“How was your trip?” I asked. Moritz gave me a thumbs-up to avoid answering with his mouth full of pastry. “And the hotel?”
“Quite lovely,” Julia said. “The whole city, really; it’s just as you’ve described it in your letters.” I was struck by the ridiculousness of her observation, as my letters regaling her with the sights I’d visited had nearly all been a lie. But I smiled at her. “And look at you, Hannalie. You’re practically glowing. Are you in love?”
“In love? Only with the orchestra,” I said lightly. And that might’ve been the truest thing I’d told Julia about Paris yet. I got into bed each night both physically and mentally exhausted from my music-filled days. I immediately fell into a deep and dreamless sleep and awoke refreshed and ready to play again each morning. There was no time or energy left to dwell on what I’d lost. That, it seemed, was destined to be my version of happiness now. And I’d come to terms with that.
Julia shook her head. “Oh, Hanni, you and your violin.” She began to cough, patted her chest, and took a long sip of her tea. I felt a tightness in my own chest. Mamele’s bad heart had caused her to cough and cough for years before she finally died. Herr Doctor had given her medicine, before her health insurance was stripped away, and then there were no more doctors who would see her, help her.
“Are you all right?” I asked Julia now.
“Yes, quite. Just a little something in my throat.” She smiled wanly and changed the subject. “Boys,” she said, turning to them. “Finish up, all right? I want to go stop in and see Tante’s apartment before we go to the Louvre. Apartment, is that right? Or is it a, what’s the French word . . . maset? Pied-à-terre?”
“Le appartement,” I said, having learned at least that much French in my search for housing. Julia knew no French, but knowing her, she’d studied up in a travel book on the train and she was showing off for me, or, for her boys, now.
“Ah, so you are learning French.” She smiled approvingly, and I didn’t correct her. “And you have friends here?”
“Of course,” I lied. “Lots of them.” If she pressed me for details, I would tell her about Ling, whom I would sometimes attempt small talk with over our lunch break, but Julia didn’t. She took me at my word.
“Mummy,” Moritz said, having finally finished chewing, “tell her about the man looking for her.”
“The man?” My heartbeat quickened. Max? I pictured him standing on Julia’s stoop in London, ringing the bell, asking for me. But Julia would’ve telephoned or at least written right away, wouldn’t she have? No matter what she thought of Max, she knew how I felt.
“Oh, that’s right,” Julia said, delicately patting her lips with her linen napkin. “One of the doctors from the hospital.”
I exhaled again. Of course it wasn’t Max. Of course it wasn’t. The only doctor I’d really spoken to at the hospital was Henry Childs and it had been quite a while, but it had to be him. “Henry?” I asked her.
Julia bent down and reached into her handbag, a ridiculous-looking, and I assumed, expensive, large black bag dressed with an enormous black bow. Did she carry this around London now? Or had she bought it special for this trip?
She beamed a little as she pulled a piece of stationery from her bag. “Oh, Henry. So you do know him.”
I blushed. “Not like that. He was helping me . . . oh, never mind.” I took the paper from her—it just had Henry’s name and telephone line at the hospital written neatly in Julia’s script.
“Yes, he came looking for you just last week and left his number. I promised I’d give it to you when I saw you.” She raised her eyebrows again.
“Okay, I’ll telephone him and see what he wants.” I stuffed the stationery into my own small blue inexpensive and somewhat beat-up handbag. My guess was that since it had been a while, he was wondering about my memories. Except by now I was feeling sure they might be gone forever. And Henry would be disappointed to hear that.
But today we were in Paris, and I had a new life. I didn’t want to think about Henry, or the past. “Come on. Why don’t we finish breakfast, and then I’ll show you my place quickly before we tour around the city?”
I was exhausted after a day of taking Julia and the boys around, playing tour guide, and after I ate a supper of coq au vin at their hotel with them, which had left me feeling way too full, I walked all the way back to Stuart’s apartment, rather than attempting the Métro as I had done with Julia earlier.
