But he knew that he was not quite like the others, and he took a certain pride in his independence, although he feared that eventually it would cost him dearly. He only hoped to protect the simple pleasures of his daily routines. Those pleasures, although they had faded, had far surpassed the burdensome weight of his evenings at home, where he was greeted by the chipmunk pouch face of his wife, a square-shaped woman, almost as wide as she was tall, who had long since redistributed the appealing swell of her breasts to meld with her corpulent midsection. And to add further insult to the injury of his bridal choice, the gravity of years had pulled on the once alluring charm of her smile, settling it firmly into a permanent scowl. Constantly, he berated himself for succumbing to the lure of her father’s connections with officials in the police department in asking for her hand…not that his choices would ever have been grand. He knew that his impoverished background and the ungraceful presentation of his own physical attributes would never have prompted someone like the elegant Mrs. Berger to have looked his way. No, this woman, a Christian like himself, who would never have considered him for a suitor, had actually chosen a Jew for a husband. And yet, he admitted, he always respected the very affable Herr Berger. Many times, this man, whose work hours were long and whose home hosted a parade of important visitors, would take the time to talk to him, even offering him a specially made insert for his walking boots, when he noticed an uncharacteristic limp in the officer’s gait.
And so on that night, although he knew that he alone could do nothing to stop the tidal wave that would strike, he was waiting for Mrs. Berger and her daughter when they came back down the stairs. He planned to stop them with a dissonant “halt,” if need be.
“Darling,” Inga cried, rushing back into the house, shouting “Emanuel” once—and then a second time with a stronger urgency—that finally brought her husband from the kitchen with his glass of tea. She ran to him and grabbed it from him, the sway of the movement swishing the hot drink so that it scalded her hand, but she waved away his efforts of comfort.
“Oh, darling. Something big, something bad will be happening tonight. It has already started.” She had been thinking that that fool policeman Miller had finally proven himself a useful civil servant, and now, even in her state of anxiety, she reconsidered her assessment of him and decided to be more generous with her words. “That policeman—Miller—the one who stalks our corner…I’m not sure why…but he just did something kind. He warned us just now. He warned us to go home immediately. And to stay inside—away from the windows, he said, and specifically—away from the synagogue. He actually accosted us so that we were scared of what he might do—and yet he wanted to make sure we understood that there will be terror in our streets tonight.”
Emanuel backed away from her and looked straight into her eyes. He moved his head from side to side, seemingly as one would before revealing a secret, and then he nodded to his daughter who had been standing by the door so that she knew that he wanted to address her, as well. “A pogrom,” Emanuel said. “The curse of our generations. A pogrom now on these very streets.” And they huddled together for many minutes, sharing the same questions—would something happen on signal or would a pulsation build from street to street? They discussed ways to warn more of the neighbors, as Sarah had immediately rushed back up the stairs and cautioned Mrs. Sagan to remain quiet in her house, away from the windows.
And then they wondered how to protect their beautiful Neue Synagogue. It was only five years before, with the opening of the Jewish museum next door on Oraneinburger Strasse, that they had donated kiddush cups and silver Shabbat candelabras from Emanuel’s mother’s family. They fretted about all of the precious artifacts from their family and others that would be at risk, but knew they were of no significance compared to the sacred Torah scrolls that would be in jeopardy. And so they set their route toward that very destination, donning once again the coats and hats and gloves they had just removed, hoping to give a timely warning to the rabbi and the caretakers of what was ahead, spreading the word from building to building before they settled back at their own residence.
They did not spend that evening listening to the usual pattern of alternating recordings of Brahms and Tchaikovsky symphonies or playing their own much more meager interpretations on the piano. Instead, they paced the house and peered outside and listened through the slivers of open windows on the second floor, reacting to each shout and crash and scream outside with a cupping of their mouths, a chorus of “Oh my Gods,” and anguished visual exchanges.
And then there was a knock on the door, so light at first that only Sarah, with the acute hearing of youth, noticed it, until they all reacted to the growing intensity of the pounds. They had inched down the stairs, but no one moved toward the front room. Instead, they huddled by the kitchen door.
“Emanuel—open up.”
It was a familiar voice, but none of the three recognized it immediately until they heard, “It’s me. It’s Jacob—-Jacob Dritz.”
At that point they separated quickly, as if vying to be the first to receive the man, and when the door was unlocked and opened, he practically fell into the room and into the net of their arms. There was a steady stream of blood winding down from an open cut on his forehead and snaking past his right eye and his cheek, ending in a shocking pool of red broadening on his white collar. With the slightest nod from Inga, Sarah ran to dampen a cloth at the sink and when she quickly returned, she relinquished it to her mother who held it to Jacob’s wound with a steady pressure.
Like Emanuel, Jacob was well known, not just in the Jewish community, but in all of Berlin. He and his brother, Joseph, owned two of the premier department stores in the city, one on Unter den Linden and the other on Koernerstrasse. After the first round of boycotts of Jewish businesses in 1933, Joseph had left the country, his wife inconsolable over fears for their four small children. But the elder Jacob, able to send his married daughters and their husbands on to relatives already in New York, had been holding out through the waves of economic Aryanization.
