The Ghost Keeper

  Friedrich doesn’t look out the window. He is smiling off over Josef’s shoulder. Josef turns to see: he is watching two young women. They’re with their friends or family (older people, at least); they lean into each other and whisper between giggles.

  The waiter comes with coffee and pastry, sets these down with a steady hand, and the china rattles only a little, a gentle tinkling that seems meant to infuse a meal with excitement. Josef eats it but can’t taste it. He cannot recall if he’s wiped his lips, and so does it over and over, like a cat.

  Soon the waiter appears again with a note. “From the young ladies,” he says, as he hands it to Friedrich, who opens it and smiles a little.

  “Yes, very well.” He folds the note and says to Josef, “If you’ll excuse me just a moment.”

  What can he say? For already Friedrich is standing, is stepping across the carriage to the table where the two young women are smiling at him (their family dispersed or banished)—and Josef is alone.

  The window blurs into impressionism. Josef’s stomach writhes. The waiter clears Friedrich’s place and says, “All is well, sir?” and Josef says, “The coffee is nice.” (For what else can he say, this Josef?)

  “From Avignon, lovely,” is the first thing he hears Friedrich say, behind him. They are talking about Europe. Politics. The girls have finished university. (There are still universities. Young people still attend them.)

  Murmuring and murmuring, minutes of it. And one of the girls says, “My father says Hitler might try to invade France.”

  At a table across the carriage from the girls, a frightened little man feels his guts churn in his belly. Flashes of colour before his eyes. France! he thinks. No, no—a safe place!

  But then there is Friedrich: “The Führer seeks only to reunify the Germanic race into one nation. France has no part in that.”

  A woman’s voice asks, “And what did you think, when the Führer drove into your city?”

  And before Friedrich can reply, the other girl jumps in: “Why, Marie, didn’t you hear how the Austrians welcomed him? They threw flowers.”

  A rain of petals. Josef’s vision is swimming with strange colours. He cannot see. A thrill of horror—it occurs to him that he might actually faint. He leans onto his elbows and fixes a smile on his lips.

  Friedrich is saying, “Thank God there was no real combat.” And then someone is saying another thing, and another voice (whose?) says, “Trout, mustard”—but that doesn’t make sense, Josef decides; it must have been something else. Or else nothing. Are they still talking?

  “I love Schiller.” A woman’s voice.

  And now composers zinging through the air to his ears—Mozart, Schubert, Brahms. “Beethoven was booted out of every inn in Vienna.” “That fish, as big as his arm.” Josef hears it from a country away. Or doesn’t hear it; it doesn’t matter. He smiles, he smiles, and he thinks: Do not let this hysteria become a laugh now, you poor fool.

  Friedrich has stood up—Josef hears how the dishes rattle a little as he pushes his chair back. And now he has come, he is talking to Josef: “A stroll through the locomotive countryside, Mr. Bauer?”

  “Ah.” Josef makes as if to look out the window, but it’s all the same, it’s all smears of flashing light. He listens for what his mouth might say. “I’m going to sit and finish my coffee. You go ahead without me.”

  A second of hesitation before Friedrich says, “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.” Josef’s voice almost merry. “Yes, I’m enjoying the view.”

  When there is nothing but the barely-noise of other diners, tables away, and the rattle of the tracks beneath them, Josef thinks: I’m trapped. He can’t stand, he cannot get back to his compartment like this. He could cry for help—but that, he thinks, would be disaster. Why are you blind? they’d ask. Because I’m terrified, his answer ought to be, and though he wouldn’t say it, some doctor called in from a second-class car would pronounce him so. Deathly afraid. Of what? Of being discovered a Jew, this doctor would say, and a fraud, and a refugee. Then wouldn’t they press Aspirin into his hand, pat him on the shoulder and push him off into the waiting arms of the Gestapo at the next station—oh, yes, and then to a prison camp, some deep black pit behind barbed wire.

