The Far Side of the Sky

by Daniel Kalla

  Schmidt leapt up from his chair and leaned over his desk. “Who the hell do you think you are, Jew? Parading up here like you’re the Queen of bloody Sheba!”

  “I am Stella Kaufman, sir,” she said coolly. “I have come to see Lieutenant Eichmann regarding my exit visa. Just as I was requested to do.”

  “You are nothing, Jew! And no one sees the lieutenant without my say-so.”

  Franz silently prayed that Frau Kaufman would submit to Schmidt’s authority, but she continued to hold his stare defiantly.

  “Kaufman, is it?” Schmidt said menacingly. “Any relation to the Jew thieves from that department store?”

  She sighed. “My grandfather established Kaufman’s, yes.”

  “To cheat and chisel good Austrians out of their hard-earned money with their overpriced rubbish and non-German goods. Correct? “

  Frau Kaufman didn’t answer immediately. The entire lobby went dead silent. Everyone, including the SS guards, had stopped to listen to the exchange. “No, sir,” she said. “My grandfather established Kaufman’s to provide quality goods to Viennese citizens at reasonable prices. And we have maintained that tradition ever since.”

  The terrible silence was broken only by a soft snicker from one of the guards near the door. Schmidt’s face reddened. He circled the desk in three long paces and lunged at the woman. She leaned back and raised her hands to protect herself, but Schmidt punched her full force in the belly. The woman groaned as she clasped her abdomen. He punched her in the face. She gasped and buckled over. Struck again, she crumpled to the ground. Blood pooled around her head and her howls of protest died away, but Schmidt continued to kick her.

  Franz could not stomach another second of the brutality. Unable to stop himself, he stepped out of the line. “Hauptscharführer Schmidt!”

  Schmidt’s head snapped up. His blazing eyes scanned the room before locking onto Franz.

  Another taut silence seized the atrium. No one else in the line dared so much as to breathe.

  Schmidt jumped over Frau Kaufman’s prone body and stormed over to Franz. He stopped a foot away and stood nose to nose as sweat dripped off his brow. “How dare you interrupt me, Jew?” he panted.

  Franz stared at the floor, desperate for the right words. “My deepest apologies, Hauptscharführer. It is only that Obersturmführer Eichmann asked me to return with papers. It is already late. I’m worried that I might miss my opportunity to see him today.”

  “That is what you’re worried about right now? Missing ‘Lieutenant’ Eichmann?” Schmidt scoffed, and a few of the other SS men laughed. He raised his bloody hand and cuffed Franz backhanded across the cheek. The stinging blow was hard enough to swivel Franz’s head, but he suspected that Schmidt had restrained himself. “Get back in line, you stupid Jew!”

  Schmidt turned and marched back to his desk. He deliberately stepped on the fallen woman, eliciting a heavy groan from her, but he did not strike her again. Instead, he flopped back into his seat and snapped his fingers impatiently to the two nearest guards.

  They hurried over and grabbed Frau Kaufman—one by her feet, the other by her hands—and slung her toward the door. On their way past, Franz saw from her pained expression that she had regained consciousness. The guards opened the door and threw her out as though tossing a sack of flour. Another guard dropped a stained towel at Schmidt’s feet and quickly swept up the pool of blood. Franz recognized the cleanup for a well-practised procedure.

  Schmidt called out “Next!” as though he were only a passport office clerk processing routine applications. The petrified man at the head of the line had to be nudged forward by the person behind him.

  After a cursory interrogation, Schmidt allowed the trembling man in to see Eichmann. He turned away the next two in line—a full-figured young woman and her scrawny husband—with a tirade of profanities and insults but, possibly exhausted from the effort of pummelling Frau Kaufman, he did not rise from his seat to strike either of them.

  As Franz stepped forward with his head bowed low, he saw the man scurry out of Eichmann’s office. “What is it, kike?” Schmidt barked at Franz.

  “Sir, I have brought proof of my departure as Obersturmführer Eichmann requested.”

  Schmidt eyed him for a long moment. Finally, he stood up and turned to knock at Eichmann’s door. “Obersturmführer, the Jew Adler is back.”

