by Betsy Carter
“You are probably right. Thank you again for writing it.”
Egon told himself that it was human nature for people to place themselves in the center of a story regardless of whose story it was. So what? The fear and anxiety that had defined his days and nights were gone. Now anything was possible.
His joy lasted a little more than a week before he found himself slipping into a different kind of worry. He’d been breathing danger for so long; now that he was back in his routine, the air smelled used. Everything had changed, but nothing had changed. He still went to work at Art’s every day and came home to the same apartment every night. He was still engaged to Catrina, and he and Meyer met for coffee and cake on most Sundays. The routine that he’d arduously cobbled together over the past three years suddenly seemed an artifice, an excuse for a life. The smallness of his days and circle of friends now felt suffocating, but he had yet to figure out how to live larger.
Egon’s reprieve from the INS was inevitably overshadowed by current events. As Meyer wrote in his July 14 column, The news from Germany smells like rotten eggs. Two weeks ago in Frankfurt, a group of “scholars” gathered for a conference to discuss the “problem” of European Jewry. Adolf Eichmann, head of the Gestapo section of Jewish affairs, has announced that he plans to restrict Jewish emigration from Germany. Hitler has taken Yugoslavia and Greece, and has repeated his threat to destroy all the Jews of Europe. Is this not more worthy of a cover on Time magazine than Bing Crosby?
Rumors of mass murders were swirling, and every day, it seemed, someone heard of someone back home who’d been arrested. The news came as one blow after another to the Schnabels. Their Germany, the one they’d been certain they’d return to one day, was disappearing. All that remained was what they’d created in America. Their tiny apartment was cluttered with the furniture they’d brought from Frankfurt. They ate only foods they’d eaten in Germany. They played German music and had no American friends. Out of necessity, they bought American clothes, but only when what they’d brought from Germany had worn out.
America, they believed, had spoiled their friends and destroyed their values, but they didn’t even see the biggest blow coming.
It was the second Friday in July when Georg’s boss, Mr. Harold, called him into the back of the store and pulled the curtain closed. Steam heat from the irons always kept the store hot, but on this humid day, the place felt as if the air had been sucked out of it.
“I won’t beat around the bush with you, Mr. Schnabel,” said Mr. Harold. “Things are not working out.”
Georg felt sweat snail down his back.
“Customers have complained about you. They can’t understand you. You don’t speak our language.” Mr. Harold licked the bottom of his gray mustache as he talked.
“Have I not done a good job?” asked Georg. The steam clogged his throat.
“You’ve done a fine job folding and ironing, but half of our work is making customers feel we’re part of their community, and someone with your… ah… limited English makes them feel the opposite. Ya know, a little uncomfortable. Maybe even threatened.”
Georg wanted to promise he’d work on his English, wanted to ask for another chance. But these things felt like begging, which was something he would not do. So he sat, stiff and mute, he who used to swagger around the courtroom and argue cases in front of top judges.
When he told Kaethe he’d been fired, this was the part that shamed him the most. “I didn’t fight back. I just sat there like the stupid refugee he thought me to be.”
Kaethe tried to shrug it off. “So I’ll take in more dresses. You’ll find another job, one where they’ll feel lucky to have a distinguished person such as yourself.”
But Georg didn’t find another job. He didn’t even look. When customers came to see Kaethe, he’d go into the bedroom and close the door behind him. He stopped wearing suits and ties, and there were days when he didn’t leave the apartment at all.
Daydreaming one morning, Kaethe said aloud, “I wonder if our lilies bloomed this season.”
Georg closed his eyes. “There would be dozens of them now. The peach-colored ones; those are my favorite. The pear trees, they must be pruned. The rain has been good for the roses. I can smell them even now.” Kaethe saw the strain go out of his face, as if he were being carried by a wave to a safer time.
If this was what would bring him back to life, then Kaethe would ride that wave with him. “The foyer needs painting by now, and we should get someone to tend to the tarnish on the chandelier,” she said.
