Jerusalem Interlude

by Bodie Thoene

  She smiled when he looked at her, but tears streaked her face. “We have never danced to it,” she managed to whisper.

  “Because we hear it only when you play it.” He took her hand and stopped the music. Then he lifted her to her feet and pulled her close to him, his cheek against her soft damp cheek.

  She raised her face to his and looked into his eyes—eyes bright with emotion, shining with love forged in the furnace of trials and crafted into an intricate beauty. “Dance with me tonight, Theo,” she whispered. “Can you hear it? Can you hear the music? Dance with me, my darling . . .”

  ***

  Eduard stood framed in the tall window. Beyond him, snowflakes whitewashed Warsaw until it looked clean and beautiful in its baroque splendor. But Eduard and Etta knew what lay beneath that glistening image.

  “It is my fault,” Eduard said softly. His breath fogged the windowpane. He could not look at Etta. She simply stared at his back in the weary realization of how desperate the situation for Jews in Poland had suddenly become.

  “No, Eduard. Silly of me. I wanted only to keep it from Aaron, not let him know about the photos.” She brushed her hair from her eyes. “You know how it is in the old neighborhood. Everyone would know . . . passport photos for the rabbi’s family. And then the questions.”

  Eduard gazed at the curtain of snow that seemed to do battle with the black smoke of the chimneys. “I should not have called the police.” His voice was filled with self-recrimination. “I had not guessed how corrupt they have become. Three years ago this could not have happened in Warsaw; before President Pilsudski died, this would not have been tolerated!”

  He turned to search her face imploringly. “Justice has died in the hearts of men. You must not stay here, Etta! If such changes have come to the Poles since the death of one man, what will come to pass in Warsaw in another three years? There is no hand to stop it. With the exception of one little priest today, the Catholic church would turn its mighty eyes away from what happened to you.”

  He shook his head and rubbed a hand over his strained face. “I will call a photographer to come here immediately to take pictures of you and the children. We cannot delay in this matter.” His eyes scanned the books of his library as if he was searching for something. “You are right. The people of your congregation must not know your intent.”

  Again he fixed his gaze on Etta. “Can you keep all this from Aaron? He must not know until the passports are an accomplished fact. Then you will present them to him and tell him what happened to you today.”

  Etta nodded a difficult assent. “But the children—,” she began doubtfully.

  “I will speak to them,” Eduard promised grimly. “They will not talk about this after I explain.” He sank down in a wing chair and stretched his long legs out across the floral carpeting. “Aaron has foolish hope for the Jews of Poland. And for the Poles.” His brow furrowed. “Last week I stitched up the head of an eight-year-old Jewish child who was beaten with a metal crucifix because he did not bow his knee to the cross when a funeral procession passed. Every day there are more incidents. Since the German deportation, the violence has become more extreme.” He did not add the thought that Etta and the children had been lucky today. “Now these men have your name. They know you want passports and exit visas from Poland. They may be back.”

  Etta visibly paled. “But why?”

  “More money. Blackmail.”

  “But you paid them . . . so much, Eduard. And all the money I have saved is the gold coins I hoped to send to Papa in Jerusalem. In case he should need them for bribes.”

  “I will take that to him.” He moved to his desk chair and wrote out a bank draft on his Warsaw account. “I have left this account open so they will not suspect I am not returning. You must use the money, Etta.”

  “But Eduard,” she protested, “you have paid them so much already. How can I repay you?”

  Eduard seemed not to hear her. He blotted the ink and tore the check from the book. Then he wrote another and yet another, leaving the dates blank. The checks lay on his desk. “Do not use them too close together. Cash them over the next few weeks or months. This will close the account. Hopefully we will have your travel documents in order by then. I will pray that you cash the last check on the day you leave Warsaw forever, Etta—you and the children, and even stubborn Aaron. Perhaps by then he will see that leaving is the only rational course of action.”

