I leave that crowd and I go walking, on through the streets, past shopfronts and churches and coffee shops, parks and statues of horses rearing beneath generals and emperors. The roar of the crowd on Rotenturmstrasse is still an echo in my ears, a ringing that doesn’t fade but seems, in its persistence, to grow louder as I flee to quieter and quieter streets.
And now I have, without thinking (or without deciding, at least), come to the hospital entrance that lets onto the Seegasse cemetery. It sucks me through it like a gully guides a stream. The courtyard beyond smells of damp earth, and it makes my fingernails itch a moment as if I’ve been digging with my hands and the soil is trapped under them. The headstones are blank faces, but somehow more sympathetic than any face at the demonstrations.
So I walk in between them, touching one and then another. The feel of wet, cold stone is the same as it was when I was a boy, and a youth. New life comes into the world, the quiet seems to tell me, but you will be forever counting up and up, because the subtraction at the other end of life will never be un-birth. We go out a different door than the one we came in through.
There are sparrows in the trees here, too, and a red squirrel with ear tufts like exclamation marks bouncing from grass to tree trunk. And how can it be, I think, that anything could change, when these things are always the same? They will all calm down, I feel certain. The world will be a sane place again soon.
And now, winding around a row of stones so old the inscriptions on them are like half-finished thoughts, there in front of me is Simeon’s stone fish. Its U-arched back, wide mouth, thick gills are a puzzle. If I dug beneath it, after all, would I find the bones of a fish?
The statue only seems to stare up at the sky, which is grey, and cold, and promises rain. I walk up to the monument and touch the mouth.
“You weren’t a natural fish, really,” I tell it.
The trees murmur in the breeze, and beyond the buildings around the cemetery there are children screaming at one another, that horrifying child-scream that means joy when it sounds like agony.
There is no sign, then, of what the next change will bring. There is the laughter and the scream, and I don’t know which one is mad and which prophetic.
8
ON THE TWELFTH OF MARCH, 1938, THE GERMAN army advances over the Austrian border without firing a shot. When they reach the capital, the people of Vienna, we are told, throw flowers instead of stones at their invaders, and the church bells peal, and out of thin air swastika flags appear hanging out of windows and above parades of goose-stepping foreign soldiers. The crowds of shouting opponents from Rotenturmstrasse have dispersed down side streets and now they hide behind their anonymity, their ordinariness. There is no resistance. There is only cheering.
But before the parades and the speeches, before any of this has happened, on the morning of the day before the Anschluss, this man Josef Tobak hears a knock at the door of their flat. Anna is there with him, making coffee, and she opens the door to a blond boy, maybe twelve. He hands her an envelope. Josef feels his pockets for change, but the boy shakes his head. He would like a warm bun from their table, he says. Anna butters a semmel, wraps it in kitchen paper and tucks it into the boy’s hands, and as he tromps off down the hall Josef says, “Clever scamp knows something about inflation.”
Anna hands the envelope to Josef. “Nothing written on it,” she says.
Josef turns it over in his hands before he slips a finger under the flap.
Anna says, “I hope it isn’t Chaim in trouble.”
Inside there’s one folded sheet of paper and Josef tugs it out, unfolds it to reveal tall swoops of text.
“It’s from Friedrich,” he says. There isn’t a signature—just those tall, loose pen-strokes like a familiar way of walking. He reads: Stay home from work. As long as necessary. Danger for Jews, etc. Tell your family.
Anna lays a hand on his arm as she reads over his shoulder and she says, as if it’s an afterthought, “I wish you’d fixed the radio.”
And now there is a tightness like barrel hoops around her husband’s chest. He says, “Perhaps it isn’t true.” He imagines Zilla away in Paris, a little bit bored with her new friends. She sends a message to Friedrich; says, If you’d just play a little innocent trick on my baby brother . . . And Friedrich would do it, Josef thinks; he’d do it without a thought.
But Anna’s cheek is against his arm now and she says, “I should tell my mother.”
