Somewhere in Germany Page 9

  They talked about poppy seed cake, carp with brown sauce, the demise of Breslau, excursions to the Riesengebirge, and the times in which one did not ask and sometimes did not even know who was German, Polish, or Jewish. Fritz Fafflok told Walter that he had lost three fingers in the war and that at the moment he was wounded, he had only worried that he would never be able to play the violin again.

  Walter spoke about his black friend Owuor on the farm at Ol’ Joro Orok, how he had taught him to greet visitors by shouting “Arschloch,” and that he was able to sing “Ich hab’ mein Herz in Heidelberg verloren.” Fafflok’s pleasant smile turned into laughter till he cried and he surmised that Walter’s moist eyes, in spite of all he had revealed about the emigration, were the manifestation of a farewell he had never recovered from.

  They agreed without any contract or pomp “to try it with each other” and both knew at that moment that they were establishing more than just a legal practice together. Walter told Fafflok about Friedhelm von Freiersleben and his principle “to have a look at the spouse” and invited the Faffloks for dinner the following Sunday.

  On the way home Walter became aware that he had talked more about his children than about Jettel. Gloomily and unhappily he asked himself how her demanding ways, her complaints, her unwillingness to compromise, her love of provocation, and her habit to air marital troubles immediately and without restraint would strike a woman who had been forced to flee from Upper Silesia to Frankfurt with two children.

  “He is such a nice person,” he said. “It would mean a lot to me if you made a good impression on him.”

  “I am going to buy Roquefort. It has become available again recently.”

  “Jettel, I am not talking about the food.”

  “How am I supposed to know? You always talk about food otherwise.”

  Without having to say anything to her, Regina once again gave her father her head and her heart. She wore the Bordeaux red dress from Switzerland even though it had short sleeves and the December day was particularly cold, and she practiced, in front of the mirror, a smile that would not immediately betray her awkward shyness. She also gave her brother an exceptionally thorough bath; brushed his hair till he screamed; calmed him down with a poem by Wordsworth, a Shakespeare sonnet, and chocolate; draped him in a light blue blanket that looked good with his skin; and carried him in as proudly as Else carried the soup bowl, sporting a new apron and the first perm of her life.

  Max, elated from the caresses to his ear and the sweetness of the chocolate in his mouth, and longing for applause, first clapped his hands and then after a short pause spat from the high position on Regina’s hip directly at Mrs. Fafflok’s forehead. “You will not be able to get away with that,” Max said.

  Mrs. Fafflok dabbed her face dry and said, laughing, “My children only knew how to spit at that age.” She had conquered Jettel’s fortress with a single sentence and was treated to precisely the stories that Walter had dreaded. Jettel told in great detail and very enthusiastically about all the attention that used to be lavished upon her, how her mother and all the young men at the dancing school had adored her, and that her husband had to promise her in Nairobi that she would have a maid in Frankfurt.

  “Otherwise I would not have set foot on German soil,” she declared. Walter suffered further tortures after the soup when Jettel, in the middle of a discussion of their difficult start in Frankfurt, put her knife and fork down on her plate and announced, “My husband is particularly unfit for survival and on top of that as stubborn as a mule.”

  “All men are like that,” Mrs. Fafflok agreed and reported that her husband was very slow, terribly idealistic, and never on time.

  “He was even late to our wedding,” she said.

  Käthe Fafflok was a determined, smart, honest, and understanding woman. She had great respect for her husband, whom she called “Lumpsele,” even though she was completely different from him in temperament and in contrast to him offered her opinion, and instantly, even if she had not been asked to do so. She was flexible, very practical, and did not have much patience with people who wallowed in self-pity, moaned about the present, and embellished the past.

  Jettel became the great exception.

  Käthe Fafflok thought her beautiful and charming, and as capricious as she would have liked to have been herself as a young girl. Jettel’s domineering nature did not disturb her because it matched her own courage. Moreover, she was tolerant enough to consider Jettel’s lack of logic spontaneity and her lethargy as part of her self-confidence. Käthe Fafflok was to become one of the few people who tried to look at the problems of a difficult marriage from Jettel’s point of view, and she was full of sympathy when she considered how the years of their emigration had impacted and worn out the Redlichs. Most of all, she was aware of the tightness of a bond that was completely different from the way it appeared. Jettel’s assessment of people was actually quite astute, a fact that she constantly had to point out to her husband and Regina. Jettel immediately recognized the understanding that came her way and did not hesitate to turn it into an uneven friendship.

  The evening became one of hope, cheerfulness, and accord. Even Regina stifled her fear of strangers, talked about Africa, and let herself become so enmeshed in her dreams that she almost betrayed the secret she still shared with her father, namely that they spoke Swahili to each other when they both heard the drums and the monkeys in the forests of Ol’ Joro Orok at the same time.

  It was Else, however, who gave both families their first common memory. On a tiny saucer she carried a few crumbs of the precious Roquefort and, shaking her head, declared, “I cut off all of the mold, Mrs. Redlich.”

  On January 2, 1949, Fritz Fafflok and Walter Redlich opened their law practice together.

