Berlin Wild

by Elly Welt

  The 4:09 arrived on the lowest-level track at Friedrich-strasse at 4:31; a five-minute climb to the upper level to catch the 4:38 for Ostkreuz. which arrived at Alexander-platz at 4:44; a ten-minute walk—I could have made it in six minutes running—to Grosse Frankfurter Strasse 47. At 4:54, I ran up the stairs. I was too late. They were gone. All that was left in their rooms were the dining table covered with a soiled white linen cloth with Grandmother’s initials monogrammed in white on the corner and, under the table, a small silver napkin ring with the initial O for Otto, and a Schiller, with the cover gone, stinking of mildew.

  I folded the cloth neatly and placed it in the suitcase with the two blankets, the soap, and all, and put the silver napkin ring in my pocket. Then I leafed through the Schiller. It was an anthology of his plays. Uncle Otto had marked up the William Tell, and from what he underlined I realized that he had known, all along, and that I would never be able to forgive myself for not pleading with him, for not insisting, for not telling him what I knew.

  Cast off, Ruodi! You will save me from death! Put me across.

  Hurry, hurry, they are close on my heels already!

  I am a dead man if they seize me.

  What! I have a life to lose, too. Look there, how the water swells, how it seethes and whirls and stirs up all the depths. I would gladly like to rescue you, Baumgarten, but it is clearly impossible.

  (Baumgarten still on his knees): Then I must fall into the hands of the enemy with the nearby shore of safety in sight! There it lies! I can reach it with my eyes. The sound of the voice can reach across. There is the boat which might carry me across and I must lie here, helpless, and despair.

  Save him! Save him! Save him!

  Righteous heaven! When will the savior come to this land?

  I should have refused to leave their apartment, should have forced them to listen, should have threatened to be there when the Gestapo came after them. I would never forgive myself.

  The line the Chief parodied, “A Gestapo in the House saves one from a Caesarean section,” was from the first scene of the third act: Tell is in the courtyard in front of his house. Having just repaired the gate with his carpenter’s ax, he lays his tools aside and says to his wife, Hedwig:

  Now I think the gate will hold a good long time. The ax at home often saves one from the carpenter.

  William Tell had been my childhood hero. I pictured him striding about, saving the innocent, the crossbow on his back fastened across his breast by a colorful band. He saved Baumgarten, of course, by rowing him across the seething water, and then he saved the entire country with his crossbow and one apple.

  When I returned to the Institute that same morning, I spread one of Uncle’s blankets on the floor under my worktable, covered myself with the other, and slept. Krupinsky and the others began the morning sorting and let me sleep. I awakened at noon, ate four bowls of polenta, and drank hot tea laced with vodka.

  I did not even bother discussing the matter with Tatiana, nor did I tell her that I no longer cared for her, even though I knew that she felt we were officially going together. I began the retreat into a dead place within myself, and without comment I would listen to her daydream about our future: I was to be a famous mathematician and she a biologist; we would have two children, a boy named Josef and a girl named Tatiana. It was too late for me to become a mathematician, and I would never, never bring children into this hideous world. The more removed I felt and acted toward her, the more interested she became in me. François Daniel was right. The only way to win a woman like Tatiana was to seem to be disinterested. It is even more effective if the disinterest is genuine. Seems, Madam. Nay, it is; I know not “seems.” I did my work at the Institute efficiently, increased my visits to the darkroom with a grateful Monika, and visited more often the two girls from Chemistry who lived in the village of Hagen, staying until dawn, then returning to the Institute in the morning. I returned to the house in Gartenfeld only five times between September twenty-first, when Uncle Otto and Aunt Greta were taken, and October tenth, when they took my mother. So I saw her—Mother—only five times those nineteen days between, and I was so non-communicative that we hardly exchanged a word.

  On Tuesday, October 10, 1944, at five in the afternoon, nearly two months after the liberation of Paris, we were finishing up in the lab when the Chief came to tell me that my parents had called. “Your parents called. Don’t go home tonight. Stay away. They are expecting visitors.”

