The Ghost Keeper

by Natalie Morrill

Through the window comes the sound of a car accelerating. A man shouts.

  Friedrich says, “It’ll be out of my hands soon.” And then he is gone.

  Recall: Anna did not tremble when she left the station, all but alone. And all the way to China—did she cry? And yet here is Josef Tobak, shivering like a branch in the wind.

  Oh, Lord—he begins to pray, but he has no other words, just his heart between his two thin hands. He offers it up, in case it should mean anything.

  WHEN FRIEDRICH GETS home, so many hours later, Josef Tobak sits awake in his bed. From the rooms below comes the sound of slow footsteps. A mind can trace this other’s movement through the house: from the sitting room, where footsteps pause awhile (the door of the liquor cabinet clicking shut, perhaps), to the back room, which looks over a garden now invisible in the night, to the foot of the staircase, and then heavily, heavily, up so many stairs.

  When Friedrich passes by the open doorway to Josef’s room, he is a shadow in a dark hall, but Josef himself sits lit by a bedside light. And so the shadow pauses, seeing him.

  “Still awake,” says Friedrich. Josef does not reply, and in a moment Friedrich joins him, sits in the armchair across from the bed, legs stretched out before him. A crystal rocks glass rests in his palm. He runs a thumb along an angle of cut glass.

  “I hope nothing happened to you,” Josef says to him.

  His smile at his hands, and the glow from the bedside lamp throws shadows across both their faces, finding the corners of things. “Nothing at all, Josef,” he says.

  Josef sits still; he is working up the energy to make himself speak, but then Friedrich kicks off one of his shoes. He picks it up from the floor and with his handkerchief over his fingers pries something from the sole: a tiny shard of glass.

  “Careful,” Josef says.

  “It’s fine.”

  “It didn’t cut you?”

  Friedrich sets it on the bedside table. “No.”

  Laid so upon the little table, under an electric light bulb glowing yellow gold, this fragment of glass wounds almost upon sight. Josef feels it in himself. But Friedrich sits there staring down into the drink he’s holding, and what can Josef do? He knows nothing.

  (Lord, forgive me that I can’t give a first-hand account of these evils, that through some mad twist of fate the man I was is safe in the home of a National Socialist during Vienna’s Kristallnacht. It will be so long before he can take it all in. Understand that in this pogrom, across the city, thousands of men and women will be arrested and sent to the labour camps, and twenty-seven killed, and every one of the synagogues set alight and left to burn. The Turkish synagogue, where, it seems to me, I first saw myself as a creature in the presence of God, was in my youth so lovingly adorned through the craft and bounty of a whole community. Now, in my mind’s eye, I see that gold flowing molten as if in a furnace, and little flakes of it flying upwards with the smoke to hang like stars above the Leopoldstadt. I know the stones cannot cry out, but Lord, I’m still answering to them.)

  These two men are silent for so many minutes that Josef is certain Friedrich has fallen asleep, or passed out from drink or secret injury—but his eyes are still half-open, the light dimly shows. He is watching the wall, Josef thinks, or the curtains; or else looking at nothing, listening for the wind outside. Josef’s own eyelids are weighted down by exhaustion.

  After a very long time, Friedrich says, “After all, there’s not much one can do in such situations.”

  Josef Tobak tries to swallow, tries to reply; but now Friedrich looks at him and says, “Lucky you’re safe up here, then.” And pats the bedspread, smiles for a moment.

  In the minutes that follow, in the quiet of this space, Friedrich Zimmel falls asleep and Josef Tobak comes wide awake. From the table beside him, a tiny artifact of violence gleams mute and cold. The bedspread beneath him is becoming unbearable, warmth from the radiator unbearable.

  Whatever it means—this pogrom—people must be frightened. What did Friedrich see? Whom did he meet? Josef hardly dares hope anything. Does it matter what he might hope? One can go on forever hoping for an outcome, after all, without lifting a finger to bring it about. He thinks at last of the face of a woman, thin, hardened strength, that peered up at him from the old servants’ entrance, and he told her, with hope framed as certainty, that she’d be safe.

