Papa joins us in my laundry-room-bedroom. He has a skullcap on his head, a small fabric hat. He has two of them in his bedroom, his and his father’s, the grandfather I never met. He doesn’t wear them but I know they mean a lot to him because I’m not allowed to play with them. My mother tells him he looks ridiculous. He says it will amuse Lion and, with a wink, he puts the other skullcap on me.
Mama draws the muslin across the window. It’s a magic curtain that lets the light in but hides us from the outside world. So the neighbors can’t look in. And she leaves the room.
Rosie calls me and I go to have my dinner in the kitchen, which is full of delicious smells as usual. She’s cooked me my favorite sausages, white ones, well done. She slips them onto my plate from the pan, and I can hear them spit. She pours over the juices and adds golden potatoes.
I didn’t hear the doorbell but Uncle Lion has arrived. He and Papa are standing over me talking. Their voices are almost identical. They look alike, like twins. Lion is shorter and wears big, round clown’s glasses. Aunt Marta, his wife, is here too. I haven’t met her before. She’s beautiful; she has a hat perched on her hair, which she wears lifted up off the back of her neck; her lips are red, her teeth white and her eyes brown. She winks at me and I look away.
Uncle Lion says in a joking voice that I have just the right headwear for eating sausages. I don’t understand. Papa looks embarrassed. He explains that I’m wearing the skullcap in Uncle Lion’s honor and because it’s the Sabbath, like when they were children. Uncle Lion laughs out loud and says those were crazy days back when they were children, and at least I didn’t have to have payot. Now they both laugh and I don’t know what they’re talking about. Uncle Lion explains that payot are ringlets of hair in front of the ears. In the old days all Jewish men wore their hair like that. They dressed in black and wore kaftans, big cloaks that stood up to all weathers, the wind, the snow and the rain. When they were little, my father and my aunts and uncles—there were seven of them in all—respected these traditions.
“Luckily, all that’s over for your father and me,” says Uncle Lion.
I’m under the table. I can see Uncle Lion’s shoes, they’re black and white, like the fur on the panda that Rosie showed me in a book. They smell of polish. My father’s shoes are very shiny, the windows are reflected in them, small and distorted. My mother’s wearing her pretty high-heeled shoes that make her legs longer. Aunt Marta’s legs are crossed against each other, like two people hugging. Through the fine black mesh of her stockings, it looks as if her skin is dusted with beauty spots. I listen to their conversation from my hiding place. I can hear the words, and repeat them to myself but don’t understand them. I try to remember them and dream up a meaning for them. It’s like being lulled by music, mysterious incomprehensible music.
“My dear Marta bought herself a new car this week,” says Uncle Lion.
“It’s a BMW,” Aunt Marta trills in a voice as high as the top notes on the piano. “A coffee-colored sports car. I think there are only two or three women in all Munich who can drive, one being your neighbor’s sister, Friedl. Everyone watches when I drive past in the street.”
“But it’s madness!” says my mother, and it’s my father who retorts:
“Come, come, my darling,” my father says. “It’s certainly less of a burden than a horse and carriage. No need for a stable, or straw and hay. And still less a coachman!”
“It’s very practical,” Aunt Marta agrees. “We’re going to the country this Sunday. Would you like to come? Would you like to bring the boy? He’s such an angel.”
“Oh, if you’d seen Hitler’s face when we parked!” says Uncle Lion. “He arrived at his place at the same time as we reached yours. He didn’t recognize us.”
“Thank goodness for that, my darling, with what you said about him in the paper,” Aunt Marta says.
“So what? We’re still a republic, aren’t we?” That was my uncle’s voice, and then Mama joins in:
“They’re saying his book, Mein Kampf, is the best seller in Germany.”
“No, mine is, Jud Süß.”
“You should be careful,” says my father. “Everyone at the office keeps talking about your next book. Success, is that right?”
Uncle Lion sniggers, “It’s true that your Duncker and Humblot tend to publish Herr Hitler’s friends…”
I don’t understand everything they say. But I like listening. I copy their words, like a parrot.
