Freedom (Jerusalem)

by Colin Falconer

  Talbot saw the rear of a donkey cart approaching rapidly and made him to return his attentions to the road. “Just tell me what happened!”

  “Bandits,” Majid said.

  “Bandits?”

  “They fired at me because they thought I was a Britisher. It is only Allah’s will I was not killed!”

  “Or wounded in the knee, at any rate.”

  “The hills are crawling with dirty Arabs!”

  “The army commander seems to think the roads are quite safe.”

  An elderly Arab wobbled to the centre of the road on his bicycle. Majid slammed his fist on his horn and passed him so close that the old man lost his balance and fell. Majid seemed not to notice. “Judea is still very dangerous, effendi. You must tell the Mandoob es Sami you will be in great danger when you go to Acre.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “I am very afraid for you. Please believe me, we should not go through the Bab el-Wad.”

  “What other way is there?”

  “We can go north to Ramalla, Talbot effendi. Then across to Lydda.”

  “The roads to Ramalla are awful. It will add hours to the journey.”

  Majid licked his lips. He was sweating, Talbot noticed, yet the morning was still cool. “The Bab el-Wad is not safe. Please do not make me drive that way.”

  “You know something, Majid?”

  “I am the brass monkeys, Talbot effendi. Do not ask me how I know, I beg you, but I know. Let us not go that way. I will make up the time, I will drive faster around the bends.”

  Talbot considered: why would anyone want to shoot him? The rebellion was supposed to be over. But Majid seemed genuinely frightened. “Perhaps I could arrange a military escort,” he said.

  Majid went pale. “No, no, please, Talbot effendi, if we take soldiers it will only be worse. It is better if we go another way, and there is no trouble. No more holes in the car.”

  Talbot sat back and admired the Aleppo pines standing sentry around the High Commissioner’s house. Majid obviously knew more than he was saying. He would have to think about this.

  Dachau

  The wind moaned through the barbed wire. Josef Rosenberg man removed his cap and ran his hand across the stubble on his skull. Bad enough that they had dressed him in these ridiculous striped pajamas but to shave his hair like this. Me, a good German citizen!

  Thank God it would all be over soon. Hitler had pushed the people too far this time. They would not tolerate this. Any day they would kick them out of office and things would get back to normal. If they resisted, Chamberlain and the French would force him out.

  And the insurance money should be through any day. He just hoped Rachel had remembered to send in the claim.

  München

  Netanel looked at his watch. Three o’clock. Six hours they had made him wait! There was a cold draught in the tiled corridor and he was hungry, but he had not dared to go out to buy lunch - even if he could find a shopkeeper who would serve him - because he knew the clerks would use that as an excuse to pass him over altogether.

  It had been over a month now since they had taken Josef. Rolf’s men had destroyed almost everything in the house; they had even kicked in all the windows in the conservatory, leaving the floor ankle deep in glass. It glittered in the winter sun like frost.

  They lived in just two rooms now to conserve fuel. He had converted the drawing-room into a bedroom for his mother, while he slept on the sofa in the living-room. They used the kitchen and downstairs bathroom for washing and cooking. He had closed the doors on all the other rooms, leaving the shattered china and splintered furniture where it was. He sealed under the doors with blankets as best he could to keep out the draughts.

  He had boarded up the smashed windows and built a small fire in the living-room. It took him a day to haul the rest of the coke up from the boiler-room.

  He left the rest of the debris in a pile on the driveway, along with the vandalized paintings. The empty square patches of wallpaper in the living-room depressed him but it was better than staring at “JUD” smeared over the face of his grandfather.

  They were left with a sofa, though its upholstery had been partly ripped with a knife; and his father’s favorite green brocade armchair, which was miraculously untouched. He scrubbed with turpentine to remove the red Star of David on the dining-room wall.

  The morning after his father’s arrest, he dressed in his best suit and walked into town to catch the train into München and the SS headquarters.

  He could not believe what he saw on the way to the station; the synagogue was a smoldering shell, and the Jewish cemetery beside it had been desecrated, the stones overturned and defaced with swastikas. The glass from the shop fronts that had littered the streets had been cleared away - he heard that Rolf’s boys had made the shopkeepers get down on their hands and knees and pick up every fragment themselves - but the Jewish shops were deserted, their windows boarded up, many of their owners having joined his father on the train to Dachau.

  He passed Horowitz’s shoe store and recognized the Helders in there, bartering with the old cobbler. He stopped and listened. It seemed Hermann and his wife had stolen all the shoes from the display window but now they were angry because none of the shoes made a matching pair. They were bargaining with old Horowitz, without apology: ten right-foot shoes for one new pair.

  Today, Netanel had with him the rest of their Deutschmarks - despite their best efforts, Rolf’s lumpen had not found the safe. The money was bundled up in the briefcase on his lap. Ten thousand marks. That was the amount the SS clerk had told him would be required to expedite his father’s release from the KZ at Dachau.

  What would they do when Josef was released? he thought. Their exit visas for Chile had expired at the end of November. New ones would cost even more money. Well, they still had possessions they could hock. Once his father was free, he would find some way to get them all out.

