A City of Broken Glass (Hannah Vogel)

by Cantrell, Rebecca

  “What did Reuben want?” I folded Lars’s tea-stained things.

  “To play marbles,” Anton said. “May I?”

  “We are just about to leave,” I said. “How about you two play in the stairwell? I will fetch you on my way out.”

  Anton ran back toward the living room. Still thinking about Lars in prison, I followed more slowly.

  * * *

  Lars and Anton chattered in the living room about the kite.

  “Where is Paul?” I asked.

  “He left to borrow the neighbor’s telephone,” Lars said. “He said that he had an important call to make.”

  “We must wait for him,” I said.

  “But can I go play with Reuben right now?” Anton asked.

  “Go,” I said. “Do not leave the building.”

  I stood awkwardly next to Lars. I wanted to apologize for implying that he caused the trouble in my life, but the words stuck in my throat.

  He watched me for a long moment. “Spatz—”

  Paul opened the front door and strode into the living room, his face relaxed.

  Lars’s brow furrowed in exasperation. I knew how he felt. But I also felt afraid to hear what else he might say.

  “How did your call go?” I asked Paul.

  “Good news,” he said. “I have an appointment in an hour.”

  “With whom?” I asked.

  “Someone,” he said. “That’s all you’re getting, Miss Journalist.”

  “Come with us to the park,” I said. “If only for a little while.”

  “It is on my way,” Paul said. “I think that is a capital idea.”

  From the top of the doorless cupboard that Ruth had been hiding in, Lars took a gray wool blanket. He slung it over his arm.

  “We are ready to go now,” Lars said. “Right, Spatz?”

  Paul helped me into my coat. As he slipped it over my shoulders, he whispered in my ear. “What happened while I was gone? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

  I shook my head. The question was, what had happened to Lars in prison? More important, what had happened since his release?

  We trooped downstairs. Lars several steps ahead, Paul and I lagging behind.

  “I’ll go with you to the park.” Paul said quietly, probably to keep Lars from overhearing. “Because I think you and Lars might need time with someone else minding Anton. But I can stay only a few minutes before I go see about Ruth.”

  I squeezed his arm. “You can leave now. Lars and I can sort things out.”

  He raised one eyebrow. “I have a little time.”

  Lars slowed, but he did not turn around.

  “Please,” Paul said. “Let me do this for you.”

  I looked up into his eyes, trying to decide whether he needed to gather his courage, or perhaps he was correct that Lars and I would not manage to sort things out with Anton around. Or both. “If you wish.”

  Anton and Reuben started guiltily when they saw us. What were they up to?

  Lars took my arm before we stepped into the street. To have a Jewish friend in Germany was shameful, but not illegal. An Aryan with a Jewish lover, however, was breaking the law, and both partners could be sent to a concentration camp. Any of Paul’s neighbors might turn him in. Paul fell back to walk with Anton. Dark clouds glowered overhead.

  We had gone only a few steps when Anton said, “I have more news.”

  I turned around in time to see Paul’s shoulders raise. Anton looked at him worriedly. We all stopped walking. Luckily the sidewalks in the Jewish quarter were deserted.

  “Out with it,” I commanded.

  “Reuben said that he did see the man who visited Miriam on the day of the deportations.” Anton rushed through his words. “Reuben saw him come after everyone else left.”

  “Did he take her?” Lars asked. “Or any kind of bundle at all?”

  I winced, not wanting to think about that.

  “Reuben didn’t see,” Anton said. “But he might have.”

  “What else did you find out?” Lars asked. “Any new details?”

  “This time I asked what he looked like,” Anton said proudly. He was learning to be a detective. “He was tall and very thin. Reuben said he was a doctor. He had blond hair and round glasses and a long white coat.” He looked at me meaningfully.

  I thought of the scrap of white cloth that had been caught on the cupboard hinges. It could have belonged to a doctor’s coat. And what of the mysterious visitor in the white coat the night before?

