The Prosperous Thief

by Andrea Goldsmith

  Renate read the headlines over and over. A call to violence if ever there was one and they probably should return home. Yet here they were at the station about to embark on a much-needed holiday and what was wise and sensible no longer seemed to have much muscle. Nothing did. Besides, they could pass. Their colouring – neither blond and blue-eyed, nor dark and Semitic – was unremarkable, and as assimilated Jews, their clothes were indistinguishable from those of other middle-class Germans. To go or return home? Renate forced herself to read the whole article properly. Ernest vom Rath, fortunately injured not dead, an unknown German functionary at the Paris Embassy; how much unrest could result? She looked at the other families gathered at the station, the Lewins were interchangeable with any of them, and she looked at Alice, a live spark hopping about on the pavement.

  ‘All right,’ she said.‘We’ll go.’

  Once they were on the train, she felt much better. Not simply relief at being out of the flat, but the familiarity of this journey, connecting as it did the two places which had formed the backbone of her life. Ever since her marriage and the move to Krefeld she had made a weekly visit to Düsseldorf. Every Thursday she would see her parents, would browse the familiar shops, perhaps meet a friend for coffee or take lunch in the Alstadt. The weekly trip helped her adjust to the move – not that she wasn’t aware of the advantages almost from the beginning. There was the proximity of Düsseldorf, but as well she had the excitement of a new life in Krefeld: Martin, marriage, new people, and work – this last the most surprising of all. For with marriage to Martin, Renate had discovered silk.

  Renate had always wanted to be a painter and from her earliest years had seemed to possess the talent. As a toddler she had produced paintings of such astonishing form and maturity her father used to joke that in addition to the usual limbs and blood and bodily organs, she had arrived in the world complete with an innate understanding of western art. She painted her way through childhood and became one of the first women to enter the Düsseldorf School of Painting. But there the dream had started to fade, or perhaps had faded earlier though no one noticed because of the long afterglow of the extraordinary work of the child.

  She had been a prodigy at four and a genius at ten. At fourteen she was extraordinary and at sixteen when she entered the School of Painting, her work was described as brilliant, although no one talked about genius any more. Her technique could not be faulted, but her work lacked animus and the angels never panted at her door. It was not that her paintings were stillborn, they were simply limp on the canvas, and perhaps had always been, but one looks for different qualities in the work of a seven year old than a seventeen year old. Renate knew something was missing. She would study her mother at the piano, would sift through the sounds and isolate an out-of-this-world exhilaration which passed from Amalie through the music. Renate loved to paint, but the passion she detected in her mother’s music was of a different order. She returned with new hopes to her work, but the painting would not yield. In the end she gave it up, not being the type to dabble in something she revered.

  Then soon after marrying Martin she discovered silk. Silk fired her imagination in a way canvas had not; it was as if colour itself had suddenly spilled its mysteries. As the months and years passed, it became very obvious that Renate had finally found her passion.

  Krefeld, like Lyon in France and Como in Italy, had long been a centre for woven silk. For several generations the Lewins had been counted among the most prominent of the silk families, so when Renate married Martin she found herself at the heart of the Krefeld community. Just a few years ago it would have been unthinkable that a Lewin could ever be an outsider in Krefeld, but now, not only were they barred from the silk business, they were routinely shunned by people who had once been friends. Experience, history, none of it matters when the whole cultural and moral landscape of your country has changed.

  Everyone in the Krefeld community had always known the Lewins were Jewish, but it was a background issue and rarely acknowledged. Renate and Martin attended synagogue in Düsseldorf for the high holidays and for the occasional wedding or barmitzvah, and that was about the extent of it. Before Hitler came to power, neither would have hesitated in putting their Germanness ahead of their Jewishness. Now as they travelled the familiar journey into Düsseldorf, keeping themselves separate but not too separate from the Germans in the compartment and trying to render invisible a Jewishness they had never strongly felt, Renate had a sense, experienced often these days, of an identity ripped out of her and shoved through a grinder. She was raised to be German, had been taught to be proud of being German, and suddenly not only was she no longer German, the whole definition of what it meant to be German had changed. She did not like what she saw of her neighbours and neither did they like what they saw of her.

