We did what he suggested, but it did no good. A week later, Dr. Schoenbart returned to tell us my father had stomach cancer.
“What is the treatment?” Mama asked.
“If he can pass as a Christian, maybe you can have him admitted to the central hospital. Otherwise . . .” The doctor’s voice trailed off.
I saw Felix Landau in the factory grounds the next day, and told him my father was sick.
“I wouldn’t mention it if it wasn’t very serious,” I said.
“Your father is old,” Landau said, drawing his back up very straight. I’d gotten used to the scar on his face, but I noticed it on that day because it was pulsing. “If your brother-in-law doesn’t see reason, your husband will be sent to a German prison—that’s what you should worry about,” Landau said. “Write to Bernhard and tell him to return what belongs to us—then I’ll try to get your husband released for you. I can’t do anything if you won’t cooperate.”
“I don’t have an address,” I said. “How can I write to Bernhard?”
“I know where he is,” Landau said. “Give the letter to me.”
When I delivered my letter to Landau the following morning, he let his hand brush against mine.
“You’re a smart woman, Maria.” He smiled at me. “Pretty and smart, a very good combination—especially in a Jewess.”
“You know,” I said slowly, “we’re barely Jews.”
He turned so that he was facing me squarely.
“Tell me what you mean.”
“My parents didn’t practice Judaism, and neither do I.”
Landau leaned closer, and drew in a breath. I’d heard the Nazis used strange, cruel methods to determine who had Jewish blood. They said we smelled like pigs and that our big noses and heavy lips gave us away.
“You smell like roses,” Landau said. I pulled away as if I’d been slapped. “Very pretty roses. I’m glad you told me that, Maria. I will bear that in mind.”
There was something in his eyes that I didn’t want to see: pity, maybe, or affection. I didn’t let myself look at it for even one second more.
By the end of June anyone who’d been able to get an exit visa was gone. The sun came up each morning but the green parks, crowded squares and voices of happy children in the streets were a mockery to me. Every routine comfort faded and I waited only for word of Fritz. His letters came in ripped envelopes with half the sentences blacked out by censors, but at least I knew he was alive and thinking of me. He closed every letter with the same words: Until we’re together again I am, as ever, Your Darling Fritz.
Then the letters stopped. After a night with no sleep, I went down to my newlywed apartment and knocked until Landau answered. It was barely dawn. Landau was wearing white long johns. I wanted to rip the smirk off his face. Instead, I begged.
“Please tell me if he’s alive?”
“He’s alive for now. But prison does strange things to men.”
“Strange things? What strange things?”
He gave me an indifferent shrug.
“What can I do? Please tell me —” I put a hand on his shoulder and he looked at the place where I was touching him.
“Tell your brother-in-law to give us what we want,” Landau said.
“I did that already,” I said. “What else can I do?”
I didn’t think I wasn’t offering him anything, because I didn’t think I had anything to offer. But I did touch him. I admit that I touched him. And Landau stepped back, leaving my hand hanging in the air.
“It’s late—or rather, it’s early. Nothing can be done now.”
I walked all the way to the Metropole. It was a hot day and you could tell who the Jews were because they hugged the sides of the buildings as if hoping to disappear between bricks and mortar.
The Metropole was even worse than before. There was horror in the hard faces of men in uniform, and terror in the children who were led behind closed doors while their mothers were sent in another direction pleading and crying.
“Find a line,” a Nazi barked, and I got on the closest one without looking up.
When I reached the front, I spelled Fritz’s name and waited, looking neither right nor left. A woman beside me fainted, and a man slipped his hands under her arms to keep her from hitting the ground.
“Friedrich Altmann has left the city,” the clerk said.
“To where?”
Telephones were ringing. I smelled my own perspiration over the lavender handkerchief I’d tucked into my shirt.
The woman looked me up and down, tapping an index card against the large metal box. I saw Fritz’s name and a number neatly typed across the white card.
“You must know,” I said. It was hard to breathe. I thought I might faint.
“Dachau,” the clerk said, filing the card away. “Friedrich Altmann is in Dachau.”
I moved away from the clerk without knowing I moved, and left without knowing how I left. On the hotel steps I slid past the other ghosts weeping or moaning or begging for their lives. The red banners flapping in the wind roared like wild animals. Black cars swept through the street like hawks, the Germans’ hard vowels shot through the air like spears. I rushed across the street without looking. A car swept around the corner, and as I hurried out of its way, my foot caught on the curb and I fell, hard, on my knees.
“Fräulein!”
A black glove, shiny boots, crisp green pants. He reached down for me. My knees were screaming.
“Get up,” the man said. I tried to push myself up. Pebbles cut into my knees, my hands could hardly lift me.
His glove wrapped around my arm, and he pulled me to my feet.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. His hand was large and black. I forced myself to stand on my own feet. I didn’t look at his face. “Thank you, I’m fine, thank you.”
“You’re bleeding,” he said. He must have thought I was a Gentile. I wanted to get away as fast as I could.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”
He let go of my arm and I rushed away without looking back. It wasn’t until I got home that I saw my stockings were torn, my knees were cut, my shins and shoes crusted with blood.