Josef breathes into her hair. She smells like flour. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll go.”
Anna gets his coat for him (“And Chaim and Jakob too,” she says. “They’ll do something reckless”), and he stares out through the window. Are the streets quieter today? The windows darker?
She kisses him—“Don’t try anything stupid, my love”—and he walks out into the streets with his collar up.
What is one meant to do, in such circumstances? Hurry, like this little man, through a maze of streets, so that one’s hat almost flies into the gutter. What a simpleton he is. Yes, tell your brothers-in-law, Josef; only know these are types who don’t heed warnings. Jakob and Chaim, in their apartment with two friends Josef barely knows (the one with the beard—Grigor, perhaps—and the one with bottle-green eyes), will tune their radio against the static. Mattresses on the floor in the far room, a stranger winding tefillin straps round his arm in the corner, and Chaim will tell Josef, Go home to your little mama. Leave us to our business. And he will, he’ll leave them, our Josef, because he isn’t the same kind of man they are.
So run on: run to Anna’s mother, guarded against the cold in her old sister’s home. And when she sees fear in a son-in-law’s face, and says, “It’s the baby, isn’t it?” and is reaching for her coat, then tell her: We’re all fine. For today, we’re all fine. Only we must stay home. She’ll listen. She will smile and take this man’s hands in hers (which are rough and red with washing, see, though from afar they look small and fine). When he kisses her cheek, he will feel all the ages of his young wife in her.
And scurry to parents (who aren’t at home, or who don’t answer the door); bother the butcher for paper and pencil, and slip them a note under the door. (What might this accomplish, if they’re already out? One can wonder later, behind a locked door.) The air grown heavier as the sun climbs higher, few neighbours out on these streets. So hurry then to a grandmother, to a little room that smells of hot milk and cats. She is only as high as Josef Tobak’s elbow, and to her he can say, “Babka, I just came to tell you—” but, “Little Josef,” she says in Yiddish, “you’re so thin. Your wife doesn’t cook?”
But after all, she understands, she listens, and she smiles and nods when he promises he’ll bring the baby round to see her—only not today! Today, safety—and she obeys him. She makes the lock click loud in the door when he leaves her.
Home through empty streets. Over the sputters of radios in windows: “. . . the chancellor will not . . .” and “. . . a deadline within the next several . . .”
He gets back to his house and Anna lets him through the door with the baby in one arm. He says, “All done,” and she says, “The coffee’s old now, I’ll have to make it fresh.” Bolts the door as she says it.
This man spends an hour on his knees behind the radio that crackles and spits into their kitchen as Anna washes dishes and feeds the baby. In the end it’s just a few connections that have come loose, but it’s finicky work putting them right and by the time he’s finished, Anna is peering out the window with the baby’s tiny head against her shoulder. She says, “It’s so still out there, Josef.”
He tunes the radio, and for a long time they listen. Anna sits with her hand in his. Only Tobias thinks to cry out, now and then.
9
NO NATION THREATENS GERMANY WHEN OUR COUNTRY is eaten up, as far as we hear; though of course our news is German news. The whole of Austria is for the Anschluss: that is the word in the papers, on the radio. There was meant to be a plebiscite regarding the annexatio
n; the chancellor called it before the tanks crossed the border, meaning to demonstrate opposition to a German takeover. But now it’s been appropriated by the new government, and in the booths on the tenth of April sit Nazi officers, ready to receive your ballot—to receive it, unfolded, into their hands, in case of confusion, so that no one might accidentally check the tiny “Nein” box when they meant the enormous “Ja.”
Ninety-nine percent of the population is in favour of annexation, the ballot counters sing. See: this is how a civilized nation works out peace.
And this man I was: what does he do? He falls sick. Not right away—not quite at the same moment that Austria becomes the German Ostmark, as if the thud of jackboots on Viennese cobblestones poisons his blood (though this too is a nice thought). First he must lose his job, first he must see fear transfigure one of his oldest friends—and then, perhaps, he can begin to fall apart.
