Somewhere in Germany Read online

  Regina lost her nerve, humor, and composure. Max cried along with her and shouted, “I want a divorce.” Jettel called her husband a heartless fool and Walter finally had to admit to himself that he could not use the methods of the Old Testament to provide for the future of a daughter whom he had raised according to his own ideals of independence and pride. He no longer accepted invitations to the nursing home, but he continued to talk, glum and obsessed, about his responsibility to find a husband for Regina before she had a chance to fall in love with a non-Jewish man.

  “We are not living in the Middle Ages anymore,” Regina protested. “I never thought that you were in such a hurry to get me out of the house.”

  “I am not,” Walter admitted. “I cannot even conceive of life without you.”

  “So why are we performing this kind of a rigmarole?”

  “If I only knew. What did Owuor say? My tongue is faster than my head.”

  Even though the conversation had no consequences at first, Regina already felt better because Walter had mentioned Owuor at just the right moment. Now, she was able to remember her childhood and, above all, that her father had never been able to resign himself to waiting. She made peace with him because she understood that he suffered some guilt he could not even speak to her about. He was unable to forgive himself for bringing Regina to a country where she would never have a chance of finding a Jewish husband and, at the same time, he felt guilty for asking her to promise to marry only a Jew.

  The Jewish community in Frankfurt was small, yet all the more quickly did people, to whom matchmaking was still a traditional way of life, see their chance. Regina was introduced to the owner of a café in Zeil, an agile widower who had just opened his second sausage stand, an optimistic scrap metal dealer with a humpback and his own car, and a clothing store owner, whom Jettel was enthusiastic about because he sold dresses that she would not be able to afford even years from now. Walter most liked a rabbi from Bremen because he suspected that he at least had the level of education that he longed for in his daughter’s husband. In her newfound, relaxed state of mind, Regina almost betrayed the secret of George Guggenheim’s ham sandwich. But she only said, “Well, just make sure that you give up smoking in case you want to celebrate the Shabbat with me and my husband.”

  Walter happily laughed as if she had indeed made a good joke and Regina realized that he was finally tired of his farce. The last doubts about her father’s charade disappeared when she noticed that Walter never missed informing his four-year-old son about the newest events in the marriage trade, and told everyone that he had laughed so hard that he had to cry when Max had tugged at the sleeve of a young man, absorbed in prayer in the synagogue, and asked him, “Do you want to marry my sister?”

  When the year 1950 came to an end, Regina also felt outwardly relieved from the threat of an arranged marriage and the humiliating evaluation of her person and her father’s fortune. Even the most eager matchmakers were no longer able to find any candidates. The old basic intimacy of secret hints and keen understanding, of sentimentality and irony, blossomed stronger than before. Regina was even able to laugh again when Walter said, “You will remain an old maid and run your brother’s household.”

  Regina, therefore, did not arm herself with any suspicion, which was left over from the most recent experiences, when Walter said, “I met a fraternity brother from Mainz and have invited him to come over Friday night.” It was already that period of time when Walter, constantly on the lookout for contacts who truly warmed his heart, discovered people who came from Leobschütz, Sohrau, or Breslau almost every week, or was contacted by fraternity brothers from abroad who were passing through Frankfurt.

  He strenuously ignored Jettel’s objections that the people he invited were strangers and only made work for her. Guests, with whom he roamed through the never-forgotten world of yesterday as if it had never ended, were fulfillment for him and the only confirmation that his dreams had come true.

  Dr. Alfred Klopp was not like the other guests with whom Walter had much better conversations than his wife and daughter. He was a strikingly good-looking, quiet, polite man, about fifty-four years old and unmistakably content and well to do. Hidden by good friends in Holland, he had survived the persecution and soon after the war settled in Mainz as a pediatrician.

  He mentioned that he did not have a family, but he did not talk about wanting to start one. Instead, he spoke of his patients, of books he liked to read, and that he loved Flemish paintings, ever since his stay in Holland, as a piece of home. After that he conquered Regina’s heart because he talked to Max as if he had only come because of him.

