“No, better than that, actually. He said it made him cringe whenever Dad was on camera. He also said that the Jewish community banded together to get it canceled.”
“That’s a lie,” Mo contended. “BravoREAL came to us and offered us another two years. You know who pulled the plug? We did. Pandora and me. Not a bunch of torch-carrying, jealous Hebrews. We were getting death threats and we decided not to renew.”
“Literal death threats?” Jacob asked.
“It was just the occasional call at first. ‘Hitler had the right idea.’ Click. ‘There’s no good Jew like a dead Jew.’ Click. ‘Gas the women and children first.’ Click. Then the emails started coming to my account the last few months of the third season,” Mo said. “They scared the crap out of Pandora. We got the FBI involved—BravoREAL thought it’d be a good idea to run an entire episode about it—but they couldn’t find the coward responsible. But then he began to target the trips. Somehow he got their email addresses and sent them these repulsive pictures of Nazis executing Jewish boys their age by shooting them in the head, except this twisted fuck photoshopped our sons’ faces into the photos. Seriously psycho shit, Jacob. We gave them all new email addresses, but the same thing kept happening. You know the missing mezuzah by the front door? I told Mom and Dad it came off during an earthquake and broke, but the truth is, I came out one morning and someone had drawn a swastika on it with red nail polish. Can you believe there are actual people—real people with families and jobs and pets and friends—in the world who hate us so much that they’d terrorize my boys and come onto my property and do something like that?”
“They live and breathe and walk among us,” Jacob said, thinking of his dad.
Mo forked the steaks, sliced through one of them, and asked Jacob how rare he liked it. “That looks about perfect,” he replied, grabbing two plates from the cupboard.
Mo devoured his meat in a matter of seconds, washing it down with the rest of his beer, then belched loudly. “We’ll discuss you-know-what when Thistle gets here,” he said, rinsing off the plate and stashing it in the dishwasher. “I’m heading to bed. I have a ton of shit to take care of tomorrow,” and he squeezed Jacob’s shoulder on his way out of the kitchen.
“Night,” Jacob said, taking a bite, then setting his fork and knife down, his appetite gone, for every time he looked at the steak swimming in its own coagulating pink juices, his mind kept veering to the image of the bloody stain the peacock had left behind on the asphalt. One minute the bird had been there, the next it was lying in a white heap on the pavement. One minute it had been crying out to the dead, the next it was joining them. Long or short, precious or unappreciated, life makes dust out of everyone and everything eventually, incontrovertibly, Jacob thought, cutting the steak up into bite-size chunks to feed to Nieves.
In the dark, vacant backyard, the air was cold and ripe with brine, although the sea was miles and miles away. A thick fog had settled across the yard. “Nieves, here, girl,” Jacob called softly, approaching the redwood doghouse with the remains of his dinner.
The terrier poked her head out, snuffling the air, then shot out the door, barking and chasing one of her invisible nemeses. Jacob set the plate down, calling again to the barking, snarling dog, which tripped the motion sensors of the paranoid lights attached to the house. They blinked on, throwing the entire backyard into relief—and that’s when Jacob saw the opossum, which the dog had cornered. It was big and white, the same size as the terrier, and it was curled up into a ball, playing dead, its rodent head and tail tucked up and away. Nieves kept drawing near to it and then retreating, baring her fangs, her fur bristled, the bell on her collar jangling like a door that kept opening and closing.
“Nieves, enough,” he said, quickly grabbing her around the collar and picking her up, whispering into her ear that it was okay, that she needed to calm down. He held her close, even while she fought against him, poking her head through his arms to keep a constant and steady watch on her quarry. Then the lights went out. Jacob hoped the opossum would shove off now that the danger had passed. He couldn’t see it in the dark, but still he sensed movement nearby and the next thing he knew, he saw a quick burst of white that stirred and parted the fog. “I’m going to let you go, but you better be a good girl,” he whispered to the dog, which had stopped barking at last. “Go eat your meat.” Once he set her down in the grass, she tore away, yipping and yapping again, this time at ghosts.