  ***

  It was Sunday. Eli walked alone through the crowded streets of the Armenian Quarter toward Christ Church. A stream of Englishmen and their elegant ladies were exiting through the wide iron gates where the Reverend Robbins stood shaking hands, smiling pleasantly in his clerical robes. He is not the gardener, after all, thought Eli as he watched the pleasant-faced old man.

  But Eli was not disguised today either. He was dressed not in his brother’s clothes but in the distinctive garb of the Orthodox.

  He wore his black coat, the one he saved for holy days and weddings. The hem of his coat showed the fringes of the garment the Torah commanded the Chosen to wear as a sign of identity. On his head was a black, fur-trimmed shtreimel, no different than a hat one might see on a Jew in Warsaw. In spite of Eli’s sandy-colored hair, light brown beard, and pleasant blue eyes, there was no mistaking today that a Jew was walking against the crowd leaving Christ Church, in through the iron gates. He waited beyond the Sunday-morning English chatter, until at last, Reverend Robbins raised his head and smiled in kind curiosity in Eli’s direction.

  Eli stepped forward and extended his hand—a brief and formal handshake. “I have come to discuss an urgent personal matter with you,” he said stiffly.

  The pastor looked over his shoulder for any stragglers who might overhear such a request. There were none. The congregation had gone to the luncheon buffet at the King David Hotel.

  “You are Victoria’s . . . friend.”

  “You have a keen memory.”

  “She has spoken of you often.”

  “She has never spoken to me of you,” Eli replied, though not unkindly. The news had simply surprised him.

  “I knew her mother well before she passed on. A gracious Christian woman. Things might have been very different for Victoria had her mother lived.”

  Eli was indeed surprised that Reverend Robbins seemed to know so much about Victoria’s life. “Yes. Different.” There was an awkward pause. What to say?

  “Will you join me in my study? Perhaps it would be more suitable for our talk.”

  Eli followed him through the courtyard to the side of the building. An unmarked wooden door led down a flight of steps to a stone basement beneath the sanctuary. Neither man spoke another word until they were both seated inside a small book-lined room with a high transom window. The pastor clasped his hands on his desk. Eli did not remove his hat in spite of the hat rack by the door. For a moment he faced the pastor without speaking. The old man’s eyes seemed to say that he knew already what Eli wanted to say.

  “You see,” Eli said. “I am a Jew.” An obvious statement, but Eli wanted to let this man know that he intended to remain a Jew in spite of what he was about to request.

  “And Victoria is Arab. Muslim. A problem for you both.”

  “You know her well, you say, and I believe you or she would not have wanted to meet me here. She must trust you. And so . . . I trust you.”

  A nod of thanks. A wave of the finger urging Eli to speak on.

  “So, Reverend Robbins.” Eli found this more difficult. “I have returned to Christ Church to ask . . . to request your help. You seem to know . . . everything. And so you must know we cannot be married in the Jewish Quarter. Not right now.”

  “Things are very difficult.”

  “But we must marry. Things are growing more difficult every day. I am certain that she needs to live beneath my protection.”

  “And whose protection are you under, Eli?”

  “God’s protection.”

  The answer was wi
thout hesitation. The firmness of it surprised the old man. “You are not a Christian,” he said, as if that was his interpretation of Eli’s response.

  “And you are not a Jew. But you believe in the Jewish Messiah, as I do. This makes it acceptable to me that you could perform the ceremony for Victoria and me.”

  The old man’s eyebrows arched with astonishment at the reply. “I am not a rabbi—”

  “She needs the legal protection of marriage to me. You are authorized to perform the ceremony. Later we will wed in the Old City beneath a canopy after she has taken the appropriate instruction and—”

  “She is not a Christian.”

  “You will tell her about the Messiah. About God’s sacrifice of His only Son just as our Father Abraham offered Isaac. And she will believe you.”

  “But . . . how can you know such a thing?”

  “Because it is the truth. And Victoria will know that if you explain it correctly. I have searched the ancient references, and it is clear they knew that Isaiah fifty-three spoke of Messiah. Targum Jonathan on Isaiah fifty-three. You know that reference?”

