by Susan Daitch
“I’ll go on my own if I have to.”
“Fine, go ahead. I’ll leave you to your preparations. Your services aren’t keeping my operations afloat. Be sure to leave your keys with the concierge.”
With that Bruno walked out, not slamming the door, but still very much gone. Departure was quick and simple, but I thought he’d be back. He’d had these tantrums before. I couldn’t say, even to myself, Bruno is a coward, or Bruno is a pragmatist, but I was charmed by the idea of the lost city this mystic Motke described. Bruno, who read stolen physics books as a boy, was immune, inoculated at an early age against lamed vovniks who sucked you in with promises of lost cities, but my bags were packed, well, not really, not yet. I looked around the tiny flat. If I had to scram at a moment’s notice what would I jam into a case? I was methodical. From the closet I took a small bag fitted with a piece of cardboard that could be removed from the bottom. I placed the Franco-Soviet Friendship papers under it, packed the suitcase, locked it, placed it in the middle of the bed, then sat on its edge, not sure what to do next. I could see the light from the concierge’s post. The woman was a problem. Why was she so solicitous to me instead of, for example, the sunny Corsican widow or the retired silk salesman who was still always offering “good deals for the ladies?” If she saw Bruno leave so late at night she might draw conclusions, might want to confide a little; she was a foreigner like us, like so many of our neighbors in the apartment building in Berlin. We find these kinds of immigrant honeycombs, or they find us.
When Bruno returned later in the evening I was asleep with the bag at my feet, but I heard him come in and sat up in bed. His profile was visible from the streetlight spilling through the unshuttered window. A chill wind blew in off the sea, he said, as if nothing had happened and I’d asked for a weather report. He’d walked around close to the piers, stopping in a bar, but finally he had nowhere else to go, and no one to talk to. He wandered the streets alone, not for the first time. We keep to ourselves here, and rely on one another, a closed universe of two, there is no one else. Feigen survives, even thrives, living in a half-dream world. His feet weren’t quite on the ground anymore. Could you trust him, really? Yes, I said, I still thought so. Why? Why are you so sure of him? Bruno wanted to know. It’s as if he’d been knighted somewhere, and once the sword touched his shoulder, everything he said had the stamp of authority. He’d unearthed the Gate of Ishtar and been part of the expedition that spirited it thousands of miles away from its place of origin. Feigen of Oranienburgerstrasse I would never have questioned, but even in his Fingers incarnation, I was ready to follow him into the desert. He made everything sound reasonable and possible, even though the journey was sparked by a chance encounter with a nut job clutching something I’d never seen before, even though he wasn’t actually going into the desert with us, only giving us the most general idea of what lay where. Bruno sat on the edge of the bed, head in his hands.
“Feigen is good at business, better than I would have thought possible, but not capable of throwing out a lifeline if you fall overboard.”
“Let’s talk about it in the morning. I can’t argue in my sleep.” I was very tired, sleep claimed me along with a small imp of glee that I could become Feigen’s favorite for a moment, his devoted, unquestioning acolyte, while Bruno slipped into an of abyss of skepticism.
Bruno is wrong about Feigen. Even as he lives increasingly in the world of his childhood, this time around with the Tunisians rather than with the ghost of the Gaon of Vilna, he is, in fact, throwing us a rope. Bruno just doesn’t know the extent to which we’re losing sight of the shore. I’m sure of it. He got into bed fully dressed without saying a word. It was a kind of reconciliation, though nothing was resolved, nor would it ever be, truly.
The next day Bruno left to meet with a wealthy family who were selling what property they had that could be liquidated quickly. Not the Rothschilds or the Weils, but whoever they were, the family was leaving for Cuba that very night. Bruno was to do a quick appraisal, give them cash, and arrange for whatever he bought to be transported to Feigen’s apartment warehouse. Sometimes I went with him. My French was a bit better, but that day there was no need. The family, like us, were recent arrivals from Germany, and all parties concerned wanted to finish business as quickly as possible and walk away.
