The Inventory: A Novel

by Gila Lustiger

  The marriage of the parties concerned, Dieter and Vicki Walter, who were both very young, had lived together for a mere five months, and hadn’t known each other much longer than that, was to be considered failed due to reciprocal fault. The court noted that the defendant’s fundamentally flawed attitude had revealed itself to the plaintiff through the act of purchasing a compact from a Jewish store.

  Vicki Walter must have been aware that her husband could not approve of the purchase as it would create difficulties for him as a Party member and in his capacity as local group leader: the purchase was at odds with both his lifestyle and his philosophy.

  Quite spontaneously, claimed Mrs. Walter, she decided to go into the store. (It was the O.B. Department Store, which had been in the Jewish hands of the Oppenheimer and Baum families ever since its founding, a fact with which the defendant must have been familiar through her husband’s information project; Mr. Walter, along with two other Party members, had drawn up a list of all the Jewish stores and pinned it in strategic locations all over the city. One of the lists was outside this very department store.)

  She had not recklessly planned the purchase. She had come, she declared, from the market and was carrying her shopping bag full of ingredients for lunch, which she still had to cook. She planned to make potato salad, and added to the normal groceries were two kilos of potatoes and six bottles of beer, which meant the bag was very heavy. She had to stop several times to catch her breath. The handles of the bag were cutting into her hands, too.

  “I did not deliberately stop outside the department store,” she said. “I went as far as I could, but my hands were hurting.”

  She noticed the compact, she said, when she was having a quick look around.

  “I can hardly stare at the ground all day, just because the whole place is fall of Jewish products,” she retorted, when her husband asked why she had looked particularly at this shop’s wares.

  The compact was in the shop window. Mrs. Walter spotted the compact in question immediately. She had always wanted a compact like it, as her husband knew. She had spoken of her wish to possess such a compact on various occasions. The last time was around her birthday, but her husband hadn’t listened. He hadn’t given her anything, neither a compact nor anything else.

  She therefore saw it as perfectly within her rights to buy the compact, to which she had taken an instant liking, and without a moment’s hesitation she went into the store.

  In response to the question with what means she had planned to purchase it, she replied that she had used the sum leftover from the housekeeping money, which she had saved up over the last two weeks, as a reward for her economizing.

  “The housekeeping money is mine,” she said. “I am the housewife,” thereby irritating her husband, who was of the opinion that any leftover money should be returned to him.

  “We could have decided together what to do with the money,” he said.

  The plaintiff admitted that the comment “It’s my money, not yours” had left a particularly bitter aftertaste.

  “She has no right to keep anything of mine since she shows no interest in my political activities, nor in the repercussions of her actions. I had had it up to here,” he said.

  When asked why she left the store in such a rush, the defendant replied that it certainly did not stem from any feeling of guilt, contrary to her husband’s belief. She had got a shock from seeing the time on the clock above the exit. Half an hour had passed, and she noted to herself she would have to dash to get lunch ready in time.

  “He,” she exclaimed, pointing at Mr. Walter, “would have a fit if his food wasn’t ready and waiting for him on the table.” This made the courtroom chuckle.

  “It certainly could not have been as straightforward as that,” contested the plaintiff. If she had not been feeling guilty, why had she not shown him the compact, or at least mentioned it?

  Mrs. Walter replied that she had refrained from mentioning it because she knew he would ask to have the housekeeping money back to finance his political activities, although it was money that she had saved. The thought had not entered her head, even back home, that the store was a Jewish one, and that she was now the proud owner of a Jewish compact.

  Mr. Walter interjected that therein, to his mind, lay her offense.

  “She is the wife of a local group leader,” he said furiously. “I spent four whole evenings at least with two of my men in the kitchen, drawing up the list of Jewish stores.”

  “I, however, was not allowed to enter the kitchen.” She could have listened from the sitting room, countered her husband. She could have made herself familiar with the required information anytime thereafter. The list was laid out along with other material on the sitting room table. Thus it was well within reach.

  “I don’t have any time to read, I have to make potato salad,” retorted the woman, making the courtroom laugh again.

  It was high time he explained how he seemed to know every detail, demanded the defendant, expressing her suspicion that she had been spied upon.

  He had found out about the purchase of the compact by chance.

  “She,” said Mr. Walter, pointing at his wife, “was observed by a guard strategically placed in front of the store to ward off would-be Aryan shoppers.”

  The guard was leaving for lunch when he turned round, with no particular aim, and caught sight of the defendant entering the shop. The accused, the plaintiff went on, had chosen her moment well. She had not, however, reckoned with the guard’s vigilance. Thus, in spite of taking precautions, she was caught in the act.

  The guard, devoted to Mr. Walter, regarded it as a matter of honor to sacrifice his lunch hour, to remain standing in front of store, and carefully follow the course of events. The accused left the store twenty minutes later, smiling contentedly and sporting an O.B. shopping bag. Mrs. Walter then went directly home to their common apartment, but held the bag for all to see, the entire way back.