  Palestine perhaps. The responsibility was his now.

  If only Josef had listened to him three years ago, they could have got out with everything!

  He looked at his watch again. Ten past three. Would they leave him sitting here all day? They had done that to him countless times. Usually the clerks did not even inform him that they were going home. They just left. At half past five two SS soldiers simply picked him up and threw him on the street.

  He looked at his newspaper. On the front page was a photograph of a column of people marching under guard through the streets of Linz. They were carrying cardboard suitcases and rucksacks and they had Stars of David pinned to their coats, even the children. Netanel scanned the faces and wondered if Aunt Esther and his cousins were among the faces.

  A dark-haired young man in a black Schutzstaffeln uniform and horn-rimmed spectacles stepped into the corridor. “Rosenberg,” he said, and went back into his office. His heart felt as if it would leap out of his chest. He threw down the newspaper and jumped to his feet.

  The office was small and cramped, dominated by a huge, grey filing cabinet. The clerk himself looked like any harassed bureaucrat. Without a word, he held out his hand for Netanel’s papers. Netanel fumbled in his jacket pocket and brought out his identity card. It was one of the new ones, stamped with a large Gothic letter “J” for Jew. It identified him as Netanel Israel Rosenberg. The “Israel” was another innovation; after Kristallnacht every Jewish male was required to add “Israel” to his name so there could be no possible confusion about their true identity.

  The man gave it cursory examination then flicked the card back across the table. “What is it you want?” he said without looking up.

  “My father is being detained at Dachau - ”

  “Yes?”

  “I was told I might be able to arrange his release.” Be polite, Netanel. This little scheiss has your father’s destiny in his pale hands.

  “Why is he there?”

  “He has done nothing wrong. When he was arrested - ”

  “I said why is he there
?”

  “Protective custody.”

  The clerk’s spectacles flashed as they caught the light. “What is his name?”

  “Rosenberg. Josef Rosenberg.”

  “Josef Israel Rosenberg,” the man corrected him. He wrote the name on a form. “Address?”

  Netanel gave him his father’s details, his date of birth, his occupation - the clerk snorted with contempt - and date of arrest.

  “It costs a great deal of money to transport a prisoner of the Reich from one place to another. And it makes a lot of paperwork.”

  “I have brought ten thousand marks with me.”

  “Good. Leave it on the desk. You can go now.” Netanel sat there. Was that all there was to it?

  “When will he be released?” he said.

  “You can go now,” the clerk repeated, and though Netanel wanted to press him further, he dared not. But just to leave the money there?

  What else could he do?

  He stood up and left the office, leaving behind the briefcase and the precious ten thousand marks.

  Ravenswald

  The House in the Woods looked deserted from the outside. The heaps of broken furniture and paintings piled up on the driveway, the boxes of broken glass and china and the boarded windows, all gave the impression the house had been long abandoned. Only the skein of smoke from one of the chimneys hinted that there might be life inside.

  Netanel let himself into the house with his key. His mother was sitting in the armchair in the darkened living- room, staring into the fire.

  “You should have the lights on,” Netanel said. He flicked the switch but nothing happened. He tried another in the drawing-room, and the kitchen.

  They had turned the power off.

  Mein Gott! But Emmerich and his friends understood the small, intricate ways of torment! Netanel went to the pantry cupboard and took out a box of candles, lit one, and carried it into the living-room.

  “Here, we have some light.”

  “You should let the servants do that,” Frau Rosenberg said. “That’s what they are here for.”

  Poor Mutti. Ever since they had taken Josef, she had not been herself. Sometimes she was lucid, but at other times her mind wandered like this. She is trying her best to escape, like every Jew in Germany is trying to escape. Only she has sought out refuge inside.

  If I can only get my father back, she will be all right.

  “Do you want something to eat?”

  “Yes, ring for Hilde. I think it’s fish tonight.”

  “I’ll make some soup.”

  “Josef should be home soon. Tell Hilde supper had better be ready or Herr Rosenberg will be furious. He does not like to be late for his card game.”

  Something caught Netanel’s eye. There was a brown paper parcel on the floor by the armchair. It was addressed to his mother.

  “Who brought this?” he asked her. The postman had long ago stopped delivering letters to their door.

  She stared at the parcel as if she had never seen it before. “Perhaps Hilde put it there,” she said.

  Netanel picked it up. There was no postage stamp, but the National Socialist eagle and swastika insignia were imprinted above the name and address. Netanel tore off the buff paper. Inside was a cardboard box. He opened it. It contained a small metal pot and a typewritten letter bearing the official seal of the Schutzstaffeln.

  It read:

  Frau Rosenberg,

  We enclose the ashes of your husband, Josef Rosenberg, who was shot while trying to escape from protective custody at Dachau. He was cremated in line with official government policy. There is an outstanding charge for transport which will be sent to you separately.

  Ernst Hasler,

  Commandant,

  Dachau K.Z.

  The man did not introduce himself. “There was an advertisement in the paper,” he said. “You have books for sale.” He waved the newspaper in Netanel’s face as if it were a search warrant. The advertisement was ringed in black ink. “Can I come inside? I don’t like being seen going into a Jewish house.”