  I telephoned, but there was no answer. I left at once. The walk through the fields and forest and the little village of Hagen. The train to Potsdamer Platz. I watched passing trains for the face of my mother. The Americans had the habit of sending a few fighter bombers over, now and then, in the early evening, to stop the railways from running, and the trains held at the Potsdamer, which was underground, for almost three hours. It was dark when I arrived in Gartenfeld. I ran fast. I could not see and bumped myself on a corner mailbox, tearing my leg. Very painful. Bloody. A Jew dare not use a flashlight during a blackout and draw attention to himself. Remember Uncle Philip.

  Father sat in his great chair before the fireplace in the small parlor on the first floor. There was no fire. He was wrapped in his overcoat. Dritt sat quietly on his lap.

  “Where is my mother?”

  “She is gone.”

  “Did she receive a letter?”

  “No. A neighbor called. Her husband was taken and she saw your mother’s name on the list.”

  “Why didn’t you take her away?” I was shouting now. “How could you let them take my mother? Why didn’t you just shoot her and be done with it?”

  “You are much too young to understand, and, furthermore, I owe you no explanation. But I will say this to you, Josef. Heretofore, the actions have been against households which are one hundred percent of your mother’s background; they have been predawn and secret. The S.S. has no desire to draw attention to what it is doing. But this present action, as I understand it, involves too many German households, is being carried out in daylight, and, therefore, it will draw attention to itself. Because of the outcry from the Germans involved, it will be abortive. If she were to try to evade arrest, they would get her on a criminal charge and there would be no recourse. Remember what happened to your Uncle Philip.”

  “I despise you for bringing me into life.”

  I went upstairs to Mother’s office to cleanse and bind my leg. The bleeding had stopped, but it would need several stitches. On her desk was her potato peeler. I put it in my pocket, then went up to my room and packed a suitcase.

  He met me at the front door. “Your mother left a letter for you.”

  I stuffed the letter in my pocket. On the way back to the train, I avoided the corner mailbox. The British were bombing again; the Wannsee Bahn waited at Potsdamer for many hours.

  10 October 1944

  My dear son Josef,

  I have two wishes: that you study medicine and become the gifted surgeon you could be, and that you, as always, be honorable in your life and in your relationships with other human beings. There is no time to say more, but you know of my love for you.

  Perhaps a moment more. Socrates has been no small comfort: “Those of us who think death is an evil are in error. For either death is a dreamless sleep—which is plainly good—or the soul migrates to another world. And what would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus, Musaeus, and Hesiod and Homer.”

  Ever,

  Mutti

  The second train arrived in Hagen shortly before dawn. I went to the apartment of Sonja Press and awakened her. She was alone. I thought she might comfort me in her bed, but she offered me only words—“Oh, my dear, I am so sorry!”—tea, vodka, and some of the Chief’s tobacco, which she rolled for me into a cigarette. I stood in the middle of her living room.

  “Horrible,” I said.

  “It should be good, Josef. It’s his new recipe, you know. He soaks the tobacco in prune juice and citric acid.”

 
“One might as well smoke stinking weeds. They are all crazy and they are all stupid. They think this stinking tobacco is good. It is not, I tell you. It is no damn good, and you know it.” I threw the burning cigarette to the floor.

  She picked it up. “Sit.” Gently, she pushed me toward the couch. “Sit.” And she bent to untie my shoes. “Lie back, Josef, It’s almost morning.”

  “Lie with me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “He does it with everybody.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Of course not. I am much too young to concern myself with such matters.”

  “You don’t understand our Russian men. To them it is like drinking a glass of water. As important but also as unimportant. With the women it is different. For me there is no one else. Lie back. No one is too young now.”

  I lay back. She removed my shoes, covered me with her shawl, pulled a chair beside the couch, and put her hand on my arm. It was dawn. And oh my good Lord said I knew you before I created you in the womb of your mother and I separated you before you were born by your mother. But I said, Oh, my good Lord, I am not fit because I am too young. But my good Lord said to me, Do not say I am too young, but you should go where I send you. And the Lord stretched his hand out and touched my mouth. . . .