  There is a fish swimming through his mind—laughing and swimming after a hook made of light. To the rhythm of the rattling car, rows of coloured blocks stream past him, each one crying out with its strange, inaudible scream. He sees by the marks on them, at last, that they’re gravestones, and a cemetery is spilling out of the sky. These cemetery walls around him, he thinks—it’s simply that I can’t see over them, that’s all. There is a light over the wall, sparkling off shards of glass, and the voice of the fox crying Shema Ysrael into the ear of a dead fish.

  His head bumps against the glass of the window and he shakes his head. You are a man on a train, says his memory, and you are sitting at a table, still alive.

  Just in time, this thought, because the next voice he hears is one from a table across the aisle.

  “Pardon me, but you’re travelling with Mr. Zimmel, aren’t you?”

  A male voice. Josef turns to nod at this person. (Never mind that there is only a dull grey shape the size of a man.)

  “Not a friend of his, though?”

  What to make of this? But Josef finds he can say, “Not as such—an employee. I’m handling some artwork of his.” Regrets this immediately: Say less, say less, he thinks.

  The stranger laughs. “Don’t tell me he’s a painter.”

  “Not at all. A collector.”

  “Ah! Naturally. Excellent opportunities for a collector these days.”

  Otto Geisman’s family comes to mind, but Josef sets them aside to say, “Quite good, I’d say, although Mr. Zimmel is currently intent on selling some of his works.”

  The man grunts. “A little odd,” he says. “I imagine the market’s saturated. This was on your advice?”

  “No,” Josef answers, and swallows, and adds, “Although certainly one can find excellent opportunities, if one looks in the right places.”

  “The right places?”

  “Abroad,” Josef says. “America.” (Dear Lord, free me from this.)

  “Ah.” (The voice lower now, and the words coming slow.) “You have passage to America, then.”

  Sickness bubbling up, but he mustn’t show it—must smile, must nod, must pick up a coffee cup and pretend to drink from it.

  “Pardon me, but what was your name again?” this grey shadow asks.

  Josef thinks, I don’t have to tell him, I can call a waiter right now; but instead he answers: “Bauer.”

  “Bauer. Hmm. I know some Bauers in Vienna. Perhaps you’re related to them.”

  Josef shrugs, shakes his head. “I don’t live in Vienna. I live in—” A pause so short, surely no one can detect it, to recall the address inscribed on his false papers. “Klosterneuburg.”

  “Ah, I see. I’d have imagined an art dealer would like his base in Vienna. But what do I know of these things?”

  “It’s not a difficult commute,” Josef tells him. “I like the quiet.” Says this last part a little more harshly than he typically would; hopes this stranger might take the hint.

  Indeed, there is a moment of quiet—cups against saucers; the rattling of the train—but then:

  “If you’ll forgive me,” the man says (seeming to lean towards Josef), “you don’t seem like the type a man like Friedrich Zimmel would usually hire.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I imagine he has a great deal of concern for his public image.” Creak of a chair as this person leans farther across the aisle. “The Party has its standards, after all.”

  “I beg your pardon.” Josef, possessed of assertiveness born of panic, turns to him one last time—eyes squinting, for he can’t make them focus—and exclaims, “That’s an exceedingly presumptuous insinuation, and I’ve nothing else to add to this conversation.”

 
A harsh laugh at this. And the next voice he hears is Friedrich’s.

  “You’re still here! This is taking it a bit far, I think.”

  Josef sighs deep. He beckons his friend to bring his face closer. When he feels Friedrich right there, above him, he says in a whisper: “I can’t see.”

  A pause. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I can’t see anything. I don’t know why.”

  “Your glasses? Is something wrong?” The urgency, the strange sternness—Josef feels his glasses leave his face, and then they’re back.

  “No, that does nothing.”

  When Friedrich damns him, he does it very quietly. “Follow me back to the compartment. You can’t stay here.”

  “Is there something the matter, gentlemen?” The grey stranger again.

  “Certainly not,” Josef snaps.

  Friedrich grips his arm and adds, “We’re fine, thank you.”

  “I’ve been talking to your employee,” the man says, “and I must admit I’m a little concerned about him.”

  “He’s quite all right,” Friedrich says, but there is now a subtle note of fierceness to his tone.

  “Are you certain? I can come with you. I’ve got a little medical training. I’ll look at him in your compartment.”