It is as if, in basements and cupboards, in back alleys and places hidden from public view, the Austrian populace have had their annexation plans laid out for years: this is the only way Josef can explain it to himself. They are so at home in their German skins. The Monday after the country becomes German he loses his job.
“We can’t extend work permits for resident aliens when so many German citizens remain unemployed,” says his department boss, Urbrecht, when Josef comes into work on the fourteenth. They are standing beside his desk, he and this man: this fellow whose hound-dog jowls and square glasses have until this day seemed only comical—now, suddenly, they are grotesque. (Whether changed or unmasked, Josef cannot say.) Half his things have been cleared from his desk already.
“I can allow you a few minutes to pack up your things,” says Urbrecht, “but after that I’ll have to call security. You understand that this is my responsibility. I can’t allow trespassing.”
Josef leans on his hands, braced against the desk, and reads the word owing on a balance sheet over and over. Urbrecht begins to walk away, but then he turns. “Besides,” he says, “you weren’t in on Friday, and you didn’t let anyone know.”
Lars Schreckenberger, whose desk has sat beside Josef’s these past five years, stares at his work: he is working on a sum. And when Josef whispers, “I didn’t . . .”—then Lars coughs, wipes his mouth on his sleeve, and only after half a minute of silence glances up at Josef.
“Do you need help packing?” he asks, almost too quiet to hear. His face is white; he looks as if he might be ill.
“No,” Josef says. He touches his hand to his forehead. He stands straight. “No. I’m fine. There isn’t much to do.”
When he walks down the hall towards the front door, his arms full of whatever notes seemed personal, and a photo of Anna in miniature, he hears footsteps behind him. Until he opens the door, he keeps his eyes focused ahead, but when he breathes in cool air from the street, he turns to look back, sees the security guard who has slowed upon seeing him exit, who watches him, expressionless, until the door closes behind him.
ANNA STARTLES HIM out of his silence with her outrage.
“Just because you missed work!” She has fastened on to this idea. “Half the city stayed in. Everyone knew what was going on. Besides, it was Friedrich who told you to stay home, wasn’t it?”
Josef hasn’t put down his papers yet; he holds them to his chest. “I . . . I think it was—”
“So there, you see? Just go to Friedrich, get it sorted out. He’ll talk some sense into that old weasel.” Her face red, her little body dense with energy. Josef lays the papers down on the table and kisses her cheek.
“Of course,” he says. “You’re right.”
THE MAIN OFFICES of Geisman–Zimmel he finds uncontained, workers spilling into the street. They stand talking on the steps outside the main doors.
“I hope you’re not here for your job,” one man yells at Josef—a sharp-faced fellow in his forties, hatless and smoking a cigarette. “Don’t bother,” says this man. “They’ve killed you off. You don’t exist.”
A policeman at the door stands with his hand held out for identification papers. He’s a Viennese policeman, true, but with accusation in his expression such as Josef can’t remember seeing. Josef fumbles to find his papers. He has not often needed them before.
“You work here?” The policeman jerks his head towards the door.
“Not at these offices, but at the Strohgasse office, doing accounts—”
“Then you don’t work here.” The officer waves his hand. Dismissed, says the hand.
“I need to speak with Mr. Zimmel,” Josef says. “Please, he knows me. It’s important.”
Now this hard-faced look—for staring down thieves, Josef thinks. “If it’s about your job, you can forget it. Mr. Zimmel doesn’t have time for any of you lot.”
Josef tries to peer around this man’s shoulders, but he moves to block the doorway.
“Can’t you have someone call him?”
The policeman’s hand is on his baton. “You really want to cause trouble, eh?”
He cannot be serious, Josef thinks. But he is: serious to the point of violence. Josef nods and backs away. Some of the men on the steps had turned to watch him, and now they raise their hands. “You see, you see,” they say.