  She and Martin would often discuss, as if speech could render it sensible, their disbelief when people they had known for years, people with whom they had worked and socialised, revealed themselves as cold, insensitive, even brutal strangers. Had they always harboured these tendencies? And if so, what blind spot common to her and Martin and so many other Jews had caused them to miss the signs. How could they have not known? It was like discovering you’ve spent years living adjacent to a toxic chemical plant when you always thought it manufactured perfume.

  Renate gazes through the window at the passing countryside. A much-needed holiday and already her thoughts driving it into the ground. But it’s not easy to forget what you once were, what in your heart you still believe yourself to be. If people could moult like animals, shed part of themselves, would she shed her Germanness or her Jewishness? And even now, after all that has happened, she is torn between desire:German, and reality: Jew. As for her daughter, today’s Germans leave a stain on her. She sees Alice trying to equate them with the Germans of her storybooks and family lore. Tell me about the Kaiser, Alice will say to her grandmother, tell me how he gave a medal to Opa. She watches her daughter struggling to understand how it was possible for the Kaiser, the highest German in the land, to honour her grandfather, a Jew, when Jews are now the lowest of the low. The other day Alice asked Renate whether they were bad Jews – Renate and Martin, Oma, even Alice herself, unlike her grandfather who was a good enough Jew to receive the Kaiser’s medal. Her daughter struggles, but how can you explain to a child she is what everyone hates?

  She glances at Alice kneeling on the seat, looking out at the passing scenery, her little girl so happy to be out and about, and makes a pledge to turn her back on all grim thoughts for today. She scoops her daughter onto her lap, slides up close to the window, and together they identify the familiar landmarks. And Renate talks as if things are as they once were, activating a type of selective vision which sees the trees and not the banners in the branches, the houses and not the swastikas in the windows, the people in ordinary clothes and not those in uniform.

  Once in Düsseldorf they take a tram to the Königsallee, not for the shops, the usual reason for promenading along the Kö, but for Alice to see the four-sided clocktower which they must circle slowly to make absolutely sure the time is the same on all four sides, and then to stand at a very particular spot near the moat which runs down the centre of the Kö so Alice can make a wish over the sea god Triton spraying water into the stream.

  ‘What will you wish?’ Martin asks, knowing even as he speaks that his daughter, a powerful believer in the secrecy of wishes, won’t reveal. Although a few days after her last birthday, long enough, she believed, for her wish to be safe, she confessed she always made the same wish: that everyone and everything would be as it used to be, including her grandfather alive again, Martin at his business, and she allowed to go to school. Now as she tries to change the world, her eyes closed and lips silently moving, Martin feels the tears bulge and a choking in his throat. It would make a fine and moving scene in a film, if only it were not his daughter.

  It is a perfect day of bright sun and soft breeze, more like late September than earl
y November. They head off towards the Aldstadt, not to take coffee because most of the cafés display signs warning off Jews, but to buy an ice for Alice from a more lackadaisical or less nationalistic street vendor. Alice walks between her parents and every now and then they swing her high in the air. One, two, three and over the crack. One, two, three and over the gutter. Such a lovely day and so pleased they have come, and no one is taking any notice of them and Martin finds himself thinking that perhaps things are not so bad, perhaps Renate is right and the worst is already in the past. He feels lighter, freer, as if he’d been in pain for months and only now as it eases can he appreciate how very wearying it has been.

  They reach Heinrich-Heine-Allee and are about to cross when their attention is caught by a flurry of activity on the opposite corner. The Breidenbacher Hof is dripping with swastikas; there’s a swirl of high-ranking SS at the entrance and a crowd milling on the footpath. This is the hotel where Hitler stays when he visits Düsseldorf, and for a brief terrifying moment Martin thinks that Hitler is here. In Düsseldorf. Today. A brief moment before reason prevails: Hitler, of course, would be in Munich for the Putsch anniversary, and the officers gathered outside the Breidenbacher Hof would be meeting for the local celebrations.