Although they had wanted him to lay still and recover, at his insistence, the Bergers wrapped him with a blanket and Emanuel cautiously moved him through the seclusion of three adjacent backyards, to be reunited with his wife, Ruth, already in a desperate state.
On November 9, 1938, this “Night of Broken Glass,” echoed throughout Berlin and other cities of Nazi Germany. Store windows were smashed and contents were looted and destroyed; synagogues were set afire and decimated, and countless Jews were attacked. And the next morning brought no relief, as many of the remaining Jewish men, often those so prominent that they ignored the first emigration waves, were rounded up.
When they came for Emanuel Berger, he let them take him without any resistance. His bowed countenance revealed a pathetic resignation that came with the understanding that he was foolish for ignoring the warning signs of what was coming. His stubbornness to remain in Berlin to protect his factory, despite pleas from his wife and daughter and his daughter’s new young American suitor, had placed his family in great peril. He was so overcome with guilt that his body had no further place to store the emotion of fear. As the front door reverberated from the smashed glass forced entry of the Gestapo, he simply stacked up papers he was working on that would delineate his holdings and passed them surreptitiously to Inga. He asked them as politely as one would ask a valet at a restaurant if he might get his hat and coat. He knew that above all, he did not want to leave his house being dragged like a victim—he wanted to proceed in dignity, to minimize the distress to his beloved women.
As it turned out, initially, he was taken no farther than the local police station, where he was jailed. When Inga had briefly glimpsed him through the window bars on a second floor cell, she had seen desperation and maybe resignation in his eyes, a look that would continue to haunt her. She stood outside his jail for a week, protesting with the other Aryan wives that their husbands should be exempt from the Jewish statutes. On the eighth
day, she could see him motion to her from a window. She barely recognized him, his nose askew and face bruised.
He was urging her to leave with side nods of his head. She was beginning to understand. Her protests were having a negative effect. They were disruptive to the jail warden who needed to squelch such activity quickly. He wanted to eliminate any incidents that reflected negatively on his position. He knew the Nazi officers sought and valued order and discipline and so he retaliated on those arrested when he was made to look bad.
When Inga returned a final time to the prison, now under hooded cover, the news was bleaker than ever— Emanuel was gone—transferred, they said. They had moved his group during the night in a truck convoy of prisoners. They would not provide more information— but most likely he would be taken by train to a more remote location, perhaps to one of those rumored camps.
It was months later that Sarah and her mother came upon yet one more inn, as they wearily walked the countryside with one horse and a small cart with their bags.
“My husband has been taken as a soldier. He was not good with money ever, and our food could not sustain us. We are good workers. I have been employed for years at a tavern. That’s where he met me. A customer—a good one—I should have known he’d be a bigger drinker as time went along. But I have no regrets. I have my lovely daughter here, partially thanks to him. And here I offer my child as a worker. She’ll serve you well as a maid. Knows her linens and toilette routines. But she is bright too, could even be a hostess—picked up on languages at some of the big houses where she’s gotten experience.”
Sarah was shocked by her mother’s verbal litany. She even managed a lower-class accent and demeanor. Sarah had no idea how skilled Mama was in thinking quickly on her feet.
She knew that she and her mother would not have to be like other friends and neighbors who had fled the city—where persecution of the Jews was becoming epidemic. The two of them would not have to hide in attics or barns. They could pass as pure Christians fleeing poverty and abandonment, thinking the countryside would offer more shelter and resources would be more plentiful—they would claim that they could not take the physical hunger of the city. At an inn they could clean, cook, and serve, whatever was asked of them, for a simple roof over their heads, a soft bed, and a couple of meals a day. Sarah’s mother, who had tried for more children—now understood God’s plan that her only child would be a blond, bobbed nosed double of herself at that age and not a boy—who could be betrayed by the mohel’s cut of his circumcision.
There were country homes they could have rented— lived more in a style they were accustomed to—but there were rumors of neighbors turning in Jews—even half Jews. No—Inga wanted her daughter to be totally safe, and she knew the best chance was to have her reunited with Taylor in America. And she had a plan to make their way to Hamburg, where ships were leaving for overseas.
Though it would have seemed most logical that they try to lodge with Inga’s family outside of Berlin, she knew that even there she would never really feel Sarah was safe from “friends” who might knowingly or unknowingly expose her. Instead, they left quietly and in the night from their Berlin residence, with only a few suitcases of precious items and, of course, Sarah’s cherished painting. They stored their possessions in the neglected carriage house of a summer cottage they often rented, they negotiated for a horse and cart, and then they continued further into the countryside, where they would not be recognized. Inga would return biweekly to that location, where she would be met with communications from trusted agents of her family who were working clandestinely to secure papers and passage for the trip to America. They both imagined that letters from Taylor remained unopened at their Berlin address.
After two or three unsuccessful attempts to find employment, when they had been circling the countryside for more than two days, they happened upon a fairly large inn with a neighborhood tavern attached and this was where she had been telling her tale.
One previous innkeeper had immediately shown an interest in hiring the pair, but Sarah’s mother was wise to his motives.