  “Why, no . . .”

  “Rabbi Jonathan Ben-Uzziel was a disciple of the great Hillel. Surely you know his work?”

  “Why, no . . .”

  “I will lend you the document, and you will show her and explain to her what it means.” Eli felt some irritation at the Protestant clergyman’s lack of scholarship in the matter of the Messiah of Israel whom he served.

  “Why don’t you tell her yourself?”

  “I want her to know Him because He is Truth, not because she loves me and I tell her. Women will say and do many things for sake of love. I will teach her other things after we are married.”

  “You are a confident young man.” The pastor leaned forward as if to study Eli in amazement. “And learned.”

  “Yes,” Eli said sadly. “I would have made a good rabbi. But men will give up many things for love, nu?”

  “Well, I . . . I do not see how I can refuse if Victoria is also . . .”

  “Just teach her, and there is no doubt. So. I can offer you some little payment. We cannot delay in our marriage. I request that you keep this matter altogether a secret. Her brothers will kill her if they find out.”

  “And you as well.”

  “Maybe even you, Reverend Robbins.” A slight smile. “But we are all under God’s protection. I will find her a place in the Christian Quarter where she will stay until we find a way to leave Palestine and the Middle East. My brother is going to school in England. Perhaps you will write us a letter of recommendation.”

  “I would not have thought it,” said the pastor dryly.

  “What is that?”

  “When I first saw you I thought you were a fearful fellow without much . . . what is the word . . . moxie.”

  “Never mind first impressions. I thought you were the gardener.”

  ***

  The last rays of sunlight shone dully on the tarnished green copper dome of L’Opera. On the crown of the cupola, the statue of Apollo played his lyre as he watched the silent intrigues of Paris below.

  Horns blaring, taxis rattled past the ornate facade of the building.

  “Academie Nationale de Musique,” Ernst vom Rath’s mother read from the window of their taxi. Her round, pleasant face beamed at the sight of the eight rows of double columns, gilded arches, and colonnades of L’Opera. “The French are so . . . ” She did not finish her sentence but shifted her attention to her son, who looked away from the building to the rows of restaurants and shops on the other side of the broad avenue. “Ernst—” She patted his hand. “You seem so . . . sullen.”

  He managed a smile in spite of the resentment he felt at this unannounced visit from his mother and sister. “I wish you had let me know, that is all.”

  “You sounded so homesick. Lonely.” His mother sounded hurt. “We thought you would be glad to see us.”

  “Glad, yes. But, I have no arrangements for you. I . . . I might have gotten tickets for the opera, at least.” He did not let them know that to be near this building felt something like standing at the gates of hell itself. It was every reminder of all the things he wanted to forget.

  His mother laughed with relief. “Is that all? Well, we have taken care of that already! There will be tickets for the three of us waiting at the hotel concierge’s desk. We saw to it in Berlin.”

  Ernst felt the blood drain from his face. He tried to look pleased. “Ah. Nice. Very . . .”

  His mother looked alarmed. She pressed her hand to his forehead. “Ernst. You are not well? Is that it?”

  “Tired, Mother. The embassy, you know. So much happening. I am just tired and I have had so much on my mind.”

  “We have come to help you take your mind off all that. When we saw the postcard, I said to your father, ‘He needs a visit to cheer him up, Ernst does!’ And we bought the tickets that same afternoon!” She sighed with contentment. “And we needed a break as well from all the dreary heiling of Berlin.”

  “Mother!” he chided. “You must not—”

  “Oh well, not around the embassy, at least, but that is why you are so gloomy. That is why we all are so gloomy. Hermann Göring and his four-year economic plan! Ha! We are ordered to save empty toothpaste tubes for collection. Did you know? They are melting down toothpaste tubes to make their fighter planes! The old elegance of our Germany is gone, I’m afraid, Ernst. But now we are here and we can forget all that for a while, ja? No doubt at the opera tonight we will run into all our old friends who had the good sense to leave until he is finished with his schemes.”