  “Josef, Josef, wake up.” The Chief was bending over me. He shook my arm. “Come now, Sonja has tea and cakes for us. We’ve half an hour to breakfast and go over to the lab.”

  Ah, the wound in my leg was throbbing. And my head.

  “Come! Sonja has prepared tea and cakes.”

  But I was not hungry. I left without eating and hobbled across the park. As I entered the Institute, I heard Stanislas Rabin practicing on the Bechstein in the parlor on the first floor. I sat and listened. Over and over and over the same scales of the Chromatic Fantasia of Bach, expanding, intertwining, unfettered. He would reach the trill and return over and over and over to the beginning. One could run statistics on how many people would be using the train system in Berlin on a Tuesday morning at, say, six thirty, but if one wanted to choose one person only from the population of the city and determine whether or not this one person would be on the train at six thirty Tuesday morning, how could it be known? Or one knows that half the atoms of radioactive substances will have disintegrated in a certain length of time, but how can it be known which atom will go first? And how can it be said which follicle of the thousands in the ovary—for after all only one, rarely two or more—is destined to complete its development? Why that one? In my high school, the Calvinist ministers preached that those who reach grace are set apart before birth. Did they believe that Paul’s follicle was set aside in the ovary? But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and had called me through his grace. . . . And Jeremiah: And the word of the Lord happened to me and said, “I knew you before I created you in the womb of your mother.” . . . But I said, “Oh, Lord, Lord, I am not fit because I am too young.” But he said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’” Rabin began again. I had visitors. The Chief came in twice for five minutes, paced, walked out. Not a word. Then Tatiana stood before me.

  “I am sorry about your mother.”

  I shrugged and remained sitting.

  “Why did you go to Sonja rather than to me?”

  I shrugged again. She left. She helped now in the lab of Frau Doktor, the kind woman biologist, and still there was the problem of the clumsy mechanical handling of the larvae which I had noted my first day at the Institute. Each pair was taken from the slimy solution, put on a slide, and then operated upon. It came to me that it could be remedied by a turning disk, with space for several pairs, like that on a photograph, going around endlessly, listening to Rabin over and over and over, I pictured the disk to myself, planning so that I could explain it to the mechanic in the Physics Chapel in the park.

  The Chief came again, this time with Professor Kreutzer, who stood before me and began to change his glasses. One feels most uncomfortable when he begins this. I stood.

  He put on the black-rims, put away the rimless, and stared at me.

  “Yes, Herr Professor?” I said finally.

  “We are not getting any reproducible effects from the ultraviolet radiation of the flies. The variations are wild. See what you can come up with on this.”

  “Yes, Herr Professor.”

  He stood there looking at me. The Chief, of course, was pacing. Stanislas Rabin began again.

  “Well!” barked Professor Kreutzer. “What are you waiting for?”

  So I left the parlor and went up to the lab. Marlene and Krupinsky were there. He said, “Sorry to hear about your mother.”

  “Will you take a look at my leg? I think it needs stitches.”

  I lay down on a worktable, and he collected his paraphernalia.

  “Listen, Josef, you need about five stitches, which means ten pricks with the needle. I can give you a local anesthetic, which means about four or six pricks, and, of course, means more chance of infection.”

  “What kind of anesthetic?”

  “Novocain.”

  “Do you have any books on anesthesiology? I was wondering, if we changed from ether to something else, would the flies still ejaculate and lose their sperm when we anesthetize them?”

  “Good Christ, Bernhardt, you won’t ejaculate if I give you Novocain, unless you have some strange perversion.”

  “Do you have a book on anesthetics or not?”

  “Not. Now don’t move!”

  The Chief came to watch. Krupinsky washed the wound, sprinkled it with sulfa powder.

  “We’ll try it without Novocain. If it hurts too much, give a yell, and I’ll deaden it, O.K.?”

