Stardust

by Kanon, Joseph

  “Such vegetables. This time of year.”

  “California,” Ben said. “They grow all year round. Have you been able to get out? See anything?”

  “The ocean. Fay took me for a drive. The rest, it’s all houses, no— buildings. Not like Berlin.”

  “Liesl’s father says it’s still the first layer here. Before the Schinkels.”

  He smiled but she seemed not to understand this, at a loss. She looked over at Liesl.

  “She’s your wife?”

  “No,” he said, looking across with her, so that Liesl smiled back.

  “Maybe one day. See how she looks at you.”

  “No,” Ben said, flustered. “She’s my brother’s wife. Was.”

  “I don’t understand. The same brother? He wasn’t killed? Years ago.”

  “No, just this month. Why did you think—”

  “Why? It was so dangerous. Back and forth. The courier. I never thought it was right—for your father to use a boy like that. Well, not a boy. Still, young. To risk his life. When you said he was dead, I thought, yes, it must be. Of course they killed him.”

  “Who?” Ben said, suddenly feeling light-headed.

  “The Nazis,” she said simply. “It was always a risk.”

  “For an American?”

  “A Communist,” she said, her voice steady, matter-of-fact.

  “What?”

  “You didn’t know this?”

  Involuntarily, Ben glanced toward Minot’s table, apprehensive, the word itself now like a pointing finger. But no one in the room was paying attention, hearing anything more than a murmuring of German. Only Ben felt the words shouting in his ears. He shook his head slowly, barely moving.

  “And he never told you? Well, that’s right. We had to be secret to survive. The first enemy. Even before they started killing Jews. No one was safe from them. I said to Otto, how can you use your own? But of course it was important to him. And he was like you—an American passport would protect him, they wouldn’t suspect. His mother’s in England. Of course he travels. So, a courier.”

  “For the Communists,” Ben said numbly, as if repeating the words would give a sense to them, steady the room.

  “Yes, for your father. Anything for your father. For him it was like a religion, so maybe for the boy, too. I don’t know.”

  “Like a religion,” Ben said, still catching echoes.

  “Yes. And he died for it.”

  “For being a Communist? That’s why he stayed in Germany?” Not another woman, a career he couldn’t leave behind, a misguided sense of safety.

  “They didn’t suspect him. He could do things the others couldn’t. Goebbels liked him. All of them—they liked to watch those comedies. They thought he was like that. So he was useful to the Party. So close and they didn’t suspect.”

  “They didn’t protect him, either. He was still a Jew.”

  “That’s what you think? All these years. That he was foolish? That he trusted them?” She shook her head. “They didn’t kill him as a Jew. They killed him as a Communist.” She paused. “He was betrayed,” she said, her voice suddenly low, looking away, across the table.

  Ben said nothing. He heard forks, people laughing, sound track noises from another movie. In this one, everything was still. He looked at Genia’s hands, the bony fingers resting now on the table, pale, webbed with veins, the hands of an old woman.

  “How do you know that?” he said finally.

  For a minute she kept looking across the table, then turned to him. “Because it was me. I betrayed him,” she said, her voice still detached, a confession without emotion or self-pity, something willed. He felt it like a hand on his arm, a restraint, making him look directly at her. “Why? Why else? To save myself.” Staring back, the rest unsaid. Then she looked away, breaking the connection. “But I didn’t. Not in the end.” She picked up the small bag at her side. “Excuse me. I must have a cigarette. Apologies.”

  She stood up, catching Liesl’s attention, who looked at Ben, first with casual curiosity, then, taking him in, with real alarm. Paulette was already putting her hand on his.

  “I’m not ignoring you, really. Mike was just telling me about Selz-nick. You know, he’s still in therapy. He believes in it. Since Spellbound. I said he could save a bundle and just give up the pills— Are you all right? You look as if you’d seen a ghost.”

  He tried to smile, shaking this off.

  “Seriously. You’re all white.”

  Finally the smile. “Just old war stories. I’m fine.”