It was dark inside. Stuart wasn’t back yet. Today was the most Stuart and I had been apart from each other in months, and it felt kind of empty inside the apartment without him. I’d grown rather accustomed to his company. Julia had said that I glowed like I was in love. But it was a ridiculous notion, and I pushed it away.
I changed into my nightgown and brushed my teeth, and just as I was about to get into bed I heard the front door open, then slam shut. “Hanna?” Stuart’s voice rose and fell in the entryway.
I stepped out of my room, into the hallway. “I’m here,” I called back.
Stuart walked down the hallway, turned on a lamp, saw me, and smiled. “How was your day?” he asked. “Enjoy your time with your sister?”
I nodded. “Honestly, she’s exhausting. She asks a lot of questions.” He laughed. “But it was good to see her and my nephews. Especially the boys. How was Le Bec?” I asked him.
“Good, excited to hear us rehearse next week.” Stuart had invited him to hear our progress, and he’d told everyone at rehearsal last week to play our best for the audience of one.
His eyes wandered down to my chest, and I realized that my nightgown was sheer, that it was freezing in the hallway. I folded my arms in front of my breasts, embarrassed. Stuart quickly averted his eyes to his feet. “Well, I should get to bed,” Stuart said.
“Yes, me, too,” I said. But neither one of us moved for another moment. We just stood there, inches away from each other in the hallway.
“Hanna.” My named sounded sweet, familiar as it rolled off Stuart’s tongue, and I looked back up at him. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything,” I said.
“That one time in London when I was upset about my hand and I . . .” His voice trailed off and I knew exactly what time he meant, that night when he’d kissed me, once, out of some sort of weird grief or desperation or . . . something. I nodded to show him I knew what he was talking about, that he didn’t have to rehash it all in words. “You told me there was someone else. But there isn’t, is there? You’ve been here with me all these months and I’ve never heard you so much as even talk about anyone else, much less visit him or telephone him or write him. That was your way of trying to spare my feelings, wasn’t it? There isn’t really anyone else.” He paused, and I wanted to tell him everything about Max, everything about this girl I’d been once, and all the time I’d lost. But I also didn’t want to talk about Max at all right now, because Stuart was standing here, so close, and I was feeling things I hadn’t felt in so long. “Please,” his voice cracked. “Just be honest with me. We know each other well enough for that much now.”
“Oh, Stuart,” I breathed his name and took a step closer to him. I put my fingers on his face—he needed a shave, rough stubble dotting his chin. I ran my finger across it gently, and he shivered a little. I stood up on my tiptoes and kissed him softly on the lips.
He caught my hands with his, pulled back just slightly, so our lips were close now, but no longer touching. I was breathing hard and so was he. “But you don’t want this,” he whispered.
“I do,” I said. And that was the truth. It really was. No matter how much I still missed and longed for Max, it was also the truth. “I do want this.”
His breath caught in his chest. He kissed me. Slowly, sweetly. He tasted of wine, and I wondered how much of it he’d drunk at Le Bec’s to have the courage to kiss me like this. But I didn’t care; I kissed him back. His hands moved up under my nightgown, cupping my breasts, stroking them lightly, as if he were afraid he m
ight break me, or I might change my mind. “I do want this,” I said to him again, and I reached to unbutton his shirt, and pulled him into my bedroom, into my bed.
“I never answered your question,” I said into the darkness a few hours later. We were both naked still. I lay on my side and Stuart lay behind me, his arm wrapped around me, his fingers splayed across my bare skin. He stroked softly with his thumb, playing pizzicato on my rib cage.
“Maybe I don’t really want to know the answer,” Stuart said softly. His thumb stopped for a moment, then started again.
“I think he’s dead,” I said, my voice wavering a little as the words, out loud, became like a strange sort of truth. “I was telling you the truth. There was someone else. His name was Max, and we were going to get married when I lived in Germany. But then . . .” I stopped short of telling Stuart everything because how would he understand it? Ten whole years gone. No memory of where I was, where I went, how I survived as a Jew. “But then I don’t know what happened to him during the war. It’s been . . . many years,” I said.