Georg nodded. “Finally, we will repair the lintel over the front door.”
It was Kaethe’s idea to plan the party they would have when they returned to Frankfurt. They obsessed over the details. Should they serve goose or duck? (“Duck, of course,” insisted Georg. “Goose is liable to be overcooked and dry.”) He said they’d begin with foie gras, but Kaethe said no, something lighter, salmon croquettes perhaps. Which dishes would they use? Would they set out the linen napkins with their initials, or her mother’s floral ones? They wrote down the names and addresses of the people they’d invite, though most of them weren’t living in Frankfurt anymore, if they were living at all.
Planning for the party took a week. When there was nothing left to plan, Georg fell quiet again. Kaethe kept straight pins in her mouth as she fitted her customers, ensuring there’d be no small talk. She’d been buoyed by Georg’s enthusiasm for the party, but now she could feel the life ebbing out of him. Always a man of proud bearing, he allowed his shoulders to stoop and had a shuffle in his gait. Kaethe desperately tried to pull him back into old memories, but now nothing engaged him.
Georg began the conversation early one drizzly evening. “I’m tired, Kaethe. I’m close to sixty and what do I have? I have no future. I have no home. I’ve lost everything: my honor, my profession. I can’t even hold a job. Can you imagine if our parents were alive and knew I had been fired from a dry cleaner’s? I don’t know what to do next. I don’t know what you should do next. I only know that it is now intolerable for me.”
Kaethe looked up from a blouse sleeve she was mending. “You have me. We have each other. What are you saying?”
“Ach, it’s nothing,” he said, waving his hand. “I’m being foolish.”
“No, tell me. What’s intolerable?”
“Everything. My life. Our future. What’s happening in Germany. Sometimes… I don’t know. Sometimes I think I can’t go on.”
“Of course you can, you always do.”
“Lately, I’ve been feeling that I can’t. I’m so very tired.”
“You must rest, then. You’re exhausted.”
“It’s not that kind of tired, liebchen. I’m tired in my heart. In my bones.”
She put down her mending. “What can I do?”
“You can let me do what I want to do.”
“And that is what?”
“Must I really spell it out for you?”
The room was darkening. Kaethe sat in the rocking chair they’d brought from Germany; Georg on the desk chair he’d used in his law office.
Kaethe’s voice was hoarse when she finally spoke. “Have you made up your mind about this?”
“I have.”
“And what about me?”
“I’m sorry.” Georg blew his nose. “I feel I have no choice. Do you understand that? You’re still a handsome woman. You have life left in you. You will find some nice American man to take care of you. You’ll see, it will be a relief to be rid of your old useless husband.”
“You talk nonsense, Georg.” Again she reached back in time. “Soon it will be apple season. Remember how heavy the trees get with all that fruit? I’ll make a compote. You love compote with fresh cream.” She made an mmm sound, hoping to carry Georg along.
“It won’t work, Kaethe. We will never go back there,” he said.
“Of course we will. You’re always saying how—”
“It’s ruined for us. Who can be sure if our
house will even be standing? I have tried, I really have.”
They stared at each other, neither willing to say what they both knew would come next.
Kaethe went into the kitchen. On the top shelf, above the stove, they kept a bottle of Drambuie, which they saved for company and special occasions. She poured them each a finger. They drank it in the dark, then drank a second finger before Kaethe finally spoke. “If this is what you decide to do, then I do it with you.”
Georg got up and brought the bottle of Drambuie into the living room. He poured them each another drink. Before they sipped, they clinked their glasses together. In the wordless shadow of evening, they could see the tears in each other’s eyes.
Georg got their papers in order. They wrote a will leaving what money and few possessions they had to Egon. Despite everything, they still felt affection for the old life they’d had with him in Frankfurt. Kaethe stopped taking in sewing. They polished the furniture, cleaned the floors, folded their clothes, and washed the windows. They spent lavishly on food they’d craved but never thought they could afford: fresh tongue, seven-layer cake, eye of round roast, duck, foie gras, salmon croquettes, raspberry tarts, and pricey bottles of Liebfraumilch.
