by Annette Hess
The delegation was ready to leave and stood outside the lodge in a light drizzle. When Eva came out the door with her suitcase, bleary-eyed but coiffed and wearing a fresh blouse, the blond man approached her. “Where’s David?” Eva wasn’t sure. When the activity outside the door had woken her, David was no longer beside her. She had expected to see him outside. The blond man checked his watch. The bus was coming in twenty minutes. Time passed, and no David. Eva went back to his room. A chambermaid was stripping the bed. She looked at Eva with indifference. Eva was already no longer a guest she had to be polite to. Eva looked around and opened the warped armoire. No suitcase, no clothes. She asked the chambermaid if she had found anything. The young woman just shrugged. The bus pulled up outside and waited, its engine idling. The driver was loading suitcases into the luggage compartment. The men boarded, one after the other. The blond man stood by the bus and looked at Eva. She shook her head, at a loss. “He’s gone. His things too.” The White Rabbit, who was the last to hurry out, because he insisted on a proper breakfast, overheard Eva and grumbled, “The Poles stole him too.” He handed his suitcase to the driver and boarded the bus. The blond man followed him, and Eva saw him speaking to the chief judge, who looked at his watch and said something. The blond man came back out to Eva and said that the longest they could wait was half an hour. They had to catch their flight before their visas expired. He sounded worried. He offered Eva a cigarette, which she declined, and lit one for himself. The bus driver turned off the engine. The weather turned pleasant, and the rooster strutted across the street with a few chickens and disappeared into a bush on the other side. Eva lifted her face toward the sky. The drizzle was like a gentle touch on her skin. They waited.
Eva dozed on the flight back. She knew where David was: in a canoe on an expansive lake in Canada that reflected the entire sky. Eva woke up and gazed out at the clouds. She thought of Toker, the first dachshund her family had ever had. She was eleven and just starting middle school. She was having a hard time making friends, so one day she brought Toker with her to school, to break the ice. It worked. On the way home, however, Toker was hit by a car. He wasn’t even a year old. In confirmation class, Eva asked Pastor Schrader, “How can the good Lord allow something like that to happen?”
The pastor looked at her and responded, “God isn’t responsible for the suffering on earth. Humans are. How could you allow that to happen?”
Eva hadn’t liked the pastor after that; she imitated his limping gait behind his back and told people that he didn’t wash. Which they believed too, because he always looked a bit unkempt.
Eva turned away from the window and decided that she would apologize to him that very week. She suddenly understood why none of the defendants acknowledged their guilt. Why they only admitted to individual crimes, if that. How could one human possibly bear the responsibility for the deaths of thousands?
Sissi stood outside the gate at the airport and waited. The first thing she wanted to tell David—she could hardly contain herself—was that her son had gotten a C on his first German assignment in middle school. She always knew he was smart. Sissi was wearing her modest suit under a new, parrot-colored coat. It was a little big, since she’d gotten it from a friend, but Sissi felt pretty in it. Pretty and sophisticated. Perfect for the airport! she thought. The first travelers passed through the electric sliding doors, almost all men in dark overcoats. Married. Well-to-do. They were followed by a young woman with an outdated hairstyle—she was probably from a good home—and a face that appeared as if she were straining to hear something deep within herself. Maybe she also had a bolted chamber inside. She passed by Sissi without a glance. Only a few more people came out the sliding doors. The arrivals hall emptied as travelers, reunited families, friends, and couples ambled, arms interlocked, out to the parking lot. Sissi stared at the door that had stopped opening.
A yellow car was waiting outside the airport. Jürgen, Eva thought, and realized it made her happy. Then she recognized the gnarled figure of the attorney general in the backseat. A chauffeur sat at the wheel. The blond man approached and offered Eva a ride into the city. He let her sit in front, whereas he took a seat in the back, to report to his boss. The car drove off. The blond man explained that some witness testimony was refuted, given certain distances or vantage points. Most, however, were confirmed. They also received credible new documentation from Polish authorities. Driving permits signed by the main defendant. The blond man handed the attorney general a folder, which he looked through. Eva watched her city’s worsening traffic through the windshield. She was afraid of seeing her parents again and was grateful for every red light. As they turned onto Berger Strasse, the blond man reported on another unexpected occurrence: they lost one of their travel companions. The attorney general immediately knew who. That Canadian Jew.