“In fact,” he had said, “I have two lovely rooms available—too little for guests, but each of you could have one. Let me show you to yours first,” he had said to Inga, “and then I will take Young Liesel.” They had changed Sarah’s name so that it would have no Semitic resonance and, ironically, as if to validate her insight, within the next year, among the many laws against the Jews that would be passed, was the edict that each Jewish woman was to take a new middle name—Sarah.
“I’m thinking perhaps that your husband in his drinking also beat you,” the man continued. “You are a sexual thing; perhaps he accused you of straying—perhaps you did.”
Many retorts ran through Inga’s mind at this point, but her aim was to remain as inconspicuous as possible. She had assessed their situation and was not being conceited, only realistic. They were two beautiful, desirable women alone in the German countryside—they may have more immediate fears than the Nazi campaign.
And so, understanding the motives of this particular proprietor whose strategy was, obviously, to divide and conquer, she made excuses for them to move on. Inga wondered if her daughter had noticed that among the valuables she was hiding was a shiny kitchen knife and she would not be afraid to use it for more than cutting vegetables.
And it was finally at just this next inn where they knew they had found safe refuge. Here they were greeted at the door by the large and imposing wife, literally blocking her thin and timid husband, who could barely be noticed wiping down pitchers and glasses behind her. She was almost grandmotherly; she told them immediately that she would be so happy to have such sweet faces in her establishment, as it was populated nightly by an increasingly rowdy crowd.
“I understand your plight,” she had told them. “Left the city myself some years ago, ‘cause I couldn’t take the factory smoke—breathing is much easier out here.” But she warned that she couldn’t host slouchers; there’d be plenty of work for them in their busy establishment.
“Got one room left—two beds—heat’s not great there at night ‘cause it’s low in the house, kind of a cellar, but I got some fine blankets.”
“Thank you, Frau,” Inga responded quickly, shaking the woman’s hand, as if extreme gratitude for the simplest acts of benevolence and charity had been an ingrained part of her upbringing. This woman would never have pictured that just twelve months ago Inga had been the mistress of a home that employed up to four workers at one time, and this just to maintain the residence of her small family, not as staff for an inn.
That first night Sarah crawled from her own bed in their small room and lay down next to her mother, sharing just the edge of a wonderfully plump and soft pillow. For the first time, she noticed the gray strands that were multiplying in her mother’s hair, distinguishing it from her own. She stroked that hair now, wishing she could be giving more comfort to this amazing woman, but knowing that, in her own case, circumstances were actually rendering her less mature, more needy. Soon she turned, and when she cuddled against her mother she was facing away from her. Knees tightly bent and tucked to her chest, encircled by her clasped hands, she had unconsciously maneuvered herself into a fetal position, as if she could retreat into the protection of her mother’s womb once more.
“Mama—I think the world is a mystery to me. I don’t think I understand anything anymore.” Her mother was surprised to hear her speak now, thinking her slow rhythmic breathing had indicated that she was finally asleep.
“My darling, my sweet Sarah,” her mother answered with a very slight ironic laugh, “we are not meant to understand it.”
“Don’t say that, Mama. Say that I will understand it when I am older.” Sarah stretched her body abruptly and turned to face her mother. “Say that when you were my age you posed that same question to your mother and she told you that you would understand one day.”
“But it isn’t true.” She put her hand under Sarah’s chin
and gazed directly into her eyes. “Look at me. I am older now, my hair is graying prematurely, and I do not understand still. The world changes. You can learn the rules, but then the rules change.”
There was only a slight silence, and then Sarah spoke again. “Mathematics doesn’t change. You always said that to my incessant questioning. You said I would understand more when I was older. Like when I was frustrated after I learned addition and subtraction, and I only wanted to continue on and learn multiplication and division. And I did learn it soon enough. And then you told me to be patient once I discovered there was algebra and then geometry and eventually, like you said, I learned that as well.”
“Yes,” her mother agreed now, as she stroked the back of Sarah’s head and breathed in the familiar scent of her daughter’s skin.
“And, Mother—what about love? Do you understand how that works?” Lately, she had been tortured by the memory of what it was like feeling Taylor’s arms holding her firmly, then his hands so lightly tracing her skin, skimming just the tops of her breasts, awakening unfamiliar sensations in her, sensations that were new to her, that caused her to have some sort of warm, stirring feeling that she wanted to recapture. Often at night, she wouldn’t just think of their conversations and replay them in her head, but she would recreate the feeling of his body pressing against her as they lingered with kisses in the dark front portico.
She was embarrassed to share with her mother the real questions she had wanted to ask. She could never articulate the physical desires prompting this dialogue. In this tumultuous year of changes, she had also made passage from eighteen to nineteen years old. But there had been no opportunity to discuss the natural changes of her burgeoning sexuality. And so again she repeated only the question about love to her mother, because she was not sure what, if anything, she had said aloud and what she had just thought. “I wish I had loved Taylor more when I was with him—I didn’t know that he’d be gone so soon—that we would be gone ourselves—that our world would be gone and I would have no chance to really love him. I need to know, Mama, if you understand love.”
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