  He told the Chief I’d probably lost a bit of blood and that I should take it easy for the rest of the day. And he gave me a handful of vitamins and aspirin.

  “I’m allergic to aspirin.”

  He took the aspirin out of my hand. “Go home and rest.”

  “Can you possibly find one for me?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “A book on anesthetic gases?”

  “Christ, you never give up, do you?” He took two steps to the shelf where he kept his medical texts and grabbed a large volume. “Here!” He shoved it at me. “Pharmacology. That’s the best I can do. In Great Britain anesthesiology is an important specialty, but in Germany it is not. Here the gas is given by a sub-assistant or a nurse, and they mostly use ether because it is safest in the hands of the inexperienced.”

  “Could you get a British text for me?”

  “Now where in the hell am I supposed to lay my hands on something like that? Look, if it’s gases you are interested in, the Pharmacology should do it.”

  I thumbed through the book:

  ETHER: (C2H5)2O One of the safest and probably the most widely used of all the inhalation anesthetic agents. It is irritating to the respiratory tract. Its administration may be followed by increased secretions in the pharynx, trachea, and bronchi, by swallowing of ether-laden mucus, and by nausea and vomiting in the postoperative period.

  I crossed the park to the Physics Chapel to find the mechanic. Together we dug through the junk looking for an old turntable to make the revolving-desk operating table for Frau Doktor. I was pleased to find an old record-cutting machine with a turntable ten times as heavy as an ordinary one. I had the mechanic cut it to a diameter of eighteen centimeters. It sat on an axle in which there was a friction bearing. I had him screw the whole thing onto a chunk of iron. Then we cut a Plexiglas disk, which fit with three prongs into the three slots we made in the turntable. We made twelve divided hollows in the desk—and twelve tiny removable cups to put over each hollow—in the same position as numbers on a clock, so the two larvae—donor and donee—could be placed side by side in the hollows. We cut grooves running to a reservoir in the center to be kept filled with saline solution so the larvae wouldn’t dry.

  The day was gone. I hadn’t hooked up the motor ye
t, but I was dizzy from not eating, so I walked back to our building just as they were closing up.

  Krupinsky said, “What are you doing here? I thought I told you to go home.”

  “I don’t have a home.”

  “Oh, come on, Josef. Why be self-destructive? Besides, your father—”

  “Krupinsky, has it ever occurred to you to mind your own business?”

  “No, I don’t think that it has. Did you take your vitamins?”

  I nodded.

  “What are you going to do? Where are you going to sleep? There are no empty apartments in the park or in Hagen.”

  I shrugged. “I’m hungry.” My hands were shaking.

  We made some tea and Krupinsky slaughtered a rabbit and asked Tatiana to put it in the autoclave. Then he and I drank tea with vodka and he left.

  I stretched out on a worktable and let her watch the baking rabbit and warm some polenta. My throat was raw, my nose beginning to run. She brought a blanket and covered me.

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Josef,” she said, “I want to know why you went to her instead of to me.”

  The upper part of the spindle will be surrounded by a coil, an electromagnet. Parallel will be a large capacitor, and the battery can be switched on or off by a foot switch.

  “Why don’t you answer me?”

  She had tears on her face.

  “I know you’re upset,” she said.

  “I’m not upset. You’re upset.”

  “I am sorry about your mother.”

  I closed my eyes, on the verge of sleep.

  “Why won’t you talk to me?” Her voice was shrill.

  I opened my eyes. “I did not come to you, because it was too cold at four in the morning to sit with you on a cement bench in the park.”

  “Where will you sleep tonight?”

  I closed my eyes and drifted at once into sleep . . . The train, racing toward the end of a long, dark tunnel, collided with a brick wall. My body was cushioned by the bodies of others—Mitzka Avilov and Dieter Schmidt—and others whom I knew but could not recognize. The train was cut open with a carpenter’s ax, and I was lifted out and saved. I looked back down into it and saw the others, mashed, broken, and dismembered from the impact of my body, their skulls smashed and their brains spilling out into pools of their own gore.