  “There’s not the least need for that,” Friedrich tells him, and pulls up on Josef’s arm.

  With his other arm, Josef pushes himself up from the chair. You only have to last a few cars’ lengths, he tells his legs.

  “These trains are a revelation, aren’t they, but the clientele not much better than they ever were.” Friedrich says it: not unnaturally loud, but plainly. Josef smiles and makes his feet begin to move in Friedrich’s direction. His fingers splayed a little, at hip level, in case of chairs or tables on the way.

  And now here is Friedrich’s hand, heavy on his shoulder. The voice low: “Try not to look too helpless. No idiot’s going to believe I hired a blind art dealer.”

  Josef smiles and nods. If I knock into something, he says to himself, it’s clumsiness. That’s all.

  From behind them, the stranger calls, “Perhaps I’ll ask an attendant to come check on you.” And though Josef feels the blood drain from his face, he smiles, and he treads steadily after his friend’s footfalls.

  Now they are out of the dining car—the waiter’s voice fading behind them: “Thank you, sirs.”

  And now they are walking down a straight aisle: through this car, into the next. Friedrich is saying, “You know how it is with these Romanians, eh?” The door of a compartment is sliding open. A hand grabs him by the arm and pulls him through it, while he grins, terrified, at nothing.

  The door closes. The sound of blinds being lowered. Hands on his shoulders. “All right, rest here.” Josef lets himself be guided onto the bank of chairs. He sits and folds his body sideways across the adjacent seat. The armrests press into his ribs.

  “Better?”

  “I’ll rest a minute,” Josef says. “It should be fine.” Of course it will be fine. Just a moment of faintness. All is not lost, he says to himself.

  And he is better, he realizes; the blood is flowing back into his head; already he feels less strange. He becomes aware of a low murmur from Friedrich’s direction. He asks, “Are you saying something?”

  “I’m praying to Saint Lucy,” Friedrich snaps.

  A silence before Josef says, “I didn’t think you were very religious.”

  Friedrich says, “Everyone’s religious in these situations.”

  The sounds beyond the window sound almost normal, almost like a train. Josef opens his eyes. The light sways a little across his vision, but it’s real. He breathes deep. His thoughts find their chorus again: Slow breaths; don’t cough.

  “Friedrich,” he says. “That man in the dining car—”

  “What did you say to him?”

  “Nothing—barely anything. But he said I didn’t look like I belonged with you.”

  Muttering, Friedrich stands, opens the compartment door, waves at someone—an attendant, Josef realizes, though mercifully he and Josef are invisible to each other. Friedrich whispers with this person for a minute.

  When the door closes and Friedrich takes a seat, he says, “That’s taken care of.”

  A lump hard as a nut in Josef’s throat. “But what if he tells them to investigate me?”

  Friedrich snorts, “That won’t be an issue,” and takes up the newspaper he’d laid on the seat beside him.

  They are quiet for some time before Josef says, perhaps without consideration: “I wish you hadn’t gone off with those women.”

  Almost a laugh, the sound his friend makes. But then there is silence, and then he says: “They just wanted to know about . . . you know. Politics, and all that.”

  But his words trail off into smallness. Josef peers at him: that boy-like shame. In Josef’s eyes, this man flickers blue and purple.

  Friedrich says, “Perhaps it was a mistake. It won’t happen again.”

  Josef says, “You’re very good to me, my friend.”

  “Josef.” Friedrich sighs. “Get some rest.”

  JOSEF TOBAK WAKES from sleep to find Friedrich whispering once again with a railway attendant.

  “. . . so it won’t be a problem,” this young man says, standing in the doorway of their compartment with his hands folded behind his back.

  “Naturally. I appreciate your taking it so seriously.”

  “Of course.” A discreet smile; a nod. He touches the brim of his cap with one gloved hand. “Just call if you need anything further, Mr. Zimmel.” And he’s gone, the door sliding shut behind him.

  “What was that?” Josef asks.

  “They took that strange person off the train,” Friedrich says. He’s stroking his chin, his eyes not quite meeting Josef’s. He clears his throat. “It seems there was a problem with his papers, after all that.”

