Felix was waiting for me on the corner, smoking a cigarette as he glanced at the morning’s paper. The train to Löwendorf would not leave for three hours, he said, and he wondered if I would mind if we had a late lunch at the Hotel Adlon, which was nearby. Just the sight of him lifted my mood, and I was amused, as I often was, by his thinking or at least pretending that I had the choice of refusing him. One would have thought that having my company was the one thing lacking in his life.
As we walked the short distance to the hotel, he explained that the Ministry of Defense had built two special air-raid shelters at the Adlon at Hitler’s order to ensure the safety of the foreign delegations who were the hotel’s patrons, as well as party members whose offices were in nearby Wilhelmstrasse. The shelters had been rather like first- and third-class compartments on a train. “The original shelter for hotel guests was a square plaster box only five yards underground, while a vast shelter deep in the earth with running water, private rooms, and a loudspeaker system was reserved for more important visitors, who were awarded special pink tickets. Those unfortunate enough to be directed to the first shelter protested with such fury that soon everyone was admitted to the superior shelter, with or without a ticket. The first shelter is now used to store abandoned suitcases.”
Herr Adlon rushed from the dining room when he saw Felix, guiding us smoothly past the crowd of men and women noisily waving cartons of cigarettes in the hope of obtaining a table or at least a room upstairs. Felix waited (I noticed that he was one of the few people who did not glance ceaselessly around the room) while Herr Adlon, smiling as if he had the pleasure of seeing me every afternoon and again in the evening, pulled out my chair (I saw that he knew not to kiss my hand). “No morels today, Herr Metzenburg,” he said mournfully as he lit Felix’s cigarette, nodding to an elderly waiter with a magnum of wine. He took our coats with a wink, promising to look after them. Felix ordered our lunch (caviar with toast, an omelet, endive salad, and champagne). I opened my napkin and spread it neatly across my lap.
I was unused to eating in restaurants, and I watched him closely. I was relieved to be wearing Inéz’s gray suit and lavender gloves—I could see that people were looking at me, but only because I was with Felix. He, too, was staring at me or, rather, staring at Inéz’s suit. “You’re looking very well today,” he said.
The other women in the room wore the new short skirts, some made from curtain material, with shoes cut from cork, and jersey turbans (no shampoo). The men were in dark double-breasted suits, their hats placed next to them on the tables, their coats on the backs of their chairs, and a few were in uniform (Kreck said that it was vulgar to wear your uniform on private occasions). People were staring at a small dark-haired woman who sat with a man wearing a Nazi armband. She wore neither a turban nor a chintz skirt but a tweed coat flecked with metallic thread and a beret stuck with several brooches. Felix noticed that I, too, was staring at her. “Mademoiselle Chanel,” he said, “and her protector, Baron von Dinklage.” Felix caught the eye of the baron, and they nodded to each other. I was shocked, having not yet understood that it was possible to make beautiful things even if you were corrupt, unlike the Irish lace makers in Ballycarra, who made beautiful things and were only thought to be corrupt. I knew of Mademoiselle Chanel, of course—she and Inéz were old friends.
“Did you notice, by any chance, that Holbein of a goldsmith in the window of the auction house?” Felix asked. “That is where Dorothea found the little Nicholas Hilliard she gave me for my birthday.”
“Yes,” I said. “Suitable for hiding.”
To my delight, he smiled. “I can think of nothing else. It’s rather like seeing a woman you desire. Perhaps better. Of course, it belongs to the Czernins. I’m thinking of buying it.” He lifted himself from his chair to greet two friends, men who, unlike the others, did not look as if they were on a stage. They didn’t look as if they belonged there, either, despite their natural air of privilege. Of course, it was these men who’d once had the dining room of the Adlon to themselves. Their tense grace barely concealed their rage.
I found it difficult to look at people, fearful of what more I might see. Was the girl with the frowning Oberstleutnant a collaborator? Did she hide Jews in her attic? Did the man in the chalk-striped suit use Polish slaves in his factories? Did that woman sell gold on the black market? Passports? Art stolen from Jews? Felix had told me that in Hamburg the daily auctions of the confiscated possessions of Jewish citizens were so crowded that it was standing room only. No one was who he appeared to be—it was too dangerous to be yourself, unless you were one of them, and perhaps even then. Even I was pretending to be someone else, at least for the afternoon.
