by Shmuel David
I waited for her for half an hour at the court in my white tennis clothes and hat that Father had bought me, but she didn’t show up. I began to worry, because Klarie is always punctual. I thought she’d show up in a moment or two. Meanwhile, I practiced diligently at the training wall.
The sound of the ball beating against the wall woke Lord, who was lying sleepily outside and enjoying the sunlight. Lately, he’s been spending a lot of time sleeping. Father says he’s starting to get old. Time moves faster with dogs. Every human year is like seven years for a dog, so I guess Lord is actually seventy. He’s a German Shepherd. He has a black back and a light-colored stomach, and his eyes are as smart and understanding as any human. Sometimes, I’m sure he understands every word I tell him. He loves sitting beside us while we’re playing tennis, moving his head from side to side and following the ball with his eyes. When the ball falls, he runs to get it and even brings balls back to the court when they fly really far. He also knows who to give the ball to.
Minutes went by and Klarie still hadn’t shown up. Something must have happened. I decided to go back home and ask Mother. I put the racket back in its bag and ran through the patio. Today, Mother is hosting her friends for tea, and they’ll be here in half an hour. Perhaps I should spend the afternoon finishing my geometry homework. Anyway, Father doesn’t have time to help me with my homework now. He comes home very late in the evenings, because he has a lot of work. I liked it when Klarie used to help me with my math homework. She’s a good teacher, a good friend, and a good sister, but now she’s married and left home and doesn’t have time for me and Pauli. She lives in the city with Lazar, who has a photography shop called Photo Lazar. She works as a lawyer at the De Mayo law firm. Father is very proud of Klarie and calls her “the pride of the family.” He never says that about me or Pauli, perhaps because I’m not very good at math. I’m considered a pretty good student in other subjects, and the history and language teachers have praised me for achieving above and beyond what is required of me, but I just can’t get numbers into my head. Father has never understood what’s wrong with his son who can’t even manage the basics of mathematics. Klarie not only excelled in all subjects, she was also an accomplished athlete—school champion in the hundred- and two-hundred-meter dash, a good swimmer, and a gifted tennis player. Father keeps all her medals and tennis league trophies in his office.
I found Mother sitting in the large armchair in her room with a small wooden box in her hand. There was a photo of Klarie on the inner lid. Father had taken the photo when Klarie was little and had all her beautiful golden curls. Inside the box, wrapped in blue velvet, were two bright locks of Klarie’s hair. Mother sat in front of the open box looking worried.
“Where have you been?” she asked. “I’ve been looking for you for an hour.”
“At the tennis court. Klarie said she’d meet me there at four.”
“She won’t be able to come.”
“Is something wrong?”
“She’s not feeling well. The doctor has already been, but he still doesn’t know what the problem is,” answered Mother.
“Oh, poor Klarie. What can I do to help?”
“There’s nothing we can do. Lazar is with her all the time.”
I got up just as the door opened, and Olga, Klarie’s best friend, came in with her mane of black curls, captivating smile, and abundant energy. The smile disappeared from her face as soon as she saw Mother’s worried expression.
“How’s Klarie? She wasn’t feeling well at the office today.”
“Lazar called an hour ago to say she has a high fever and he’s calling a doctor,” Mother said.
“Oh, I’m really worried. She’s got a very important debate the day after tomorrow.”
“You worry about yourself first. You’ve done enough damage putting all those communist ideas in her head,” Mother scolded her.
“You have nothing to worry about, Madame Louisa. Your daughter won’t cross the line.”
“I most certainly don’t want anyone knocking at our door in the middle of the night and taking her away to be interrogated. Would you like to spend time in a jail cell?”
“Madame Louisa, I’d willingly sit in jail for such a noble cause,” answered Olga, and her smile brought the two dimples back to her face.
“Nonetheless,” Mother said crisply. “You two can be good friends and have fun together, but leave politics out of it. Agreed?”
“All right, Madame Louisa, don’t worry. I’ll try to go visit her in the city,” said Olga turning to leave.