By day my mind traced over escape routes, friends I could contact, favors I might be able to call upon. At night I dreamt that Fritz and I had sprouted wings, sailing above giant crows with slick black feathers. But it was all in my mind, a manic casting about for hope that faded until Felix Landau showed up at my door one night in his black jacket. The scar on his face a painful red under the bare hallway bulb.
“I’ve come with a message,” he said.
I tugged my dressing gown around me. He took an official-looking document out of his coat pocket.
“Lieutenant Hans Erlichmann of the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration requests your help in securing the transfer of all Altmann Textiles records to the Reich. In exchange, Fritz Altmann will be released from prison.” Landau’s diction was crisp and formal. “You may do a service to the Führer and also help your family.
The name Erlichmann was not familiar to me, but I knew it wasn’t good to have a Nazi officer take any special notice of my family’s affairs. Landau saw the panic on my face.
“Lieutenant Erlichmann wants to help you,” he said without even a hint of irony. “Let me explain.”
He said the orders were simple: I was to accompany him to Berlin, where Bernhard would come with all the account books and sign over everything to the Germans.
“Haven’t you already taken everything?” I asked. “The factory and all the money that goes in and out of here are yours.”
Landau eyed me coolly.
“Not mine—the Reich’s,” he said. “And I’m not a fool. We know there’s an entire subsidiary of Altmann Textiles being run out of Paris. That subsidiary also belongs to the Reich. It’s my responsibility to ensure that every single asset is relinquished in full cooperation of the law.”
I di
dn’t know if I had a choice, or if I was about to be arrested and taken to Berlin.
“But why Berlin?” I dared to press him. “And why do you need me to go with you?”
“Because your brother-in-law isn’t very keen on coming back to Vienna,” he said. “That’s why. And because we think your presence will be particularly persuasive.”
“Then I will be a ransom,” I said. I didn’t ask, because it seemed apparent to me.
Landau heaved a loud guffaw.
“I can have you arrested now, tonight, tomorrow—anytime—for failing to cooperate with the mandatory Aryanization of every Altmann family asset.” He spoke as if he were struggling for patience. “Instead, the Reich is inviting you to Berlin. We feel quite sure that your presence at the table will entice your brother-in-law to cooperate to the fullest and sign all the proper documents.”
“You don’t need his signature,” I said. “Just take it, the way you’ve taken everything else.”
A strange, cunning look came over his face.
“The Reich doesn’t seize property,” he said. “As you know, everything is done by the letter of the law.”
It made no sense, and yet it made perfect sense: the Nazis’ brilliance, the thing that kept everyone doing what we were told, was the way they made everything—even a coercive trip to Germany—sound extremely logical and lawful. This was their first great cruelty: strict adherence to laws that served only themselves.
“And if I go, Fritz will be released?”
“When Bernhard signs the papers, Fritz will be released.”
I packed as if for a funeral, with somber dresses and a dark hat. Just before dawn I locked the apartment door, although of course I knew anyone could enter if they wanted to. Landau met me beneath a lamppost by the gate, and put my overnight bag in a taxi. I sat between Landau and a man in uniform who didn’t say a word to me. Close to the train station, we passed a barroom that was still open. Women of the night were hanging on to officers who were stumbling out of the brightly lit storefront. The prostitutes’ lipstick looked orange in the strange dawn.
At half past eight, the three of us boarded a Berlin-bound train. There were Nazis everywhere in brown coats and black uniforms, traveling with women wearing dark lipstick, long raincoats, and manly hats. Red lights flashed and bells rang as we pulled out of the station. I closed my eyes and recalled the song Fritz had been singing the day I met him.
You are peace, the gentle peace, you are longing and what stills it.
I consecrate to you, with all my joy and pain, a home in my eyes and my heart.
When we crossed into Germany, Landau insisted I eat with him in the dining car. I choked down a few bites and watched the wet countryside turn into flat houses, small villages, then rows of Nazi flags as we approached Berlin.
Rain was falling steadily as I followed Landau through the German streets into a hotel, where a porter showed me to my room. I locked the door, and tossed through the night. In the morning, nauseated and frightened, I trudged behind him up a flight of stone steps and down a hall into an airless room where Bernhard sat stiffly, his mouth in a grim line.
Outside, it began to thunder.
“Be brave, Maria,” Bernhard said.
I gave him a nod but couldn’t manage a smile.
A man in a business suit handed a dossier to Landau.
“Your brother-in-law is a stubborn man,” Landau said to me. “We want him to understand the consequences if he tries to hold back anything this time.”
Bernhard understood. He signed and dated the documents. It took less than five minutes. Then I was led out with Landau.
“Can’t I speak to my brother-in-law?” I asked.
“No,” Landau said. He put his hand on the small of my back—a protective gesture, one a man might do with his wife. “Now we go back to our hotel.”
We walked together under one umbrella, through crowded streets and past perfumed women and handsome men who barely glanced our way. The smell of grilling meats belched from sidewalk cafés.
“Will we go home tonight?” I asked. “Will that be to your liking?”
“My liking has nothing to do with it, Maria.” He smiled, and I saw his crooked teeth. “Our train doesn’t run back to Vienna tonight.”