  From the corner of his eye he could see the emerald bracelet covering his hand. At the next table Fay and Ann Sheridan were charming Minot, who wanted to get rid of termites. Bunny, apparently still worried about the seating, kept looking over at Liesl, watching her. Jack Warner was telling jokes. The waiters had begun to clear the tournedos, replacing it with floating island, puffy clouds of meringue. And Otto had risked Danny’s life. The one Ben knew nothing about.

  “I’d better check on her, make sure she’s okay,” he said to Paulette, getting up.

  Liesl, still concerned, shot him a what? look, but he made a nothing movement with his head. As he crossed the room, still half in a daze, he noticed Bunny chatting with Marie Minot, keeping things going.

  She was sitting behind the coffee table, tapping her cigarette on the rim of the ashtray.

  “I thought I would never say that,” she said, not even looking up, as if she’d expected him. “Not to anybody. And now his son. For years I thought, what if someone finds out? What if someone knows? And it doesn’t matter. None of it matters.”

  “Everything matters.”

  She looked at him, then made a half smile. “To the living.” She drew on the cigarette. “So, what do you want me to say to you? An apology? It’s late for that.”

  “Tell me about Danny. What did he actually do? My father made him carry things?”

  “In his mind only,” she said, tapping the side of her head. “Messages he had to remember. No papers. If they had found papers, they would have arrested him. Killed him. So it was safer up here. Of course, if they tortured him, he would have told them—everybody did—but without papers there was no reason to suspect him. And an American passport. They couldn’t arrest Americans so easily. So he was perfect for us.”

  “My father’s idea?”

  She nodded. “There was a problem. Before, we had a network with merchant seamen, for outside communications. You couldn’t use the radio. By hand. By mouth. And then there was a roundup—one of the cells in Hamburg—and we knew they had been given away. An informer. We traced it to one of the sailors, so we couldn’t use the network anymore. That’s when your father had the idea. The one person he could really trust.” She stopped. “Except me, he said. But he couldn’t send me. So he was wrong about that, too.”

  “But what did he actually carry? What kind of messages.”

  She shrugged. “To help get people out. At that point, all we were trying to do was survive. Save ourselves. There weren’t so many left. He would travel through Paris. There were people there who could make arrangements, to get people across. This was before the war. If we could get people to France—”

  And later to Spain, Ben thought, helped across by someone with experience. By then you didn’t have to be a Communist to be in danger.

  “So we used him for that. Not a spy, not like in the films. Just messages, to help get people out.”

  “But he would have been hung just the same. If they’d caught him.”

  “Yes, naturally. That’s why I thought it was too dangerous. But he wanted to do it. You know, at that age—no fear. It’s exciting to them, everything a secret. They don’t know yet what it’s like to live that way, to live in secret.” She rubbed out the cigarette. “But he survived, you said, so I’m glad for that. They never got him. Well, he stopped when Otto— He did it for Otto. He never came back to Germany after that. So maybe that saved him.”

  “Tell me w
hat happened. With my father.”

  “It’s not so much to know,” she said, shrugging. “A familiar story. They caught me. My fault—I was careless. So, Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. We used to talk about it, if the Gestapo— I knew what it would mean. Not just for me. My family. They didn’t have to torture me. I already knew what they wanted, the names. Who was head of the cell? Well, Otto, Goebbels’s friend.” She looked up. “So I gave them your father.”

  “And they let you go? I thought—”

  “Yes, usually they killed you, too. After you told them. We all knew that. They had no more use for you.”

  He looked at her, waiting.

  “I agreed to give them names I didn’t know yet. To be an informer. They thought I would do it—so weak, they hadn’t even had to beat me. A coward. With blood on her hands. What they wanted.”

  “And did you?”

  “Only to get out. To have a chance to escape. I knew they would watch. But we did it, my family. We went into hiding. The Party helped us, the ones who were left. They thought whoever had betrayed Otto had betrayed me, too, so they helped us. Safe houses. We lived like that, place to place. No one ever knew I’d given them Otto. Of course by that time it didn’t matter if you were a Communist—it was enough to be a Jew. So we hid. Do you want to hear the rest?”