For eight days they ate and drank whatever and whenever they pleased. They stopped sleeping in any natural order and would doze off after a big meal, then awake to another. On the ninth day, neither could bear to look at any more food. They lay in their bed half-dressed. Georg rolled onto his side and looked at Kaethe. She had gray pouches under her eyes, and her face was bloated. “I think it’s time,” he said.
They got up and straightened the bed, then both of them bathed. He put on a freshly starched shirt and trousers, she her favorite dress from home, whose side buttons she had to leave undone because it no longer fit. She combed her hair and put on rouge and lipstick; he splashed on some aftershave. He opened the remaining bottle of Liebfraumilch and pulled a glassine bag from his pocket. It contained thirty Seconal, which his doctor had given him when Georg had told him he was having trouble sleeping. “Take one at a time with plenty of wine,” he told Kaethe.
She sat in her rocker, he in his desk chair. They held hands as they swallowed the pills and drank the wine.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“We’ve had a good life,” she answered.
As they got drowsy, their sentences dissolved into words.
“Fruit trees… piano… roses… chandelier…”
If orderliness can be considered a legacy, that’s what Georg left behind. Before he and Kaethe took the pills, he slipped a note under the superintendent’s door. Using the old law firm letterhead, he wrote in his cursive hand:
8 August 1941
To Whom It May Concern: By the time you receive this notice, my wife Kaethe and I will be deceased. Our will is on the dining room table under a silver bell. The rent for August is in an envelope next to it. Contact Egon Schneider (LO7-9301) and ask him to tell whoever might be interested about our passing. Mr. Schneider can dispose of our bodies in any Jewish cemetery of his choosing. I have signed a blank check to take care of the cost. It is in the same envelope as the rent money. Should Mr. Schneider inquire about the reason for our death, please tell him that no one is to be sad, that we have had enough, that this is what we wanted, that we are sorry to inconvenience him.
Mr. and Mrs. Georg Schnabel
The call came to Egon the next day. The superintendent spoke quickly, obviously eager to dump Mr. and Mrs. Georg Schnabel into someone else’s care. The horror of hearing this news was different from the horror of hearing about someone lost in Germany. The worst thing that could happen to immigrants had happened to the Schnabels. They were trapped. They’d made it to America, but they couldn’t adjust to this country, and they couldn’t go back to their old one. Their circumstances were of their own making, and in some way, that made their deaths even more grotesque and personal.
Meyer did what he always did when his feelings overwhelmed him: He turned to his typewriter. In his next column, he wrote: That grand master of hatred and misery, Hitler, has reached across the ocean and claimed two more victims, Kaethe and Georg Schnabel. He described who they’d been in Frankfurt and how they’d come to New York two years earlier, when they could no longer rationalize staying home. He called their deaths a tragedy. They brought the old country with them to America and never gave up hope of returning to Frankfurt. As a reminder of the life they cherished, they kept a silver dinner bell on their kitchen table and wore clothes more suited to climbing the Tyrolean Alps than strolling through Manhattan. Their oddness was easy to mock, but their perseverance and deep love of country was something to be respected.
Meyer helped Egon arrange for the funeral the following day. The burial was at a Jewish cemetery in Fairview, New Jersey. Liesl, the Cohens and their baby, Meyer, Egon, and Catrina stood graveside that morning. The rabbi recited a blessing of peace as the caskets were lowered into the ground. Each person dumped a shovelful of soil onto the coffins. There must have been loose rocks in Meyer’s pile because the sound that it made when it hit the wooden caskets was the sputtering of pebbles. He pictured the Schnabels holding their hands over their ears. How they’d hate all this dirt. But there they were, locked in their boxes and helpless, being laid to rest by people they barely liked. What an inglorious end. Meyer placed his shovel down and ran into the woods that butted up against the graves.