  She reflected, a little dismayed, on the irony of fate, and admitted unusually fast to her heart that she would have instantly married the thoughtful man, whose profession and education impressed her, if he had appeared on one of the hated Sunday afternoons in the Jewish nursing home. During dinner, she changed from the gray sweater with the mended sleeves into a new red blouse, put her hair up, used Jettel’s lipstick and rouge, and caught herself wishing Dr. Klopp would pay as much attention to her as to her brother.

  But when she returned to the room, she heard Jettel say, “Our Regina is really a very capable girl. Always busy with housework, and the way she takes care of her brother! Everyone envies me. She sews beautifully.”

  Regina, who fastened loose hems with a safety pin and had frustrated sewing teachers on two continents, immediately got the picture. Her skin turned as red as her blouse and she was glad that she was able to offer, with a steady hand, the vegetable bowl to Dr. Klopp, who was intensely busy with his pot roast and seemed all of a sudden embarrassed and distracted.

  She tried to smile at him, but she was unable to answer his question about her journey to Switzerland because Jettel was just telling him how Regina never minded getting up at night when her brother needed her. “The man who ends up with our Regina is a lucky one,” Jettel said and laughed as coquettishly as if she were part of the catch that the guest could not possibly let pass.

  Dr. Klopp took his leave immediately after dinner, somewhat abruptly and deeply embarrassed. He had just remembered that he still had to visit a little patient of his and had to take care of some “urgent paperwork.” He stood at the door in his coat and hat and waved at Max.

  “Curtsy, Regina,” Walter said.

  “You couldn’t have found a better way of telling him that I am too young for him,” Regina later hissed at her father.

  Even though he had at least had a good time during the earlier part of the evening, Dr. Klopp was never heard from again. Regina was grateful to him nonetheless. Without him she would not have found out until much later that her father dreaded nothing more than the moment when he had to give up his daughter to another man.

  “You don’t want me to get married at all,” she reproached him.

  “By everything that is holy to me, that is not true,” Walter insisted.

  “Bwana, you are lying like a monkey.”

  “Yes, but it is your own fault.”

  “Why?”

  “You,” Walter sighed, and imitated Owuor’s voice, “have stolen my heart, memsahib.”

  8

  MAX WAS ABLE TO CATCH the quietly blowing wind and turn it into a transparent cool washcloth for his burning face when he rotated the crank and held one hand out of the open car window. As soon as he moved his head just a little bit from one side to the other, trees with big round trunks became as thin as a thread, just like Kaspar, the little boy who would not eat his soup in Slovenly Peter on the fifth day. The trees, topped with green hats, flew into the blue sky and scratched at white soap-sudsy clouds. But most of the time Max just sat quietly next to his father and looked at him through the black curtain of his long eyelashes. The great miracle kept rolling on. It was like being in one of those fairy tales, which silly little children believed in. Only a thousand times better and as real and sweet as the red lake of strawberry jam on a breakfast roll.

  Ma
x was the first to learn that his father had turned into a rich giant who was able to honk the horn with one hand and with the other to give orders to the gearshift, which had to be obeyed immediately and with a great howl. The giant could have ridden on a golden horse in the sun above the houses. If he had wanted to, he could have flown to the moon and back in an airplane of pure silver, but he did not need such tricks because he sat in a big, wonderful car with dark red metal fenders and shining glass windows.

  The giant with the dark brown, wavy hair, who looked like Max’s father had looked only yesterday, was singing, “The Eunuchs are sitting crying in the harem,” “Who is supposed to pay for this?” and “Gaudeamus Igitur.” Foaming bubbles emerged from his mouth. Between the songs and powerful shouts of “hurrah,” the king took his hands off the steering wheel and clapped. The thunder was very short and quite hard. But when he did not sing, honk the horn, or clap, he called out loud enough for the windows to vibrate, “This car belongs to me and my favorite son.”