I wandered back toward the café where we’d met the old woman who sold Feigen the simurgh. There was a lot of activity on the piers: shipments loaded and unloaded, but I found myself looking, more than usual, not at the transport of things, but at the people leaving. Some were very public about their departure, hand clamped on fur collar, hats pulled low, issuing orders at ships’ porters, sometimes at captains, even. Others left more quietly, secretly, barely visible as they slipped cash to first mates or cooks, whoever might secret them away in steerage or hidden in freighters bound to unnamed ports. I wondered if she would reappear, and scanned the street for some sign of her tattered costume, but she was nowhere in evidence. A peddler scurried away when he saw me. Was it the same one as the other day? I’m not sure. I wandered around a market, and finally after buying olives, lemons, and artichokes, I made my way home. Late afternoon turned to evening. I went out, came back again, but Bruno, who should have long ago completed business, did not appear. He didn’t like carrying a lot of Feigen’s cash around Marseilles. It made him uneasy, so he would have wanted to return to Fingers as quickly as possible. Bruno was not one who could effortlessly have fought off even a lame thug, and with his dapper clothes and small build, he was a walking target. Feigen trusted him, and despite our fears, he was often right. Bruno was only robbed one time, and that was before we’d even become reacquainted with Feigen. It was past six in the evening. I decided to go to Fingers’ to find out what had happened. As I walked through the courtyard Lev, the concierge’s sixteen-year-old son, called out to me.
“Madame Nieumacher, stop, please, for a minute.”
Unlike his mother, Lev rarely spoke to us at all. I don’t think he talked much to anyone. His speech was often difficult to follow, as if the road from thought to expression was full of doubt and marked by stuttering. His left eye drifted to one side, while the other was able to focus.
“What is it, Lev?”
“I saw Monsieur Bruno this morning. I said hello to him, twice I said hello, but then some men put him in a car.”
“You mean he was arrested?” If someone had reached out from the mop cupboard and strangled me, that’s how I felt. One minute your shoes click on the flagstones as you put one foot in front of the other, the next you have trouble finding oxygen. Why did he wait until now to find me to tell me this?
“I don’t know for certain if it was the police, you know? Don’t go to the station to ask about him,” Lev warned. “Even if it wasn’t the police who took him, they’ll arrest you, too.” He abruptly covered his tracks. “It was an unmarked car. No one would arrest M. Nieumacher. He isn’t a thief is he? Has he killed someone?” These were the questions of a boy who knew the streets well, and who countered mysteries with the worst possible outcome. His mother poked her head out to yell at him, he should come back in already, dinner was on the table.
I leapt upstairs, grabbed my bag and ran back through the courtyard, hoping the concierge, busy with her cooking, hadn’t noticed me. Lev wasn’t quite right in the head. He could have seen many things that hadn’t necessarily happened. Still, as I made my way to Fingers’ apartment, I avoided the Rue de la Republique, a more direct route, and walked instead down narrow streets, zigzagging, and back-tracking as the sun dropped lower and lower in the sky. I picked streets that were as empty as possible, using the reflections in shop windows to determine if anyone was following me. Business streets gave way to residential blocks whose buildings or houses were fronted by porticos carved with lion heads, phoenixes, pineapples and intertwined fish, symbols of the merchants who had once lived within. A woman pulling laundry in from a balcony stared at me, at least I thought she did. A man in a fez a
ppeared behind me on Rue des Saltimbanques, so I abruptly switched to the elbow-shaped Rue le Chatelier. It was probably just chance that explained his walk on exactly the same route as mine, but with his repeated presence in the glass I walked faster, yet at the same time tried to appear unhurried, just out for an evening stroll, as if that were possible. Finally I reached Feigen’s street in a neighborhood genteel enough to just pass (our clientele was picky, but nervous, and in a hurry) but also near the railroad. Ringing the doorbell over and over until his concierge opened the door, I fell into the entrance of his building just as the man in the fez rounded the corner. Had he seen me? Had he even been following me? The woman was silent and only gestured with her head that yes, Monsieur Fingers was upstairs. I could take the lift.
