Rebecca leapt into the air, eager to enjoy the Valentine meal with the man she loved. Two long elegant glasses stood next to each plate, filled to the brim with white champagne. Rebecca in gaiety scuttled to the decorated table and smelled the plate of food as she sat. She laid her Dresden Wire Mesh handbag on the chair beside her. The soft painted pink petals and pale green leaves decorating the bag were a perfect compliment to the nature encompassing them. The late winter chills in the wind pervaded the park and tossed Rebecca’s long hair.
“This looks lovely.” She smiled subtly and Eli returned her gaze.
“A plate of your assorted favorite foods,” Eli pointed showing her each one. “Smoked duck, a pocket of caviar, baked carrots, and sautéed pears.” With each named food, Rebecca’s smile grew wider, realizing Eli knew her so well. Rebecca savored the duck and then picked up a spoonful of carrots. She nibbled a pinch of caviar and then sipped her white champagne.
“Did you cook all of this?”
“I spent all Friday night a slave in the kitchen.” Eli smirked.
“You told me you had to work late.”
“And I did,” he joked. After the meal, Eli pulled up two paper bags and handed one to Rebecca.
“Another surprise?” Rebecca’s warm gaze fell over Eli’s face like shadows on the sidewalk.
“Open it,” he said and Rebecca didn’t resist. She pulled out a pair of pink ice skates with matching laces. Holding the skates beside her foot, she danced on the grass in spins. “Looks like they will fit.” Eli stared at her. “Thank you Eli. The color is beautiful.”
“We have a lovely frozen lake.” Eli grinned, “a picnic, and a wonderful day to ourselves. What more could two people want for?” Eli persuaded. Rebecca’s loud guffaw was coupled by her tousled hair. Staring at her, she felt Eli wanting something.”
“What?”
“Please, try on the skates.” Eli encouraged.
“Now?”
“Just a moment. We can test them out on the ice near the shoreline. I will hold you hand.”
“But… ”
“Don’t worry. I will hold you.” Eli winked.
“Alright.” After Rebecca pulled her two skates over her feet, they walked, hand in hand, with Eli doing most of the balancing, to the frozen lake.
Her honey touched brown hair glistened under the late winter sun and the dew from the grass also hung in the sky on her nose. Eli brushed the loose strands off her cheeks and collar before lowering his lips to her supple neck. Her lake blue eyes radiated under the blue sky and Eli’s contrasting deep brown eyes sat like steady stones.
Holding her hand steady, Rebecca pushed off the shoreline onto the hard ice. The two separate bodies twined so close became like one, at least to a distant observer.
“Stay near the edge. We don’t want any accidents.” Eli stated.
“Are you sure this is safe?” Rebecca questioned with furrowing brows as she stared at her feet over the ice.
“I used to come here with Papa as a boy. The ice is hard. Just don’t leave my hands.”
“I won’t.” Rebecca giggled in a smile, thinking she would be a silly girl indeed if she broke hands with the one man holding her up securely.
“I love the weather this time of year,” Eli whispered and she could only smile, closing her eyes against the soft breeze. Rebecca pushed with Eli at her side and she almost slipped when she tried to turn around, but Eli caught her. Stumbling in his grip, he grinned and she gritted her teeth, but soon she stood and smiled.
Stepping off the ice and onto the grass, Eli pulled her up spun her into his arms, even the weight of skates could not keep him from her. Carrying her to the picnic table, she sat to pull off her skates. Then, they lay on a quilt Eli straightened out over the grass near the picnic table. Letting the cool sky fall over them like a blanket, they rested in each other’s arms, their toes touching.
In this quiet moment, the only disturbance between them was of past words of politics reminding them that the country and the world were changing.
“Do you really think Hindenburg won’t remain president for much longer?” Rebecca inquired.
“Elections are coming up. Anything is possible.” Eli glanced away at the sun before returning his gaze. “Hindenburg is the favorite, but he’s getting old and his mind is not what it used to be. If Hitler runs this year, who knows what will happen. He makes promises the people want to hear and, despite his party’s violence and radical ideas, the people want bread on their tables.” Eli kissed her lips. “But we can hope.” The morning trickled into late afternoon and they headed back to their apartment building.