Only Liesl ran after him. She found him doubled over, as if he was going to be sick. “It’s hard, I know,” she said, putting her arms around him.
He let himself be comforted and cried on her shoulder. They stood like that for a few minutes before he lifted his head and wiped his nose with the handkerchief she handed him. “I was so intolerant of them,” he said. “I wanted them to want what I did. I wanted them to embrace America. Not give up. I was harsh. With him, especially. That’s my way. I don’t think. I say or do whatever comes into my mind. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything.”
“I know you are,” said Liesl, rubbing his back.
“I’m sorry for the ridiculous night you and I had. I was so eager. I was confused.”
“I know,” she said.
“I’m sorry that I still haven’t gotten your pearls restrung.”
Liesl used her thumb to wipe his tears. “Poor Meyer, your brain is so quick, the rest of you has trouble keeping up. What happened with the Schnabels would have happened whether or not you were harsh to them.”
“Why are you being so nice to me?” asked Meyer.
Liesl fingered the single strand around her throat. “I still want them back.”
They laughed, and together they walked back to the group.
30.
The old rules were hard to follow. The new ones we make for ourselves are harder still.
—Meyer Leavitt, Aufbau, September 8, 1941
As always, Egon woke as the sun came up. In the two months since he’d received the second letter from the INS, he kept up his habit of going to the park in the morning. These days, he moved with intent and eagerness; his visits with the birds had more purpose. In addition to feeding them, he began sketching again. He sat and listened, and could distinguish the whistles and warbles of the European starlings from the incessant chirrup chirrup of the house sparrows. It made him laugh to think they might be saying cheer up, cheer up. With the bread crumbs spread around him, he sat so still that sometimes the pigeons would peck at his shoes. They would fly close to his face and stare at him with their doleful red-orange eyes, and he would feel certain that something had transpired between them. He became a young boy again, sitting in the Stadtwald with his mother. He could smell the gooseberry jam she’d eaten for breakfast and feel the smoothness of her skin as he leaned against her arm. The long, slender beak of a woodcock would flow from her pencil, and the bird’s sneezy tsiwick tsiwick would fill his ears.
He knew what Catrina would say about these moments, that his mother was keeping watch and guiding him
, and he thought how comforting it would be if she were right.
On the Tuesday after Labor Day, the sky was so lucid that everything beneath it looked new and clean. Egon felt the same way. It was as if a storm had blown through his head and cleared out all the debris. He was left standing, he and Catrina. Together they would be the Schneiders, perhaps not as successful as his parents but no less remarkable in their possibilities. He searched through his drawer for the blue-and-white-striped Arrow shirt that Catrina had given him for his birthday. He decided to wear his only suit, the navy blue one, and his brown Oxfords. Not so bad, he thought, catching his image in the hall closet mirror. He strode up to the Cloisters like a man about to break into song. At his usual bench, he fed the birds and sketched a starling and a herring gull. When he finished, he tucked the drawings into his pocket and leaned on the stone wall overlooking the Hudson. There was a hint of ocean breeze in the air. A knot of joy clumped in his throat. It was beautiful and magical, this New York City, and it made him sad that the Schnabels would never see it this way. Egon was different from them. He would never let himself give up the way they had.
When he arrived at Art’s and pulled open the front door, the odor smacked him in the face: sour and stale, as if sediments of Swiss cheese and ham had sunk into the floorboards. The light was as dim as at four thirty on a winter’s afternoon, and the sawdust looked gray and exhausted. His yellowing apron slumped on its hook with its miserable Cheese Man button pinned over its heart. Had he never noticed these things before, or had he just endured them?
He folded up the apron and stood by the door. When Art walked in, he was startled to find Egon waiting for him. “My goodness, we’re all dolled up today. To what do I owe this special greeting?” he asked.
“I am afraid this is no greeting, but a farewell,” said Egon. “I am grateful for the work you have given me, but now it is time for me to leave this job.” He handed Art the apron.