  Martin takes in the mix of uniforms, all so sharp and ordered and portraying an air of authority not possible with normal clothes. There’s brown SA and black SS and a sprinkling of grey-garbed army men, and a huge contingent of fresh-faced and eager Hitler Youth in brown and League of German girls in blue. Such a collection of good Germans a mere twenty metres across the road, so many smiling youths and smiling officers together with their proud wives and adoring mothers. So many people united by a cause.

  And suddenly the terror returns. Martin pulls in the air but it won’t come. His guts want to spill to the pavement, he’s faint but must conceal it. Must appear normal. Hundreds of Nazis across the road, and his wife and daughter to protect. Who does he think he’s fooling with his ‘we look no different from other Germans’? Superficially there might be nothing to distinguish them, but these days even a child can sniff out a Jew. And as if his thoughts were blazoned on the sky, suddenly everyone on the opposite corner seems to be looking their way. Martin feels no less conspicuous than if he were wearing the black hat and shaggy beard of an orthodox Jew.

  He grabs Renate with one hand and Alice with the other and turns them in the opposite direction, not running but striding away from the Germans in uniforms. With Alice struggling to keep pace, he swings her into his arms. Through the streets they go, away from the gathering of happy Nazis, as fast as they dare without drawing attention, until they reach the entrance to the Hofgarten. They do not pause until they are well inside the park, and at last they stop, out of breath and tight with fear.Alice, too, is white and stiff, but asks no questions.

  It is blessedly quiet in the park, just strolling couples and family groups enjoying the unseasonable sun, and slowly they unwind, slowly they catch their breath. The trees are practically bare of leaves, but there are thick clumps of bushes lining the paths, and holly trees too, glossy green and loaded with berries. As they walk down the main path they feel less exposed; it is as if the park wraps them in a green protective armour. And there are no Germans in uniforms here.

  ‘Probably all flexing their muscles around the Breidenbacher Hof,’ Renate says to Martin. ‘Just waiting to scare a few Jews.’

  Martin smiles, but only weakly.

  Tiny bushy-tailed squirrels scamper across the paths, others nuzzle in the lush quilting of fallen leaves.Alice now asks whether she might go and play. Renate lets go of her hand and gives her a small parcel of bread. The child squats at the side of the path and immediately three squirrels appear. They crouch a couple of metres from her, waiting.

  ‘Clever little creatures,’ Renate whispers to Martin. ‘Close enough for food but far enough to run should they need to.’

  ‘Jews should be so smart,’ Martin says.

  Renate shakes her head. Enough, she is thinking, enough. Can’t you let it go for an hour? And Martin, no less keen than she for some respite, determines to keep such observations to himself. They stand close together while Alice feeds the squirrels, and then the three of them continue through the park, Renate and Martin strolling arm in arm, while Alice gambols across the grass, kicking up the leaves into what she calls snow-leaf storms. Each of them in their own way is making the most of an experience which may not happen again for quite some time, although the possibility of never walking here again would not occur to them.

  On the other side of the park Alice dashes ahead to the kiosk. She missed out on her ice before, perhaps now she can have one. But she sees the sign, ‘Jews undesired’, before her parents have caught up with her, and knows there’ll be nothing for her here.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Martin says, guiding her away from the kiosk.‘We’ll be at Katz’s soon for lunch.’

  As they exit the park they see their tram and make a run for it. They are out of breath and laughing as they trundle down the broad Kaiserstrasse and then into Nordstrasse and the area where Renate grew up. She knows all the shops and houses here, all the landmarks. Martin glances at her, she looks just like her old self.