  “Not to Regina?” the mighty son asked.

  “Women do not have cars. But they can come along for a ride if they are nice.”

  “Why is Regina not coming with us then?”

  “There is no place for women on a maiden voyage. It is bad luck to take them along.”

  “What is a maiden voyage?”

  “This here. We are driving our own car for the very first time. This is for men only.”

  “Only you and I,” Max happily said. “Me and thou. And miller’s cow.”

  “We are not taking the miller’s cow along either. A lawyer doesn’t pay attention to cows. That was once upon a time. I only talked to oxen in my other life.”

  “Did you live once before, Papa?”

  “And how, my son. I was a little gray mouse then and afraid of every cat.”

  “And now,” Max realized, “you are the Puss ’n Boots.”

  “Nonsense. I am an attorney and notary.”

  “I am going to be an attorney and notary, too. With a big office and lots of clients.”

  “You do that, Maxele, my son.”

  The miraculous carriage was a used Opel Olympia, a wheezing prewar model, only insufficiently recovered from many injuries. It had been a bargain from a client who, on his way up the social ladder, had quickly switched cars and had sensed Walter’s desire for mobility—and at a speed the car itself had not been able to achieve for years now.

  After that the robust little Opel with the magic powers became above all the triumph of a man who had been imprisoned on a farm in Africa and had dreamed of a donkey with a saddle when the fever shook him and he needed a physician. The singing giant and his chosen son stopped between Königstein and Kronberg, sat down on a meadow of green velvet, ate potatoes made of marzipan and bread made of nougat, smoked cigarettes made of tobacco and chocolate, and decided to name the car “Susi Opel.”

  Max, who attended a Catholic kindergarten in the Eichwaldstraße and was quite taken by the mysterious stories that Sister Elsa retrieved from the depths of her black habit, wanted to baptize Susi Opel with three drops from the small bottle of blueberry liqueur in the glove compartment.

  “Jews don’t get baptized,” his father told him, “and neither do Jewish cars. You should never forget that.”

  “Never,” Max promised.

  In a life that permitted miracles again, Susi Opel was a shining heroine when she stood red and squat in front of the house, and she became the panting mistress of father and son when she had to negotiate hills and curves. Just one look in her mirror overshadowed the new miracle of the slim, heavily made-up Fräuleins, the young women in their long skirts and high, clanking heels. The rooster that was crowing about the economic miracle, which was just about to start and would make bank accounts and new houses grow, was less audible than their own squeaking wheels and coughing motor. Those sang of a dream that Walter had believed in for such a long time, and that now had so obviously taken shape that Jettel no longer mourned the fixed salary of a judge.

  The practice of attorneys Fafflok and Redlich prospered in such a way that people at court no longer talked in a vague and patronizing way about the “two stubborn mules from the East,” but said respectfully and often even enviously, “Those two have made it.”

  In addition to his industriousness and professional brilliance, perseverance, and astute business sense, Fafflok had also brought his old, amply proportioned secretary, who handled all tasks to perfection, ranging from Kattowitz to the new attorneys’ union. Part of Fafflok’s dowry consisted above all of two industrialists with roots in Upper Silesia and great need for a notary. Walter initially was only able to offer his energy, quick thinking and action, a passion for the profession he loved and had never forgotten, and the obsession to seize from the present what the years of emigration had taken away from him.

  Very soon clients came for his sake, too—Jewish people from abroad who hoped for restitution for lost homes and businesses, and Jews who had ended up in Frankfurt, had lost family, health, and all means to gain a livelihood in the concentration camps, and still remembered the word “justice.”