Feigen came to the door with a prayer shawl over his head, swaying, mumbling in Hebrew, refusing to speak French or German.
“Dr. Feigen, I need you to speak a language I understand.” He turned away from me, but continued to mutter prayers in a low sing-song voice. I asked him again, and he only walked further into the cluttered apartment. Who was he trying to resurrect with this endless loop of chanting? Thirteen-year-old Shuki dreaming of Nevski Prospekt, Potsdammer Platz, the Eiffel Tower? Mar Eldad Ha-Dani back from the dead ready to explain everything?
“Bruno was picked up.”
He paused for a moment, still swaying a bit while clutching the top of a chair. Finally, in German, he asked if I had the Franco-Soviet Friendship papers with me. I nodded. Feigen led me deeper into the apartment to the room with the sliding panel, and once again pushed the bookcase away, dusted off the chair with a handkerchief and opened the cabinet of curiosities. I noticed more cans and bags of food had been stacked against one of the walls.
“What the police were looking for could be any number of things. They may have found something amiss in his papers. At worst he’ll be deported back to Berlin.”
“Or he could be shot.”
Feigen looked at me as if I were an idiot in need of being lied to. He let the shawl slide, catching it just before it hit the floor. Of course he could be done away with, what do you think, we’re watching Dr. Caligari, only waiting to be told all participants are hearing voices while strolling the asylum grounds?
“The papers took too long to arrive from Kaliningrad. You should have left long before this. Also, the French police won’t believe he was from Alsace, gone to study in Berlin.” He raised his eyebrows the way Bruno often did, as if to say some secret, you schmendricks, I was on to you all along, but I ignored him. “They’ll probably come for you next, as early as the morning, perhaps even tonight. There’s a ship leaving for Alexandria in a few hours. I’ve booked passages for two.”
“When did you meet with this captain?”
“Two days ago.”
“You were going to leave without telling us?”
He nodded. At first, yes, that had been his plan.
“Who was the second passage for?”
He extended an arm, hand open in my direction. I looked down at his saucer palm, fingers splayed, ready to catch any fish that swam too close, but kept my arms clasped behind my back. What did this mean? I’d never imagined either FFF or Shuki Fingers thought of me as anything other than Nieumacher’s wife and mostly silent accomplice. His conversation was always directed at Bruno, and he rarely looked in my direction. I was the hat check girl, the waitress, tray in hand, the tailor’s assistant whose measuring tape never touched an inseam, and I was perfectly happy being that person. Feigen hadn’t ever really impressed me as a human with corporeal needs. At those dinners in Berlin, he didn’t touch his food. He smoked and talked, pushed plates away so he could hold court, perhaps to eat alone in the kitchen late at night. Whether Dr. Feigen or Shuki Fingers, he was a thought machine, a brain on stilts, stuck in a pale, melting, fallible body I tried not to notice. I didn’t know what to say. Once, at a dinner in Berlin he described an English Egyptologist, Flinders Petrie, who sometimes worked completely naked. Was he looking at me as he spoke? That’s how I remember it, and I looked at his wife who had turned red, though I would have expected she was used to his stories. Someone else diffused the awkwardness at the table by going on to describe how in 1917 when the British captured Palestine from the Turks, Petrie proposed the entire population of Jerusalem be moved elsewhere so excavation would be facilitated. I still couldn’t get the image of Feigen himself working naked out of my head.
“I could become the Bruno Nieumacher named in the Franco-Soviet organization. I thought, well, there is always a possibility, and maybe this plan would appeal to you. When Bruno failed to appear this afternoon I was alarmed, but also a little hopeful. We could leave together as the Nieumachers. I can change the date of birth on the Franco-Soviet Friendship Dig documents. It’s not a difficult operation. And look what I have here.”