  Franz couldn’t make out the reply from inside, but Schmidt opened the door and grunted for him to enter the office.

  Adolf Eichmann sat at his desk, looking as immaculate as before in his pressed black uniform. His short hair was slicked back, not a strand out of place. Again, the lieutenant made Franz stand and wait while he filled in form after form. Franz didn’t dare glance at his watch, but he guessed that almost ten minutes passed before Eichmann put down his pen and looked up at him. “Back so soon, Adler?” he said softly. “You must have enjoyed our conversation yesterday more than I did.”

  “Obersturmführer, I believe I have secured the correct paperwork to prove departure for my family.”

  “Is that so?” Eichmann leaned back in his chair. “And where does the good doctor and his family intend to go?”

  “Shanghai, Obersturmführer.”

  “Shanghai?” Eichmann let out a small laugh. “I should have guessed. The only place accepting Jews without visas. Which, I’m afraid, is about as welcoming as the world gets for your kind.” He sighed. “Still, so many Jews scuttling like rats off to that poor city. It’s doomed to become a Chinese Jerusalem. Or worse, another New York.”

  Franz knew better than to reply. Eichmann flicked his fingers impatiently. “I do not have all day. Show me your passport and proof of passage.”

  Hand steady but heart racing, Franz withdrew the handwritten boarding passes along with the passports. He passed them to the lieutenant, who scrutinized each ticket.

  Eichmann finally lowered the tickets to his desk. “Hannah is the Jew child, yes?”

  Franz nodded.

  Eichmann looked around the room theatrically. “And where are Jakob and Esther Adler?”

  “At home, Obersturmführer. I didn’t realize they also needed to attend.”

  “You clearly didn’t get legal advice from your brother, did you?” Eichmann’s malicious grin told Franz that he knew exactly what had happened to Karl. “Then again, I suppose I have no shortage of your kind to face in person.”

  Franz looked away, afraid his expression would betray his feelings. “Thank you, sir,” he mumbled.

  Eichmann grabbed another sheet of paper off his desk and slowly filled in the blanks. He picked it up and waved it in front of Franz. “You will sign this declaration on behalf of yourself and the others in your family. In it, you renounce claim to all property, assets and citizenship in the Reich, and you swear that you will never again return.”

  Eichmann slid the sheet across the desk to Franz. Without hesitation, or even reading the page, Franz signed his name and dated it beside the two places marked with an X. Eichmann laughed. “You people really would sell your own mothers to save yourselves, wouldn’t you?”

  Eichmann snatched back the declaration and reached for another form that Franz recognized as the Führungszeugnis, or certificate of good conduct, which any person emigrating from Germany also required. The lieutenant signed and stamped it in red with the official eagle-clutching-a-swastika seal. He then stamped the passports and boarding passes. He bundled the documents together and held them out. Before Franz could take hold of them, Eichmann yanked his hand back. “Tell me something, Adler. Do you really think you can outrun destiny?”

  “No, Obersturmführer.” Then, without thinking, he blurted, “I don’t believe anyone can.”

  Eichmann glared at him. “I would be careful with your tongue, Jew,” he said quietly. “My destiny—like all good Germans—is to bask in the glory of the Third Reich. Your destiny, like that of your entire miserable race, is annihilation.” He tossed the passport, boarding passes and the exit
visa over the desk and onto the floor at Franz’s feet.

  Franz dropped to his knees and scooped up the documents. He stuffed them in his pocket, turned and hurried out of the office without a word. He raced past Schmidt and the line of terrified faces behind the desk.

  Out in the moist air, Franz almost laughed with relief. But as he walked the two miles from the Prinz Eugen Strasse to his father’s home on Robert-Hamerling Strasse, a new thought darkened his mood. Father. How will I possibly persuade him to accompany us?

  Franz walked up the steps of the brownstone to the main floor suite. He knocked on Jakob’s door, gently enough so as not to alarm him into thinking it might be the authorities.

  His father’s appearance stunned Franz. Normally, Jakob lived in a suit and tie, even on bank holidays, but now he wore slacks, an open shirt, a cardigan and slippers, all black. His grey hair was dishevelled and, for the first time in Franz’s memory, his father had thick stubble on his cheeks and chin.