* * *
Monday morning, Eli read over briefs and statements that needed to be reviewed for court in the afternoon. Aaron burst into the office with a newspaper swaying in his hands.
“Did you read the morning paper yet?” Aaron’s voice sounded frustrated and his movements agitated. He sprawled the paper over the mahogany desk in front of Eli. “President Hindenburg reluctantly agrees to run again, announcing his candidacy for re-election.”
“That is a good thing.”
“I’m not finished.” Aaron ran his finger across the next line in the paper, “Hitler decided to oppose him and run for the presidency himself.” Eli sunk in his chair, remembering Rebecca’s words, “do you really think Hindenburg won’t be president much longer?” It wasn’t set and Hindenburg had a stronger following than Hitler, but it was one more step forward for the Nazi party.
“Why aren’t you in your office next door?” Eli asked.
“Not very busy for me these days.” Aaron’s lip curled. “My colleagues, Cynthia and Robert from the party, have no trouble finding new clients. I, on the other hand, am having a hard time holding on to my old ones.”
“Sorry,” Eli said in a soft voice, both of them knowing the reason wasn’t that he was a bad lawyer, but that he looked too Jewish.
Aaron ruffled his fingers through his dark curly hair. “You’re lucky. You get to work with your father. He makes sure you acquire clients.”
“Even our business has lessened this year. The Nazis are first-rate at spreading propaganda.” Eli glanced over the newspaper again, reading the quotes enclosed: “Freedom and Bread,” was printed underneath Hitler’s picture as his personal slogan to perpetuate his campaign.
“Freedom and bread! How memorable!” Aaron reacted in disgust.
“Hitler has a monster of a campaign and Hindenburg is essentially resting on his reputation as former president.”
“Hitler won’t win,” Robert said, squeezing through the opened crack in the door. Aaron and Eli both jerked their heads up at Robert. “He won’t have enough supporters and he knows it. This is just a ploy to gain more Nazi sympathy and followers.” Robert closed the door behind him.
Aaron’s eyes sharpened in the corners, “And it’s working. His influence has already reached into our law offices. What’s next, synagogues?”
“I don’t know,” Robert said with sincerity, “but he has another speech scheduled in Berlin today and there’s a Nazi rally downtown.”
Robert handed a Nazi pamphlet to Eli, who stood to take it. “This was handed to me this morning on my way to work.” The pamphlet read: The Sensationalist Newspapers Lie! Biased and racial slurs filled the pages, propitiating a Nazi world view. Eli clutched it in his hands, then crumbled it, thudding heavily onto his seat.
The work day was long as all days were without Rebecca at his side, but this day was worse, because Eli could see the grip of the Nazi party tightening like a rope around the neck of the country he grew up in, of the country he once loved. Eli walked to his old Audi and drove home for the day, seeing plastered over the city walls posters of Hitler and his Nazi campaign.
Some announced sixteen simultaneous mass meetings in Berlin on the problem of unemployment, 5,600,000 demand work, and some stated:
“Germans! Give your answer to the System! Elect Hitler! Everyone knew this system meant a pej
orative Nazi term for the Weimar Republic, blamed for the problems the country faced.
Other posters came more to the point of the problem, to the very core of Germany’s economic collapse, stating, “The Jews are our misfortune,” after the meeting by Julius Streicher, a leading Nazi who stood by the displayed words during his speech. Posters plastered with Jewish and African derogatory comments became more frequent and more widely accepted. Eli slid behind the wheel of his car, tugging on his pale grey tie with sparkle on its opposite side which reminded him of Rebecca on New Year’s Eve.
He drove over the roads he grew up on as a child, riding his bicycle and falling from it for the first time, over the roads he walked to school on, over the roads he had his first kiss. When he parked his Audi and plodded to his apartment building, he grabbed his chest at pains burning inside, though no such physical sensation was there, before opening the front metallic door with its broken latch.
