He followed her downstairs and picked up the receiver. It was still warm where Suse had held it, and the mouthpiece smelled of her breath. She had retreated to a chair and sat watching him expectantly.
“Hello? Gerhard? Gerhard, I am so sorry. It is difficult to know what to say, except that our prayers are with you all.”
Gerhard’s voice was faint. “Sabine and I feel you all very close, very close. I shall put Sabine on, but first I wanted to speak to you. We’ll accompany the body by train to Berlin early tomorrow morning, and the funeral will be at the Fasanenstraße synagogue at three in the afternoon. Rabbi Hartstein will be present, but it would mean so much if a member of the family conducted the service. Well, there are no rabbis in the Leibholz clan, so you are our minister. It’s what Papa wanted, he specifically asked about it before he died, and Rabbi Hartstein has agreed gladly.”
Dietrich tried to speak. After a moment, Gerhard said, more faintly still, “Dietrich?”
“Gerhard. Gerhard, I’m sorry, but I can’t do it. Please let me explain. I’ve just come from a pastors’ meeting. The situation is very sensitive in the church just now, very sensitive. The timing is not—” Dietrich paused and searched for words. “I raised the issue. It was thought this would not be a good time, with church elections approaching—”
And he could not go on. He turned and leaned against the wall, listening to Gerhard, who was saying yes, yes, of course.
“The times,” Dietrich said again, trying not to hear the hurt in Gerhard’s voice, and then he was talking to Sabine, repeating himself so that he seemed to be talking inside his head, wanting to cry Sabine Sabine.
When he finally replaced the receiver in its cradle, Suse said, “You refused to do the funeral.”
“Yes. You heard me say that.”
She turned away and went upstairs.
He went straight to his parents in the music room. Paula was embroidering while her husband read aloud from Stifter.
“I can’t do the funeral,” he said. “I’ve told them. Niemöller believes it would be very ill-advised at this time.”
Karl Bonhoeffer removed his reading glasses and looked at Dietrich. “That is regrettable,” he said.
“Yes,” Dietrich said, steeling himself for his father’s disapproval. “But we’ve national church elections coming up and we must avoid unnecessary controversy.”
“Sabine will be disappointed,” Paula said.
Karl turned to his wife. “Yes, my dear. But Sabine is quite as strong as anyone. I’m sure she and Gerhard didn’t stop to consider the larger situation when they made their plans. For a while we must learn to adjust our expectations of what can and cannot happen. I know Hans was very concerned about the incident with Uncle Rudi.”
“Yes,” Dietrich said. “I suppose that was foolish of me to antagonize Uncle Rudi.” He sighed, stood, and walked to a bookshelf, ran his finger distractedly along the spines of the leather-bound volumes.
His father said, “Why don’t you play for your mother and me? That would be soothing for us all.”
“Yes, all right.” Dietrich went to the Bechstein and raised the lid. “What would you like? Mother?”
“I always enjoy Mozart,” she said.
He would not have chosen Mozart, whose work always seemed to ask more of him than he could give. He made a halfhearted attempt at the Piano Concerto in C Major while his mother sewed and his father leaned back in his chair with eyes shut, smoking his pipe. When Dietrich had finished he stood and said, “It’s been a trying day. I believe I will go to bed.”
He bowed to his father, and kissed the pale cheek his mother offered him. On his way upstairs he passed the open door to Suse’s room. She was listening to a phonograph recording of Schubert’s Trout Quintet, and he wondered if she had turned it on to drown out the sound of his playing.
With the family he sat in the front row while Rabbi Hartstein chanted the Kaddish. Now and then he glanced sidelong at Gerhard and Sabine, pale but dry-eyed, and themselves as still as the dead. Dietrich imagined himself stumbling through the unfamiliar service. See, he told himself, it is best this way.