  “How he died.”

  “I don’t know that. Shot, I suppose. I hope it was that. No, what happened after. Not everything, don’t worry, not all the horrors. Just enough to know why it’s like this now. Why isn’t she weeping? On her knees begging forgiveness—”

  “You don’t owe me any—”

  “Doesn’t she feel anything, facing me, Otto’s son? What kind of person is this? That it doesn’t matter to her. Can’t even say she’s sorry.”

  “Isn’t that what you’re doing now?” he said gently.

  She shook her head. “It’s too late for that. So, one story only. Something you can’t put in a film. Never mind the hiding, the rest of it. How you feel in the line, select one here for work, select him for the gas. Impossible to understand that, even when it’s happening to you. So impossible for you.” She took a breath. “We were back in Berlin then— the first big roundup. 1942, February. Cold. All of us in a basement, like rats, but still. Leon, my sister, her husband, all down there, but safe. Then not safe.” She looked up. “We were betrayed. Maybe a justice. Anyway, Jews in the cellar, so they came for us. You don’t fight, but they pull you out anyway. Poke the guns in your stomach. Yelling. I can hear them now, it never goes away, the yelling. And it frightens Rosa, my sister’s baby. An infant. ‘Shut it up,’ he screams at her. The soldier. As if she could do something—all that noise, so terrifying. Terrifying to us. And she tries to quiet it, against her shoulder, you know, rocking, while they’re pushing us out and it’s not enough for him. ‘Shut up!’ he yells and then he grabs it, right out of her arms. A second, my heart stops. Now, too, I can see it. He takes Rosa by the feet and before my sister can move he smacks her against the wall, swinging her like a doll, once, that’s all, because then it’s quiet. He drops her like a rag, a piece of— I don’t know. A thump, and then blood on the wall, a blotch, little streaks. There’s nothing in his face. It doesn’t matter to him. This takes—how long? How long can the heart stop? A second, less. And it’s my whole life in that time. Then I hear my sister scream and I’m somewhere else, another life.”

  She stopped, almost out of breath, shutting her eyes, then reached for another cigarette, something tangible, right now, and lit it.

  “She brought it with us. She picked it up and brought it. They didn’t care. On the train. Until Leon managed to get it away from her, get rid of it. By that time she didn’t know. She was—not herself. So of course they selected her right away for the gas, a madwoman. Right on the platform.” She looked up at him. “Tell me anything matters. Otto’s son.” She reached out and grazed his hand with her fingertips. “If it did matter, I would be sorry. Do you know that?”

  She turned her head, distracted by the sound of doors opening.

  “Here they come. They’re going to watch a film.” She stood, drawing him up with her. “Make some excuse for me, yes? Headache, whatever you like, it doesn’t matter.” She smiled to herself, a weak grimace. “That, either.”

  She slipped out behind the stream of people heading for the bathrooms before the movie started. It seemed a disorganized moment, an aimless milling, like the scattering pieces in his head.

  “What’s wrong? What was all that?” Liesl said.

  He stared for a second, adjusting to the switch back to English, his mind elsewhere.

  “Nothing. She’s— I’ll tell you later,” he said, looking at her closely now. Had she known? How could she not? Unless Danny had kept this secret, too. “Can we cut out before the movie? What’s the form?”

  “We can’t. It would be considered an insult,” she said. “Listen, I have to talk to you. I think I know—”

  “Later,” he said, touching her arm. “Here’s Bunny.”

  “Everything fine?” Bunny said, looking at Liesl. “Did you enjoy Dick?”

  Her dinner partner had been Dick Marshall, out of his pilot uniform, a smile replacing the oxygen mask. More window dressing for the party.

  “Yes, he was very funny.”