  He was a thin, neat man, with short blond hair. The side pockets of his overcoat were piped with green, and he wore a jaunty Tyrolean hat with a badger brush set at the back, in the traditional manner.

  He looks like a stick insect, Netanel thought. “Come in,” he said.

  The black-and-white-tiled hall was empty and Netanel wore a scarf over his suit to keep out the chill. The man stamped his feet against the cold and looked around. “Where are the books?”

  “This way.”

  Netanel led him up the stairs to his father’s study. As he opened the door he imagined Josef sitting at his desk in a worn velvet smoking jacket, poring over family accounts. But the room was empty. Josef’s splintered desk was rotting away on the portico with the other furniture smashed by the SS on Kristallnacht. Now only the bookshelves remained - one of them had been hurled to the floor but the heavy walnut had withstood the impact. Their shoes echoed on the parquet floors and left imprints in the thin rind of dust.

  The buyer frowned, like a pearl dealer confronted with a handful of misshapen baroque. “What do you have here?”

  “It depends what you’re looking for,” Netanel said. The buyer ran his finger along the bindings. He raised his eyebrows. “Heine?”

  “You like Heine?”

  “Heine is hard to find. Most of these have ended up on bonfires.” He took out The Harz Journey, flicked through the pages. “It’s in good condition,” he said grudgingly.

  “My father always said that a book was the sum of a man’s thoughts, and as such it was to be revered, not burned.”

  “Depends on the man. Depends on the thoughts.” He took another volume, the Buch der Lieder, the Book of Songs, from the shelves. Netanel curbed an impulse to snatch it out of his hands. It was his father’s favorite. Letting this lumpen even hold it seemed like sacrilege.

  I’m sorry, Father, but it’s no good to you now.

  “I can perhaps take some of these off your hands.”

  “How kind. If you will excuse me saying, you do not look like the sort of man who reads Heine.”

  “They are collector’s pieces.”

  “So you want them because Hitler has made them rare? You are very astute.”

  The buyer surveyed the top shelf. “Erich Maria Remarque,” he murmured, impressed. “I’ll give you ten marks for the lot.”

  And I’ll throw you out of the window, you little shit. “No less than fifty.”

  The buyer reached into his jacket and produced his wallet. He took out four ten mark notes. “Forty.”

  Netanel took it. “You have just got the biggest bargain of your life.”

  “I get bargains like this every week. Not that I have anything against the Jews personally.”

  “Hardly anyone does. Only Hitler.”

  “Quite so. Do you have a box I can put these in?”

  Hermann closed the shop every day at five o’clock. Winter was drawing in, and it was dark by the time Marie flipped over the sign on the front door: CLOSED. She heard Hermann grunt as he lifted a lamb carcass off his workbench and carry it out to the cool room in the back yard. Marie went to the trays, took two veal steaks and some lamb chops and wrapped them in paper. She tucked the package into the cardigan she wore underneath her apron.

  By the time Hermann returned to the shop she had finished packing away the rest of the meat trays. Her petty larceny went unnoticed.

  The wind rattled the boarding at the windows and tiny flurries of snow found their way through the cracks. Netanel and his mother huddled around the small coal fire for warmth, blankets wrapped around their shoulders.

  Netanel had prepared bowls of thin Knochensuppe, vegetable soup flavored with a little chicken stock and a few marrow bones. A small candle fluttered in the draught. Soon the last of the coal would be gone, and they would have to burn the furniture.

  Despite the loss of the ten thousand marks, they still had a little money
left, but no one would take it. The National Socialist government and the majority of people of Ravenswald were quite happy to let them starve.

  But not everyone. One night he had heard footsteps on the portico. When he went outside to investigate he found a parcel lying by the doorstep, and saw the grocer, Muller, riding away on his bicycle. The parcel contained tins of food and condensed milk.

  Other packages appeared: bread, a few vegetables, once a liverwurst. They were always left during the night, as no one would dare be seen near the House in the Woods during the day. Once Netanel thought he saw Frau Hochstetter hurrying away; on the portico step he found a small basket containing eggs, bread, milk, and a little meat. That night he and his mother had enjoyed a feast.

  But how much longer could they live off the charity of the few people of Ravenswald who still remembered der Chef kindly? How long before Ubersturmführer Emmerich frightened them off too?

  “Josef is late home from his cards,” Frau Rosenberg said.

  “He’s dead, Mother. He’s not coming home.”

  “He is getting later and later. He works hard, I know he needs his pleasures. But I shall have to talk to him about it.”

  “He’s dead. You can’t talk to him.”

  “He does like his cards.”

  There was a gentle rapping, from the back door.

  “That will be him now,” she said.

  Netanel put down his soup. He told himself to remain calm. It could not be the SA, they would come straight through the front door with axes, no timid tapping at the washroom. So it must be a friend. Perhaps another delivery of food!

  He took off the blanket, lit another candle, and went into the hallway. God in heaven, it was like a tomb out here! There was a sheen of ice on the tiles and his breath immediately turned to vapor. He crossed the hall, picking his way over the wreckage that still littered the floor after Kristallnacht, and made his way to the washroom at the back.