Olga is a real heroine. She’s not afraid of the police or even of going to jail, and she’s willing to fight for her beliefs. At our youth movement, they’ve been talking about being loyal to your beliefs. Our movement instructor, Itche, explains everything about Zionism and how we can fulfill its vision by emigrating to Israel and working on the land—a barren, dry land crying out for our love. But would I be willing to go to jail for the Zionist vision, like Olga?
I wish I’d asked to go with her to visit Klarie. I badly wanted to visit her, but Father says eleven-year-old children shouldn’t wander the city by themselves. There are dangers in the city, especially gypsies who kidnap children. I wish I could be more independent, like Peter or Joachim from my class. Only today, they told me again that they took the tram downtown all by themselves, got off, and saw all the shops in Aleksandra and Mihailova streets. Father won’t let me go downtown by myself until I’m fifteen, not even with Pauli.
***
Mother’s friends sat out on the patio drinking their five o’clock tea from floral porcelain cups. Victoria was dressed like a queen in a long, blue velvet dress, a red kerchief embroidered with golden threads around her neck and shoulders, and a white parasol edged with lace in her hand. Victoria’s husband is also called Emil, and he’s a rich fabric merchant. He’d arrived from Istanbul ten years before the Great War and became the main fabric supplier for the army and the government. Victoria is very active in city social circles and arranges balls for the Serbian nobility at their luxurious house in the Dedinje neighborhood. Even though they’ve lived in the city for thirty years, she still prefers to speak French.
Unlike Victoria, Angela, wife of the Austrian consul, arrived in sports clothes, like the dress you’d wear for a Sunday family tennis tournament: a tennis dress with a short plaid jacket and a gray narrow-brimmed fedora hat. She’d brought a box of records with an elegant cover. “Highlights from Die Fledermaus conducted by the virtuoso Austrian conductor Erich Kleiber, a rare recording,” she told Mother knowledgeably and gave her the box. I’ve noticed that Angela never comes empty-handed.
Vivian came with Adolph, her pinscher dog, who goes everywhere with her. She always carries him under one arm.
As soon as Mother noticed that Vivian was coming, she asked me to put Lord in the cellar, but Adolph’s nervous temperament woke Lord the minute Vivian was at the door. Lord erupted into a loud fit of barking. Luckily, I was able to grab his collar at the last moment and prevent him from knocking down Vivian and Adolph. I signaled her to go around through the kitchen and out the door close to the pantry. I was still holding the wildly panting Lord by his collar when I heard a knock at the door.
“Who is it?” I shouted.
“It’s me, Peter.”
“Come inside, quickly. I’m holding Lord.”
The door opened and in came Peter, my good friend and neighbor. He was wearing white tennis clothes, his black hair carefully combed. Peter lives with his mother, two bodyguards, and several servants in a majestic palace bordering the western side of our garden. A tall wall separates our house from their palace. It was all to keep him safe, the crown prince who would inherit the throne when he turned eighteen.
I remember the day Father came back from work and told Mother even before taking off his coat that King Alexander, Peter’s father, had been assassinated
in Marseille.
“A Bulgarian assassin,” he said with disgust, shocked by the outburst of joy flooding the country as the news spread. “He wasn’t much liked,” he summed up.
Meanwhile, Peter lives the life of a careless teenager, just like me. During the summer months, when he comes home on vacation from a military boarding school in England, he visits us to play tennis and swim in our pool. He told me he had a hard time at boarding school, with its strict British discipline and even stricter teachers. He’d be happy to move back here and go to school with me.
He once told me he preferred our cozy, noisy household to the cold, quiet air of their royal mansion. It’s always fun here. There are noisy children and summer garden parties; we even have a swimming pool and a tennis court.
Peter had seen me waiting for Klarie next to the practice wall and offered to play with me instead. I went up to my room to fetch the racket and balls while he watched over Lord.
We passed the patio on our way to the court. The five women were drinking tea and talking loudly. I motioned to Peter to go on to the court and that I’d join him in a moment. I listened to the women’s conversation, hoping to hear something about the events that so troubled Mother.