  “That shocked me particularly deeply,” said Mr. Walter. “It didn’t even cross her mind to hide the bag discreetly in among the groceries. Any old neighbor could have seen where the local group leader’s wife spends her mornings.”

  Everyone, he added, knows the logo printed in red on those bags.

  “She had been making fun of my political activities for quite some time,” said the plaintiff. He lent no credibility to her theory that her open behavior emphasized her innocence.

  “A friend of hers stirred her up against me.” The plaintiff named a neighbor who lived on the floor below them. She was also the one who contacted the police on hearing the woman’s cries for help. They arrived three quarters of an hour later.

  Mr. Walter said he had found out about the purchase after a meeting. The guard, respecting the situation, approached him afterward, when the other members had already left, thus showing more compassion and sensitivity than his own wife.

  He had questioned her about it immediately. To begin with, she had denied it. When he told her she had been seen, she called him a dirty rat.

  Even after several warnings she was not prepared to hand over the object she had purchased from the O.B. department store.

  “I had to search the apartment.”

  After a cursory look in the kitchen and the sitting room, he ransacked her wardrobe. In no time he found a compact in among her underwear. He had never laid eyes on it before and she could not explain where it came from. As its place of safekeeping struck him as more than a little suspicious, he held on to it.

  It was only after the subsequent argument regarding the compact that he struck her. He hit her once, possibly twice but certainly no more, hard in the face. He did not do this in a fit of rage, but rather to teach her a lesson. She grabbed hold of his arm and demanded he hand over the compact.

  “She wanted the compact, spoke of nothing else, and didn’t listen to what I had to say,” retorted Mr. Walter, as his wife pointed out to the room the areas of the face where bruising had occurred. He ad
ded, “She started screaming, ‘Give me back my compact, give me back my compact.’ I had to hit her.”

  According to Mr. Walter, in this instance she also showed a lack of sensitivity. The neighbors were forced to take notice of her because of her shrieks.

  He then filed for divorce immediately. When the police had gone, she refused, the plaintiff went on, to spend even ten minutes more under the same roof with him. She left for her mother’s. She sent her mother to him the next day, and she had asked that he make up with her daughter. He told her he would give her another chance. He had made her return as easy as possible, and was even willing to forget the incident.

  She came back the following day, but still refused to speak to him. A whole week went by this way and he spent as much time as possible at the Party, to escape the unbearably oppressive atmosphere at home.

  “A week later, she finally opened her mouth. I was extremely excited that evening because it brought the end of a project we’d been busy with for two weeks.”

  Together with a companion from the Party, a teacher, he had drafted one hundred manifestos, which were to be read throughout the Reich.

  “We sat down together in the sitting room after dinner. I lit a candle and began reading the text to her. She listened passively, playing with the tassels of the tablecloth. I tried to ignore it. As I read the last section, she smirked. I asked her what was so funny and forbade her to smile. She held her mouth tight shut, like a stubborn child, and listened like that without moving.”

  He had tried not to feel provoked, and read on to the end. He had not shown his annoyance. Then he had asked her whether she had anything to say about it.

  “And what do you think she said when I asked her for her opinion?”

  She asked, said the plaintiff, where her compact was.

  “That was her only utterance. It was obvious to me then that it was all over between us.”

  Mr. Walter stated that he did not harbor any feelings of anger toward his wife. He put her behavior down to youth.

  “Vicki, when all is said and done, is not a bad person,” he said, and when the grounds for the sentence — his wife’s fundamentally flawed attitude — had been read out, he wished her the necessary maturity to change her colors soon.

  50 Kilos of Gold Fillings

  1.

  My name is Ernst Fuchs. In 1908 I first saw the light of day in a sleepy little town on the Polish border. It had a beautiful gothic church tower and a marketplace where the local farmers sold their wares twice a week. There was also an inn where high society liked to gather on a Sunday to talk about everything under the sun over a midday drink.

  My father had a general store. He stocked just about anything that could be of use in our town, from raisins, schnapps, and smoked fish to cotton thread.

  There were two fat catalogs on the counter. They were sent to us twice a year and were full of illustrations of what you could order, prices including postage. Should you be looking for something special — a baptism gift or a wedding present — you would come to my father, leaf through the brochures, and get his advice.

  My father was the contact to the outside world. He loved keeping up to date with it all and so he traveled to Danzig or Berlin more than was strictly necessary. We were all ears when he returned from one of his trips, and he told us his stories at bedtime. They seemed more incredible to us than Grimms’ fairytales, inhabited as they were by electric kettles, trams, and every imaginable machine. We always awaited his return impatiently, in anticipation of a present.

  My mother hardly ever helped out in the store. She didn’t have a particularly strong constitution. The four pregnancies had certainly taken their toll on her physically. A year after I entered the scene, a child was stillborn, and I don’t believe she ever got over that emotionally.

  Although my father worshiped my mother, or so it seemed to us through our children’s eyes, he didn’t like to have her around him in the store. He also tucked himself away from us whenever he could.