  “Reuben also said—” Anton shifted his feet. He gulped and kept going. “—that the doctor asked to buy a baby once from his mother—”

  “I know about the doctor,” Paul interrupted. “He doesn’t have her.”

  “Really?” I asked him. “Perhaps he and Miriam—”

  “She is my daughter,” Paul said, “not yours. And, yes, I am certain.”

  He brushed past us and trotted up the sidewalk.

  Anton hurried to catch him. Paul’s reaction was another mystery to solve. But first I had some questions for Lars. He took my arm, and we followed the others.

  A woman hurried out of a kosher butcher shop with a packet wrapped in white paper. Two small children hung on her skirt. She kept her eyes low and stepped into the street to pass us.

  Lars gripped my arm.

  “It is because you look like a policeman,” I said.

  “I do not.” He pursed his lips in irritation.

  I studied his straight posture and his low fedora. “I see.”

  We walked a few steps in silence.

  “Why were you at Paul’s apartment in the middle of the night?” I asked Lars.

  He patted my hand. “I had an errand to run. I came back when I completed it.”

  I hated it when he patted my hand, and he knew it. “What errand?”

  “The second we have privacy, Spatz, I shall reveal all.” He raised his eyebrows dramatically.

  “Reveal all?” I asked. “What about public decency laws?”

  “I shall exercise what restraint I can.” He leaned close to my ear. “Which isn’t always much.”

  I held my tongue. We caught up with Paul and Anton. Paul gave me an apologetic smile for walking off. I smiled back.

  Shop after shop sported the same sign in their front windows: JEWS ARE NOT WELCOME HERE. Crudely painted yellow stars adorned a few buildings. I could not accept that this was my Berlin. Even though I now lived in Switzerland, I considered Berlin my home, had always treasured a hope that the Nazis were wrong about their Thousand-Year Reich, and that I would return someday for good. But there seemed no way to undo this.

  Paul caught my eye. “You can become accustomed to it.”

  “I hope not,” I said.

  “How can you get used to it?” asked Anton. “It’s wrong.”

  “You do it because you have no choice,” Paul said. “I’ve done nothing but try to emigrate since 1935. I can’t get out. They canceled all the passports of German Jews in October, so I can’t even take a trip and fail to come back.”

  Anton looked at me, as if he knew that he should not be listening.

  Paul kept talking. “I have no relatives outside of Germany to sponsor me. And my job skills are useless abroad. Newspaper writing? In German?”

  “What will you do?” Anton asked. I wondered what we would do and how we would get out ourselves.

  “Get to Palestine,” Paul said. “However I can.”

  I took a step toward him, but he sidestepped away. “You don’t want to be seen as having any kind of relationship with a Jewish man, Hannah. Anything sets tongues to wagging.”

  As if to agree with him, Lars kissed the top of my head. I glared at him. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Paul smile.

  “There’s the park!” Anton pointed ahead of us at a long stretch of dead brown grass surrounded on all sides by tall apartment buildings. On the edges, bare trees lifted heavy limbs up to the steely sky as if they never expected spring to return. Wind
blew my hair across my cheek. I shivered. If nothing else, it was enough wind to get the kite aloft.

  Anton shifted the kite to his other hand and tugged on Paul. “Let’s go! You, too, Lars!”

  “I think I will stay here and keep an eye on your mother,” Lars said.

  Paul and Anton headed farther into the park.

  Lars spread a gray woolen blanket on dead grass and patted it. I sat, but left a wide stripe of space between us, trying not to think about the gray wool blanket we had spent so much time under in 1936. This might be the same blanket. I blushed.

  “How are you feeling today?” Lars asked. “Is your head better?”

  “I am not interested in small talk.” I tucked my hair behind my ears. “I believe this counts as privacy. Tell me why you came to Paul’s apartment so late?”

  “You do seem back to your old self.” He lay on his back on the blanket and laced his fingers behind his head. He would feed me his story at his own pace. “It took me some time to complete my errand, and I came as soon as I finished it. I came in the middle of the night because I wasn’t entirely certain that you would be at Paul’s if I waited till morning.”