“You live in a bubble here in your beautiful mansion,” declared Vivian loudly to Mother.
“What do you mean, ‘a bubble’? Aren’t we Jewish? Don’t you think I’ve been following the news from Germany?”
“I’m afraid it could spread to other places, even here,” said Vivian.
“You’re right,” Victoria interrupted. “My sister has lived in Germany for many years, and she says their hometown school has already fired two Jewish teachers.”
“Well, for now, it’s only happening in Germany,” Mother tried to reassure everyone, handing Vivian the sugar-cube bowl. “No one here would dare fire a teacher just because he’s Jewish.”
“Edmond says that many of the most successful Austrian artists and architects working in Germany should move back to Austria and end their careers in Berlin or Munich,” said Angela, adding that she’d heard of places where Jews are not allowed to teach in government schools and that the Jewish communities there have had to open their own high schools.
“Exactly,” said Vivian. “And I tell you it’ll end up here too. What’s happening in Germany is madness. At first, they said it was only against the communists. Now, it’s mainly against the Jews.”
I tried to imagine this happening in my own class, that one day they might tell me not to come to school anymore.
“Hey, Hanne! Are you coming or not?” Peter called impatiently.
“Coming!”
I ran to the court. We played for an hour and a half. Peter won most of the matches, but I still felt pretty good, because I’d managed to beat him a few times and return some really difficult serves. Lord brought back all the lost balls. Toward the end of the game, Pauli showed up and asked to join us. We told him we were in the middle of a tournament and another player couldn’t just butt in. Besides, he wasn’t even properly dressed. In response, Pauli took all his new clothes for summer camp out of a large paper bag, just to annoy me and make me jealous.
When we’d finished our game, I invited Peter to come and play with me the next day, but he was leaving for end-of-year exams at boarding school and would only be back at the end of the summer.
We parted with a handshake. I went up to shower and change my clothes.
When I came down for dinner, I found Mother at the dining table with a worried expression on her face.
“Why so late?” she asked.
“Late? We always eat at seven thirty. Where’s Father?”
“Your father stayed in town. He’s with Klarie now,” she said worriedly.
“Any news?”
“Yes. The doctor says he thinks she has pneumonia and needs to be treated in the hospital.”
“Hospital? Can they cure it?”
“I don’t know,” she said impatiently. “We’ll have to wait and see.”
***
Alan had been sitting beside his father for four days now, there from morning till late afternoon. When his sister came to take his place, she made sure he went home to rest. In a conversation with the doctor the previous day, they’d been told their father’s condition was no longer critical and that he’d be transferred to the neurosurgery ward the following day for further treatment.
The photos he’d stashed in his jacket pocket on the first evening continued to wait for a moment when he could actually communicate with his father.
Meanwhile, he’d been sitting next to him for hours, without the two of them exchanging a single word. He helped his father with small tasks, such as sitting up in bed or going to the toilet, which made him realize how hard nurses worked there. He found it difficult to help his own father. He had never seen him so dependent on others. It embarrassed him. Nurses needed to help complete strangers for at least eight hours every day. He’d have gone insane if he had to work as a nurse. Dr. Paritzker said they were now waiting for the moment his father’s eyes were focused again and his speech became clearer. This could happen in days, weeks, or even months. They would need a lot of patience. Alan ran out of patience. This was no longer an emergency situation, and he could start thinking of flying back to New York. Not right away, of course. He needed to change the flight date. But could he leave his father like this? Could Bracha take care of him alone? Was it fair to expect it of her?
“You idler!” His father sat up in bed with a glare. “I asked you to see Inge. Was that too much to ask?”
Alan took the three photos he’d found from his jacket pocket.
His father tried hard to focus on the photos. He drew the photo of the two girls leaning against the swimming pool rail closer to his eyes, then, in a rage, tossed it to the floor.
“No, no. These are Klarie and Frenzie, can’t you see? I asked to see Inge!”