Upstairs, Diet was sound asleep, the novel he’d been reading lying facedown on the floor where it had fallen from his hands. Die Leiden des jungen Werthers—The Sorrows of Young Werther, Goethe’s classic tale of a young man seduced and ultimately overcome by unrequited love. He picked up the book and set it on the nightstand, then went into the bathroom to shower, thinking about das kleinste Bad in der Welt back in Berlin and how yesterday—it was hard to believe it had only been yesterday—he had slipped into the shower with Diet, the first time they’d ever fucked in that tiny space. Mainly, they saved themselves for other places, darker, danker places, each carrying out the other’s fantasy of power and aggression.
It all started two years ago, during their first Christmas together in Berlin, when they got on their bikes and pedaled out to Diet’s sister’s house in Lichtenberg, an area rife with gangs of neo-Nazi skinheads and their sympathizers. Jacob had read about the neighborhood beforehand, for it was often cited as being a hotbed of anti-Semitic activity by the ADL, whose website Jacob often found himself obsessing over. It wasn’t snowing when they set out from their flat in Mitte on that cold Christmas Eve afternoon, but by the time they made it to the former Stasi prison that had been converted into middle-class housing—pristine white townhouses that sat in neat, tidy rows with tiny driveways that held tiny cars—the first of the flurries had begun to fall. They fell past the windows in gentle arcs as Jacob met Diet’s family for the first time—his twin sister, Dagmar, her husband, Tomas, and their parents, Leopold and Griselda, both retired attorneys. Leopold was long and lean like Diet, Griselda somewhat shrunken with her son’s same blue eyes.
Jacob removed his shoes, as was customary, it seemed, all over Germany, and then he followed Diet into the large, spacious kitchen, the heart of chez Krause, where the dinner table had already been set and Griselda was checking on the Christmas Eve goose.
“It’s a tradition in our family,” Diet said, leaning in and whispering to Jacob. “My mother makes her goose and we all tell her how delicious and juicy it is, though usually it’s dry and inedible. You’ll tell her you like it, yes?”
“Yes,” Jacob said, heeding the warning in Diet’s voice, a warning that he’d come to listen to ever since they’d moved to Germany, for Diet, who had hardly seemed German to Jacob while they’d been living in New York City, had renewed his marriage vows with his native country, embracing it with a scary nationalistic fervor.
Christmas Eve was more important than Christmas Day for most Germans, Tomas explained to him, after they’d all taken their seats at the table. His English wasn’t terrific, but it was far better than Leopold and Griselda’s, for he’d apparently lived in Brazil for a spell during college, where he’d learned both Portuguese and American English. “Not that bloody Queen’s English,” he said, chortling.
“He is loud and brash and stupid,” Diet had said of his brother-in-law. “We don’t particularly like him or the way he treats my sister. He’s such a boor, and an insufferable, dismissive one at that. But you’ll see what I mean.”
Yet so far Tomas had been the friendliest of the lot—with a smile on his face, he offered Jacob “an authentic German beer and not that swill you have over in America.”
The family chatted idly in German, and as they did, Diet kept turning to Jacob and translating what it was everyone was saying, which Jacob found sweet and kind, though wholly unnecessary, for it sounded very much like the kind of small talk his own family made. Jacob sipped his beer and looked out the sliding-glass door that led to a small backyard,
where the snow continued to tumble through the dark, thinking how at one time this entire place had held prisoners of the state, of the DDR, and wondered when it had been decommissioned and turned into condos. He was about to ask Dagmar about it when she turned to him and asked in her broken English why he hadn’t gone home for Christmas.
“Because I’m Jewish,” he said, surprised by the question but even more surprised at Diet, who clearly hadn’t told them he was dating a Jew.
“But…yes, okay…but…still…you celebrate Christmas, yes?” Dagmar asked.
“Um, no,” Jacob said, feeling his heart galloping.
“Jews celebrate Chanukah,” Tomas said proudly. “They hate Christ.”
“We do not hate Christ,” Jacob said, glancing at Diet, who sat there in pleasant silence.
“And…you are like Berlin?” Dagmar asked, clearly confused by who and what Jacob was. Can it really be that she’s never met a Jewish person before? Jacob wondered. It seemed absolutely impossible, yet then he looked around at where he was and his stomach sank below his knees.