“Oh, Hanna.” Stuart kissed the top of my head, pulled me tighter against him. He wanted me again; I could feel him against my leg. And it was weird talking about Max with Stuart because I wanted him again, too, even though I knew deep down that I could never love anyone the way I loved Max.
Max, 1933
He waited anxiously for Hanna to arrive at his shop later that night as he was also expecting the Feinsteins, but supper came and went, the outside world turned dark, and Hanna didn’t show. It wasn’t unusual; she didn’t come every night. She had said she might not be able to get away until tomorrow. But he’d been hoping she would. He needed to see her, needed to kiss her. And also, he wanted her to see the Feinsteins scared, in danger, if only so he might convince her that she needed to take everything more seriously. Consider her future more carefully, too.
But then the Feinsteins walked into the shop, and Hanna was still nowhere in sight. They held only one knapsack of belongings between them, and Frau Feinstein was pale, shaking. Herr Feinstein patted her on the shoulder but it seemed more rote than comforting, as his hands betrayed him—they were shaking too. “I don’t trust him,” Frau Feinstein said, her voice breaking a little. “He could be a Nazi too.”
It took Max a moment to realize she was talking about him. Because how could she not trust him? How could she really believe he could be a Nazi? She had known him since he was a little boy playing on the floor of this shop, wandering next door for a slice of bread. Her doubt stung, as if she had slapped him. Could she really not distinguish between the awful Nazis and him any longer?
“It does seem inconceivable.” Herr Feinstein looked at Max and frowned. “Where could you possibly take us now?”
“Both of you, please,” Max said. “I’ve known you my whole life. You were dear friends of my parents. I would never do anything to put you in harm’s way. I need you to trust me.”
Herr Feinstein shook his head. “I do not trust anyone anymore.”
Max understood that feeling; he hated it, that this was what Germany had become. But he understood it. “What I am going to tell you is going to sound insane,” he began. “But I swear to you, I’m telling you the truth.” He explained to them about the closet, about everything he had read in his father’s journal. Then he told them what he remembered of his own trip last year, and how he’d seen Herr Feinstein in another time, distraught on the street, upset over something that had happened to Frau Feinstein.
By the time he was finished talking, Frau Feinstein had begun to cry. “He’s going to rob us,” she said to her husband, clutching the knapsack, the gold and jewels he’d told them to bring so they would have money to pay for a new life. “And then he’ll put us in that closet and kill us.”
Herr Feinstein looked at Max and frowned. “This sounds like a mshuge story you read in one of these books.” He shook his head, sadly. “Max Beissinger, a Nazi?”
“But I can show you my father’s journal,” Max said. Proof.
“Your father was always writing tales,” Herr Feinstein said. “Always wanting to write his own book.”
“No,” Max cried out. “This isn’t a tale. Look . . . I’m going to go with you. And I’ll go into the closet first, all right? You can just follow behind me, keep up my pace.” Both of them stared at him, their mouths slightly open. “I will take you to safety. I promise,” he said. “You just need to trust me. I can save you.”
He didn’t want to go into the closet at all, but he felt certain they would not go without him. He desperately didn’t want to leave Hanna, but he had to save the Feinsteins. It was what his father would want him to do, what his father would expect him to do. Max had a way to save them; he had a responsibility to do it that he could not ignore.
If he went with them, then he’d be gone a few days, and he’d return with a headache. But one more time in the closet would not be enough to kill him. It couldn’t be. From his father’s journal, he knew that he and his mother had gone many, many times. Max would not make that mistake.
He hastily scribbled a note for Hanna and left it by the register. He couldn’t write anything in it about the Feinsteins (what if the SA were to visit his shop?), but he didn’t want Hanna to worry or get upset again if he was gone when she returned.
Hanna, Had to do something urgent. Will be back in a few days. I promise. Don’t be mad. I love you. Always, M.B.