  I turned to face him so that I could watch his expression, careful to maintain space between us. “And? What were you doing?”

  He studied my face long enough to make me uncomfortable before answering. “The kommissar acquired another lorry last night.” He smiled impishly. “With a bit of skill.”

  “Herr Kommissar is a felon at heart.”

  “I have many things in my heart, Spatz.” His eyes turned serious. “What about you?”

  For years, my heart had caused me nothing but pain. Instead of answering, I watched Anton sprint across the brown grass with his kite.

  “I built the compartment in the first lorry,” Lars said finally. “I know a warehouse where I can work undisturbed by official questions to build a compartment in this one. When I’m done, I can smuggle you and Anton into Switzerland.”

  I let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

  “I love that expression on your face,” he said. “Relaxed. I haven’t seen enough of it lately.”

  “How long will it take to build the compartment?”

  “A few days,” he said. “I can work only at night, when the shop is closed.”

  I studied him. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Three reasons.” He rolled onto his side, closing the space between us. I stiffened, but stayed put anyway.

  He propped his head on one hand and lifted the thumb of his other hand up to tick off his first reason. I stifled a smile at the familiar gesture. “One, if you are caught, things would go badly for me.”

  “Self-interest?” I did not believe it. His Lars Lang identity was already useless, and nothing I said would change that. His smartest course of action was to leave Germany himself as Lars Schmidt immediately, without waiting to build a compartment in the lorry.

  “Something like it.” He extended his index finger. “Two, I landed you in this mess by not turning straight around and driving to Poland after we killed the Gestapo men.”

  I winced at the bald words. But he spoke the truth. We had killed them. I had killed one myself. I swallowed. “Why did you press on to Berlin?”

  “Because I thought you might not live through the trip back to Poland.”

  “That would have been an easy solution to problem one.” I pointed to his thumb.

  “Simple,” he said. “Not easy.”

  I could not meet his eyes. Anton had the kite in the air now and ran with it. Paul limped a few steps, then stopped. His leg clearly pained him.

  “Spatz?”

  I did not know what to say to his last words. “I believe you said you had three reasons.”

  Lars drew in a shaky breath. I turned my full attention to him. This was the real reason. My heart sped up.

  “And third, and probably most important…”

  “Lars?” I prompted.

  “I’ve spent the last six months trying to convince myself that I don’t.” He rolled and unrolled the edge of the blanket.

  “Six months?” I asked.

  Lars raised his head and met my eyes. “When I saw you in Poznań, I realized that I do. I…”

  “Do what?”

  “I love you.”

  I stopped breathing. I should have a reaction to his words, but I felt numb, as if I waited for my emotions to catch up. I had never stopped loving him, but that did not mean that I was ready to fall into his arms and forgive him for everything he had done, or not done, in the ten months since his release from prison.

  He looked terrified, which was how I felt. “Spatz? Do you still—?”

  “What happened six months ago?”

  Before he could answer, across the field, Anton cried out. I jumped to my feet. I sprinted across dusty grass and around an obstacle course of molehills. In the mostly empty park, no one else seemed to notice that Anton scuffled with three boys in a tangle of arms and legs. Two were his size, one larger. Halfway across the field, Paul gazed up at the kite now caught in a tree. He turned slowly.

  Behind me I heard Lars and Paul running, too, but I outdistanced them easily.

  I grabbed the tallest boy’s bony arm as he drew back his fist to strike Anton and yanked him to his feet. His friends stood, too. Two were taller than I, one only slightly smaller. All three were flushed pink with exertion or anger. None lowered their fists. Anton scrambled up and held his fists up, too.

  I gulped and raised both hands, palm out. “Stop this at once.”

  In the dirt at their feet, a fourth boy of six or seven curled in a sobbing ball.

  Paul and Lars arrived and waded in, and the boys dropped their fists.

  “I am a police kommissar,” Lars said sternly. “You will tell me what this is about.”