“I’m liking it a lot,” Jacob lied, for Diet’s sake.
“It’s very strange for you,” Dagmar said, though he couldn’t decide if she meant it to be a question or a statement.
Jacob chose to nod in agreement and smile, though that didn’t seem to satisfy Tomas, who pressed him to explain. “It’s just…I’m having a bit of a culture shock,” he said, already suspecting that this was the wrong thing to say, for Diet shifted in his seat and glared at him as if to say, Now is not the time, Jacob. “It’s been a hard adjustment going from one of the most culturally diverse cities on the planet to a city that’s predominantly…well, white and Christian.” Though he wanted to stop himself and eat every single word he’d just spoken, he realized that it was too late and sat back in his seat, taking a long gulp of beer and hoping what he’d said had gone over everyone’s head.
No such luck, for Tomas, who sat up in his seat and leaned his elbows on the table, had something to say about it. “But Berlin is different than the rest of Germany. There are all sorts of brown people here. There are Turks and those Israelis keep flooding in, but they all live among themselves. Oh, it’s a big problem, don’t get me wrong, but they want it that way. You are right, though. Germany is not as diverse as it could be, but we, Dagmar and I, are doing our part. We are making our country theirs, since they’ve lost their own. We hired an Israeli maid. Her name is Hannah. Isn’t that right, Dagmar?”
“You have an Israeli maid,” Jacob reiterated, feeling himself being drawn into this conversation against his will. “That’s pretty diverse of you, sure. We had a German maid when I was a boy. We treated her well. She never had to take her shoes off in the house, though.”
In the meantime, Diet chattered in German with Dagmar, his mother, and his father, who banged a fist on the table and shouted something at his son. Griselda jumped in and the three battled it out, which Jacob figured was nothing too unusual for them, considering how impassioned and litigious they seemed to be with one another. At least now it sounded as if they were finally talking about important matters, which made him feel even more left out, for as far as he could remember this kind of thing had never happened at the Jacobson table. At a certain point, Griselda got up to check on the bird.
“My wife is winking at me. This means the goose is ready,” announced a jovial Leopold, who rose to help her.
“Did you hear any of that with Tomas?” Jacob whispered to Diet, who apparently had because he sat fulminating beside him, his face screwed up into one of those punishing looks that could only spell doom for Jacob later.
“Don’t,” Diet said, and that was all.
But it wasn’t until after dinner, which was incredibly delicious (Jacob had repeated this many times to Griselda), when they went upstairs to sit around the tree and exchange presents, that Jacob felt the full effect of where he was and what Tomas had said and wanted to get out of there as fast as he could. He sat glum and silent, the full weight of his foreignness pressing down upon him. Worse than this, he had a terrible sense that he’d stepped into a house of xenophobes and anti-Semites who didn’t understand they were xenophobes and anti-Semites, all of this further complicated by his love for and adoration of Diet, who happened to be a member of this family.
In typical German fashion, Jacob learned, they all opened presents with a quiet, subdued civility, one present per person, nothing outlandish or ridiculously expensive, just useful gifts like books for Diet, opera tickets for his parents, a new sweater for Dagmar, and a subscription to Men’s Health for Tomas—and nothing for a sulky Jacob, who hated himself for sulking, until Griselda reached down between her feet and handed him a small basket with what looked like roses in it but which turned out to be several pairs of socks she’d folded up and arranged to look like roses. He peered down at the beautiful woolen socks, all snug in the basket, then at the family, including his own Diet, who was sitting on the small sofa between his parents, all of their faces glowing in the soft candlelight of the Weihnachtspyramide—the Christmas nativity pyramid—and the white lights of der Tannenbaum and he wondered how he had ended up there, in Germany, with a German boyfriend who claimed he wasn’t anti-Semitic but who didn’t see anything wrong with what Tomas had said at the table and had not risen to the occasion, this man he loved who had brought him into this house and then refused to defend him, for this was a defining moment between them and Diet had let it go, had let Jacob down. It was all he could do not to pick up one of the pairs of socks and touch it to one of the candles that kept the Christmas pyramid spinning. But Jacob restrained himself, though by the time they left on their bikes an hour later, he was more than ready to call it quits, to beat a hasty retreat back to the flat, pack a bag, and get the fuck out of Germany. Five months after their arrival and Jacob would fly back to New York City, absent Diet and into the full and glaring light of his family’s We Told You So.