“I’ve heard,” Uncle Lion continues, “that your protégé, Carl Schmitt, wasn’t completely averse to the woolly theories of those bastards the SA.* Don’t tell me my little brother’s publishing company is tending toward the far right like all the rest?”
“Not at all,” my father retorts with a strange laugh. “I can assure you Schmitt isn’t a racist. Besides, we publish other authors. You should read the Englishman Keynes, for example, even if his Economic Consequences of the Peace might be bedtime reading for our eminent but offensive neighbor. I’m very proud to be his publisher.”
“I was teasing, my dear brother. I know all that. Anyway, Goebbels said that if he ever had the power he’d make me pay heavily for it all. They’ll do anything to exterminate the Jews. And it doesn’t make any difference that you and I aren’t religious, or even believers, just like all our brothers and sisters. As far as they’re concerned, a Jew is a Jew, or to use their elegant vocabulary, ‘vermin is vermin.’ So even though we don’t wear skullcaps or side-curls, we’re no less Jewish than our dear parents. They’ll destroy us.”
“Do you think that’s possible?”
“Hitler’s a thug,” Uncle Lion replies, “a former prisoner, a schemer leading a band of good-for-nothings. They’ll do anything. They’re like the barons in the Middle Ages wanting to add another kingdom to their land. They want castles, gold and serfs. Like the barons, they’ll use the Jews to whip up hatred in the masses, who are still just as superstitious as in those days.”
“Which is the gist of your novel,” says my father.
“Which is selling better than Mein Kampf…”
“Neither of them predicts much good news for us in this country,” Aunt Marta chips in.
“In any event, I don’t know whether your rat of a neighbor will read my next book, but I’ll get him all right. I’ll quote from memory what I wrote this morning and you can tell me whether you know who I’m talking about.”
I’m happy listening. The words slide over me, slipping away, escaping, but I catch them.
Uncle Lion’s voice is like music, a tune I can hold:
“ ‘When he spoke in public his voice became squeaky, verging on hysteria, the words springing effortlessly from his mouth with its thin pale lips. He accompanied his speeches with sweeping hand movements like fly fishers. He was easy to understand, his opinions were perfect topics of conversation for commenting on everyday life. The root of evil was moneylending, the Jews and the Pope. An international cabal of Jewish financiers was destroying the German population, as tuberculosis bacteria would healthy lungs. All would be well and everything would fall into place once the parasites were eliminated. When the Kutzner machine stopped talking, his thin lips and little black mustache, his graying hair plastered onto his head, which was almost completely flat at the back, made him look like an empty mask. But the moment he opened his mouth again, his face came eerily to life with an almost hysterical intensity, his nose tipped upwards, and he rekindled life and energy in those around him. News of Rupert Kutzner’s eloquence spread; he had found a way forward, with all the genius of simplicity, and it consisted in purifying public life and restoring it to its most basic principles. Larger and larger crowds came to listen to him, attentively, approvingly. A printer published a confidential paper dedicated entirely to Kutzner’s ideas. In print, these ideas looked more muddled. But they had the advantage of reminding readers of the powerful impression the man made when he rode the tide of his own oratory. More and more people came to the Zum Gaisgar
ten restaurant. The manager, the printer, the boxer and two drivers set up a political party, the Real Germans, which now no longer referred to Kutzner as a machine, but as a political writer.’ ” Uncle Lion paused, then asked, “So, what do you think?”
“Well,” said my father, “you’re not pulling your punches!”
“When I think that at one time, before your neighbor was sent to prison, he would treat me to a ‘Herr Doctor’ at Munich’s Hofgarten Café, where we often went with Bertolt Brecht!” exclaimed Uncle Lion. “I wonder what Dr. Freud would make of it. I slipped him into my novel, actually; he’ll be amused. Incidentally, I’ve brought Bertolt’s new opera libretto, The Threepenny Opera. I came up with the title! It’s good, wouldn’t you say? He came to see me in the hospital, after my operation, and I saved him from the terrible titles he was contemplating! It’s a sellout at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin.”
As I crouch under the table, the conversation makes a sort of purring sound overhead. The words and names jumble together, always the same ones: “Jew,” “war,” “Hitler.”