* * *
Rebecca spent the first half of her day at University, preparing to end her courses in March and pick up her Bachelor’s of Science diploma. She could taste the thrill of completion in her mouth. It took her longer than four years, but she was proud of her accomplishment.
The second half of the day, she cleaned up spills and served food at the local diner, offering everyone a smile, even those who annoyed her. She needed the money to spend on food, clothes, and things she liked to do. Her mother pulled the strings of her father, like a jockey pulls a horse, when he offered to pay for college to make sure the extras were not in the deal. Her mother used this tight fist on the money to try to get her daughter back, to live home with her again, as all high class daughters did. But Rebecca would not have it that way. She wanted to pave her own way out of her mother’s grip. Yet she never thought about how much her mother tried to control her life as she served at the diner. She thought about how much freedom she had because of that job, that university, and that life with Eli in Munich.
She placed food onto tables throughout the afternoon rush, picking up tips and putting all the coins inside her small apron pocket unraveling around the seams. Toward the end of the rush, she plodded over to one of the two tables left. A blonde older woman with wide blue eyes had her hair pinned up tightly like a honeycomb. Her companion, a thirty-something man, also had structured blond hair, blue eyes and a square frame from his shoulders to his feet. She overheard their conversation and leaned in to listen.
“This place is crawling with Jews. I’ve seen German girls walk hand in hand with them. Disgusting. This is what’s wrong with our youth today. They’re being corrupted,” the blonde woman said as sure as day that she was right and sat haughtily in her seat.
Her companion didn’t disagree and even encouraged her thinking, a thinking he also shared. His stiff movements and rigid posture reminded Rebecca of the Nazi men. Her ear had pulled itself in their direction and, before they noticed, she yanked herself back to her job, but not before overhearing his comments.
“Soon, we won’t have to worry about them anymore. We’ve got plans.”
Rebecca slipped away, wondering about his statement and if it had anything to do with the stormtroopers terrorizing the cities. In this moment, she felt fear for Eli and herself for the first time. She slid her hands into her apron pockets and felt the coins she had earned for the day.
“Everyone needs to be served, Rebecca, even those you don’t like.”
He knew Rebecca was an open minded girl, a girl whose sentiments swayed as freely in the wind as the flowers in spring, and he knew she was a principled young lady brought up by strict parents. He’d never seen the young man she dated, but knew of her mother’s disapproval. But none of this mattered as he shoved Rebecca forward. It didn’t matter if the customers’ values vehemently differed from her own or if she desperately didn’t want to do this, because they were only customers and Rebecca only a waitress.
Rebecca bit her lip and almost curtsied out of habitual nervous politeness at the customers at the table, the customers who repulsed every bone in her body. She took their order and served their food without so much as forgetting her smile, an outstretched smile which she learned from her mother and reserved for them.
At home in her quiet room, the thoughts of the unpleasant, overheard conversation weighed heavily on her and then her phone rang. She pranced over to it, happy for the interruption, believing it to be Eli.
She answered the phone with an enthusiastic hello until the speaker at the other end asked, “Is this my daughter, Rebecca?”
The roughness in the voice jolted her back to the earlier unpleasant conversation. “Yes, of course, Mutti. This is Rebecca. Who else would it be?”
“You sound different.” Her mother paused and then continued, “I was calling to see how you were doing.”
“I’m fine. I’m doing well. I just got back from work.”
“Work.” Rebecca could feel her mother’s glinting eyes. “You know you wouldn’t have to work if you just stayed home to study at University.”
“Mutti, we’ve been through this too many times. I’m not going to do this with you again.” Rebecca’s voice was worn with arguments between them and then her voice soothed, “Besides, I’ve almost completed my diploma so you won’t be able to complain about it much longer.”
“Your diploma? That’s fabulous, dear. Has it been four years already? It feels like just yesterday you were packing up your luggage and leaving your mutti in tears.”
“You are so dramatic, Mama.” Rebecca rolled her eyes.
“So when am I going to see you?”
“I was just up for Christmas.”
“Over a month ago and besides, you didn’t stay long.”
“Can you blame me?”