Alan carefully picked up the photo his father had tossed away and heard him say, “Where did you find Frenzie? I don’t like Frenzie.”
Alan handed him the third photo. His father looked at it and began to wail.
“Oh, Olga, my poor Olga. What have they done to you?”
Bracha came into the room and immediately noticed the change they’d hoped for.
The next day, Alan was already busy making phone calls to get on an earlier flight and called New York as well. Rachel said she and the girls were doing fine and that he shouldn’t worry. Charles calmed him down as well and said that the project was progressing nicely, and that it would be great if he could come back a little earlier so he could supervise the completion of the first phase. That would be great; he’d be able to get back in time to manage the project, which in the meantime was being handled by Charles’s assistant. Satisfied with the discussions, Alan returned to the hospital in a good mood. But his father, who had shown encouraging signs of coming back to life the previous day, was again sunk in apathy, his eyes glued vacantly to the ceiling. Alan asked him if he wanted anything, but his father didn’t answer, just lay there in complete silence.
Alan took another photo of an unidentified woman from his pocket; he’d found it while rummaging through the drawers and envelopes—an older woman, elegantly dressed, on her head a broad-brimmed floral hat with a feather, a parasol raised to shade her face in one hand, and a flat-nosed dog held in the other.
“Vivian!” His father returned to life. “Where did you find all these photos? Have you found the notebook too?”
“What notebook?” Alan straightened up.
“The diary I wrote as a child and translated into Hebrew. I haven’t shown it to anyone yet.”
“You kept it a secret? Why?” asked Alan, surprised by his father’s sudden outburst of wakefulness and the new information.
“Because… Because I haven’t yet decided if the time is ripe,
” he faltered.
“Ripe for what?”
“For exposing everything. For revealing what I’ve gone through.”
“So, can I read it now?”
“Wise guy!” his father said angrily. “You’ve found it already, haven’t you? What can I keep hidden now?”
“But I haven’t found Inge yet.”
“You won’t find her there. My business with her is elsewhere. But you have to find her. Do you hear me?”
Akiba 1937
My best friend at school is Isaac. Although we’re very different and he lives downtown, I like him a lot. He’s a real redhead with frizzy, rust-colored hair, and he’s also very stubborn. Isaac’s the kind of boy who always has adventures, just like the ones you read about in books. I don’t know what he sees in me; I feel like such a coward next to him. Isaac needs me to help him with his homework, and I need him to help me learn to be brave like him. Isaac likes to tease me because I belong to the rich upper class, while he belongs to the oppressed working class. He sometimes calls me a spoiled rich brat.
They’re very nice to me at Isaac’s house. Whenever I go over there, his mother always brings us chocolate, fruit, and juice to his room.
Today, Isaac and I were walking home from school together when two older boys suddenly jumped out from a street corner and grabbed him. One held him from behind while the other took his soccer cards out of his pocket. I was paralyzed with fear and just stood there without even trying to stop them. After those thugs had gone off with their loot and Isaac finished looking in his pockets for cards they might have missed, he asked me angrily, “What’s wrong with you? Why did you just stand there like an idiot?”
I felt so ashamed. If only I wasn’t so weak and scrawny. I feel strong, but something keeps holding me back. Today, I decided this has to change.
It takes a good few minutes to walk from school to Isaac’s house, and the road passes through narrow side streets filled with shabby, old houses. On warm summer days, people sit out in the street at their front doors, drinking black coffee and smoking cigarettes. The clattering of dice on wooden backgammon boards fills the air, along with curses and profanities I’d never heard grown-ups use before. At the end of the street, there’s an Ashkenazi synagogue. In a few months, we’ll celebrate my bar mitzvah there. Father took me to that synagogue to show me a Torah scroll before I actually read from it during the bar mitzvah ceremony. Father only goes to synagogue once a year, on Yom Kippur, to hear the Kol Nidre prayer. When he goes, he takes the prayer book, prayer shawl, and tefillin he received from his father for his bar mitzvah.