  Most of Josef’s things are in a little case by the closet door, ready to be taken up at any moment. The few things left to pack he gathers now, folds them, and stows them in a case. While his friend sits sleeping, he puts on his shoes; his coat too, and hat. Opens the case, unfolds the scarf, and hangs it round his neck. And now his throat begins to itch and twitch, as if it’s been waiting for an excuse to cause trouble. In the bathroom across the hallway he draws a cup of water and drinks it. When he sets the cup down, he stands listening a moment. Not a sound from his bedroom. The whole house quiet.

  Does he believe he’ll get far? This is a fine thing to ask—and it is unlikely Josef could answer. Already when he reaches the second floor he’s wheezing, and all the way down the long staircase to the front door he slides his shoulder along the wall to stay upright. He lets himself start coughing once he’s almost at the door, when surely Friedrich won’t hear him; but once he begins, he can’t stop. Ugly, brutal coughs—he opens the front door to take his noisiness out of this building, but then he must sit on the front step. Sit . . . ? All but collapse, then. This fit sends his vision swirling.

  No lights to be seen in the windows of the houses, and the trees lining the street are black against a sky of ash. Across the street and in front of another great old house, a street lamp sends a star through the dark. Josef rests his head on his suitcase.

  To get to the second district tonight, to anyone he loves, is out of the question. It strikes him, then, that the Währing cemetery is not far from here. A comfortable walk to one in good health. The fragment of shattered glass is lodged in his mind; a smashed and trampled Währing gravestone seems carved out by this thought. An angry mob might, he thinks, attack the dead as well as the living.

  But his skin is clammy, throat raw—he will not be able to walk down the street alone, he understands. So what is there to do?

  I will tell Friedrich I can’t stay any longer, he thinks. Or I’ll tell him I’ll take my chances on a train alone. Or I’ll say, I forgive you for everything, I more than forgive you—treat me as your Party says you should, but I will continue to think well of you. Or . . . But he wonders, could he say all this? Would he mean it? Watches the shine of the street lamp through the trees. And thinks, Friedrich would not do anything truly evil. Not even if I told him all that, not even if he were afraid for his life. For my sister’s sake, if not mine—he would remember himself, he would be (not a hero, but) human.

  Breath slowing, and the weight of the suitcase in my lap a solidness that brings me back to myself—here I am, despite everything. The autumn air disperses my coughing into cold white clouds. I think of my cousin whom I convinced to trust against her instincts, and I think of my sister in Paris, she with her Italian husband, happy. And how it hurt Friedrich. It shouldn’t matter, I think. (Now, when I sit up straight, the coughing comes intermittently.) But what does it take, I wonder, to change a person’s heart? And how much change do you need before it matters?

  This old house behind me is a friend sitting silent in sleep. Maybe I will have to go back inside, I think. In front of that house across the street, that street lamp still glows and it might be that someone else is thankful for this same light, perhaps coming home, perhaps sitting at their window in a dark room.

  When Friedrich stirs, a couple of hours on, I haven’t found it in myself to move, but sit on this step, suitcase in my lap. At last I hear footsteps behind the door. He hasn’t turned a light on, but in the grey morning light filtering in through frosted glass, I must be visible to him. A few seconds before he pushes the door open and I turn to look at him. He and I stare at each other a long moment.<
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  I wait while he steps out to me. I’m too tired to stand.

  He says, “You gave me quite a fright.”

  “I’m sorry.” My voice like that of an old man, it seems to me.

  “I thought you’d disappeared.”

  I sit still. I’m working up the energy to make myself speak, but then he clears his throat and sits beside me. Leans back on his elbows, gestures to his crossed legs stretched out towards the street. “Mother would have something to say about this,” he quips.

  And again I prime myself to speak, but he reaches his hand out and taps the suitcase with his knuckles. He doesn’t remark; he goes, “Hmm,” and looks back out at the street.

  So this is the way we are: two mismatched men, sitting side by side on concrete steps, the trees above us lightening in the first pale hours of the day. After a very long time Friedrich says to this beleaguered Josef, “You’re not leaving this morning, I hope.”