Felix caught sight of Count von Arnstadt, standing in the doorway to the dining room, and nodded to him. My heart sank. I wanted to be alone with Felix, people staring at us as we toasted each other with champagne (even if Felix didn’t toast).
“In the beginning,” Felix said, smiling at a woman in a heavy mink coat (people no longer left their coats with an attendant, as they were certain to be stolen) whose gloved hand Arnstadt was bending to kiss, “my friends said, ‘Oh, come now, mon vieux, it’s not quite so bad as you feared,’ but in a very few weeks, they all said, ‘Nothing could be as hellish as this. What were we thinking?’ ” He was silent, looking both contemptuous and amused. “We once found it humorous to buy those postcards sold at newspaper kiosks—perhaps you’ve seen them or even sent one yourself—Göring in a fur hat and cowboy boots or the Führer looking apoplectic.”
Arnstadt at last reached our table, a mocking smile in readiness for Felix. “The Adlon is full of beautiful women today,” he said as he sat down.
“They can’t all be Poles,” said Felix.
“And Helldorf with three of the loveliest. Of course, he is the richest man in Berlin. Thanks to the extremely lucrative market in passports.”
Felix opened his mouth to speak, then closed it as he caught sight of Baron von Dinklage coming toward us. At Felix’s expression, the baron turned into the lobby—Felix’s combination of decadence and rectitude made him difficult to read, but the baron seemed to have no trouble at all.
“Sie haben Glück gehabt bisher, Felix,” said Arnstadt. “All die Jahre hatte ich keine Ahnung, dass Sie so ein Spieler sind.” You’ve had luck so far. All these years, I had no idea you were such a gambler.
Felix frowned in irritation and turned to me. “Maeve, du hast deinen Sekt gar nicht getrunken.” It was not so much my thirst that concerned him, as his wish to warn the count that I understood German. He was silent as the waiter filled his glass with champagne. “I hope that you’ll have lunch with us,” he said to Arnstadt when the waiter was gone. “Thanks to the precautions taken by our Führer, it is the place where we are least likely to die.”
“Unfortunately, today is the day I deliver the Little Friend to the Chancellery.” He paused to light a cigarette. “You may be interested to know that our friends’ affairs are less Feydeau than we like to imagine.”
“Quite interested,” Felix said.
Arnstadt looked at his watch. “We banned Helen Keller today.” Sensing my confusion, he gave me a smile that could only be called sinister.
“Stop teasing her,” Felix said.
“Would that I were,” said the count.
The melodic ring of a gong, more like a dinner bell than an alarm, sent a surge of fear through the room. It was the signal for guests, waiters, bellboys, cooks, and Herr Adlon himself to race for the stairs. We went down a narrow, harshly lit staircase, Felix’s hand not quite touching the small of my back, and found ourselves with sixty people in a large whitewashed room with rows of wooden benches, much like a country schoolroom. Arnstadt had disappeared. I saw Mademoiselle Chanel and her baron ushered into a private room.
Felix made a place for me on a bench, regretting its roughness, and we sat down. It was much colder underground than in the dining room (we never saw our coats again). “I apologize,”
he said, “for the smell.” I thought at first that he meant the smell of rotting potatoes, but he said, “When the ban against bathing more than twice a week was issued, it never occurred to me that some people were relieved.”
There were men and women on the benches behind and in front of us, and in each of the other eight rooms, and the conversations were in many languages. The young man next to me, whom I’d noticed in the restaurant having lunch with a woman I took to be his grandmother, was reading a book by H. P. Lovecraft. The boy’s grandmother was not with him, and I wondered if they’d been separated and if she was safe in another room. The waiters who had shoved their way down the stairs a few minutes earlier draped white cloths over their arms and held trays of pink gin cocktails at the end of each row.