“What the hell got into him this time?”
The blond man told him that they informed the Polish security police in Warsaw before their departure. The police would be launching a search of the area.
Eva got out of the car at German House and couldn’t believe her eyes. Through the windows of the restaurant she could see people—guests—sitting at the tables. She checked her watch. It was just before two. Lunchtime. She spotted her mother standing at one of the windows; Edith had stopped there, a few plates balanced on her arm, and was peering out at Eva. She looked anxious, as if she feared Eva wouldn’t say hello. Eva waved halfheartedly. Then she decided to get the reunion over with and entered the dining room, suitcase in hand. Edith was serving the plates. Eva lingered by the door. There was a pink porcelain pig on the bar, which was new. Edith came up to her.
“Hello, Mum.”
Edith moved in for a hug, but Eva deflected, holding out her right hand. They shook. Edith then took the suitcase and carried it to the door to the stairs. Eva followed. She noticed a little sign stuck to the piggy bank as she passed: Giordano family.
“Yes, your father made that,” Edith said, turning back to address Eva. “I tried talking him out of it, but you know how stubborn he can be.”
They stopped at the door. Edith stepped toward Eva and whispered, “And look around. Look how well it’s been received already. There’s an insurance company around the corner now. That’s those three tables right there. I’m working the bar myself, by the way.” Eva still didn’t speak. “Have you eaten? There’s beef roulade. The meat is so . . .” Her mother formed an oval with her thumb and index finger and kissed her fingertips. It made her earrings swing.
“I’ll go say hello to him first,” Eva said. She went into the kitchen, her mother following on her heels, as though she were afraid she might reconsider along the way and run off. Eva’s father was standing at the stove, his back straighter than usual, shaking a big pot in which he was browning the roulade. He periodically stirred the gravy bubbling in an oval saucepan. Steam rose and enveloped her father. Frau Lenze rapidly spooned mashed potatoes onto six plates that had been lined up on the sideboard and then heaped several small dishes with cucumber salad.
“Hi, Frau Lenze. Hi, Daddy.”
Frau Lenze looked up. “There’s our girl! Was it nice? Feeling better after some time in the sun?”
Eva frowned at her in confusion.
“Frau Lenze means by the sea,” Edith hastily explained.
Eva’s father removed the pot from the flame and came over. He looked bad, his eyes bloodshot and his face reddish blue. Nonetheless, he did his best to beam proudly.
“Well, I took the plunge! This corset is worth its weight in gold. Did you see how busy we are? We’ve already sent out eighteen orders of roulade.”
Eva just looked at her father. She didn’t know what to say.
“But I’ve got one set aside for you!” he continued. “Take a seat out there. You get the nicest one of all! Coming right up, browned to perfection.” He turned quickly back to the stove.
Eva took a seat at one of the back tables in the dining room. Her mother wiped the dark wo
oden tabletop with her dishtowel.
“I’ll bring you a glass of white.” It was a statement, not a question. Eva didn’t respond. Her mother went to the bar, taking a few new orders along the way. Eva observed the cheery guests, their bellies full and hearts happy, thanks to her father. She suddenly recalled that she had eaten lunch in the former officers’ mess during their tour of the camp. She remembered that none of them ate much. As they were leaving, David quietly and earnestly asked whether she didn’t at least want to peek into the kitchen. Eva had shaken her head and rushed outside, only to find her anxiety grow even greater there. Her mother returned with the wine and her plate.
“The mashed potatoes are made with extra butter, Daddy told me to tell you,” Edith said.