  I’m sure this was the only reason he went fishing on weekends. He certainly wasn’t fond of the taste of fish. When I was still in shorts, I was allowed to go with him sometimes. This soon petered out though because I couldn’t keep quiet — show me the child who can.

  I can barely remember the births of my two sisters: Katharina was two years younger, and Charlotte, known as Otta, came a year later. For some inexplicable reason, however, Käthe’s arrival is associated with an image of a shiny red toy train rumbling round in a circle, and a small iron barrier that I excitedly raised when the train drew near. Perhaps I’d received this as compensation for the small catlike crumpled sister that suddenly appeared in a cradle in my room. Or maybe I’d seen a picture of it in one of my father’s catalogs and wanted it, knowing of course that my parents might be a little more open to persuasion right then. I’m really not sure now. Anyway, it doesn’t play such an important role.

  When I was about four years old my parents employed a nanny. She had thick brown hair that she wore pleated and rolled up around the ears. I adored her. She cooked, cleaned up, and if my mother was resting, or having a friend for tea, she would sometimes look after us children. She is the one who armed me with the fairies, giants, and witches that I re-create at my godchild’s bedside.

  Our nanny, whom I called by her last name, came from a very simple background: both her mother and grandmother had been maids. She would have become one too, if she hadn’t been lucky, becoming an employee of my father and enchanting our childhood.

  She baked an orange cake for us every Friday. And thus, quite unintentionally, she instilled in us a sense of time. The cake did not only signify the start of the weekend. Without this dark brown object, we would have known nothing of the importance or, dare I suggest it, the existence of a religious day.

  I was to have many opportunities later on to sample orange cake — it is regarded as one of the few culinary specialties of the town I live in now — but never, not even abroad, did they excite such pleasure as those early ones: that sunny smell, spongy, so light that it crumbled at the slightest touch, the base just a little moist from the runny warm butter and the juice of the oranges, sprinkled with a mixture of almond chips and powdered sugar like the snow of the first day of winter. It would give us children short delicious hiccups, which became in their turn a weekly family tradition, as we each shoveled in our allotted slice hurriedly to ensure a second helping.

  Twice a year we were spruced up and sent to a photographer. These sittings seemed to last an eternity. All movement was prohibited and you were supposed to laugh at all sorts of childish and unfitting remarks: we did so out of feelings of pity and impatience rather than any genuine desire. What torture!

  The day before I always went to the barber. Or rather I was dragged to the barber by my father, because I hated and feared him. He joked about cutting off my ears as well as my hair if I didn’t keep still.

  The nanny cut my sisters’ hair. She casually pleated it into two pigtails, then with one snip cut off several centimeters of hair. With long hair, the precision of the cut isn’t considered all that important.

  I think that at moments like that — most of the time I was quite content as I was — I envied my sisters for being girls. Although I understood fairly quickly that the barber was just kidding, it was only when I was older that I could shake off the unsettled feeling that possessed me when I saw a pair of scissors.

  Those numerous photos taken in front of ever-changing backgrounds could tell a historian far more about the tastes, fears, and dreams of our time than the silly statistics so fashionable today, as though figures could describe our reality. Those photos have of course disappeared without a trace. I have no idea who took them when my family was driven out of their house one night. I keep the hope alive that one day while out taking a Sunday stroll I will come across my father, my mother, and my rather awkwardly smiling sisters at some flea market, among orphaned cups without handles, headless dolls, and other
old worthless objects. They could only mean something to me, surely not to anyone else.

  There’s one photo I remember particularly vividly. It was one of the few I enjoyed having had taken. I am in a summer sailor’s suit with shorts, standing in front of a tropical background. There’s a palm tree, some bushes, and a brilliant blue sky. I have just turned six, and this is my official birthday picture. In my left hand, slightly twisted, I’m clutching a hat, in my right a walking stick or a riding crop. This time I am not supposed to laugh. Instead I am meant to look serious and important. I look into the black hole of the lens and imagine I am a plantation owner in America. We had just received a letter from my father’s brother. He had emigrated to America at the turn of the century. My uncle had come into quite a sum of money and his fortunes were often the topic of my parents’ conversation at the table.

  My uncle hadn’t made his money, as my vivid boy’s imagination liked to think, by growing sugar cane. He had set up a flourishing chain of express dry cleaners. He had invented a then complicated (later simplified) chemical process with which the most stubborn of stains could be removed from clothes without their having to be washed with soap and water.

  Nowadays everyone has heard of dry cleaning. But when my uncle introduced it, one can imagine the reaction.

  My uncle sent us a shiny postcard of a row of nicely dressed employees he used as an advertisement. Although the layout of the card wasn’t the best, praise is certainly due for the way my uncle managed to exploit a prejudice as a selling ploy. The saying on the upper portion of the card in the shape of a garland read, Was ist denn das? The death to dust!, playing on the mistaken belief that we Germans are even more cleanliness-conscious than other nations.

  There’s not much to tell about my school days. I attended the local primary school, then spent some uneventful years at high school. It was a few miles away from home in a small provincial town. My father took me there every day.