  There are more uniforms about when they leave the tram at Goebenstrasse. Martin, now determined that this should be as normal an outing as possible, guides them to the end of the short street so Alice can identify the building where Oma and Opa used to live – ‘And where I grew up,’ adds Renate – the second and third floors now hung with banners, and the sound of a wireless where once had been Amalie Friedman’s music. The wireless is playing military music, German military music with a strong seductive melody, impossible to resist, and so majestic that to sing along is to swell the heart. Martin has heard German music these past few years that could mobilise the hordes no less effectively than the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Even now, standing in the street below the Friedmans’ old flat, he can hear the thud thud thud of boots behind the heavy beat of the orchestra. It’s annihilating and unstoppable and he doesn’t want to hear any more. He gathers his wife and daughter and hurries them back to the main thoroughfare.

  They set off in the direction of Katz’s restaurant, but Alice, already very hungry, says her legs don’t want to move any more. So with half a kilometre to go, Martin swings her onto his shoulders. They continue on their way, Renate and Martin with arms linked and Alice surveying the world from on high, so she sees the Jews first. Martin feels a flinching of her body and in the next moment, in a space ringed by onlookers, he sees them too: two observant Jews and not a common sight in Düsseldorf, bearded men with long black coats and hats, not Homburgs like Alice’s grandfather used to wear, but – she’s so taut and still – to her eyes probably much the same. Two observant Jews similar in age to her grandfather, here in an area which Alice associated with him, being cornered by four Brownshirts. Martin doesn’t want to see what is happening, he doesn’t want to get involved. He just wants to protect his wife and daughter from the situation up ahead and deflect any danger that might spill onto them.

  There is only one way clear, and that’s back the way they have come. In front are onlookers and buildings and the two Jews with the four thugs taunting them in snarls from the gutter. They tug at the men’s beards, pull on their curled forelocks, knock their hats and skullcaps into the filthy gutters. Four young thugs and two wizened old Jews.

  ‘Bloody Jew scum,’ they jeer.‘That’s what you get for attacking a German.’And start to throw punches, deliberately missing the old men’s faces by millimetres.

  It won’t stop there, Martin knows it won’t stop there. He should help them, they’re old, they’re defenceless, they could have the life beaten out of them, they’re scholars not fighters, Martin should go to their aid. And in the next moment: why should he? If these Jews didn’t look so obvious no one would be threatening them now. These sorts of Jew with their ancient clothes and ancient customs make it worse for all Jews.<
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  One of the stormtroopers, he doesn’t look more than seventeen or eighteen, lands a punch on the bare head of the shortest Jew. The man staggers but doesn’t fall. Another swipe and he is on his knees. Filth from the gutter spatters his spectacles.

  ‘Your hats, you Jew bastards, on your heads.’

  They reach out, they replace their hats, mud dribbles down their old faces and snares in their beards. Again their hats are knocked off and trodden in the slushy gutters. And then the flash of a knife. Renate seizes Alice and pulls her off Martin’s shoulders, shoves her face into her skirts. Alice starts to wriggle, she twists around, she wants to see. Renate and Martin hold her with a grip so tight it must hurt. Now Alice is pulling – it’s not like her – she’s pulling in the direction of the old Jews. She has no idea of the danger. Martin hauls her onto his hip better to stop her from running off. Her curls slap his face as he swings her up. There’s a stillness in the onlookers as the blade of the knife catches the light and slices into the curls of one of the old men.

  ‘Cut mine,’ Alice cries out, tugging at her ringlets. ‘Cut mine instead.’

  Martin slaps his hand across her mouth.Was he quick enough? Did they hear? Did anyone hear? And hisses in her ear she has to be quiet. Alice must catch his terror, because when he loosens his hand from her mouth she no longer struggles, just watches the thugs with the old Jews. The man with the knife finishes the job and is about to start on the other Jew when a clock tolls. He stops and checks his watch.Turns away from the Jew to face – surely not them? Surely the thug is not looking their way, surely he’s not going to single out a child for a silly mindless comment. Quick quick. He’s coming their way. Excuses. Her grandfather. Yes, her grandfather, a decorated soldier, just died. She’s a little girl. She doesn’t know some old men are good and others aren’t. And she doesn’t understand about the Jews.