Josef will not hear; will turn their words, instead, as he walks away, into wind, into birds, into motorcar engines—the voice of the city that is the same as it was last week, last year, always.
THE AFTERNOONS IN the Währing cemetery, in these days, play out in peace while history gets its business done beyond the walls. Here, as always, I am at home in myself. Over the winter, dead branches have broken from the trees, fallen onto some of the headstones, knocked a few over. And I think (on this day as every day) I should bring a saw, or an axe. The branch I take up is too large to lift, but I can drag it by one end. Up above me, the trees speak in birds’ voices. On the high stone walls, the evergreen vines glisten; the squirrel with tufted ears skips from far away on my left to far away on my right.
Some of the headstones are made with a plaque set into the marker, and over time some of these plaques have fallen out. The headstones without plaques are little children without faces. Someone brought a spool of wire here some years before this, and many of these headstones have their faces held on with wire belts. When the wires rust, I replace them. I do a few that day, half for the feel of the wire biting my fingers and the weight of stone in my hands.
Around five o’clock, I head up the street towards Friedrich’s house. It’s a quiet street; it always is—no businesses, and the kinds of families who can pay someone to do their shopping. When I’m in sight of the house, I see a man walking out the front gate: a man in a hat and a dark coat. When he turns to shut the gate behind him, his arm band shows and I almost freeze in my steps. He’s seen me. For an instant some part of me formed in grade school says Run.
But this man smiles and nods. And his hand stabs out and he chirps his salute as if he’s saying, Beautiful day!
I’ve never saluted in my life, and my instinct is to bow, but I don’t—and I manage to mimic this man, and to hiccup a “Heil . . . !” in a voice that would be mysterious to anyone who knew me.
Then, “Sorry,” I say. (Sweat, suddenly; the horrible threat of laughter.) “It’s new to me.”
The man waves his hand. “Practise, practise, practise,” he says. “You are a German citizen now.” He pats my arm before walking down to the corner where his car is parked. A young man in a military cap sits in the driver’s seat. Through the reflection off the windshield I cannot make out the driver’s expression. I turn through the gate and I don’t look back again.
When Friedrich’s butler, Kurtz, opens the door to my ring, he smiles at me for a moment and says, “Mr. Tobak, yes.” But then his expression changes, almost as if someone has shouted his name. “Please wait here.”
“Outside?” I’ve already taken off my hat.
Kurtz hesitates for a moment. “Come in and wait by the door,” he says.
Friedrich sits on his sofa with his hands open on his knees. He’s pale, his face is damp; his brandy bottle is on the table in front of him, a little rocks glass beside it. When he hears us enter, he jumps up. “Josef,” he says, “you really shouldn’t have come.”
“I had to. Urbrecht fired me today.” I’ll say it, I think; we’ll hear each other, and if he has to deal with it later, I’ll set a time.
Friedrich rubs his forehead and with the other hand beckons me over to sit beside him. “I’m sorry about that,” he says. “Bad times for everyone, it seems.”
A flush of anger under the skin. “Did you hear that? He fired me. Without reason. If I deserved it, I’d be ashamed to come to you, but I don’t, and so . . . well, here I am. I have a wife and a child, Friedrich.” I won’t sit. Is he listening? He pours himself more brandy.
“Yes, I thought of that.” Sucks his drink through his teeth, not looking at me. “Please, sit. This isn’t a courtroom.”
A chill, when he says that. But I do sit. “What do you mean,” I say, “you thought of it?” I cough once. My chest is beginning to hurt. “You can’t have known.”
“Not about you specifically,” Friedrich says. “But it was most of the company today. The managers would have heard over the weekend, or first thing this morning. They did what they thought right. I can’t oversee every department.”
“I don’t understand.” Is my voice calm? “They heard about what? And what’s happened to most of the company?”
Friedrich swallows. He stares at the ceiling.
“Just, you know.” He shrugs. “The whole National Socialist bit.”
“Because we’re German now, they fire Jews for no reason?”
The Ghost Keeper Page 7