  Refugees from Upper Silesia came in droves. Even the drums in the woods of Ol’ Joro Orok could not have been faster in spreading the news about a tribal war or a bushfire than the happy Upper Silesians were in telling each other the news that at 60 Neue Mainzer Straße there was a friendly man behind his desk whose sense of justice was as pronounced as his kindness. He spoke the same language and had the same sense of humor as the people, who—like he before them—had lost their homeland, faith, and belongings. Because he was unable to forget his own fate—being cast out and dispossessed—he was never just the legal adviser he had to be, but also someone who gave them sympathy. He felt that every case that was entrusted to him, no matter how small, demanded his full attention. More than anything, this man, with the vehement, choleric temper and eyes that immediately betrayed his kindness, knew how important it was for people who had been humiliated to go to court and to sue for respect. When the unwanted refugees from the East were called “gipsy pack” or “dirty refugees” and were accused of offenses that incensed and insulted them, he was not concerned about the negligible fees for the legal battle, but burned with the same indignation they felt.

  When it became known that almost every week Walter wrote a letter for his friend Greschek in Marke so that no accusation would remain without a rebuttal, others were also encouraged to defend themselves against the provocations of the well-to-do. They came with the defeatist attitude of an outsider from the small surrounding villages where they had been banished, and left the practice with their heads held high.

  Although it was no longer customary in these times of a growing economy, Walter also still took payment in kind, just as he had done a long while ago from the peasants around Leobschütz. The refugees, who lived in the villages and were able to buy produce cheaply from the farmers, could spare groceries more easily than money. Some of them already owned small stores. Walter considered vegetables, potatoes, geese and rabbits, wood for a living room table, cheap tin toys, fabric for dresses, and blankets as sufficient payment for his services. The only important thing for him was that the wares, which piled up in his office, could be equitably divided between him and Fafflok.

  Occasionally, though, Fafflok mildly, and not on his own accord, had to remind Walter about the rent, insurance, salaries for the office personnel (in addition to Mrs. Fischer from Kattowitz there was also a young intern now), and other necessities besides kitchen and household. His wife, first occasionally and later more and more often, encouraged him to such objections after he brought her the sixth tablecloth from a dry goods store in Friedberg.

  This rebellion also encouraged Jettel to protest when she and Regina kept getting, from the same store, aprons and blouses that did not even live up to the modest requirements of the times, and moreover were made from the same material as the tablecloths. Since Walter desperately wanted a car, Jettel co
uld not have found a better time to persuade him to finally give up his beloved bartering.

  Anyway, Susi Opel offered an opportunity to find new outlets for his connections to Upper Silesia. Almost every Sunday Walter drove with Jettel, Regina, Else, and Max to find the lost homeland—for a few hours at least. The trips into a gilded past led to Bad Vilbel and Kleinkarben, Friedberg, Bad Nauheim, and to villages that could rarely be found on any map and also to farms where refugee families had been taken in.

  As soon as it became known that Dr. Redlich and his family had arrived, small feasts were improvised, and they turned into melancholy gala celebrations. There were always cakes with streusel and poppy seeds, mountains of whipped cream, and “real coffee.” In addition, “decent schnapps,” mustard pickles, and herring salad made from an old family recipe were never missing. The roast was accompanied by a sauce and mashed potatoes, which were all served under their original Silesian names. The green beans were prepared sweet and sour, “just like at mother’s,” and with raisins, and if Dr. Redlich had announced that he would come, baked calf ’s feet and brains were dished up because everyone knew that he had made the trip just for them.

  Walter believed all of this himself. Jettel and Regina were not that easily deceived. They very quickly realized, and were even more baffled by the silent accord of their misgivings, that it was not his homesick stomach that he wanted to indulge on Sundays. He was healing his wounded heart.

  Only with people from Leobschütz and even more so with friends from his youth in Sohrau was he able to immerse himself without prejudice, uncertainty, and restraint into a world he had to believe in if he wanted to look at his return to Germany in the merciful light of a boost to his ego. When people from Sohrau innocently asked about his father and his sister, as if those two had just gone on a trip and had forgotten to write the promised postcards, he took the question itself as an interest in his fate.