“Yes, I can. We bought you a new car and you show us your appreciation by leaving on Christmas day.”
“Dad bought me the car, and you kept pushing the issue with Eli. I told you I didn’t want to talk about it on Christmas of all days.”
“But I am your mutti and I worry about you. You see everything that’s going on with the posters and pamphlets. Hindenburg can only do so much to keep this country under control, and there are many supporters of the Nazi party. I don’t want you getting hurt.”
“Just admit this is about you. This is about you not wanting me to date Eli because of your own prejudices.” Rebecca’s nostrils flared.
“This doesn’t have to do with me, Rebecca. There is so much you don’t understand because you’re so young.” She paused and then continued, “He could change your life forever, your reputation, your hopes for settling down with a fine German gentleman.”
“These aren’t my hopes, Mutti; they’re yours.”
“And they should be yours, too. I forbid you to see him.” Deseire held her tongue after her strong statement and Rebecca hesitated to answer at first, surprised her mother had actually said, “forbid.”
“You can’t forbid me, Mama. I’m not a little girl anymore. I make my own choices.”
“Just promise me you won’t do anything rash with him.” Deseire’s voice softened, soothed and Rebecca knew what rash meant to her mother: intimate, pregnant, married, anything that couldn’t be undone.
Rebecca knew her mother was too late with the first forbiddance and she was exhausted at what else to say to her.
“Goodbye, Mutti.” Rebecca clicked the phone down as the white cord tangled. She plopped onto her soft sofa with a weary sigh from a long day and closed her eyes to sleep.
Saturday, March 19, 1932
Missing her the past few weekends because of a stressful office atmosphere, Eli took it upon himself to invite Rebecca for tea at his place Saturday morning,. He’d tried to make up for the loss in the office since Ekkehard’s betrayal concerning the dry cleaning receipts. It didn’t sting Eli personally for he didn’t know Ekkehard very well, but it was a betrayal to an office he had worked at for more than five years, a betrayal to his father.
Ezekiel and Eli vow
ed to never allow something like that to ever happen again. Over the past few weeks, Eli had to do twice the amount of his usual work, his own and the clerk’s duties, since Ekkehard had been asked to leave and they didn’t trust hiring another man.
Since Valentines was the last day Rebecca had seen Eli, it took very little encouraging on Eli’s part to arouse her interest. Rebecca yearned to see Eli: touch his skin, hold him, lay her hands in his, caress his soft lips with hers. She found the more she didn’t see him, the more she dreamt of him while she walked to her classes at University and while she served food at the diner and while she slept.
She had grown accustomed to his dark hair brushing up against hers on the sofa or in the bed. She had missed his tender voice calling her name. So, when Eli had phoned Saturday morning to invite her to tea at his room, she skipped from her sofa and dashed up the stairs.
When Eli opened the door at her soft knocking, their eyes met and all the feelings emerged that they felt on the porch the day they first made love, intensified from a lack of satisfying it. Rebecca’s body burned, longing for his touch and Eli’s eyes glazed over her as his fingers played with her hair and neck. Before Rebecca could address her sensual desires, Eli reached out for her hand and escorted her to his small table with two teacups on top of it.
He had a lot on his mind, yet somehow from his eyes falling on her, all the thoughts that preoccupied him disappeared. Social anxieties or political nuances no longer filled the space between them. This space filled with her smell, an expensive perfume, and the air she breathed, the same air that filled his lungs. In this space with her, the betrayal of Ekkehard and the loss of the case, the woes of a growing Nazi party and the propaganda plastered on the walls vanished. This space held only him and her and their love, pulling them like magnets unable to resist its dangerous polarity.
As Eli watched her sip her orange flavored tea, he reached across the minuscule wood table which pressed against his chest and pulled her free hand to his lips. Rebecca put the teacup down, wrapped her other hand around his and then touched his lips. He held her hand there for moments. Fingers interlocked, she tickled his leg from underneath with her lifted toes like feathers brushing against bare skin. Control diminished and Eli leapt, tossing himself around the table and sweeping her into his arms.
The Day the Flowers Died Page 8