  7

  FROM THE SMALL BUT QUICKLY GROWING CIRCLE of spectators, Regina gathered that the two Volkswagens that were standing with open doors in the Höhenstraße must have collided. She was no more than thirty feet from home, and because of a completely filled milk jug in one hand and her heavy briefcase in the other, she had no intention of stopping. At that moment, though, the driver of one of the cars came to her attention.

  Even though she was normally not able to remember faces, she immediately recognized the extraordinarily short man with the unruly black hair and gold incisors. She had seen him at the synagogue during the High Holidays. At the end of the service he had stepped on her foot by accident, first smiled at her, afterward very solemnly extended his hand to her, and wished her all the best for the New Year. He had not spoken to her more than the few traditional Hebrew words for the occasion.

  While he was now standing in front of his car, getting more and more excited, slamming his fender, and unmistakably searching for words, Regina noticed that the man spoke in broken German. It was not only the spontaneous sympathy for a human being who was not equal to another because of his linguistic inability that made her stop. The man, who was obviously from the East, touched her because he was small and timid, and appeared unable to assess the situation he had gotten himself into and was quite aware of it.

  The other car’s driver, who was big, robust, and dressed in one of those recently fashionable colorful shirts with palms and birds printed on them, shouted and stood with arms akimbo. The small black-haired man perplexedly looked around several times, raised both hands, pointed at his fender again, and nervously stammered that he wanted to call the police. He did not say, as Regina noticed instantly, “police,” but “the German policemen.”

  Windows were opened in the houses and pillows were put into place. The practice of getting comfortable while gawking had previously only surprised Regina because of its undisguised display of curiosity. Now she felt an irritation that quickly turned into revulsion when she looked at the men with their cigarettes or newspapers in hand and the older women who occasionally still held a dusting cloth. In contrast to other times, she felt that she could read in the voracious faces an unusual kind of hatred f
or this kind of scenario. The voices grew louder.

  First Regina had trouble finding out if only the two people involved in the accident were talking or if the bystanders were already voicing their opinions. All of a sudden, however, she clearly heard the man in the multi-colored shirt piercingly shout, “They forgot to gas you, too.”

  The doubt if she had really heard what her ears tried to make her believe was mercilessly short. It only lasted until Regina felt the retching in her throat and the coldness in her hands. A sharp pain seemed to be tearing her apart and she did not know in which part of her body it had started. Her first impulse was to keep on walking as long as her legs would still carry her, but she realized that it was already too late to escape and that it was not only the shock that overwhelmed her, but also shame because she was standing there as if nothing had happened and was silent as if she had not heard anything.

  Regina had known for quite a while that she did not have her mother’s courage to instinctively defend herself against insults and defamation, but she had never before considered her dislike for confrontations as weakness or cowardice. She had accepted her habit of never offering an opinion prematurely or unasked as a typical result of her English education and the kind of pride that she thought would make her invulnerable. Now a single short sentence had taken away her self-confidence and dignity.

  In spite of her excitement, she did not have any illusions when she looked up to the apartment. She was hoping her mother would be at the window. The urge to call Jettel and hand over the responsibility for protection to her became so painful that her heart started to race and her eyes to sting. Dismayed, Regina realized that she would not be able to fight her tears much longer; her head was only able to hold on to one thought: She wished it had all been nothing but a bad dream and she would wake up soon in her mother’s consoling embrace. At that moment of defeat, she saw her father.

  Walter stood in front of the man in the multi-colored shirt. In her fear and confusion, he seemed quite small and very weak to Regina, but to her amazement his voice was strong.

  “Say that again,” he shouted.

  “I am going to tell that to anyone who wants to hear it. After all, we are living in a democracy. Someone like him would have been gassed before.”

  “I am going to bring charges against you,” Walter said. He was very quiet now. As a child Regina had often seen him like this when he felt lost and still refused to give in to his despair.

  The man with the large hands looked at his feet for a moment as if he had to find new ground, but then quickly looked up again and suspiciously said, “What is that Yid to you? Why are you getting involved?”

  “Because I am such a Yid, too, whom they forgot to gas. And I also know how to bring charges against swines like you. Unfortunately for you, I am a lawyer.”

  Regina longed for her father as strongly as just a few moments ago she had longed for her mother. She ran, the milk jug still in her hand, toward him and realized only then that she was able to breathe, see, and feel again, and that the people, the masks of hatred, and the indifference had disappeared.

  Only the small dark-haired man was still there—and a few steps and a thousand years removed from him, the shrunken giant. Walter, his hat tilted backwards, his lips pressed together tightly, stood between them and silently wrote down the license plate numbers. Regina noticed that sweat had formed on his forehead. She let her briefcase drop to the ground and grasped his hand.

  “I was here and heard everything,” she whispered.

  “I am sorry, Regina. I didn’t want this to happen. Come on, we cannot go home like this. We better sit down on the bench over there. Your mother doesn’t have to know about this.”

  They sat among the trees and blooming roses of the broad street, exhausted and burned out from their anger, and were both unable to speak for several minutes. They did not even dare look at each other.