The Feinsteins were whispering to each other as Max strode toward the closet and shoved the bookshelf out of the way. He took out his keys, undid the lock. “Come on,” he said.
Frau Feinstein dug in her heels, shook her head. “And what if he is even telling the truth?” she said. “How do we know the future is better?”
Herr Feinstein looked from her to Max, then back to her again. He reached for his wife, grabbed her, hugged her hard to him, then pulled back, put his hands on her cheeks, and kissed her softly on the mouth. “I love you, Rachel,” he said. “If we die tonight, then I want you to know that.”
Her face softened. “I love you, too, Bertram.”
His father had theorized the faster you went through the wormhole, the further in time you jumped. If they made it far enough, Hitler would have to be out of power, the world would have to right itself again. Max may be naive, and he had read far too many books, but still, he truly believed that good would always win over evil. Eventually. “Come,” Max said, holding out his hand. “We’re going to go quickly.”
Herr and Frau Feinstein looked at each other again, and Frau Feinstein took her husband’s hand. He placed his other hand in Max’s, and then Max opened the door to the closet, holding on to them both, and began to run.
Elsa, 1950
Johann had been dead nearly an entire year when Max showed up on my doorstep. I had been counting my husband’s absence at first in hours, then in days, weeks, and now it was months. Eleven of them. Soon, unbelievably, it would be a year. And still, I felt the hole each morning, the lack of him simply being: immediately upon waking, there was a sharp pain in my chest that made it hard to breathe. I might have been tempted to stay in bed all day, even all these many months later, if it were not for my Grace, who was still here living with me, and who at fifteen still desperately needed her mother.
Grace and Emilia both had grown up in a time of war. They’d spent a good part of their childhood being afraid of bombs and sheltering from air raids. Death and destruction were what they knew, how they came to be women. We’d relocated to the countryside for a bit when the girls were younger, living in Johann’s father’s fishing cabin, Johann refusing to be conscripted to fight for a government he no longer believed in, refusing to stay behind in Berlin and be arrested for it, too. But even in the country, the war had still been close enough to touch. One night an Allied bomber had fallen out of the sky, bursting into flames across our pond, and Gracie, at seven years old, had clung to me and refused to speak a word for three whole weeks. I still sometimes believed
that she had not fully recovered. She was quiet, brooding; she had a darkness that Emilia never had, and making friends was difficult for her. Emilia had recently moved away to attend school in Holland, but sometimes I thought—or maybe I hoped?—that Gracie would live here with me forever. The only thing that made her happy was playing the piano, and on weekends, evenings, holidays, that was all she did, play and play and play. Her music was the only thing some mornings that got me out of bed.
I’d kept in touch with Hanna here and there, and I wrote her once about my Gracie and her piano. Hanna wrote me back: Didn’t we always know she loved music! and in that exclamation point I saw Hanna’s own happiness, that the orchestra she had joined in Paris was perhaps giving her what she always wanted.
Gracie was playing her piano when the bell rang that morning. And I called for her to get the door. I was in the kitchen, taking my brötchen out of the oven, a habit I’d forced myself to keep since Johann was gone, baking and cooking each day. Gracie needed to eat. And I supposed I did, too. Sometimes when I caught my reflection in the mirror, it surprised me to see how thin I was, how my bones protruded from my wrists, making my small arms appear birdlike. Johann would not have liked that. He had reveled in my roundness after I had the girls, but I still could not bring myself to eat.
“It’s a strange man,” Gracie yelled, upon opening the door. I nearly dropped the brötchen on the floor. Even all these years after the war, safely ensconced in West Berlin, this kind of thing still frightened me, and I ran to see for myself who it was.
And then there he was, like some sort of living illusion, Max, exactly as I remembered him: young, handsome, a winsome look on his face. In the second before I grabbed him in a hug, I thought the most ridiculous thing I had thought in the last eleven months (and that was saying a lot): If Max could walk up and ring the bell, back from the dead, just like that, then maybe Johann could too?
In Another Time Page 17
