Somewhere in Germany Page 18

  “I was a Nazi.”

  Regina was so sure that she had become the prey of her fears too early that she actually turned into a child again. She pressed her lips together till she felt the pain, for she knew that a human being on a precipitous flight had to close her mouth if she had already been foolish enough to have her ears deceive her.

  She looked unperturbed at Emil Frowein, fixing her gaze on the white spots on his temples, the teeth in his open mouth, the knot on his gray tie, and the cigarette smoke, which moved in tiny clouds to the light-colored curtains. Her fear had not found an echo.

  “Why did you say that?” Regina quietly asked.

  “Because you would have found out anyway. Everyone in the office is just waiting to tell you the nice story. I will do it myself.”

  “Go ahead.”

  He used words and terms that Regina had never heard before. He spoke of armchair culprits, opportunists, and the German front newspapers that he had saturated in the occupied countries with an ideology that forever prevented him from looking into a mirror without shame. He was his own accuser and judge, and he talked about the stupidity of intelligent people, the ambition and blindness of the young man he had been at one time, the despair of early recognition, and the insight that came too late.

  Regina did not let his words deceive her heart. She liked Frowein. She thought of the second of their shared laughter, felt his honesty, admired his courage, and knew enough.

  “You are the first Nazi I ever met,” she said with a smile. “At any rate, the first who admits it. Usually I only meet people who have saved Jews and have said ‘good morning’ instead of ‘Heil Hitler.’ My father will be amazed when I tell him tonight. At home, we have been looking for a real Nazi for years.”

  “What is he going to tell his daughter?”

  “Oh,” Regina said, “my father is like you. Honest through and through. He always says that he perhaps might have been a Nazi, too, if Hitler had let him.”

  “A remarkable father,” Emil Frowein said. “I am not surprised that he also has a remarkable daughter.”

  Regina did not hear the telephone on the desk ring; she saw no movement. So she did not realize at first that the honest wolf, which had not wanted to change its fur, was no longer talking to her. But then his voice became thunderous and swallowed his breath, and for the second time this day she was unable to understand the words that whipped her ears.

  Excited, Frowein shouted into the receiver, “But not the Schlachanska from Frankfurt? Don’t tell me they arrested good old Schlachanska.”

  14

  THE LITTLE SILVER-COLORED MERCEDES, which Regina had searched for in every corner of the apartment the day before to stop her brother—who had given up all hope of ever seeing his favorite toy again—from crying, lay on the small piece of grass between the round bed of carnations and the lilac. Relieved, she unlocked the black wrought iron gate to the front yard. When she bent down, smiling, to pick up the little car and thought of the happy face that would greet her in a few minutes, her senses finally freed themselves from the confusion of the overwhelming day.

  She allowed enough air to get into her chest and head to feel better through the conscious movement of her body, and smelled, until her nose could hold no more of the intoxicating sweetness, the lilacs that were warm from the afternoon sun. Only at this moment of final release did it occur to her that she was returning home unscathed, proud, and above all happier than she had been in years.

  Because she wanted to drink in the happiness of her liberation for another moment before sharing it with her parents, Regina sat down under the lilac bush, looking at the light walls of the house, without even hearing the noises from the street. She took off her shoes, pushed her feet into the moist soil, rubbed her back on the thin sturdy stem of the bush, and closed her eyes.

  She quite distinctly saw herself sitting in the publisher’s office, pedantically watched how he moved the vase from one side of the desk to the other, and heard him talk about the salesman with the inflated prices for paper. With the pleasure of the winner she had never been before in her life, she once again enjoyed her angry eruption from the world of long-held silences and, after that, the precious units of a new time in which she had become courageous and outspoken.

  Later, in the soft, cozy state between satisfaction and beginning sleepiness, she saw the sharp contours of Emil Frowein’s office with the light curtains and thin billows of smoke from his cigarette, and finally his gray eyes, which had not been able to contain their shadows when they met Regina’s glance. She lifted her cup, this time animated by cunning and the pleasure of knowledge, and waited for the laugh that he did not know the meaning of. But she knew when she let the scent of the lilacs fill her nose for the last time that her heart would linger a long time before it returned from this safari.

  Dreamily, Regina considered how much of all of this she could tell her father and, above all, how she could avoid frightening him without taking away the taste of happiness and pride. She looked up at the windows on the fourth floor before she had had enough time to bring the last pictures and words into a comprehensible panorama. Max stood on the balcony, shook the bars, and excitedly called her name.

  “A fat man with a big car is in prison. But I am not going to tell you who he is. I am not allowed. Papa says that that is attorney-client privilege,” he shouted into the garden.

  Regina jumped up, took her shoes into her hand, hastened up the stairs, noticed that her father was wearing his hat, and asked breathlessly and reproachfully, “What kind of nonsense is this?”

  “Don’t be scared Regina. Schlachanska has been arrested.”

  “I know. But why did you have to tell that to a seven-year-old boy, of all people?”

  “He was here when I got the call. I was in such shock, I repeated everything out loud and if there is anything I regret in my life, this is it. Explain to him that he is not supposed to talk about this. Jeanne-Louise is not supposed to know.”