  “I am sorry, Regina,” Walter repeated. “I would have liked to spare you. I had always hoped that you would never experience anything like this today. Until today at least you didn’t know that such things exist.”

  “Oh, yes. I have known for a quite a while. But usually it is different.”

  “Different? How?”

  “Quieter. Not so brutal.”

  “I am glad that you are not like your mother.”

  “She has courage. I don’t.”

  “Yes, you have courage. Only in a different way.”

  “I don’t know,” Regina said, doubtfully. “Anyway, why did you stop?”

  “I immediately saw that the man was a Jew.”

  “So did I,” Regina said.

  She felt the trembling in her father’s body and, even though she did not want to at just this moment, she remembered their last day in Africa when the two of them had been sitting on the kitchen floor and had said goodbye to Owuor. Her ears had opened too far and too wide. “Your father,” she heard Owuor say, “is a child. You have to protect him.” Even though her eyes were still wet, she was able to smile again and to prepare herself to help her father keep the dreams he was unable to give up.

  “We are a great pair,” Walter said, “sitting here like two children who are in trouble and don’t dare to go home.”

  “And we didn’t do anything. Only the others.”

  “It is always the others.”

  “In my childhood I would have learned such a beautiful sentence by heart,” Regina said. She reached for the jug on the ground because it occurred to her that her mother needed the milk and would demand an explanation, but her father put his hand on her arm.

  “Wait a moment,” he said. “You have to promise me something.”

  “I already did. Mama is not going to find out from me.”

  “There is something else. Promise me that you are only going to marry a Jew when the time comes.”

  “What makes you think of that all of a sudden?”

  “Not all of a sudden, Regina. You are going to be eighteen this year. I should have brought this up long ago. But on days like this one I know that I would not be able to stand it.”

  “Stand what?” Regina asked, although she knew what he was talking about.

  “Not to be certain that some man in some fight would not call my daughter a dirty Jew. In fact, I sometimes ask myself why my daughter never goes out with a young man.”

  “Just because of that,” Regina answered, embarrassed.

  Dinner consisted of potato salad with herring, apple, pickles, and homemade mayonnaise, and garlic sausages from the new Silesian butcher in the Berger Straße, and for dessert there was the traditional conversation that people in Frankfurt had no idea of a good potato salad and were generally unable to cook. In contrast to other times, however, Jettel herself had to point out her culinary mastery because Walter, as she noted reproachfully, was far away with his thoughts and Regina had to have a headache on a Wednesday of all days.

  Wednesday had been a special day for a while. It was the day the magazines arrived from the reading club. First everyone devoured his or her favorite publication and at the end Walter always read the romantic novel, which was illustrated with photographs, aloud and with such a deliberately wrong pronunciation of individual words that Jettel and Regina kept on infecting each other with bouts of laughter because Else was not aware of Walter’s ironical supplement. She listened earnestly and always said at the end, “It is so nice and cozy here, just like at home on the farm.” After the events of the day, though, Regina noticed for the first time that the sad heroine was a young girl who, because of her noble father, had to decide against her heart and in favor of duty.

  The deeper meaning of the sudden invitations to the Jewish nursing home by people who frequently had visitors from abroad, and whom her father hardly knew himself, became more obvious as well. Previously he had always disguised those visits laboriously and not very convincingly as related to his new position on the board of the Jewish community. Now he declared openly and—only to Jettel�
�s amazement—with a determination that precluded any contradiction, “We are going. A man has surfaced for Regina.”

  Regina was less angry about the fact that she had always had to decline any invitations of her classmates on Sundays, and could not even tell them why, than about her own naïveté before the decisive conversation with her father.

  For months she had not realized that the strange afternoon coffees, which were as boring for her as for her four-year-old brother, were linked to a Jewish tradition that she had not expected to find in her own liberal home. Neither her father’s tolerance nor her mother’s romantic notions about love and marriage, which were documented every Wednesday afternoon by reading the magazine stories, prevented the two of them from parading their daughter like a prize-winning cow in a meat market. Regina was baffled, furious, and unsure of herself.

  Had her life been more like that of her contemporaries, who were able to liberate themselves from their parents without ever thinking of family and tradition, without feelings of guilt, and full of the kind of happy optimism unsupported by experience, the men, almost all of them considerably older than her, probably would have touched her. Most of them came from countries where it was apparently just as difficult to find a Jewish spouse as in Germany after the war; the ones from England or America usually lived socially isolated in small towns without Jewish communities.

  This rootless generation of men was so extraordinarily alike because they had all escaped from a hell of homelessness and persecution and were determined to revive their murdered dreams of vitality, youth, and family.

  They had melancholy eyes, which did not match their bravado not to waste time on conventions and courtesy. They all talked about a tragic fate in a mixture of broken German and Yiddish, and openly stated that they were looking for a capable wife, and immediately. Only Regina had not caught on for a long while that she had been chosen as prey for these lonely hunters.

  Over the course of one month, a businessman from Chile, a farmer from New Zealand, two American sales representatives, and the owner of a grocery store in Liege appeared on the scene. The businessman from Chile was especially in a rush. He had even called on Sunday night to find out if Regina had made up her mind so that he could reserve a second ticket for the boat.