Somewhere in Germany Page 14

  “How did your great magician do it? What did he tell you?”

  “You have to make your ears really big, memsahib kidogo,” Regina laughed. “That’s what I did today. I listened carefully. You talked about Lucky Hans when you saw that I was alone. You said that you didn’t want to be alone with me. That’s when I knew that you were afraid of me. Your fear has made me courageous.”

  “I was afraid of myself, you depraved child from Africa.”

  “Owuor used to say, ‘fear is fear, and whoever is afraid is going to be hunted. And caught.’”

  “Your Owuor was a clever man. I am sure he also told you not to leave the house without a toothbrush when a man asks you out to eat.”

  “No, he only said, ‘always take your head and your heart on safari.’ But I also have a toothbrush.”

  Regina was already lying in bed when Martin came out of the bathroom and again he was wearing a crown that only she could see. She was eleven years old once more and heard the monkeys chatter in the woods, but this time she was clever enough to think of the magic of the wise God Mungu in time. Only He was able to kill a budding wish before it turned into a lethal plant that burns the intestines.

  But when she touched Martin’s body and he touched hers, and when she felt his breath at her ear, felt the hand on her mouth, and stifled the scream that was still caught in her throat, she understood that she had dared to get too close to a fire that neither Mungu nor time would ever be able to extinguish.

  She had taken her heart on safari, but had left her head behind. Much later in the eternity that lay between desire and fulfillment, Owuor sent his knowing laughter to the mountain, for he alone was clever. His little memsahib, however, lay in the arms of a sleeping king and had offered herself to the hunter.

  “I always thought,” Martin called from the bathroom the next morning, “a woman at least wants to know if a man is married before she seduces him. German women always asked about that. I do remember that.”

  “I am not a German woman,” Regina laughed. She was still lying in bed, numbed by the brevity of happiness and the weight of wonder.

  “You are an African witch. I felt it over there,” Martin said, “but I didn’t remember it in time.”

  He sat in front of the mirror and thought, like the day before, of the man who was allowed to stay young while only his picture aged.

  “Of course you are married,” Regina knew. “Why should I ask you? All men your age are married.”

  “I am not. I have been divorced for years. A second time. I do not know why, but it is important to me that you know that.”

  “To me, too.”

  “Why?”

  “Just because. You don’t have to be frightened right away.”

  “Will you promise me something, Regina?” Martin said to his picture in the mirror. “That you will not be sad when I have to leave again.”

  “You told me that once before.”

  “Will you promise?”

  “Yes, but not because of you. And not because of me either. How could I explain my sadness without speaking of this night? I could not hurt my father. He loves me so much that he will never want any man to have me. And certainly not you. He has still not forgiven you for the blue blanket that you lay under with my mother.”

  “Is that part of your magic, too? What makes you think about a blue blanket?”

  “As long as I can remember, the two have never been able to agree if the blanket was really blue.”

  “In those days,” Martin said, “your father really only saw ghosts.”

  He was even able to laugh when Walter and Jettel returned in the afternoon from the Harz and the trip to Greschek, saw him sitting in the living room, and Walter, after an emotional hug, instantly asked, “You did not harm my daughter, did you?”

  11

  IN THE EARLY MORNING of the second Tuesday of April 1952, Max took his parakeet, Kasuko, off his head before the inky blue bird could even say “Jambo” and unfurl its wings, put it on the rim of his plate, and informed his friend about a future meant to become as sunny as the day itself, with a sentence that had finally been released for use by a six-year-old boy: “Today life begins in earnest.” After breakfast Max climbed onto the little stool in the bathroom to look into the mirror undisturbed and free from unsolicited advice that was no longer in keeping with his new status in life.

  Even though he was unable to detect the anticipated changes to the extent he had hoped for, he smiled, knowing that he had finally arrived at the turning point in his life for which he had yearned for so long. From now on there would be only a short, manageable path before he, too, would be an attorney and notary and, above all, would be as rich and famous as Josef Schlachanska and drive to court in an even bigger Maybach than his idol.

  Max was wearing a long-sleeved white shirt with a tight collar that still needed some getting used to, and a tie matching the shiny red cone-shaped bag with school supplies and goodies for the first day of school. He also sported the longed-for cap with the rounded shade that turned a kindergarten child, previously just wrapped in bright blue woolens, who at most might have been allowed to go to the milkman or the playground by himself, into a first grader whose independence was not only expected, but demanded. Standing in the familiar spot between door and washbasin, he already knew that his first long pants—gray, soft, and with a black leather belt—had forever relieved him of the shame of the hated long brown stockings that had been attached to girl-type suspenders. Even more important and irreversible things had happened. On the day before, his father had told his mother not to call her son “Maxi,” “Darling,” or, of all things, “Pumpkin” anymore; not to kiss him in the street without any particular reason; not to cut his meat and mash his potatoes at the table; and not to tie his shoes or button his coat when in a hurry.