Afterward they followed the coffin to the Jewish Cemetery in Weißensee. Dietrich watched the pedestrians en route, imagined heads turning to stare after the hearse with its menorah displayed on the grille. In fact, at one corner in Prenzlauer Berg, as they waited for the change of a traffic signal, a group of black-uniformed SS pointed and, laughing, began to applaud. Dietrich looked quickly at Gerhard, but his brother-in-law had either not seen or refused to notice. Nor did Gerhard pause to take note of a crudely painted graffito on the cemetery wall that proclaimed
A BLESSED DAY FOR GERMANY
WHEN ALL JEWS LIE WITHIN THESE WALLS
Dietrich moved close to Hans von Dohnanyi and whispered, “It’s outrageous! Before, that sign would have been quickly painted over.”
“This is not before,” Hans said. “And I’ll tell you, soon such a sign will not be done by hand.”
“What are you suggesting?”
Hans didn’t answer, just nodded toward Rabbi Hartstein, who had begun to say the final words over the coffin.
The family gathered for supper back in the Wangenheimstraße, but Dietrich had no appetite. He had barely spoken to Gerhard and Sabine (Gerhard was polite; Sabine had kissed him for greeting, and briefly squeezed his hand as they entered the synagogue, but had otherwise been quiet and withdrawn). While the others gathered in the library, he went miserable to his room, pleading one of the moods which had often sent him away from company to seek solitude. Even that didn’t help. He had an unbearable need to stand face to face with an accusing angel. He slipped downstairs and out the front door, heading on foot for the Ludwigkirchplatz.
He had not seen Elisabeth Hildebrandt since their return from Göttingen. They had barely spoken on the return journey, and Dietrich had been angry at her silence. Of course she was on edge, everyone was, but it was ridiculous to blame him, as she seemed to do.
Now he wondered.
He walked fast, flinging his arms as though warding off invisible attackers. After striding along at such a pace for half an hour, he encountered a drunken brownshirt, a fat and balding SA Oberschütze who staggered and leaned against a wall. He passed so close to the shambling creature he caught the sour smell of beer and urine and heard a low mumbling singsong as the Nazi comforted himself. Dietrich was taken with a sudden urge to throw this pathetic excuse of a man to the pavement and stomp his head against the cobblestones. He forced himself to hurry on.
When he entered the Ludwigkirchplatz, he walked once around the perimeter, then twice more encircled the church with its ghosts of pilgrims and penitents who had gathered there in ages past. He could see the light in Elisabeth’s apartment each time he passed the south transept. Finally he gathered his courage, climbed the stairs, and pounded on the door. Hearing no answer, he decided she must be out. Then a frightened voice within said, “Who is it?”
“Elisabeth. It’s Dietrich.”
The door swung open. Only partially open.
“It is you,” Elisabeth said. “You frightened me, knocking so loudly at this hour.”
“Why? Has someone threatened you?”
Elisabeth held on to the edge of the door with white-knuckled hands.
“Not personally,” she said. “But I hear things. In the streets. I suppose it’s much more quiet in your Grunewald.” She stood back. “You’d better come in.”
He went inside, but when she gestured toward the couch and asked if he wanted something to drink, he shook his head and remained standing, looking at the floor.
“Well?” she said.
He told her everything. Admitted as well that he hadn’t invited her to the funeral because he’d been afraid of what she would say. Only when he had finished speaking did he dare look at her. She was staring at him, arms folded across her chest. He longed to touch her, to kiss her as he slipped a hand inside her blouse, to carry her to bed.
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He reached out a hand, and she stepped back.
“My God,” she said, “how can I trust you? If you can do this to Sabine of all people, what would you do to me?”
“Elisabeth, it isn’t as though I refused because I support what the government is doing!”
“Why did you come here tonight? For absolution? You’ll not get it from me!” She studied him for a moment, then said more softly, “No, it’s not absolution you want, is it? You’ve already received that from Sabine, without even asking for forgiveness. And that isn’t fair.”
He sank onto the couch and covered his face with his hands. “What should I have done? Niemöller said it would hurt our cause in the church election if—”
“The church election! As if your side has a chance of winning that. And as if it would matter if you did.”