  “I’ll bet,” Bunny said, but relieved, as if he’d expected a different report. He turned to Ben. “And you. I thought it’d be pulling teeth, but there you were, nattering away.”

  Ben felt fuzzy, a diver decompressing too fast. Why were they talking about any of this? Floating on froth, like the meringues.

  “Mr. L can’t get two words out of her. Well, we’d better start the picture before the natives get restless. Glad you enjoyed yourself,” he said to Liesl. “You’ve got a treat in store—Jack sent over something special.”

  “Ben,” she said, when Bunny left, “at dinner—”

  “She knew Otto,” he said. “She knew Danny.”

  “Daniel?”

  “In Berlin. When he was with my father. She thought the Nazis had killed him. He was getting people out. The way he helped you, later. It started then. Why didn’t you tell me he was a Communist?”

  “What are you talking about?” she said, nervous, unprepared for this.

  “She told me. She was there. You must have known.”

  “Known what,” she said, a quick dismissal. She looked toward the room, measuring their distance from the others, then back at him. “He never said. Everyone was a bit then. They were against the Nazis. Organized. There wouldn’t have been a resistance if they hadn’t—”

  “You never asked?”

  “I didn’t care about that. Politics. When someone throws you a lifesaver, you take it.”

  “And marry him.”

  Her eyes flashed. “It wasn’t important.” She looked down, biting her lip. “I thought he was—sympathetic, that’s all. So maybe he worked with them, everyone did. It was never official—you know, a Party member. Meetings. I would have known about that. It was a way of looking at things then, because of the Nazis. Years ago. Anyway, that was there. It was different after we came here.”

  “It’s not something you stop, just like that.”

  “Things change. People change.”

  “Do they?”

  “You think that? That’s what you’re looking for in his desk? A card? A letter from Stalin? I would have known.” She looked away, hearing herself, yesterday’s certainty. “He made movies here, that’s all. Silly movies.”

  “So did my father. And he ran a cell. According to her.”

  “If you want to know, ask them. The Party.”

  “I don’t think they’re handing out membership lists these days.”

  “Ask Howard Stein. It’s always in the papers about him. That he must be one. Polly says he is. Ask him. Why is it so important anyway?”

  “Because we have to know everything about him. What he was doing. Why anyone would—”

  “
No. You have to know. I don’t know why. Look, they’re going in. No more about this. The way people talk. Who knows what’s true. My father’s applying for citizenship. How would it look? A Communist son.”

  “A dead one.”

  “Well, my father’s alive. Talk like this—”

  “We have to know. It might be important.” He took her elbow. “Don’t run away from this. Help me. We owe it to him.”

  “Owe it to him.” She smiled to herself, then looked up. “I was trying to help. Before you started with all this. Politics. They don’t kill you for that yet. Maybe not love, either. You want to know the girlfriend? Rosemary.” She nodded. “Maybe not the only one, I don’t know. So does that help? Does she look like—”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know. I knew at the table. The way she was with me. She wouldn’t look at me. Not once. I could see her do it, not looking. And then she heard who you were and she was upset. She wasn’t ready for that. The wife, that’s one thing. But you—”

  “That’s it, the proof?”

  “You can prove it any way you like. I already know. It’s her,” she said, turning away so that before he could say anything else she had already joined the people moving toward the screening room.

  He followed, his mind darting again, his feet moving on their own, in another place. Around him people were talking about the movie, overheard but echoing, like voices in a train station.

  Warner’s treat turned out to be Saratoga Trunk, a Bergman not yet released.

  “I’ve been sitting on this since over a year,” Jack said.

  “You’re worried?” Sol said.

  “Not worried. Sam Wood, you’re always going to get an A product. Getting the time right. They put her in dark hair, in period, and I’m thinking, they want Casablanca again, not this. A totally different type. So I wait, we hold the picture. Then what? The Bells of St. Mary’s for Christmas. Talk about timing. I figure after that they’ll like her in anything. Put it out right after, you can’t miss. Same season. You can’t get into the Crosby, see the other.”