  Max had gotten the confirmation from his father that he was a real man from now on; he could no longer cry because of a hurt knee or when he was fighting with other children about possessions or privileges, but he also could no longer be bothered by insulting demands to carry plates from the dining room to the kitchen, to hang up his coat, or to carry out other ignominious duties from the world of women.

  The child—who had called for his mother or his sister, or in dangerous situations for both at the same time, whenever he fell in the street or could not defend his toys or reputation alone in the sandbox, and who had been limited to looking at pictures in books and newspapers—now separated himself from Jettel and Regina in a room that smelled of sharp scouring soap, vinegar, and chalk, and with determination sat down at a desk in the first row. After three hours, Max emerged from the classroom again. He was accompanied by a blond boy with accurately parted hair, very short gray lederhosen, and a resolutely clenched right fist. This boy was a year older but luckily not yet much taller to significantly impair Max’s own self-confidence. Max called out to his mother, who was standing at the school entrance with other excited parents in their Sunday dresses and dark suits. He yelled from afar and loud enough for everyone to hear that she had been wrong once again and that he would—contrary to her assumptions this morning—not have to learn single letters and could already read and write a lot, “a real, real lot” as he declared.

  On his first day of school Max managed, without any detriment to his strongly developed self-confidence, to get over the insulting way that older students knocked the cap off his head and teased him with some doggerel about being a first grader. After all, he was able to not only write his name, but also his address and the two sentences, “I am going to the Lersner School. My teacher’s name is Mr. Blaschka”—the first success of the “whole word method” that many parents said was too challenging for the children and a typical example of the deplorable tendency of a democracy to endorse experiments at the expense of innocent creatures who were unable to defend themselves.

  With the anticipation of a person with an early awareness for the triumph of initiative and the result of surprise
effects, Max sat at the kitchen table after school while his mother carefully unpacked his schoolbag and angrily noticed that he had not eaten the expensive banana and an exercise book and pencil were missing.

  Max could not be convinced to give the explanations that were due for such a loss of property. Instead, he was happy that in addition to his mother, Else, his father, and his sister would simultaneously become aware that he was not a student like all the others, who were satisfied just to copy the nice yellow cards that Mr. Blaschka had put on their desks in the morning. He had immediately understood and used the power and possibilities of the written word.

  His schoolbag no longer had on it the name his mother had written in blue ink, but instead read “Dr. Max Redlich.” For some weeks and after repeated study of the small golden plate on the apartment door, he had practiced the two decisive letters and the important little period, which had been added in strong black pencil lines. He now considered it a special bonus for his hard work that his parents would discover his idea before lunch. He licked his lips in sweet anticipation as on the otherwise deplorably rare occasions when his mother took a second helping of vanilla ice cream out of the freezer.

  The excitement and moreover the prospect of the praise that was due him made his ears deaf to any noise that did not concern him. His eyes were unable to concentrate on the events in the kitchen. Max, therefore, did not realize right away that the happy voices that were appropriate for the festive occasion had become silent, nor did he notice that his father’s face had already changed color. He also heard his mother’s cry too late, and the plaintive accusation, “The rascal has already smudged his new school bag.” Almost simultaneously, he got a slap in the face from his father—not painful, but embarrassingly hot because it was so unexpected and unusual.

  Only after the raspberry pudding, which tasted strangely bitter, did father and son resume their communications. Max got fifty cents that Walter termed “compensation for personal suffering” and to which he added the surprising promise that his son had a credit for a slap in the face on any occasion when he was aware that he was doing something wrong at the time of the infraction. The conciliatory handshake common among men was followed by an extensive lecture about the unlawful acquisition of academic titles.

  The slap in the face did not remain the only lasting memory of his first day of school for Max. Much more impressive than his father’s angry outburst and his legal teachings was the confusing admonition that wealth could not be put on the same level as academic achievement and that Joseph Schlachanska, in spite of the Maybach, chauffeur, and spectacular appearances, in contrast to his own father, did not have the title “Doctor.”

  A week later Max had an opportunity to enjoy his father’s wealth, too. Since there were no schoolbooks for the “whole word method,” the teacher, Mr. Blaschka, distributed his own handwritten texts on separate sheets of paper. After Walter had seen his son do his homework once, he offered the teacher with the likable Silesian name the opportunity to copy his manuscripts on the new copying machine of the practice of Fafflok and Redlich. Max considered this a personal merit and instantly forgave his father for not occasionally sending him—like many of the other children—to school with a bottle of schnapps, flowers, or even chocolates to make the teacher well disposed to the bearer of such gifts. Max, therefore, came home from school daily in the best of moods and fully enjoyed his parents’ repeated praise that he was finding friends much faster than his sister.

  All the more remarkable was a lunchtime meal, three months to the day after the beginning of school, when the first grader, until then spoiled by success, came home very quietly and so dejected that he did not even take the parakeet out of its cage. He was pale, had red eyes, and, even though they were having the scrambled eggs and spinach he had asked for in the morning, pushed a half-eaten plateful aside with a small sigh and shook his head. Only after repeated questioning—and when his mother’s assumption that he was sick turned into the serious threat of using the thermometer—did Max realize that this was his last chance to break his silence if he did not want to end the day with one of those hated moist throat compresses that his mother considered the only weapon in the fight against all ailments except a sprained ankle.