  What had arisen first in Josef as a swell of relief now begins to sink as doubt. “Oh.” And then: “Friedrich, you don’t think . . .”

  “What? That he’s a criminal of some kind? Certainly I think that. Glad I told someone. He’d have come after us for blackmail.” But Friedrich is still not looking at him, Josef notes. For a while they both turn to watch out the window. The shadows of trees and hillsides are leaning into afternoon angles.

  “Still,” Josef says. “It’s what someone would have said of me.”

  “Josef, there’s no doubt in my mind he was an opportunist of some kind.” Annoyance in Friedrich’s tone, but it softens to something meant to reassure when he says, “And besides, if he was a refugee, he was a damned idiotic one, making trouble like that.”

  But it only swells in Josef, this feeling, so that he sees spots throbbing in the air and feels almost faint. He can’t reply. He turns to the window; he holds a hand over his eyes; he prays, Forgive me, forgive me.

  18

  A DANCE ACROSS OBSOLETE BORDERS, AT PASSAU; INTO what used to be a foreign land; transfer at Frankfurt. All the way towards the port at Hamburg, carrying suitcases, carrying art—he doesn’t go blind again, our Josef Bauer. At Frankfurt, he watches himself huff as a security officer flips through sketches. And when they pick up Josef’s tickets in Hamburg, the agent says, “You’re a friend of Mr. Zimmel, then?”

  Josef shrugs. “An employee.”

  “You know, they don’t like Nazis so much in America.”

  “Perhaps not,” he finds he can say, “but they know art.”

  The agent laughs. “They have money, you mean.” He stamps Josef’s passport, waves him through. “Best of luck to you, then.”

  At Hamburg, they stay in a hotel. The next day Josef’s ship sails for New York City. Josef cannot make himself believe it. Surely there will be someone to stop him. Surely they’ll turn him around, send him back to Vienna. Surely, he thinks, Friedrich can’t leave him now.

  AND NOW I can see this man as myself, lying on this hotel bed—and Friedrich on the other side of the room
, in his own bed, staring up at the same ceiling, a bedside lamp still glowing between us. I am thinking: But even if they let you board, it isn’t over yet. They could turn you around once you surrender yourself in America. Friedrich says he has a contact, but what if it’s no good? Well, then—back home, and that’s the end of you.

  The simplicity of the whole thing makes me strangely calm. Chances are things will fail—but until they do, keep acting as if they won’t.

  I ask Friedrich, “Do you mind if I pray?”

  Friedrich breathes in sharp, as if waking from a half sleep. “Not aloud. What if somebody hears you?”

  “I’d like to, though.”

  “Be quiet as a mouse, then,” Friedrich says. “If I can hear you, perhaps they can hear you in the next room over too.” He rolls over. “Remember that, when you’re on the ship.”

  I haven’t got my prayer book, of course, nor anything I might have had in the old days. I can unfold a fringed scarf and drape it like a shawl. I can pray in whisper—words remembered. Blessed are you, Lord, I say. And think: It’s true, amen.

  The hotel air smells of cigarettes and soap and, from the cracked-open window, a salty ocean cold. It occurs to me: this is my last night in Europe for who knows how long. To this kind of thought, a person must close his eyes. He causes the wind to blow and the rain to fall—it’s so, I think.

  In the dark, when I lie back down in my bed, Friedrich says, “Did you pray for me too?”

  And I find myself startled—not only because of the question’s intimacy, but because it hadn’t occurred to me. I say, though, and mean it: “I pray always in thanksgiving for you.”

  Friedrich says nothing for a moment, and then: “Try to remember me, when you’re away.”

  A swelling in my heart; a coal fanned to glowing. “Don’t worry about that, Friedrich. Really.”

  AND WHEN, ON the pier the next day with his portfolios at his hip, this man I was shakes his friend’s hand, Friedrich says, “Well, you haven’t fainted, at least,” and Josef makes himself smile.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you, Friedrich—and please don’t misunderstand me, I know you’re under terrible pressure—but please, don’t let them tear down the Währing cemetery.”