  Franz considered hugging his father but instead shook his outstretched hand. “I’m sorry, Father,” he said, still at a loss for more meaningful words.

  Jakob nodded and turned back for the sitting room. Franz followed his father, who moved slowly and had to stop twice to catch his breath on the way to the couches, which were no more than twenty feet from the door. Franz was surprised to see unlit Sabbath candles on the table behind Jakob and a prayer book lying open beside them. His father had lived a secular existence, and Franz had not seen any religious items in his parents’ home since his mother died, fourteen years earlier. “Papa, are you sitting shiva?” he asked, bewildered.

  Jakob shrugged. “You and I may have long ago given up on Jewish customs.” He stopped to gulp a few breaths. “However, your brother never did. I feel I owe this to him.”

  Franz summoned a grin. “I suppose it’s never too late to find God.”

  “Oh, Franz, in my case, it is far too late.” Jakob wheezed. “Besides, at this time, I think we Jews should be far more concerned with God finding us rather than vice versa.”

  Franz noticed an ominous bluish tinge to his father’s lips. “Papa, are you still taking the theophylline pills?” he asked, referring to the latest treatment for emphysema.

  “I will need a few more,” Jakob said.

  Franz dug a pill bottle out of his pant pocket. “This is the last of my stock.”

  Jakob accepted it with a shaky hand. “It will do.”

  “I will find a new supply as soon as we reach Shanghai.”

  Jakob tilted his head but said nothing.

  “Papa, I have good news.” Franz went on to explain about the last-minute berths he had secured on the Conte Biancamano. He locked eyes with his father and repeated the lines he had rehearsed on the way over. “I understand your desire to stay in Vienna until the end, Papa. But Vienna has become an ugly place. Mama and Karl might have died here, but it’s unfair to their memories to mistake the Vienna of today for the same wonderful city in which they lived. This is no longer our home.”

  Jakob nodded. “I agree, son.”

  “All we have left is each other. Now, of all times, we need to stay together as a family. Hannah needs her opa. Esther needs you too.” He paused. “And I refuse to leave without you, Papa.”

  Jakob, the consummate lawyer, measured Franz with unreadable eyes. “Son, I intend to join you in Shanghai.”

  “You … you will?” Franz exclaimed, shocked by the unexpected capitulation.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s wonderful.” Franz beamed. “I expected you to put up more of a fight.”

  Jakob shrugged. “You are surprisingly persuasive for a doctor.” “I must have absorbed a little something from all the great legal minds in the family.”

  “Of course, I cannot leave with you this Sunday.” Jakob stopped to catch his breath. “No. I think I will follow you on that Japanese ocean liner next month.”

  “But, Papa—”

  Jakob held up his hand. “I cannot walk any distance. Once you land, you will need to find somewhere to live. By the time … I arrive you will have had a chance to establish a home.” He paused again for a few more breaths. “Franz, it is for the best for all of us.”

  Jakob’s impeccable logic left Franz speechless. He recognized that he had just been outmanoeuvred. And in that moment, he realized that he would never see his father again.

  CHAPTER 8

  The temperature had tumbled overnight. A centimetre of wet snow blanketed Vienna, turning the streets slick. Franz and Hannah sat in the back seat of the taxi, silently holding hands as the cab wormed its way through traffic, forced to bypass cars and trucks that had slid into each other or the sidewalk.

  Hannah stared out the window. Franz sensed his daughter’s homesickness growing by the minute but did not share the sentiment. He carried his losses in his heart. Even as they passed landmarks such as the Imperial Palace, which he had known his entire life, he was far too preoccupied for nostalgia. He only wished the taxi would move faster. And he worried Esther might have trouble reaching the railway station with the roads in such poor condition.

  Esther had insisted on spending her final night in Vienna in her own home to organize her belongings. Franz understood. Packing his whole life into one suitcase had proved far tougher than he anticipated. Never much of a clothes horse, he picked his two least-worn suits, opting to wear one on the trip and throw the other in his bag along with a few sweaters, slacks and short-sleeved shirts, since he had heard that Shanghai sweltered in the summer. But he struggled with the rest of his possessions.

