Somewhere in Germany Read online

  The official’s name was Fichtel. He was hoarse, wore a gray shirt with a collar much too big for his neck, and, in spite of his Adam’s apple and sunken cheeks, his face exhibited a trace of good humor that Walter found encouraging.

  “Well, why don’t you tell me your story,” Fichtel said.

  When he heard that Walter had just arrived from Africa, he whistled in a long, almost absurdly youthful way, and said, “Oh boy, oh boy,” which Walter at first did not understand. Made confident by the alert expression that all of a sudden illuminated Fichtel’s face, Walter began to report in detail about the last ten years of his life.

  “And you want me to believe that you voluntarily returned to this damned country? Man, I’d rather emigrate today than tomorrow. Everyone here wants to. Whatever made you come back?”

  “They did not want me in Africa.”

  “And they want you here?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Well, you must know. Everything is possible these days. Did you at least bring some coffee along from those Negroes?”

  “No,” Walter said.

  “Or cigarettes?”

  “A few, but I already smoked them all.”

  “Oh boy, oh boy,” Fichtel said. “I always thought the Jews were clever and got through anything.”

  “Especially through the chimneys at Auschwitz.”

  “That is not what I meant, certainly not. You can believe me,” Fichtel assured him. His hand slightly trembled as he pushed the stamps from one side of the table to the other. His voice was uneasy when he said, “Even if I immediately classified your request as an urgent priority, I would not be able to give you an apartment for years. We have none. Most apartments have been either bombed out or taken over by the Americans. You will be much better off with the Jewish community at the Baumweg. People say that they can work miracles and have entirely different possibilities than we have here.”

  The sentence confused Walter so much that he did not allow himself to contemplate the emotions that crowded in on him.

  “Are you telling me that there is a Jewish community here in Frankfurt?” he asked.

  “Of course,” Fichtel said. “After all, a sufficient number did return from the camps that everyone is talking about these days. And we hear that they are not doing too badly. They even get a bonus for heavy labor. You are entitled to that, too. Look, I am going to write down the address for you, Dr. Redlich. You will see; you may be able to have an apartment of your own by tomorrow. As I always say: Your own people will take care of you.” It was already after four o’clock when Walter returned to the Monopol. At the Jewish community he had only been able to see a woman who had asked him to come back the next day. At the hotel, he expected to find Jettel, if at all, in tears. He saw her from a distance and believed that the hallucinations that had threatened him since he took leave of Koschella had finally gotten to him.

  Jettel was sitting in a jeep next to a soldier in an American uniform, Regina in the back with Max on her lap. Walter was certain that they were in the process of arresting his family because they had remained in the hotel. He hurried toward the car, his stomach in cramps, making gestures that seemed as absurd to him as the entire day.

  “Hurry,” Jettel cried excitedly. “I already thought that they were going to take us away from here before you returned. Where in heaven’s name have you been? The child does not have a single dry diaper left and Regina has a constant nosebleed.”

  “Sir,” Walter called out, “this is my wife. And my children.”

  “Well, then don’t leave your beautiful wife sitting in a seized hotel, you fool,” the sergeant grinned.

  His voice distinctly betrayed the fact that he was originally from Baden; his name was Steve Green, formerly Stefan Grüntal, and because of his linguistic skills he was in charge of all problematic issues involving Germans. The secretary of the Hotel Monopol had called Steve Green when she realized that she would not be able to get rid of the lamenting Jettel, her sobbing daughter, and the crying baby in her usual way of just displaying intimidating arrogance.

  Until 1935 Steve’s parents had owned a small hotel in the vicinity of Baden-Baden. His mother cooked the best chicken soup in the world and hated the Germans. In New York his father had worked his way up from a night porter in Brooklyn to a salesman in a jewelry store on 47th Street; he went to synagogue every Shabbat and also hated the Germans. Steve hated above all Frankfurt, the bloody army, and the PX store’s German employees, who shifted the supplies to the black market before the GIs could buy them.