What I really want is to see Aunt Marta’s new car. It’s far more impressive than Herr Hitler’s. I’d like to block my ears now. I can hear them through the table, still talking about the same old things. Uncle Lion makes jokes, but Papa has stopped laughing. His voice is tired.
I eventually came out of hiding and sat on the sofa. I wanted to go to sleep but made myself stay awake. After dinner, my mother sat at the piano and sight-read the libretto Uncle Lion had brought. She hummed a little as she played. It was the story of some very poor people, like the beggars who knocked on our door the other day. My father, Uncle Lion and Aunt Marta stood around her. I went over to them. Uncle Lion looked sad. My father said I must go to bed, and took me to my room. While he hugged me goodnight I kept listening to Mama’s voice and the piano. The song was about England. England’s an island, Papa explained. I pictured a country floating on the sea, and fell asleep.
My father didn’t go to the office this morning. He put on his dressing gown, the one he wears when he edits manuscripts at home. But he’s not working now: my mother asked him to stay to look after me because she and Rosie have gone to take care of Aunt Bobbie, who’s been ill for several days. Aunt Bobbie’s not really my aunt, she’s our upstairs neighbor, and she owns the building, which she inherited from her parents. She’s lived here since she was little, like me, and like Mama. They played together as children, and their parents were friends before them. Aunt Bobbie lets out rooms to lodgers: when new ones come she introduces them to me, and they come to say goodbye to me when they leave. Rosie and I have been praying to Jesus that she won’t die. I pray her heart will keep beating because I know that’s how you live. In case that prayer isn’t answered, I pray Aunt Bobbie will go up to heaven and will be happy there with her parents. She adored her parents. She’ll go to paradise, where we’ll all meet again someday. I don’t want my parents to die. And I don’t ever want to die myself. I often think about that in bed at night. I know it’s impossible. But maybe, in my case…
Aunt Bobbie’s feeling better. Her sister Friedl visits her every day and this morning she suggested the rest of us could have a picnic in the country now that Bobbie’s out of danger. My mother thought it a very good idea: I was pale and the fresh air would do me good. She wasn’t happy leaving Aunt Bobbie at home alone, though, so she offered to stay with her. My father said he was too busy for a picnic, he had manuscripts to read and texts to edit, but when he realized Mama was getting annoyed he agreed to the outing. Mama announced that she would prepare the picnic herself while Rosie dressed me for the country and Papa got himself ready. Friedl winked at me. She knows I love her car. When she comes to see Bobbie she parks on the street outside and sounds her horn so I can see her through the window. She said her daughter would be coming too. I did try not to blush. I often wonder whether people can hear what I’m thinking. I hope not. I don’t think they can, otherwise I’d hear what’s going on in their heads. I’d like to have that gift, reading other people’s thoughts, seeing what they see, but most of all, I don’t want anyone to know that I think Friedl’s daughter is very pretty. Her name’s Arabella, she’s five, like me, with green eyes and blond hair. She has a tiny thin nose, she always seems to be well behaved, and when she smiles I know I go red.
The roof is open. I’m in the back with Arabella, and Friedl is driving. My father’s up front, wearing a white suit, white vest, white shirt and a white hat that he holds with one hand to stop it blowing away. There’s a lovely smell of warm leather. I burned my thighs slightly when I sat down on the sunbaked seats. Arabella has lowered the armrest between us. The sky is blue, striped with fine white lines like trails of cotton wool. The car makes a lovely noise and bounces along the road. There are holes and bumps, and a cloud of dust billows behind us. Friedl sounds the horn when we overtake bicycles or carts or farm laborers pushing barrows full of fruit and vegetables. I put out my arm, reaching out my hand like the wing of an airplane and swinging it up and down. I imagine I’m flying.
We played rock-paper-scissors, twenty questions and charades, we sang as we watched the countryside go by, and I fell asleep. When I woke we were on the shores of Lake Starnberg, parked up beside a cross. My father told us to get out of the car and before we were allowed to go play he gave us a history lesson. History doesn’t mean “his story,” and it’s not a story anyway: it’s real things that happened a long time ago. Other stories are the exact opposite: they’re completely invented.