Eva looked at the plate, at the roulade lying there in a thick gravy, a heap of light yellow mash beside it. Her father appeared in the kitchen doorway and watched Eva. Her mother stood behind the bar, pouring beers and keeping an eye on her too. Eva picked up her fork in her left hand, the knife in her right. She plunged the fork into the mashed potatoes. The tines disappeared in the puree, which glistened with butter. She pulled the fork out again. She cut a piece of roulade, which began to steam from the inside like a living body. Eva brought the skewered bite up to her mouth. The smell of the meat penetrated all the way into her forehead. Something crept out of her stomach and slowly made its way up into her throat. Eva put down her silverware and took a sip of wine, which tasted like vinegar. She swallowed and swallowed. Out of the corner of her eye she could see her father in the doorway, trying to catch her attention. He wanted to know how it tasted. Her mother started making her way over. Eva felt as though the guests at the other tables had stopped speaking and eating and were also looking at her expectantly. “I’m sorry!” she wanted to cry. But her mouth had filled with saliva, which she couldn’t get down. At that moment, the felted curtain at the entrance was thrown open and Stefan burst in. He wore his schoolbag on his back, and he looked around, spotted Eva, and dashed toward her table.
“We’re serving luuuunch againnnn!” he yelled as he ran, as if the family had won the lottery. Edith snagged him and held a finger to her lips.
“Shh!” She then led him to Eva’s table and took his knapsack. “Have you finally gotten your dictation back?”
But Stefan just bared his teeth and ignored the question as he hung on Eva’s shoulder.
“How was your vacation? Did you bring me anything?”
Eva shook her head. “Not this time.”
Edith looked at Eva’s plate. She was normally horrified when guests left a lot uneaten—“Was there something wrong with your meal?”—but she kept quiet this time, helpless.
“Stefan can eat it,” Eva said. “I’m not hungry.”
“No,” Stefan protested. “I get to have pudding today!”
Eva got up and opened the private door to the stairwell. “I’m going to go lie down.” She took her suitcase and left the dining room.
Stefan turned to his mother. “You said this morning that I could have pudding at lunch if I hurried!”
Edith didn’t respond. She took Eva’s plate and went into the kitchen. Ludwig was waiting there behind the door. He too saw that Eva hadn’t eaten anything. With the cutlery Edith scraped the food into the big metal trash can. Frau Lenze looked at her in surprise but didn’t ask. Ludwig was silent and returned to the stove. He pushed pots back and forth, stirring and turning things busily. But Edith saw that his shoulders were twitching—that he was crying.
Edith knocked on Eva’s bedroom door later. She entered and sat down on Eva’s bed and avoided looking at the hat on the shelf. Eva, lying on the bedspread, hadn’t slept. She didn’t look at Edith, who placed a hand on her shoulder.
“You can’t do this to your father.” Eva remained silent, and Edith continued, “It was twenty years ago. By the time we realized what was happening there, it was too late. And we’re no heroes, Eva. We were afraid—we had young children. People didn’t speak up in those days. It can’t be compared to how things are now.” Eva still didn’t move. Edith took her hand off Eva’s shoulder and said, “We never hurt anyone.”
It sounded like a question. Eva regarded her mother out of the corner of her eye. She looked small sitting there on the edge of the bed, and she smelled of flour and the expensive perfume from Paris Ludwig gave her every year for their anniversary. Eva detected wrinkles around her upper lip that hadn’t been there before. She thought of her mother’s dream role, Schiller’s Maid of Orleans. Feisty, but ultimately lacking her own will.
Edith tried to smile. “Your Jürgen called twice while you were gone. What’s going on between you two?”
Eva normally would have wanted to tell her mother about David, her strange friend, who had just vanished. And about Jürgen, whom she didn’t want to live with, but whom she probably loved. She had always confided in her mother. Her mother was the person she was closest to. Eva studied her mother’s hands, the fingers that were too short for playing the violin, the worn wedding band. Eva saw that the hands were trembling slightly. She knew that her mother wanted her to do what she had always done when they’d fought in the past—take her hand and say, “Everything’s fine, Mummy.” But she didn’t move.