  He communicated all of this in a mixture of fluent German and incomprehensible American English while he drove the jeep at breakneck speed and with curses—much coarser than anything Walter had ever heard in the British military—through streets lined with burned-out houses in Frankfurt’s inner city. If streetcars or men with wheelbarrows forced him to stop, he threw, depending on the situation, a cigarette out of the jeep and amused himself watching the people fight over it. Or he forgot that he hated the Germans and surprised stunned young women, whom he called “Fräulein” or “Veronica,” with a bar of Hershey’s chocolate.

  Steve gave a packet of chewing gum to Regina, while speeding mistook Jettel’s knee more and more often for the gearshift, and answered Walter’s questions about their destination with a wink and by pointing out “off limits.” About fifteen minutes after their start, he turned from an alley with chestnut trees in bloom into the small but remarkably well-preserved Eppsteiner Straße. He jumped out of the jeep, gallantly helped Jettel out of the car, somewhat roughly hurried Walter and Regina, still with the baby on her arm, to get out, took a pistol from his pants pocket, stormed into the corridor of the house, ran to the third floor, and rang a bell.

  A gray-haired woman reluctantly opened the door and anxiously cried, “Oh!”

  Steve screamed “Seized!” in the direction of the startled woman and “Okay!” down the staircase. The woman turned pale, wiped her hands repeatedly on an apron with a flower print, and lamented, “But I have only two rooms left.”

  “One too many,” Steve shouted. “These people are going to stay. Housing for one week.”

  The woman opened her mouth, but instantly closed it when Steve said, “Shut up,” and asked her, “Did I lose the war or did you? And you’ll provide some food, too. Or I will be back, and not alone.”

  After that he patted Jettel’s hair, slapped Walter on the back, pushed Regina aside, and stuck into Max’s mouth a piece of chewing gum, which Jettel tore away from him in a panic and began to chew herself. Max started to scream. The woman groaned and said that her name was Reichard, that she herself did not have anything to eat, and that she had lived in a flat with five rooms before the occupation of Frankfurt.

  At the back of her neck, her hair was braided into a bun, which made her look stern and intimidating, and she held her arms crossed in front of her stomach; for a moment it seemed as if she was going to push Jettel out the door, but then Walter said, “We are very sorry to cause you any trouble.”

  “I will show you the room,” Mrs. Reichard sighed, “but I want you to know right away that I only have vegetable soup. I am not obligated to do any more.”

  Of all the mysteries of the day that they were never able to solve later on, she remained the most inexplicable one. The vegetable soup turned into a casserole; a cardboard box was transformed into a child’s bed; there was a thin slice of bread for everyone; and, after that, in cups of Dresden china appeared some hot beverage that Mrs. Reichard referred to as coffee. She called Max “Bobbelche,” rocked him on her lap, and cried. She got a cot from the attic for Regina. After dinner Mrs. Reichard spoke about her husband, whom the Americans had arrested, and her only son, who had been killed in Russia. Jettel said that she was sorry, and Mrs. Reichard looked at her in surprise.

  The four of them slept in Mrs. Reichard’s room. Over the bed hung a picture of two chubby-faced angels that fascinated Regina. There was a big, light rect
angle on the opposite wall that interested her father. He maintained that a picture of Hitler must have hung there.

  Jettel said, “What a shame that you are always so clever about things that really don’t matter.” Her voice was not malicious, though, and Walter said, laughing, “Your mother used to say that, too.”

  Regina was glad that she did not have to catch any poison arrows before they hit their prey. She fleetingly thought of the chocolate that Steve had thrown to the young women and for a long time of the scent of the guava tree in Nairobi. Her stomach was not full enough, though, and her head was too empty to enjoy the safari.

  Shortly before falling asleep, she heard her parents fight after all, but it was, almost like in the best hours of the days gone by, only a harmless squabble and then a quickly reached peace. First, they were unable to agree who had invited Koschella to the wedding, and at the same time, they were sure that they had probably mistaken him for someone else and that most likely he had never been to Breslau in all of his life.