Papa showed us the cross and a small church right behind it. He explained that the cross and the chapel were erected in memory of King Ludwig II, who died here, looking out to Empress Sissi’s castle, which we could see on the other side of the lake. Arabella asked whether it was in the days of knights. My father said it wasn’t as long ago as that because it was in his own lifetime. He told us about the king, said he was called Ludwig like him—which made me smile—and was nicknamed the “Mad King.” That made Arabella and me laugh so much! He told us how romantic the king was, miming out the meaning of the word on bended knee before Friedl, gesticulating comically as if he were the Mad King and Friedl the princess who didn’t love him. Using a stick he found on the ground, he pretended to drive a dagger into his heart, and slumped onto his side. Arabella and I ran over to him, giggling, prodding him to bring him back to life. Papa told us how Ludwig II believed he had special, very pure blood flowing in his veins. Papa’s face grew more serious when he explained that this was nonsense, everyone has the same blood. Friedl said all that matters is the color of our souls. Some are described as dark and others beautiful, pure and noble, the souls of princes, like mine—or princesses, like Arabella’s. Then Papa told us how the Mad King had built a fairy-tale castle, with such tall pointy towers that they pierced the clouds. We’ll go see it this summer, when we go for our vacation with Uncle Heinrich, my mother’s brother who has a house on the other side of the lake, opposite the Mad King’s fortress.
Friedl took the food from the trunk of the car. She opened a wicker basket with a whole set of tableware in it. It was magnificent. I wished she didn’t have to unfasten the plates, glasses and napkins, or the bread and cold meats. Everything was strapped in its own place. It looked like a doll’s tea set. We laid it all out on a colorful tablecloth. My father took a parasol as white as his suit and drove it into the ground. Mama and Rosie had packed up a real feast, which Friedl and Papa spread out before us: hard-boiled eggs, cold chicken, mayonnaise, sausages, potato salad…we demolished the lot.
For dessert, Friedl sliced up peaches for us and sprinkled them with sugar. We had to use our forks but I couldn’t pick up the last pink-tinged granules of sugar. I was allowed to let them melt on my tongue. Friedl was worried I’d stain the white lace napkins; she cleaned up my face with water from the lake. After the meal we put on our woolen swimming things and went to play on the shore, getting only our hands, feet and faces wet because Arabella and
I couldn’t swim. We skipped stones. I couldn’t get them to bounce on the surface, one after the other they vanished without a ripple. My father’s, on the other hand, seemed to spring off into infinity. They were like aquatic grasshoppers. Yachts glided along the horizon, their pointed, ballooning sails looking like the necks of the swans at the park, and I fell asleep holding Arabella’s hand.
When we woke everything had been cleared away. We said goodbye to the lake, climbed into the car and set off. Dark trees masked a mauve sky. I was aware of jolting on the road surface, the sound of the door opening, Papa’s arms carrying me, Mama’s lips on my cheek, my clothes sliding off, crisp pajamas, cold sheets, and I went back to sleep.
Arabella doesn’t visit anymore. I miss her.
Aunt Bobbie has recovered. Her friend der Herzog, Luitpold of Bavaria, came to let us know. He’s in my father’s study and I’m spying on them. They make me laugh: they’re standing talking to each other earnestly, swaying back and forth, rolling onto the balls of their feet and then their heels, like puppets. The duke is grimacing to stop his monocle falling out. They take books from the shelves, open them, leaf through them, and sometimes they just put them back without saying anything. My father is at the top of his library steps reaching for a large book that’s been put away too high up for him. My mother brings in coffee, and I come out of hiding to ask whether I can dunk a sugar lump. They talk about Friedl and her husband. I can see the duke doesn’t like the man. He says the fellow “admires Hitler,” our neighbor, but doesn’t expand on this. I don’t like anyone criticizing Friedl, and I so want to see Arabella again. I wonder whether we can get married someday, Arabella and I. Or perhaps we won’t be allowed to because I’m Jewish and she isn’t. I think it might be possible; my father had another wife before my mother, and she wasn’t Jewish. They had a child together, Dorle, my beloved sister; she’s twelve and she sometimes comes to live at our house.
Hitler, My Neighbor Page 2