich nodded. “Our father was a . . . fellow traveler in the Third Reich.”
“Fellow traveler?” Herr Strobl snorted and pulled a scornful face. “Then I’d expect the entire country to be plagued by psychological problems.”
Heinrich shrugged.
“Right. Let’s draw a line under this, shall we? She seems to have got back on the right foot ever since she’s been with that Jew.”
“Jew?”
“You mean you didn’t know? They keep it a secret, but of course we know things like that.”
When Heinrich came home that evening he felt weird.
140
He stood at the window, there was a chink in the curtains. He was holding a pair of binoculars. In the tower block opposite, seventh floor, third window from the right, the light went on at 7:00 p.m. precisely. A bathroom. Josef Ranzner peered excitedly through the binoculars. A girl, maybe fifteen, appeared at the window and got undressed. When she was naked Ranzner began to masturbate, trying to keep the binoculars steady with the other hand. All the while he addressed the young girl in a whisper, now she was tying up her long hair and getting into the bath. At the precise moment that she drew the shower curtain and vanished from Ranzner’s view he ejaculated into his underpants, immediately feeling that old sensation of regret that had been a constant companion ever since he had been able to think, and whose significance even now seemed to be an unbroken seal. Ranzner was momentarily seized by the fear of dying alone. He thought back to the only woman he had ever loved, he did it every day. But her features had changed, it was as if his memory could not decide between two possibilities and so it showed them both in one face.
Suddenly the doorbell rang. Ranzner jumped. For a second he was worried that Mossad or the B.N.D., or some overzealous German court had been watching him and now they had come to arrest him, expose him in front of the entire world, just as . . . He paused. Father? An image flickered in his mind: the Reichsführer S.S. Now Ranzner was confused, something was wrong, but he could not work out what.
The image flew away. Ranzner forgot the incident. He carefully placed the binoculars on the sitting room table and tiptoed into the hall. He was glad that the lights in his apartment were switched off for his observation session because they were visible through the spyhole from outside, he had checked this himself.
It was pitch-black in the hall. Silently, Ranzner felt his way forward. The spyhole was his guiding star, it shone brightly in the darkness, right in front of him. Ranzner approached it slowly.
When he squinted through it he saw in the brightly lit corridor a young man in three-quarters profile. The man looked immediately familiar, but at first he did not know why. He withdrew his head from the spyhole, only to put it straight back for another view. He could scarcely believe what he was seeing, but there was no doubt about it. Karl Treitz had found him! Karl Treitz had embarked on a search for him and was now standing on the other side of the door. How on earth could that be possible?
The young man in the corridor rang a second time. To Ranzner’s surprise, he opened his mouth and called out, “Father! It’s me. Heinrich, your son! Please open up. I want to talk to you! Father?”
Josef Ranzner did not know what to think. There was something not quite right about this man, it was better to exercise caution. Ranzner decided to observe him first to gather more data. He stayed at the door, spying through the hole, until Heinrich Scholz gave up and left.
Relieved, Ranzner went into the bathroom.
141
“Grandma?”
“Lisa! What a wonderful surprise! How are you?”
“Aren’t you angry that I haven’t been in touch for so long?”
“No, my child, of course not! You’ve got all your own things to be getting on with. Tell me, how’s life in Israel? How long have you been there now? Almost half a year, isn’t it? Are you going to stay over there?”
“Oh, Grandma, it’s not how you think it is.”
“How is it then? Is something wrong?”
“Grandma, I’m pregnant—by Shimon.”
“Lisa! My, my, that is some news. So what are you going to do?”
“I want to come home!”
“Of course! Come home! Do you have any money?”
“No.”
“I’ll send you some via the embassy, I’ve already inquired and you can do that.”
“You already inquired?”
“Just in case your money ran out. But my God, Lisa, how did that happen?”
“I love him, Grandma. And he loves me too. But he just can’t . . . There’s something that’s stronger than his love for me. I . . . I’m so unhappy!”
“Lisa, darling, you’ve got to use your clever head. I’ll telephone the embassy first thing in the morning and you go and collect the money. Then you can book your ticket home. Where are you staying?”
“Oh, with Shimon’s bassist still, he’s got a large apartment. I think his parents have money. Shimon and I were living here together. He moved out last week. He says he can’t commit! But I know that he loves me, Grandma! How can both of those things be true? I never knew that was possible!”
“Lisa, you poor thing! Go and get yourself a handkerchief. You do have things like that there, don’t you?”
“Loo paper.”