  That small coal of heat, glowing—and, “I don’t know,” this Josef says. “I was thinking of it. But perhaps not yet, if you say so.”

  Friedrich pats Josef’s shoulder with one heavy hand. “Good. Because I have new papers for you. And a new destination. Our good luck they never . . .” A pause. “Anyway, best not to dwell on these things. The man who last had them won’t need them anymore, is all.” A chill, then sudden heat. (A spirit that races to claim Josef.) But Friedrich says, “You’ll go to New York, if I can manage it.”

  “New York!” He can barely whisper, but covers his mouth as if the neighbours might have heard him.

  “I know what you’re going to say,” Friedrich begins, “and it’s true, it’s very far from Anna and Tobias. But I have no confidence whatsoever you’d survive the trip to Shanghai. And besides all that, you can recover in America, and then you can send for them. How would that be?” He’s looking at Josef, who can only stare. “You won’t be foolish enough to turn it down.”

  Josef coughs, and then: “The person these papers belonged to . . .”

  “Ah! Tobak.” Friedrich waves a hand. “I had nothing to do with what happened to him. You have my word. It’s just . . . circumstance and luck in sorry times. Really. You take advantage of what luck hands you, if you’ve got any brains at all.”

  Josef swallows. “New York.” The star of lamplight through branches growing smaller and fainter as he says it.

  “Sunday, we’ll leave.” Friedrich breathes deep, glancing behind him. “Lord! What an awful house to have to live in, all alone.”

  Josef says, “Friedrich, if ever, someday, I can help you—please tell me. I’ll do it.”

  “Well.” Friedrich stretches his back against the steps. “There’s a kind word after a wicked night.”

  A few moments more, and Friedrich will help Josef upstairs, as far as the sitting room, where Josef’s coughing will make them both stop and rest on the sofa. Later, Josef will wake in this spot with his suitcase still on his lap, and Friedrich slouched sideways across the sofa’s armrest, head towards the window. The man’s face so much younger in sleep—Josef will think it as he drapes his jacket over his friend. The climb to his room will be hard and slow but his mind strangely quiet, and when he gets to his room, he will fall asleep in his clothes and dream of nothing.

  17

  IT’S POSSIBLE THERE WERE OTHER WAYS A VIENNESE JEW could get to America after Kristallnacht, but I can barely understand or believe the one that worked for me. These things I know: without false papers, I would have been dead. Without the portfolio of artwork, I would have had no story for the customs agents. If Friedrich had not gone with me as far as my ship, I might have gone dumb with fear, or forgotten how I was meant to answer questions, or I might have simply passed out from exhaustion and been picked up by the police. (And that, certainly, would have been the end.) And if he hadn’t arranged things in New York, I’d have been sent back, like somebody else’s mail.

  In November of 1938, through the fog of a reawakened sickness, this much is clear to me: the man who is travelling answers to Josef Bauer. He is employed by Friedrich Zimmel as an art dealer, and he is going to America with a set of paintings and sketches he will sell to buyers in New York and Philadelphia. (Where the real Josef Bauer might be, and why his passport is now in my pocket, is not a question I dare ask Friedrich—but the face in the passport photo is very much like mine, I think, so perhaps it’s a fake.) Sometimes this man will feel faint from standing too long with his little bag in his hand (far less than any emigrant would carry, surely) and the two great black portfolios leaning against his hip. Every time the customs officers open these, Josef must be sure to say, “Careful, careful!” as if the greater risk is that the art might suffer damage, rather than that he not be allowed through.

  On the day he leaves Vienna, they drive past the Währing park. The walls of the cemetery are just barely visible from the road. But on the bricks (and how much is in Josef’s swimming mind, he doesn’t know) there are paint marks like the wings of white birds and black birds, flocks flying beyond the branches—it takes him a moment to understand what it is.

  “Yes, it’s been that way awhile now.” Friedrich barely glances out the window when Josef mentions it. “I was a little surprised. I didn’t think many people knew it was a Jewish graveyard.”

  The driver calls back to them, “I think a lot of people were fairly scandalized, sir. Imagine it! In this neighbourhood.”