  “Is it true,” he asked, “that the Jews were all burned in one big oven?”

  “Who said such a thing?”

  “Klaus Jeschke.”

  “You have never talked about him before.”

  “He is the tallest in the class because he has already had to repeat it twice,” Max said and gloomily looked at his mother. He noticed that his skin was burning as if he indeed had a high fever and he felt the start of the violent beating of his heart all over again as if he had just heard the words, which had hurt him in the same strange way that a too-vehemently-thrown ball would hurt one’s head. Now that he had decided to talk, all of a sudden it became important to him to tell the story as fast as he could and without any bothersome questions that would force his tongue to make detours. It had confused him since main recess in school and had shamed him in a way that he only knew from having a bad conscience and being unable to defend himself without getting tangled in an ever-growing web of lies. He angrily stabbed his fork into the yellow mass of cold scrambled eggs.

  “He said that all Jews stink. That is why Hitler burned them. And then he pushed me over and said that he likes Hitler best in the entire world. Is it true that all Jews stink?”

  “Your father—” Jettel started, but when she realized how shrill her voice had become, she pushed the fury back into her chest because she realized, at the moment when rage was her only strength, that she had to stifle the fire for her son’s sake. She kept silent till she was able to relax her hands sufficiently so that she could put the thermometer back into its case. Realizing that she could not expose Max to the feeling that something unusual had happened, she suppressed the desire—which hit her like a physical pain—to take her son in her arms. She was surprised how easy love and lying had become for her.

  “You know,” she said, “that Klaus Jeschke is just a very stupid boy. He doesn’t even know what he is saying.”

  “I always know what I am saying,” Max insisted.

  “Not everyone is as smart as you. Many children only repeat what they hear from their parents. He only said this without thinking about it. He doesn’t even know what it means.”

  “So what does it mean?”

  “We have,” Jettel said and forced herself to look at Max, “often told you about Hitler. You know that he was a very evil person. You also know that we had to go to Africa because otherwise we all would have died here.”

  “In an oven?” Max asked. “Would they have burned us all like the witch in Hansel and Gretel? Regina, too?”

  “Yes,” Jettel said. Only after some time, when Max looked at her expectantly, but also with a curiosity that she could not interpret, she added, “I would not play with Klaus Jeschke anymore if I were you. Then he cannot say such nasty things to you. And you do not have to get upset.”

  Max touched his head and sniffed, “I never played with him. Not with that one. He stinks. When that Onion-Klaus comes into class, we all hold our noses.”

  “Tonight you can tell your father the entire story,” Jettel said. “Let’s see what he is going to say.”

  But Walter had a municipal council meeting and came home so late that Max was already in bed and not allowed to get up. He was, therefore, unable to check any further if his first encounter with this new kind of hostility, which had paralyzed his fists and tongue so that his head could not forget it, would embarrass his father as much as his mother.

  But he was still awake enough to find out that Klaus Jeschke was the cause of one of those huge fights in the bedroom that were almost always taken up again at breakfast the next morning—without words, but apparent for a boy who had been trained early to detect the exchange of looks between his parents.

  While Max let the last cookie melt on his
tongue and happily anticipated the moment when the taste of chocolate would mingle with that of the toothpaste, fighting noises started that were too familiar to frighten him. First his mother shouted, “Your damned Germany,” and shortly afterward, “You had to come back to the country of the murderers at all costs.” And his father screamed angrily, “Not even you can be stupid enough to take the jabbering of such a brainless brat seriously. Do you really think Regina never encountered any anti-Semitism in her fine British boarding school?”

  Before he fell asleep, Max decided to remember the word that he had heard for the first time in the pleasant state between waking and sleeping, and to ask his father about it and about the size of ovens in which people were being burned. But the next morning he forgot about both because he had to look too long for his pen and his gym bag. The next one of those serious father-son conversations, which gave Max the uplifting certainty that the major problems in life could only be solved by men, would only take place at the Bethanien Hospital at the Prüfling. There, however, Klaus Jeschke was not mentioned anymore.

  On the Wednesday when Walter received a warning that the times of hope were past, they had sauerkraut and the kind of sausages he loved for lunch. Before the big fight, Jettel had gone out of her way to the Silesian butcher in the Berger Straße and was now, to her regret, unable to change the menu according to the tense atmosphere at home. But Walter, who had only eaten one of the sausages without touching the skin, had not even asked for the mustard that Else had forgotten to put on the table and he also left most of the sauerkraut uneaten.

  During the silent meal, Jettel had made every effort, as required by the special circumstances, not to look at her husband and through an unguarded look to give him the idea that she might be ready for a reconciliation. When she noticed that Walter pushed his plate toward the bowl with the potatoes the way Max had done the day before, she thought that he was giving her a hint that the fight would be resumed. But while she was beginning to formulate the sentence that boiled within her, she looked up and saw that he had pearls of sweat on his forehead, very dark lips, and an unusually pale face.