  2

  SUNDAY, APRIL 20

  Hurrah. Today for the first time I am (almost) happy in Frankfurt. Finally, we have been able to move out of Mrs. Reichard’s apartment. At the end she really made our lives miserable. Until an apartment is assigned to us (that may take a long time) we can live at 36 Gagernstraße. Three days ago, Papa was finally able to reach someone—the world’s nicest man—at the Jewish community. His name is Dr. Alschoff and he managed to find a place for us at the former Jewish hospital. It is extensively damaged and no longer a hospital but rather a nursing home. We have a room with three beds, a table and three chairs, and a hotplate. We wash ourselves in a bowl that is standing on a three-legged stand that I like a lot. The toilet is down the corridor. We get one meal a day from the cook of the nursing home, but only for three persons because Max has food stamps for infants; that is, too many for milk, too few for fat. That is what the cook says. Our clothes stay in our suitcases. For the first time in my life I am glad that I do not have much to wear. A truck brought us to the Gagernstraße. We could have come on Saturday but we were not allowed to do so because Jews do not drive on a Shabbat, and the nursing home is kosher.

  I am glad that I can keep a diary. I have to thank Dr. Alschoff for that. He gave me three notebooks and two pencils as a welcome gift, and now I finally have someone to talk to. I am only going to write in English in this diary. Then I will feel at home. But I have to write really small and not every day either because paper is scarce in Germany. Who knows if I will ever get more?

  I have to write something else about Dr. Alschoff. He was in a concentration camp. In Auschwitz. When Mama heard about it she cried terribly. Her mother and sister died there. But he had not met them.

  He has very sad eyes and wants to stroke Max over and over again. He says there is only one purely Jewish family with children in addition to ours in the community. Papa told me later that Jews did not get sent to the concentration camps if they had a Christian spouse. Like Koschella. Mama said God did not have to save him. Papa became angry and told her that saying that was a sin. Then they fought terribly. Max always laughs when our parents are getting loud. He has not talked since we arrived in Frankfurt. But he already knew how to say kula, aya, lala, toto, jambo, and almost “Owuor” before. For the first time tonight, Max is not going to sleep in a cardboard box, but in my bed instead. I am very happy about that.

  THURSDAY, APRIL 24

  There is a big lawn here with many benches. Today I sat on one of the benches for the first time. A very old woman sat down next to me. Her name is Mrs. Feibelmann and she started talking to me right away. I was terribly embarrassed, but she did not laugh at all at my English accent. She said she got rid of her laugh in Theresienstadt. That was a concentration camp, too. Almost all of the people who are living here were in Theresienstadt. Frau Feibelmann took Max on her lap and sang to him. Then she limped away and returned with two cookies that she put into his mouth. She had three children, but only one son is still alive. In America (that is why she has the cookies—he sends packages to her).

  Her two daughters and five grandchildren were killed. I do not know how a person can talk about this without crying. I never heard as many sad things in all my life as in our first ten days in Frankfurt. Many people here have a number on their arm. That means they were in Auschwitz.

  There are three sheep in the yard. I envy them a lot; they have enough to eat. The cook does not like us. The portions that he gives us are much smaller than those for the old people. We are not allowed to eat in the dining room because Max disturbs the old people. All of us have gotten thinner already. Except for Max. We give him a lot of our food.