From his pocket he removed a flat maroon object, held it toward me, and slowly turned the pages. It was a passport for Bruno Nieumacher, born in Alsace, but where his picture should have been, was a photograph of an old man, Frederik Feigen. It was very well made. Better than the one Bruno carried.
“I had it made just in case, you never know, just in case, you see . . . for a rainy day, should one arrive, and I think it has. In my opinion.”
He reached for my hand, then let it go as if he knew every cell in it was racing in the other direction, sorry, back against the wall and through the plaster, down the street, across the city.
“You know there are worse things that could happen to you.” (Looking down from his post in an imaginary classroom would he tell me a story of Russian rapists, arsonists, murderers, as if I didn’t already know all about these? Just around the corner there are always phantoms, everyone has them, and often they have sharp knives, x-ray vision, and the power of surprise on their side.)
I pulled my hand away.
“So that’s how it is. I see.” Feigen looked deflated.
“Bruno wasn’t picked up by accident?’ My voice went up slightly at the end of the sentence. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t know if I was asking a question or stating a fact. Feigen shook his head ambiguously. Was he denying he’d tipped off the police exactly, or was the movement of his head meant to indicate avoidance, refusal to answer in so many words, walking in a different direction now. It was growing darker. I was uncomfortable in the small room with Feigen and reached for a light switch, flicked it. Nothing happened. Feigen took the perfect passport, held it under a faucet, drenching the pages, so laboriously constructed, which much have cost him a fortune. He exhaled deeply.
“Last night, later and later it got. I looked around, I found myself completely unable to pack, to put anything in a container or a suitcase. I no longer knew how to decide what to hold on to, what to leave behind. I’m finished with moving from place to place. The comforts of a small enclosed room are sometimes greater than you might imagine.” He pointed to the room concealed by the bookcase. He gave up the image of traveling east with a student wife and would retreat into his room when the time came. If I had agreed to his plan, well, that would have been a different story, but I hadn’t.
Without saying another word Feigen handed me the more current maps, and though it clearly pained him, he also gave me Yanek Motke’s map, the most valuable thing, perhaps the only thing, to survive from his childhood. We said our goodbyes, and when he turned to the east to continue praying, I grabbed the simurgh from the cabinet, snapped open my bag, and dropped it inside. I needed the creature to prove I had a destination, to put a seal on the idea that I was going somewhere, and wasn’t to be left aladrerden, adrift in a sea of shit.
Running in the rain to the piers, I looked down at the pavement cracks, not wanting to take a last glimpse at the city. Lights from the ship, Le Faroan, twinkled from the harbor, and I boarded without looking back.
An Egyptian boy who spoke a little French showed me to my cabin. He told me I had arrived just in time. They would be setting off in only a few minutes.
When I unlocked the door Bruno was lying on my narrow bunk smoking a cigarette as if he had all the time in the world, and it was I who was late. He rubbed his wrist then rolled up his cuff as if showing me a bracelet he’d lifted from some unsuspecting patron.
“I hope you brought papers for two.”
Despite the story we floated as students in Berlin, we weren’t French citizens and never had been. We had German passports, but when we entered France we needed visas, as well. Having left in a hurry, like many others, we didn’t have them, and if caught, we could be expelled, sent back to Berlin. It was a well-known fact that the French bureaucracy and immigration moved like a sleepy, overfed sloth, and its filing system was an inefficient, disorganized mess. In other words, the odds were good you could stay on indefinitely, never caught, but sometimes one was caught. Then Leon Blum was elected, and things got a little easier, but one couldn’t breathe entirely freely, not at all. Bruno’s visa-less German passport, his identity card, all of it, were no more real than the papers sent to us by the printers in Kaliningrad.