  “Where is Mama?”

  “At Mrs. Schlachanska’s. You have no idea what has been going on here since the call came from Schlachanska’s office. I have to leave right away, too. We are going to try to have him declared unfit to undergo detention. Then he won’t have to go to jail and can lie in a hospital. How do you know about this already?”

  “I heard about it in Offenbach. At the editorial offices,” Regina said. When she realized that she had pronounced the words with the pride of a child who is only aware of herself, she sadly pushed her hair out of her face.

  “I am sorry Regina. I am a bad father. Did it go okay?”

  “Yes, bwana,” Regina said and laughed off her embarrassment. She embraced Walter till his gasping breath sealed her ears. “You are a good father,” she said. “All good fathers have moist eyes when their daughters are happy.”

  “I still have a moment,” Walter said. “Have a cigarette with me, Regina.”

  “But you have given up smoking.”

  “He only does not smoke when Mama is around,” Max announced cheerfully. “Attorney-client privilege. He always smokes in the office. I have known it for a long time.”

  “Me, too, unfortunately,” Regina sighed. “You never had any luck being dishonest. Just like me.”

  They sat in the sunroom with its yellow painted walls that glowed in the evening sun like the maize fields at the edge of the woods. A scaly black-and-white snakeskin lay across the sofa, a big spear shone reddish-brown behind white wicker chairs, and on the plastic shelf little Masai soldiers carved of dark wood declared a permanent war on each other among grazing elephants and light-colored wooden gnus. A yellow rubber ducky had swum to Africa and sat next to a buffalo with just one horn. Max rubbed his silver-colored Mercedes on the hem of his blue and white checked shirt and let it race around the ashtray. The smell of the tobacco was heavy and sweet; the last drops of a deep red blackberry liqueur sparkled in the pink shot glasses from Leobschütz.

  Regina let the tip o
f her tongue glide into the glass and, recalling her own childhood, allowed her brother to do the same. She was too tired to decide if she was still content or already in the claws of the excitement related to Schlachanska’s arrest.

  Sadly, she realized that she had only had a few opportunities since Walter’s illness to share with him the magic of an accord that bound them so closely together. When she talked about her visit to Offenbach she was no longer the chronicler she had wanted to be. The old pain and always new yearning for the dead days, when it had been enough to let the hours run like sand through one’s fingers and only open one’s ears, came unexpectedly. Determined, because she was about to miss the connection, she returned to the present.

  Her voice was as smooth with care and caution as the naked body of a thief with oil when she talked about Emil Frowein and how she instantly found him agreeable. She actually succeeded without any effort and even with delight in pronouncing the word “agreeable” as if it were the only one that had occurred to her.

  “I hope he is not planning on having an affair with you.”

  “What has happened to Schlachanska?” Regina answered.

  “You are not supposed to say that name out loud,” Max admonished her. “Nobody is allowed to do that except Papa and me.”

  “It had to happen at some point. I am not able to see through the whole thing yet. He obviously helped to transfer abroad some money that his clients got as restitution and were supposed to spend here. It is called a currency offense. I will have to explain that to you in detail sometime.”

  “And you?” Regina asked, taken aback. “Aren’t you also opposed to the fact that Jews have to travel to Germany first to get their money?”

  “Yes, I am. I don’t agree that people should be forced to come here for money that is owed to them. I think it is immoral that they are being told: ‘If you want our money you have to forget what we have done to you.’ At least Schlachanska fought against this.”

  “Are you going to do the same?” Regina insisted.

  “No. You know that your father is a fool. An honest Prussian nebbish, law-abiding and with a concept of justice that Schlachanska laughed at.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “That I am driving an old Opel, don’t buy enough hats for your mother, and don’t buy new shoes for myself. I just want to be able to sleep in peace and not have my children visit me in the Hammelsgasse.”

  “The Hammelsgasse is where the prison is,” Max said. “Is Jeanne-Louise allowed to go there now?”

  “Why don’t you talk to your smart little brother and tell him to be quiet,” Walter laughed and got up. He took his hat off the table, gave his son a slap on the shoulder and his daughter a kiss, and was already at the door of the apartment when he turned around. Regina knew this movement only too well.

  His voice was not able to deceive her either. She had realized during the last five minutes that his throat had become too tight and his eyes restless.

  “Oh, Regina,” Walter said, “I have to ask you a small favor. I have an appointment with a client at the Hotel National at eight o’clock and I’m not sure that I will be able to be there on time. I know you don’t like strangers, but just make an effort. I don’t want this man, of all people, to spend the evening alone in Frankfurt.”

  “So many words, such a small favor. What is the matter with you?”

  “I know you. But I am sure this client will interest you. Just ask for Otto Frank from Basel at the reception desk and tell him you are my clever daughter, big memsahib of the printed word. By the way, he is the father of Anne Frank. I already told him I am running late. He is expecting you.”