AT THE HOSPITAL, Annegret had picked up her “naughty habit” again, as she called it. She had battled with her conscience. But Doctor Küssner, who had given his notice, pushed her over the edge, and her sister, with her lies, also pushed her over the edge. It was all quite clear to Annegret: she needed those pitifully fussy newborns who convalesced under her care. She had to save lives and receive the thanks for it. It was the only thing that quieted her heart and gave her the strength to endure everything else. Annegret had taken to carrying the reusable syringe again, its glass barrel filled with a brownish liquid contaminated with E. coli, which she either mixed into the children’s milk or administered directly. Annegret acquired this solution by means that disgusted even her. But it was the easiest way. Annegret wandered among the bassinets, assessing the little creatures cradled there. She stopped at one of the beds and looked at the boy pedaling his legs and gazing at her trustingly. Annegret listened for noise in the hallway—her colleagues had all gone to the cafeteria for lunch. A sunbeam stole through the window and threw a white spotlight on Annegret as she pulled the syringe from her pocket, stepped up to the head of the bassinet, and opened the boy’s tiny pink mouth with the index finger of her left hand and inserted the syringe with her right.
“You’ll be rid of me in three weeks. Just spoke with the boss.” Doctor Küssner entered the room and walked over. He looked at Annegret’s hand by the baby’s mouth, first in curiosity, then alarm. She pulled out the syringe and tried to stuff it back in her pocket, but Doctor Küssner seized her wrist.
“What is that? What are you doing?”
THE TRIAL CONTINUED. The days repeated themselves. In the mornings, children played in the schoolyard beyond the auditorium. The autumnal trees swayed outside the glass panes, their movement familiar. The defendants remained steadfast, while the public hungered for new bombshells. And the witnesses remained those who had to muster the most courage to enter the courtroom. Nothing appeared to have changed. In the same way that floodlights were installed after a certain amount of time to better see the defendants’ faces, however, the tour of the site turned the imagined into certainty. Auschwitz was real. The chair diagonally in front of Eva’s spot remained empty. Fräulein Lehmkuhl and Fräulein Schenke were stunned to learn from Eva that David had disappeared and the Polish police hadn’t yet located him. “He must have gotten lost,” Fräulein Lehmkuhl said in distress. The blond man also glanced at the empty seat from time to time. Someone else noticed David’s absence as well. The White Rabbit approached Eva during a break one day. Defendant Number Four wanted a word. Eva reluctantly followed him to the other side and finally saw the haggard-looking face up close. He asked her about the young man with the red hair. He had gone missing? Well, when
was he last seen? Where? What efforts were undertaken to locate him? Eva could easily picture how this man had led his interrogations. She looked at him furiously.
“That’s none of your business!” she hissed.
She turned to leave, but the Beast caught her arm and said, “He’s a hotheaded young man. Just like I used to be. I’m worried about him.”
Eva would have liked nothing better than to spit in his face. Instead she replied, her voice strained, “I don’t think David would like it for you, of all people, to concern yourself with him!”
She freed herself and returned to her seat, thinking, He’s a criminal. A mass murderer. She couldn’t forgive him for that. Then what were her parents? What did she have to forgive them? Did she have to? Eva was floating, as though in a bubble—she could see her parents outside it, indistinct, their voices muffled. She wished the bubble would burst. But she didn’t know how to make it.
At the end of another day of proceedings, which had limped along in the tedious review of papers and petitions, and by the time most people in the hall had their minds set on dinner, the light blond-haired man presented the court with the documents he had acquired from Polish authorities. They were driving permits for the delivery of Zyklon B, signed by the main defendant. The forms were marked, “Materials for Jewish resettlement,” which served as a cover-up.
“Does the defendant still wish to claim he had no knowledge of the gas chambers?!” the chief judge snarled into his microphone. The main defendant turned his raptor head to his attorney, and they exchanged a few words. It then appeared as if they were both stealing a glance at Eva. But she must be imagining things. The White Rabbit stood up. He pushed up the sleeve of his robe with his right hand and checked his shiny new wristwatch. He stated that his client had always been against what happened at the camp. He had wanted to leave and had volunteered for the front—in vain.