At our hotel he closed the umbrella before ushering me through the revolving door. Inside, the lobby was bright and strangely empty.
“You’re a smart Jewess, you should understand that the Altmann property legally belongs to the Reich now,” Landau said, as if explaining a lesson to a schoolchild. “We could have seized it, but we showed your brother-in-law the courtesy of a formal exchange so he’s no longer a criminal in our eyes.”
We were in the lift by then, a tiny space that was wet with rainwater and sweat. The elevator walls were mirrored with a dark, smoky glass. Landau spoke to my reflection.
“Now Bernhard will be free to go about his Jew business elsewhere,” he said.
The lift stopped at the third floor, and he put a hand on my waist.
“Maybe you’d like to freshen yourself now.” He walked me to my room and waited for me to open the door. “A bubble bath, or some lipstick? I ordered you a bottle of Chanel No. 5. It’s a lovely scent. So womanly.”
Landau followed me into my room and shut the door behind him. On the gleaming settee there were a dozen pink roses in a cut crystal vase. Beside it, on a silver tray, was a pitcher of red juice and two glasses.
“Roses for you,” he said. He reached for my coat. “Because you always smell like roses.”
I knew it was going to happen then.
“You don’t have to be scared,” he said, reaching for me. “We have perfume, roses. Lipstick for your beautiful mouth. Would you like to take a bath?”
I shook my head.
“That’s fine. You can take a bath later.”
He poured a cup of juice, and held it out to me.
“Pomegranate juice is an aphrodisiac,” he said. “Come, Maria. Drink.”
He held the cup to my mouth until I took a sip. Then he put a hand on my shoulder and turned me toward the bed. When I tried to resist, he put a hand on my chin. He smelled of onions. He made me look at his face, and my skin burned.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said.
The bed was a four-poster canopy princess bed, like the one I’d had when I was a little girl. I stood against it, and he let go of my hand.
“Now take off your dress.”
I shook my head.
He reached for the top button of his shirt, and opened it. He unbuckled his belt, and then the buttons on his trousers. I could see that he was aroused.
“Please,” I said. I meant to shout, but it came out as a whisper. “Don’t.”
In the small room he was a large, dangerous animal, a tiger at the zoo. When he stepped out of his pants and kicked them behind him, I heard my aunt telling me to be fierce.
“I’m glad you came to Berlin,” he said. “We have an understanding, don’t we? Don’t pretend you didn’t know.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m afraid I’m a fool.”
“A pretty fool,” he said, grabbing my wrist. “A very pretty little fool.”
Then he pushed me onto the bed, and forced himself between my legs.
By the time Landau returned me to Vienna I’d been gone almost three days. The rain had stopped and late afternoon sunlight was cascading over the city. I couldn’t wait to bathe in scalding water and burn the clothes I’d been wearing. But I didn’t have time to clean Landau off my skin—because at home I found a note from my mother slipped under the door.
She asked me to come directly to Stubenbastei, and when I saw the blackened windows, I knew right away what had happened.
“There are no rabbis, no minyan.” Mama was stoic as she wiped away my tears. “We have to say the Kaddish ourselves.”
Poor Papa was small and yellow-skinned in his coffin, the dark evening jacket swimming on his wasted body. T
he coffin itself was a luxury, and my mother was proud to have found one.
Despite what I’d told Landau about not being Jews, in ordinary times we would have called on a rabbi from the synagogue where I’d been married, and he would have organized ten men to pray over my father’s body. We knew no one would come to sit shiva or to pray the Kaddish now. Instead, Mama found a heavy black prayer book in my father’s study. She turned the pages backward, then forward. The Hebrew letters were like hieroglyphics to me, scribbles and symbols that I couldn’t decipher.
“Leopold should be here,” Mama said quietly. “Leopold and your uncle Ferdinand are the ones who should lead the prayer. Do you know the Kaddish?” she asked. “Do you know the prayer for the dead?”
I shook my head, and did the only thing I could think of: I held her and sang the one song I knew that gave me comfort.
“You are peace, the gentle peace, you are longing and what stills it. I consecrate to you, with all my joy and pain, a home in my eyes and my heart.”
I couldn’t bear to tell her what happened in Berlin. I felt the shame as if it had been branded onto my body, and swore I would never speak of it.
In her dream] she puts a candle into a candlestick; but the candle is broken, so that it does not stand up. The girls at school say she is clumsy; but she replies that it is not her fault. . . . An obvious symbolism has here been employed. The candle is an object which excites the female genitals; its being broken, so that it does not stand upright, signifies impotence on the man’s part (it is not her fault). . . . But does this young woman, carefully brought up, and a stranger to all obscenity, know of such an application of the candle?
—SIGMUND FREUD, THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS, 1900
ADELE
1900
Outside, it was a brilliant October morning. Inside the studio, Klimt stoked the fire and it roared. The curtains were drawn and the small back room was dim and close, like a tent at night. The floor was covered in animal skins, and the walls were hung with dark canvas. Candles flickered. The light was amber and gold, the flames buzzed and snapped, candle wax popped and melted.
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