  Even though Regina had, early on, and after that again and again, followed the traces of Anne Frank, she had never realized that it had been her father’s fate to survive. While she waited for Otto Frank in the dark foyer of the hotel and contemplated, annoyed, why Walter, contrary to his usually open ways, had never told her that he knew him, she was unable to imagine meeting the father of the murdered girl.

  She stared at the faded wallpaper and envisioned an old, marked man with a bent back and cane, a broken voice, and trembling hands. She was sure that she would not even be able to think of a courteous greeting and that he would feel the same way. She repeated the name several times like an incantation, and was scared and exhausted from her fantasies.

  Otto Frank was tall, slim, and white-haired, elegant in an understated way, and looked younger than he was. He wore a light-colored jacket that emphasized the friendliness of his narrow, slightly tanned face. He had remarkably straight shoulders and a quick, firm step when he walked toward Regina. His handshake was firm, too. He smiled and said, “You don’t have to be embarrassed if you stare at me, frightened. I am used to it. Most people do stare. They think I am a ghost. I am very flattered that my attorney is sending his enchanting daughter to meet me.”

  “I thought you might be annoyed,” Regina replied and realized with relief that she had been able to remember the little bit that she had doggedly rehearsed in the tram to the main station. “I am sure you have things to discuss with my father,” she continued, encouraged by her unexpected nerve. “I am supposed to tell you that he will be here soon.”

  “Everything is going well in my case. Your father is an excellent lawyer. I just wanted to meet the man who never wrote me a single letter without a personal note. He must be a very goodhearted person, your father.”

  “He is,” Regina agreed and asked herself how she ever could have been afraid of meeting Otto Frank. She was about to tell him about her confusion, and no longer had any difficulty finding the right words, but he was already talking again. She liked his voice. It was soft like his glance, but firm like his handshake.

  “You are coming at just the right time,” he stated. “I don’t like to eat alone and if I know something about young ladies your age, they are usually hungry around this time.”

  “That is true. I could eat an ox. I think that is what they say here in Frankfurt.”

  “That’s right,” Otto Frank confirmed. “I lived here long enough.”

  They sat in a small corner of the big, brightly lit restaurant that had more waiters than guests. He ordered eggs in “green sauce” and explained, making a face as if he had done something laughable and had to apologize, that unfortunately his stomach, too, had never been able to forget Frankfurt.

  The last trace of insecurity left Regina even before the arrival of the eggs in a bed of watercress and a silver sauceboat. Otto Frank spoke of Basel and how he had only gradually been able to get used to the dialect there; he discussed his second wife, whom he had met after being released from Auschwitz; and he told Regina about the trips he did not like to take but was unable to avoid because he did not want to disappoint the young people who wanted to meet him. He talked a lot about Amsterdam and affectionately about their friends there, but all of a sudden, as if he had been carried away by inappropriate details, he asked Regina to talk about herself.

  She reported about the return to Germany, hunger, the long hunt for an apartment, and finding their own house. She was amazed how well he knew the Rothschildallee and how often he had been there in his life. She spoke briefly about her years in school and longer than she considered polite about her professional goals. This led her to her visit in Offenbach. She did not even skip the publisher’s story of the paper salesman. She was now able to talk without uneasiness and even ironically about the event. He considered it as bizarre as she did, but “unfortunately typical.” When Otto Frank laughed for the first time, Regina looked at him for a moment too long and with wide-open eyes.

  He noticed it and laughed a second time. “Everyone thinks,” he said, “that I am not able to laugh anymore. Maybe people even think I should not be allowed to laugh anymore. As if I had no right to be alive. But I find laughing easy today.”

  “Why?” Regina asked.

  “Just look into the mirror.”

  She instantly put her
knife and fork on her plate without being disturbed by her confusion, and took a small mirror out of her handbag, which still held the folded high school diploma. She lifted the mirror up high and tilted her head a little to the side like the parakeet at home when he tapped against the shiny glass of his cage.

  Regina looked at her face, which was framed by dark hair, high cheekbones, a sharply defined nose, and a small mouth. She saw her pale skin and the eyes that were marked by an early understanding and never without a veil of sadness, and she knew. Since she had first read Anne’s diary and had seen her picture, she had felt what Anne’s father had just confirmed for her.

  “She looked a little like me, didn’t she?” she asked quietly.

  “Yes. Very much so. I have never before met anyone who reminded me so strongly of Anne.”

  “I am sorry,” Regina murmured, “I didn’t want that. It must be very hard for you. So suddenly.”

  “No. I do not want to forget. I want to be able to imagine what she would have looked like if she had been allowed to live. That is the difficult part. Anne always remains a child to me. We had no time for a farewell. Faces slide away then. There is no way to fight against time.”

  Regina thought about the farewells that lay behind her, but for once the claws of sorrow were shortened to the softness of grateful amazement; she understood how merciful life had been to her. At every parting she had been allowed to take a long look. She knew every trace of the face that she did not want to forget: She only had to close her eyes to see Owuor, only had to open her ears to hear him laugh. His laughter bounded back from the snow-covered mountain like a mighty thunder whenever she summoned it.

  “What did you feel when you read Anne’s diary?”