The loudspeaker began to hum. A man’s voice, in the tone he might use to read a child a story, said, “A number of horses from the riding stables in Tiergarten, their manes and tails on fire, are now racing up and down Kurfürstendamm,” and several peopled laughed loudly. Men opened newspapers, women made lists with little gold pens, their handbags used for support, and some fell into a deep sleep, chins propped in their hands. Even Felix was quiet, and I was able to stare at him. I realized as I watched him how much I had come to trust him. With the vanity of a beloved man, he assumed that the doing and undoing of daily life (the smell of the unwashed, the lack of mushrooms, the uncomfortable benches) were, if not his responsibility, at least his to ameliorate, and I had come to expect it of him, too.
“The Chancellery is issuing new regulations concerning domestic staff,” he said, startling me. “You, Miss Palmer, will be required to sleep at least nine hours a day, and you will have one entirely free day as opposed to two free afternoons a week. Which means that today has been your free day.”
I was sorry not to have a quick answer for him. His odd, sometimes irksome way of speaking as if he were an Edwardian lord still rattled me. A young woman sitting in the row in front of us had no such hesitation. Speaking English with a Viennese accent, she said in a voice just loud enough for us to hear, “Certainly wish mine would bring me to the Adlon on my day off.” She turned her head to smile at us. Having already sized up our relationship from our conversation, she had not yet had actual sight of Felix, and when she did—his imperious, attractive, rich self—she liked what she saw. To my irritation, she swung around on the bench, not an easy thing to do, and sat facing us, her silky knees touching Felix’s knees.
I did not look at him for fear that he liked it. I had an impulse to snag her stockings, but to my relief, the little bell rang to signify that the raid was over and that it was safe to return to the dining room. Felix helped the woman to her feet—she was a bit stiff after sitting in such a cramped space—steadying her with a hand on her elbow. Turning every few steps to make sure that we were behind him, he explained that he did not wish to see us survive an air raid only to be trampled by the French ambassador. It was Friday and the foreign diplomats would be rushing to the private dining room upstairs for their weekly lunch meeting with Ribbentrop. In the lobby, Felix kissed the woman’s hand and said that had circumstances been less trying, he would have been pleased to accompany her wherever she was going. She kept her hand in his rather longer than I thought necessary. She did not say good-bye to me when she left to find her friends.
Felix watched her go and then turned to me with an amused smile. “Would you mind if we didn’t stay for lunch?” he asked.
I said that I didn’t mind at all (I’d been dreaming of the omelet). On the street, a disorderly company of shouting boys, members of Hitler Youth, was marching past, spades in hand, to the excited shouts of the crowd. Felix turned his back to them, the better to light his cigarette.
When I finished my chores, I sometimes took a book or my workbasket (and sometimes nothing at all) to the temple in the park, where I climbed to the roof to sit under the striped awning. I could see across the park to the Night Wood and beyond the river to the village.
As the Reich prohibited Jews from owning a sewing machine or typewriter unless it could be proved that it was a gift from an Aryan, Herr Felix had written a letter that Caspar delivered to the police station in Ludwigsfelde, stating that he, Felix von Metzenburg, had presented Herr Hector Elias with an Olivetti typewriter in 1937. I was curious to know what Kreck thought about this (we both knew it was a lie), but he said nothing, telling me a joke instead. “In the Great War, they used to say it would be over when officers had to eat the same food as soldiers. Now they say it will be over when Göring can fit into Goebbels’s trousers.” I realized that I’d never heard him laugh before.
America at last entered the war. Caspar and I huddled in his room, listening to the reports of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The Japanese had sent nearly four hundred planes, flying in three waves, to bomb the Americans. Eighteen ships, including two battleships, had been lost, with three thousand dead. The Japanese had also attacked a hospital in Singapore, killing many of the doctors and a British corporal on an operating table. Hundreds of people, both staff and patients, many of them wounded, were marched to a warehouse where they were kept until morning, when the Japanese bayoneted them to death.