  A swell of solidarity as Josef thinks the man is talking about the vandalism, the painted swastikas, but then the driver says to Friedrich: “Perhaps you’ll have it torn down, sir.”

  Friedrich taps his fingers to his chin. In his car, on the street, he wears his Party arm band without any semblance of shame. He says, “Hmm,” as the park disappears behind them. And then, “Perhaps.”

  Josef sits without speaking, tries not to think, all the rest of the way to the Westbahnhof.

  He’s wearing new clothes, bought by Friedrich in town. With this fine cloth rubbing against him, he does not feel like himself. The sky is November-dark, and the streets wear the smash and smear of the nights previous: a word of hate on a storefront, white stars painted in condemnation. (He thinks: It isn’t a mark of shame, but see how determined they are to make it one.)

  And for a moment his mind cries out (as his hand presses hard into the padded black door), I have no right to be here. Why is not my home smashed in, why am I not among the dead or missing?—as if I had the right to rise above this. For he isn’t any better, this Josef Tobak-Bauer, than the most ordinary man, and yet he is the one in this long black Benz, planning his way to America. Get out, his mind cries. Throw your lot in with those who have more right than you to escape, but who must stay.

  But now another part of his mind, the part that sounds sometimes like Anna, pipes in: If you were trapped, and any of your neighbours had the chance you have, is there anything you wouldn’t do to help him take it? And Josef knows how he would feel, even in his heartbreak: that a part of himself, however small, were escaping with that person. Now how many such pieces, he wonders, can I stand to carry with me?

  All around the English embassy, the lineup of mothers with children winds like a tail around the feet of a cat. The driver calls back, “See that, sir. I wish they’d grant them visas, after all. Though of course they won’t.”

  Friedrich answers, “Save everybody a lot of trouble.”

  “It just goes to show, sir.” The driver seems to shrug. Josef wonders what this man’s name is, and is he from Vienna? His whole life, Josef wonders, has this man lived among neighbours he hated, and said nothing?

  At the station, the air grinds with machinery. Josef carries his bag and the portfolios—he will pretend he has strength enough for this, rather than leave his hands free: for every police or military officer they meet salutes them, and Josef has this excuse to keep his arms down.

  When a porter comes to take the portfolios, Josef snaps, “No, I’ll carry those. You take this.” Hands the man his su
itcase even as his nerves crest a surge of terror. The porter nods and takes the suitcase—not suspicious, Josef sees; nervous, in fact, and keen not to offend. Josef prays: If there is a chance I might survive this, help me not to squander it.

  They find their compartment. This fraudulent art dealer sits facing away from the engine. He lets his eyes close for a moment, and he touches his chest, the place where his passport and tickets are folded inside his coat, in the pocket against his heart. Miraculously there.

  The first test passes without incident: the conductor takes their tickets and doesn’t remark, does not even let his eyes linger on Josef. He says, “Thank you, Mr. Bauer,” in the same crisp, professional tone that he uses for, “Thank you, Mr. Zimmel.” The train is already leaving the city. They are entering vineyards and farmland, browned with the coming winter—but broad and open in a way that feels strange to Josef: boundaries falling away, shelter shrinking into the horizon.

  Friedrich stretches his legs out into the space between their seats. Josef tucks his own feet back underneath him.

  It is best, indeed, that Josef isn’t in charge of this business. He would hide from everyone, he wouldn’t eat. But Friedrich tells him, after an hour, that they’ll get coffee in the dining car. And though Josef is half-certain he’ll be ill, he perceives that eating might be ordinary behaviour.

  In the dining car, they aren’t made to wait, but are led to a little table by a window right away, a table with a white tablecloth swaying like a girl’s skirt to the rhythm of the tracks sweeping along beneath them. The waiter bends low when he talks to them, and speaks mainly to Friedrich. Today they have a Hungarian goulash, he tells them: very hot, very nice. With a white beer, perfect. But Friedrich says, “Just coffee, I think. And two apple strudels.” The waiter walks backwards a few strides before hurrying off.

  Outside, hills. Lakes winking silver-grey between banks of black forest. White caps of mountains in the far distance, receding as the train snakes north.