  Blood ran out of Anton’s nose and dripped onto his shirt. I fished a handkerchief from my pocket and handed it to him. I longed to sweep him up in my arms, but knew that he would not thank me for it.

  “That boy didn’t want to prove he was no Jew pig.” The tallest boy pointed scornfully at the little boy, whom I now saw had no pants. The older boys must have removed them to see if he was circumcised. I looked at Paul. He held one of the larger boys by the collar and looked unsurprised by the revelation.

  Lars snatched a pair of shorts from the second tallest boy’s hand and dropped them on the little one.

  I knelt beside him. “Are you all right?”

  He unrolled and grabbed his shorts. He slid both legs in, yanked them up, and ran. No one tried to stop him.

  “Was he Jewish?” Lars asked.

  “No.” The tallest boy kicked a dirt clod near where the little boy had cowered. “That would have been the end of it, if this kid hadn’t stuck his long nose in.”

  Anton glared at him. A bruise darkened his cheekbone, but other than that and his nose, he seemed in fairly good shape, considering that there were three of them.

  “Is that what it has come to?” I asked. “Big boys like you picking on a little boy still in short pants?”

  “Don’t matter what size he is. A Jew’s a Jew.”

  “Yet he was not Jewish, correct?” Lars rebuked him. “So you beat up and humiliated another good German boy.”

  I winced at the easy way those words came out of his mouth. Good German boy, as opposed to a Jew. A former SS officer, he was adept at navigating Nazi speech.

  “We didn’t know.” Chastened, the three boys shifted their feet.

  “Be off home,” Lars said. “Think better next time.”

  Muttering, the boys marched off.

  “I believe I must take my leave as well,” Paul said. “As we discussed earlier.”

  He was going to visit Ruth. “Do you want me to—?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “This will be painful enough without spectators.”

  Imagining the unpleasantness that lay ahead, I took a step toward him. Lars dropped his arm arou
nd my shoulder, establishing ownership for anyone who watched.

  Paul stuck his hands in his pockets. “I am quite able to shift for myself, Hannah.”

  I thought about the night before.

  “Stop by the apartment tonight,” he said. “We can talk about the next step.”

  So, at least now, he thought that there was a next step. “See you then, Paul.”

  “Until then.” He nodded to Lars and Anton and left.

  As his tall form limped across the grass, I longed to follow, but I stayed put.

  Anton wiped the back of his hand across his bloody nose. “Where is he going?”

  “To visit Ruth. He knows where she is now.” I reached for the handkerchief that Anton held.

  “I can do it.” He gingerly wiped his nose.

  “Just your nose?” Lars asked.

  “They didn’t land a lot of punches,” Anton said.

  “Good man,” Lars said. “Three against one, and all larger than you.”

  “Lars,” I said. “I do not wish him to be encouraged in fighting.”

  “I didn’t encourage him before,” Lars said. “Merely congratulated him after.”

  Anton beamed.

  “Anton,” I said. “Learn to restrain yourself. Things are different here than at home. The consequences of your actions can be much more severe.”

  “Yes, Mother,” Anton said in a singsong. “I shall.”

  He had no intention of following my advice.

  Lars laughed heartily.

  I rounded on him. “What, exactly, is humorous here?”

  He stopped laughing, but still smiled. “Watching you beset by problems that usually face me.”

  “What does that mean?” Anton asked.

  “Trying to get someone to change their nature because you worry about them,” Lars said.

  “I am not your child.” I crossed my arms.

  “That is not what I meant,” he said. “Only that it is difficult watching the brave and sometimes foolish.”

  Anton looked from one of us to the other. “I’m going to get my kite.”

  He bounded across the grass.

  I turned and searched the empty field for Paul. He was gone.

  “He told you not to follow him,” Lars reminded.

  “His Jewishness is a liability,” I muttered. “Something he, as a man, cannot hide.”

  “Of course it is,” he said gently. “Have you forgotten where you are?”