The snow. So much of it had fallen in just three hours that riding their bikes was impossible, so they walked them in silence to the nearest S-Bahn station at Rummelsburg, got on the train, and rode it all the way back to Mitte in silence as well. It was, in Jacob’s recollection, the longest and most severe silence he’d ever endured and brought along with it terrible feelings of regret and remorse, for he understood that he’d upset the evening for Diet and that Diet would forever associate it with Jacob, the Jew who ruined Christmas Eve. He wanted to apologize, but more than that he wanted to ask Diet why he hadn’t spoken up at dinner, why he’d let Tomas say what he had without so much as a word.
In the flat they removed their freezing, soaked shoes, then changed into dry clothes. Diet put the kettle on for tea and Jacob sat down at their rickety IKEA table, a hand-me-down from Dagmar. “That went well,” Jacob jested, trying for levity. “I really liked Dagmar. And Tomas—that guy’s a real hootenanny.”
“My parents came all the way from Munich to meet you,” Diet stated, remaining with his back to Jacob, his shoulders hunched and his spine rigid. Jacob could just make out each individual vertebra beneath the thin cotton of his shirt and wanted nothing more than to get up and wrap his arms around him, but he remained right where he was, for though he understood that he could not hold Diet responsible for what that idiot Tomas had said, he could hold Diet responsible for sitting there and letting him say it.
“Did you hear what he said to me?”
“They have an Israeli maid, Jacob. I don’t get the major deal.”
“The problem isn’t that they have an Israeli maid. The problem is that your boyfriend happens to be Jewish—”
“Jewish, not Israeli.”
“Don’t split hairs. You know exactly what I mean,” Jacob snapped, thinking about why it had all bothered him so much. “It was his tone of voice. It made me feel…like a dirty Jew. Like that’s all Israelis or any Jew for that matter is good for. To clean up after you. I mean, them.”
“This is not what he meant,” Di
et commented, turning around once the kettle had boiled and pouring the hot water into two mugs. “You aren’t a dirty Jew.”
“What if I am? What if that’s how your family sees me?”
“I will not lie to you,” Diet said, coming up behind Jacob and wrapping his arms around him. “There are plenty of Germans, French, and Poles who will still take one look at you and hate you on sight,” he cautioned. “But do you really believe we are any worse than you Americans? Look at what’s happening in the United States with those suicide bombers. You’re safer in big bad Germany these days than in your own country.”
“My country doesn’t have the history yours does,” Jacob pointed out. “My country didn’t exterminate millions of people based on a single idea from a megalomaniac. But yours did. Your grandparents were party members. Are you trying to tell me that you don’t have a single anti-Semitic cell in your body?”
“Why are you so terrified of being hated?”
“I’m not terrified of being hated. I’m terrified that you don’t dislike the right people.”
“Yes, okay. I understand. But I do not dislike you. I do not dislike anyone. What I dislike is that you hate yourself,” Diet declared, taking a seat across from him. “You hate yourself for being Jewish, and you see that hatred everywhere and in everyone.”
“I do not hate myself for being Jewish.” Then Jacob thought about what he had just said and began to wonder if he didn’t hate himself just a little, yet he wasn’t sure it was because he was Jewish or a Jacobson, or for something as simple as merely being alive. “Well, okay, maybe I do. But I come from a long history of self-hating Jews. Another Jacobson curse I’m not proud of.”
“How can we correct this? How can we make this better for you?” Diet asked, and his sincerity nearly broke Jacob’s heart.
It began some days later in the dark of their bedroom, an idea fashioned out of Jacob’s wish to shed any and all vestiges of this particular Jacobson curse and Diet’s wish to exonerate himself from the atrocious guilt he’d inherited—that entire generations of Germans had inherited—from his grandparents, all of whom had been Nazis. It might be a way of wiping two slates clean at once, Jacob had said to Diet, who’d protested and fought against the idea but had, in the months since, come to see it as life-changing.
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