“Why wouldn’t it? Do you think the church so unimportant?”
“Dietrich, these people aren’t going away. And they’ll kill us all if they have to.”
He stared at her.
“It’s not just a transfer of power,” she said.
“The German people will—”
“The German people will love it. Germany is like a wound swollen with corruption, and the German people are ill with the need to puncture it. You and your church elections. I’ve been with you, remember, to your meetings. I’ve seen how you all talk and talk and talk. It’s futile. But you know that, deep down. You know it, and that’s why you’ve come here, to hear me say it.” She lit a cigarette and gave it to him, but moved away again as she lit another for herself and blew smoke at the ceiling.
“I’m leaving,” she said.
“What? Leaving Berlin?”
“Leaving Germany. I’ve written to Jean Lasserre and he has a position for me. So it’s coal miners again, in France this time.”
“But what shall I do—”
“—without me,” she finished, and shrugged.
“Why are you mocking me? After our friendship, after our—”
“What would you call it?” she said.
Such a look of pain came over his face that she relented at last, stubbing out her cigarette, sitting beside him and resting her head on his shoulder. He took her in his arms and they sat very still for a time. Then she stood once more.
“Go away,” she said. “I don’t want to see you again. I hope someday you find some courage. That’s what you need, you know.”
She went into her bedroom and shut the door.
He waited, smoking another cigarette, but she didn’t come back out, or call to him. Finally he let himself out the door and made his way home.
Time of Trial
THE NOTORIOUS COMMUNIST charged with setting fire to the Reichstag is on hunger strike in Tegel Prison. Marinus van der Lubbe’s complaint is that he has been lied to. The SS men in their black uniforms have not healed his eyes as they promised. So he has decided he will refuse to eat until he receives satisfaction. If that fails he thinks he will hire a lawyer and bring suit.
He lies in a fetal position on a narrow cot. When the guards slide a metal tray of food through the slit in the door, he looks away. He holds his breath. He bangs his head with the butt of his hand. Anything to keep from eating until the tray is removed.
One day the guards carry him unprotesting—though he will not help them by walking—to a small room on the ground floor, where he sits head down on a chair in the middle of the whitewashed room. For a time he is alone. Then two men enter and sit opposite him. One of the men, who has gray hair and a neatly trimmed goatee, speaks slowly in German, then waits for the other to translate.
“Herr van der Lubbe? May I call you Marinus? I wonder if you would be more comfortable if I address you by your given name?”
Marinus van der Lubbe nods, without speaking, without looking up.
“Marinus, I am Dr. Karl Bonhoeffer.”
At the word “doctor” Marinus looks up, squinting against the light. He grabs the translator’s hand imploringly. The man gestures toward the other. “There, Marinus, there is Dr. Bonhoeffer. You should address him.”
His head bobs ups and down and he tries to focus his eyes. “Dr. Bonhoeffer, you have come to heal my eyes?”
“Marinus, I’m so sorry. I’m told you’ve been examined by an eye specialist since you’ve been in prison, and nothing can be done for your eyes. The damage is irreversible. I’m sorry.”
Van der Lubbe covers his face with the sleeve of his striped prison uniform. Nothing can coax him to look at the men again, or speak to them. Finally he is hauled back to his cell, where he will be strapped to his cot. A tube will be inserted into his nostril and snaked through the esophagus into his stomach and so he will be fed.
The visitors return in a week, after Marinus has forgotten them, and Dr. Bonhoeffer patiently tries a different approach to his examination, careful to avoid mention of the prisoner’s eyes.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer stands in the pulpit of the Johanneskirche in Friedrichshain. It is solidly middle-class, a church of shopkeepers, managers of rail stations and canal operations, clerks in various government ministries, and their wives and children, all dressed in their best clothes and anxious to judge the newest candidate. After the service they will shake hands with the blond young man who is hoping to become their pastor, the third in a month who has stood the test. They await the sermon with relish, pleased to know that these earnest applicants must curry their favor, pleased they can decide who shall have a position and who shall not.