  Ernst looked forward at the cab driver who just happened at that moment to glance into the rearview mirror. Their eyes caught for an instant, and Ernst was filled with the unreasoning fear that somehow every word his mother had said would get back to Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin. Back to men like Göring and Hitler and . . . Vargen.

  Ernst took his mother’s gloved hand. She saw the fear in his eyes and immediately felt it too. “Ernst, what is it?” she asked quietly.

  He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Not even here. Not even here must you say such things, Mother. They are watching . . . everyone.”

  “I did not mean . . . I would not injure your career or—”

  “I am not speaking of my job at the embassy. Mother, you still do not know what they are, what those men are capable of!”

  Frau vom Rath studied the face of her son. She brushed back a lock of his hair and then turned toward the opera building as they rounded a corner. Best to talk of light things. Things that did not matter. “Yes. L’Opera. Red silk walls, I remember. We are in the third tier. A box, Ernst. We will be able to see everyone and everyone will see us.”

  29

  No Place to Go

  This morning Hans Schumann brought Herschel a stack of outdated copies of the Yiddish daily paper, Pariser Haint.

  “I thought you would like to read up on all the news,” Hans said cheerfully. “These were free, anyway, because they are from last week. The story is so much more complete than just a little word of news on the radio. Of course you want to hear everything about what your family has been through.”

  At this, Herschel managed a feeble nod. He did not know if he did indeed want the details of his family’s torment filled in. He was helpless here in Paris, so impotent against the forces that gripped them. He stared at the stack of newspapers and stood up angrily. “I do not want to read about it.”

  Hans looked surprised, hurt by the rejection of his helpfulness. “Well, then. As you wish.”

  “I want to go out,” Herschel croaked in a hoarse, desperate voice. “I do not care any longer if they catch me! Let them deport me too!”

  “Herschel!” Hans admonished, taking him firmly by the arm. “Have you forgotten? You have things to do! Things to make them listen to you! To all of us!”

  “I want out!” Herschel tore himself from Schumann’s grip, pushed past him, and clattered
down the steep stairs to a narrow landing.

  Hans called after him. Someone opened a door in the hallway of the rooming house and then closed it again quickly at the sound of Hans shouting down from the attic. “Come back! You have no place to go! Come back here!”

  Herschel put his hands over his ears as he charged down two more flight of steps to where the light of day shone through the glass panel of a door.

  Herschel had no coat. He slammed the door and ran out into the brisk November wind, but did not feel the cold. He ran along the boulevard, lifting his face to the light. He thought of the streets of German cities. The automobile horns sounded the same. He imagined what he would have done if the Nazis had come for him, if they came for him now in Paris. He would run. They would scream their obscenities at him and shoot their guns, but he would outrun them all and hide. Yes! He must hide!

  He slowed his pace. Hans had not caught up with him. The cold sidewalk was crowded with people who did not see him, did not know why he was running.

  He stopped and looked toward the green dome of the great Paris opera house. He remembered music playing in his father’s shop and he thought of Elisa Lindheim and her violin. Probably dead, like everyone else in Vienna. Or dying. Or wishing to die.

  He turned in the center of the sidewalk like a lost child. Before him was the display window of a gunsmith’s shop. Herschel walked forward and leaned his forehead against the glass pane. A display of weapons was laid out on red fabric—large barrel revolvers and smaller caliber pistols. Different sizes of bullets down to the short stubby cartridges.

  Herschel remembered Thomas von Kleistmann. He thought of the death of the old bookseller. He remembered his own wild firing, and then . . . Herschel frowned. A second gunshot had followed his. Why had he not remembered until now? That other gunshot had crumpled the old man. Then Herschel had run wildly through the bookstalls to escape. He had run and run until he had slammed into Hans and been taken to the attic to hide. And that filthy Nazi von Kleistmann still lived, still strutted in the German Embassy and raised his hand to Heil Hitler and rejoiced at the news of twelve thousand deported to Poland!