1942
There had been rumors all year about the murder of Jewish prisoners, but people continued to dismiss them. The villagers, and even some of the Metzenburgs’ friends, said that while they had long and valuable friendships with one or two special Jews, the humiliation and misery inflicted on the country were in part the fault of the Jews, who had forgotten their place, lording it over the German people for far too long. Felix, when confronted with this commonplace (many Jews were Germans), answered that the madness that had overtaken Europe served to make us more alike, not less, but the villagers only smiled at him and shook their heads.
Felix said that he once believed that humanism had been founded on the shared need to know. It had grown more and more apparent to him, however, that the opposite was true—we were united by our shared need not to know. “By the time that we understand what is happening,” he said, “we are already complicit.”
To the surprise of everyone, including Herr Elias, Felix decided to give a small lunch in Herr Elias’s honor, choosing a day that fell in the same week as the Jewish feast of Passover. Dorothea asked him to reconsider the timing of the lunch, but he was insistent, irritably announcing that he would not succumb to intimidation. “No one is asking you to succumb to intimidation,” she said; “rather, I want you to consider that you are putting your guests in danger.” He refused to change his mind. The trees in the orchard were in bloom, and he told Kreck to fill the rooms of the Yellow Palace with branches of flowering plum and cherry. Caspar and I spent the morning on the river, fishing for brown trout with a footprint dun I found in the gun room.
I didn’t know the story of Passover, and I’m not sure that anyone other than Herr Elias did, either. I’d asked Felix about it, and he read some of Exodus aloud to us at the table, much to the boredom of Inéz, who was spending two nights at Löwendorf on her way from Cairo to Paris. She sat next to Herr Elias, and I was on his other side. Next to Felix was Princess Bibesco, who was traveling with Inéz. Princess Bibesco wore a white silk dress embroidered with red roosters. Ropes of pearls were wrapped around her fingers and wrists, and on her head was a stiff crown of lace embroidered with a crest. (Inéz later told me that the princess had posed nude for the painter Boldini, something that Inéz herself had always hoped to do—he’d painted Inéz’s portrait when she was sixteen, but unfortunately she’d been clothed.) If Inéz was bored and the princess opaque, Dorothea was enraged. She had again asked Felix to abandon his idea of a Passover lunch that morning, and he had again refused, rather grandly declaring that as horror was here to stay, she’d best get used to it. “Horror?” she’d repeated, over and over again, her voice barely audible.
Felix had placed three tins of his special blend of Turkish tobacco and some packets of cigarette paper at Herr Elias’s place. The g
uest of honor was late, having walked from the village (Jews were forbidden to ride bicycles), a yellow star pinned unevenly to the left side of his tweed jacket. Felix greeted him affectionately. “Ihr Stern ist unsere Schande,” he said. Your star is our shame.
“Some people believe that a government that forbids certain of its citizens to possess toasters, irons, bicycles, or even a dog must feel unsure of its power, and this makes them careless,” Dorothea said, her voice strained, but everyone ignored her.
The laws of the Reich forbade Jews to wear wool. They could not ride on trains or go to the theater, libraries, zoos, and parks. In Berlin, Jews could shop only between four and five in the afternoon, and they could not enter the district known as Judenbannbizirke, which stretched from Wilhelmstrasse to Unter den Linden. They were forbidden to drive or to use public telephones. They were not allowed in air-raid shelters. Herr Elias, despite wearing his star and giving up his bicycle, was breaking the law—his tweed jacket, his ginger cat, his gramophone.
We had a feast of wild asparagus, trout, warm potato salad, honey with the dried figs and dates brought by Inéz from Cairo, and many bottles of wine. When Felix apologized that there was no gefilte fish—he’d considered asking Schmidt to make it, but as it had never been served at Löwendorf and we were lacking many of the ingredients, he hadn’t been confident of success—Inéz asked, “Gefilte fish? Qu’est-ce que le poisson gefilte?” I noticed that Herr Elias and Felix looked at each other for a moment, Herr Elias smiling slightly.
“Mousse de poisson,” said Princess Bibesco.
“Ah,” said Inéz. “Comme une quenelle.”
The Life of Objects Page 9