Dietrich has not preached in several months. He glances nervously at his notes, which seem suddenly to have rearranged themselves from the orderly paragraphs over which he labored so diligently the night before. He holds tight onto the oak pulpit and wishes it were the Abyssinian Baptist Church he stood in, longs for a congregation that will call out.
He preaches on Moses and Aaron at the foot of Sinai—one fresh from the presence of Yahweh, the other paying homage to a gold calf—brothers arrayed one against the other.
He says, “Aaron’s Church of the World stands against the Church of the Word. Moses waits, while his brother worships the god who is no god. This strife at Mount Sinai is repeated over and over throughout history, even unto our own day. Sunday after Sunday we come together as a worldly church, a church which has no interest in the invisible and mysterious. We come together as a church which creates its own gods. We come as a church which looks for pleasing gods to worship rather than asking how to please God. We are a church which will sacrifice to idols but will not sacrifice for the true God.
“I must tell you, our current idol already lies smashed on the ground, scattered in pieces about us. Therefore we must be patient, like Moses. We must go away to listen, and come back again, ready to worship the true God.”
They listen in puzzled silence, and afterward shake hands politely with the candidate before filing outside into the bright September sunshine. They gather in clusters on the sidewalk in front of the church, and agree among themselves that they have likely seen the last of Pastor Bonhoeffer.
Fatherland
WHILE HE AWAITED THE DECISION of the good burghers of Friedrichshain, Dietrich daydreamed about what it would be like to have his own church. To stand in the pulpit Sunday after Sunday, charged with the care of souls. To lean close while listening to the lonely ramblings of an elderly woman, to hold the parchment hand of a dying man or comfort a woman who had lost her child. To teach young and old alike, not as the sort of academic lecturer he had been at the university, but as a storyteller. To direct and deepen the spiritual life of the parish, which would become a community, an extended family.
He thought of all this with both awe and pleasure as he sat inside a window in the Gaststätte Pilsen and watched Pastor Martin Niemöller emerge from a leaf-strewn path in the Tiergarten onto the Budapester Straße. A wind had kicked up, forcing Niemöller to hold on to his hat. Once inside the restaurant, Niemöller waved as he handed over his hat and coat, and smiled as he
approached the table, shaking Dietrich’s hand and saying, “You managed the most pleasant table in the place, I see.”
Dietrich shrugged. “I come here often and the maître d’ knows me.”
“Then the chef must know you as well,” Niemöller said, “and so I shall be most grateful you suggested we meet here.”
Dietrich ordered a bottle of Riesling, and when it had been decanted and tasted, Niemöller grew serious.
“I’m afraid I have bad news,” he said.
Dietrich squeezed the stem of his wineglass and looked down. “Johanneskirche,” he said.
“I’m afraid so. You’ll receive official notification from the superintendent, of course, but I thought you’d want to hear from me first.” Niemöller noted the look of pained disappointment on Dietrich’s face, and then said, “I knew you wanted this position, but I didn’t realize quite how much.”
“It’s just I’ve been thinking for days now how nice it could be to have my own church. I’d just about decided it was what God had in mind for me.”
Niemöller said gently, “Perhaps you’re hearing a call. But Johanneskirche isn’t the only church. I don’t know of any other openings in Berlin at the moment, but vacancies show up with some regularity.”
“Yes,” Dietrich said, “but.”
“But?”
“Was it politics?”
“Who knows?”
“They gave no reason for rejecting me?”
“Well.” Niemöller hesitated.
“I’d like to know,” Dietrich said. “It might be useful in the future.”
“The written evaluation of the search committee states that your preaching style was too demanding, and your message depressing.”
“Good Lord,” Dietrich said. He fought off a sudden craving for a cigarette.
“I hope I haven’t ruined your appetite,” Niemöller said, gesturing at a just-arrived plate of oysters on the half shell.
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