  Eventually, he chose his most precious surgical tools—the set that his mentor, Dr. Ignaz Malkin, had left him. He also tucked his Zeiss-Ikon plate camera into the bag. He pored through his wedding album and pared down the photos. He could not face another photo of Hilde’s luminous smile or Karl’s laughing eyes. Eventually, he gave up and just blindly tore out pages.

  The taxi skidded to a stop in front of Vienna’s oldest and largest railway station, the Südbahnhof. As a child, Franz had always arrived at the grand old station giddy with anticipation. For the Adler brothers, the Südbahnhof, with its nineteenth-century classical facade, was synonymous with adventure.

  Concerned about his dwindling cash reserve, Franz waved off the two approaching porters. Instead, he lugged their two cases toward the platform himself. Hannah, who wore two shirts and a sweater beneath her summer jacket and winter coat, carried a small sack with books and snacks slung over her shoulder and clasped Schweizer Fräulein in her good arm.

  Though their overnight express train to Trieste wasn’t scheduled to depart for another three hours, Franz was glad to arrive early. The lineup already ran beyond Platform Five. Franz scanned the faces in line but saw no sign of Esther.

  The howling wind blew intermittent gusts of wet snow into the station. Franz knelt down and retucked Hannah’s scarf snugly into her collar.

  The Jews on the platform were easy to distinguish from Gentiles, because they invariably carried bulkier cases and were surrounded by clusters of distraught loved ones. Few, if any, had dry eyes. Jakob had been too unwell to see them off. Franz was almost relieved. As guilty as he already felt about decamping from Vienna without his father, to have to watch while the train pulled away, leaving Jakob behind on the platform, would have been too much to bear.

  Hannah let go of his hand and rushed off in her slightly lopsided gait toward the main terminal. Franz was about to chase after when he noticed Esther, dressed in a long black coat, gloves and hat, approaching with a porter wheeling her trunk behind her.

  Hannah threw her arms around Esther’s midsection. “Tante!” she cried. Esther walked hand in hand with Hannah toward Franz. “Where’s Onkel Karl?” Hannah demanded.

  “He’s not coming with us,” Esther replied.

  Hannah looked crestfallen. “Is he staying with Opa?”

  “I suppose he is, darling,” Esther said.

  Hannah turned wide-eyed to he
r father for clarification. Franz smiled and mussed her hair. “Just think of it, liebchen. You get your auntie to yourself for the whole ocean voyage.”

  Hannah nodded weakly. Franz turned to his sister-in-law. “Is everything all right, Essie?”

  “Nothing is all right,” she sighed. “But everything is in order, I hope.”

  The express train rolled to a halt at the platform. After the arriving passengers noisily disembarked, guards and customs officials began separating out the Gentiles, who merely had to flash proof of not being Jewish to board. The line for the Jews moved forward in fits and starts. After ninety minutes, the Adlers’ turn finally came.

  A pale, fleshy customs inspector sat at the desk on the platform. He bore such a striking resemblance to the storm trooper who had clubbed the Yacobsens that Franz’s heart was sent racing. “Your passports and certificates of good conduct,” he grumbled.

  Franz and Esther dug out their documents and passed them to the official. He examined each piece languidly. “Are either of you carrying valuables or cash beyond the permitted one hundred Reichsmarks?”

  “No, sir,” Esther said, and Franz shook his head.

  “Time to inspect your bags.”

  The official made Franz lift each case onto the table, beginning with Hannah’s. She watched expressionlessly as the man rifled through, leaving a dishevelled heap of tangled clothes. He pushed it away for Franz to reassemble. “Next piece.”

  Franz heaved Esther’s trunk onto the desk. The inspector pawed through her belongings with the same disregard that he had shown Hannah’s. Suddenly, he stopped and looked up at them, his arm buried deep in the pile of Esther’s clothes. “What do we have here?”

  Franz feared that the inspector might have found her camouflaged gold or jewellery. He glanced over to Esther, who had paled noticeably.

  The inspector pulled out a rolled canvas. “A Monet? Or perhaps a Rembrandt?” he snickered as he began to unroll it. “You do realize the penalty for trying to smuggle valuable artwork out of the Reich?”