  FRIDAY, MAY 2

  Today Papa went to court for the first time. He is now a district court judge. He was terribly excited and even paler than usual. Mama gave him her second piece of bread for breakfast. He hugged and kissed her and said, “Jettel, this is the happiest day of our lives since we had to leave Leobschütz.” Too bad that Mama said, “How happy we would really be with a full stomach.” I thought Papa would get angry, but he just gave her another kiss. When he came home, his cheeks were all red and he looked much taller than in the morning. He reported that everyone had been really nice and everybody wanted to help him get used to his old profession again. If they only knew that he never forgot his old profession at all. Otherwise we would not be here in Frankfurt, but in Nairobi instead. Or even better: on the farm in Ol’ Joro Orok. Tonight we are all going to the Shabbat service. Mama wanted me to stay in the room with Max, but Papa laughed and said, “At home in Sohrau the women always brought their babies to the temple.” It is strange how we all mean something different when we talk of home.

  SATURDAY, MAY 10

  In spite of the fact that paper is in short supply, I have to write today. Max is talking again. He has just said “Herta.” That is the name of the black shepherd dog that belongs to the cook. I am very happy and will try not to speak English or Swahili with Max any more. Mama says that it only confuses him.

  MONDAY, MAY 12

  Since yesterday it does not get dark until eleven o’clock at night. Double daylight saving time. It means that we go to bed later and have to be hungry longer. Papa calls it the victors’ revenge, but I have heard that it is supposed to save electricity. You can go to jail if you use too much.

  WEDNESDAY, MAY 21

  Papa has been singing “Gaudeamus Igitur” for the past hour, has completely forgotten about being hungry, and has found a fraternity brother. It happened like this: He talked to a (very beautiful) young woman in the yard. She told him that her father had been a member of a college fraternity, but had to leave because he married a woman who was not Jewish and had not brought up his children as Jews. Father immediately knew that the man must have been a member of the Kartell Convent deutscher Studenten jüdischen Glaubens (K.C.). His name is Dr. Goldschmidt and he is a physician. He comes to the Gagernstraße every Wednesday. When he was looking for his daughter in the garden, Papa greeted him whistling the K.C. tune. He is going to invite us to his home. For a cup of real coffee (he gets it from one of his patients).

  MONDAY, JUNE 2

  It is hotter here today than in Nairobi. Mama moans a lot, but she still came to take my place after I had been standing in line for an hour at the grocery store to get milk. We were only able to get eight ounces. Still, it was not a completely bad day. As of today we are getting a newspaper. The Rundschau (Frankfurt Review). Victims of racial persecution (that is, us) receive it without having to be on a waiting list. Finally, we do not have to worry about toilet paper anymore. It is a pity that we are not able to get the Neue Zeitung (New Post). It is supposed to be much softer.

  THURSDAY, JUNE 5

  Good news again. The pram we bought in London for Max has arrived. It was sent to the courthouse. Now I don’t have to carry Max anymore when we go for walks.

  SATURDAY, JUNE 7

  Germans are very nosy. Everyone wants to know where
I got the beautiful pram, and when I tell them “London,” I have to talk on and on. About Africa, our return, etc. Almost all of them then say, “How can one possibly come back to this country?” and keep on asking questions. Many tell me that they once had Jewish friends and were always against Hitler. It embarrasses me.

  SUNDAY, JUNE 8

  Papa did not watch Max and did not notice that he ran out of the yard. We searched for two hours. Max sat in only his underpants and without shoes on the streetcar tracks in the Wittelsbacher Allee. Luckily, streetcars are not allowed to run on Sundays, and nothing happened.

  MONDAY, JUNE 9

  We had to go to the police station to be fingerprinted for our identification cards. Mama raged, “Just as under Hitler,” but Papa said it was the Americans’ fault. Mama later told me that she has been terrified of German officials in uniform ever since Hitler’s time. I found the men quite pleasant. One of them gave Max a slice of real white bread. Strange, when people here in Frankfurt speak German, they talk quite differently from us. I have a hard time understanding them.

  FRIDAY, JUNE 13

  Real joy. We have an apartment. Nuß-Zeil in Eschersheim. Three rooms, a kitchen, and a bath. Papa arrived with the assignment from the housing authority and was so overjoyed that he was unable to eat even the little bit the cook is giving us (it is becoming less and less). Mama says that she needs a maid now.