Ashes

by Kathryn Lasky

  Though this was my first-ever cabaret experience, I had a feeling that what Rosa and I were seeing was the most slyly anti-patriotic show in Berlin. One didn’t have to listen that carefully to the lyrics of the song to see that they mocked Germany’s obsession with military power. And the words certainly hinted at the mounting militarism with that line about the land where the cannons bloom. I looked over at Ulla, who was just now selling a pack of cigarettes to a bearded gentleman. As she walked away from him, I could see her face quite clearly. I could see creases at the corners of her mouth as she smiled. Little crinkles of pleasure at her new independence perhaps, her new daring life in this subversive café? A small curved line punctuated each corner of her mouth like quotation marks. But Ulla, unlike the Empress Hermine, was no quotation girl. I felt a sudden twinge—pride. I was proud of her working here. But did everyone realize how subversive this was? Did Karl?

  We didn’t stay long. But part of me wanted to remain, wanted to tell Ulla that I thought her working here was not bad even if she wore a skimpy costume and did more than just keep the books. I wanted her to know that I understood the sophisticated humor of Max Weltmann. But I thought, not now. Later. Her boss might get angry that her little sister and her little sister’s friend were hanging about. So Rosa and I walked out into the night. Although it was late, it was not very dark. It was the kind of night filled with the fuzzy gray light that Papa found maddening. Warm and humid rags of mist floated up from the river Spree.

  We had turned down an alley when suddenly Rosa grabbed my arm. Directly ahead was a gang of young men with paintbrushes.

  “Another painting squad!” I whispered. We turned to go the other way, but now behind us, seemingly out of that gray mist, three more figures appeared.

  “Hello, Fräulein.” One boy had already dipped his brush into a bucket he had set down, and he began painting the first arm of the swastika on a brick wall. “Want to help?”

  We shook our heads. “We have to get home,” Rosa whispered hoarsely.

  “Nein, sister,” another boy said, coming up and pulling on a curl of Rosa’s that stuck out from under her beret. “You ain’t going no place. I think you need to help the Führer.”

  “He doesn’t need our help,” I said softly.

  Yet another boy came up, a taller one. “Come on, Egon. Let ’em go. They’re just kids. We got a lot more work tonight.”

  Egon took a step closer. His eyes were like blue slits. His skin was as gray as the night air. His face looked like a mask, the mouth a slot. It was as if there might be another face behind this one. “Say it, sister.”

  “Say what?” I asked.

  “Say it!” The others pressed in on us.

  The slot opened to reveal square yellow teeth with large spaces between them. And then the arm shot out, the palm flat. “Heil Hitler!” The two words tore the darkness. Rosa’s arm and mine immediately sprang upward.

  “Heil Hitler,” we called. The words stumbled out of our mouths. And we ran into fog-thick air of the Berlin night.

  chapter 18

  That was morality; things that made you disgusted afterward. No, that must be immorality.

  -Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

  I am standing naked now in the murky light of the alley. Scraps of fog swirl around me. I try to grab something, anything, to cover my chest, but the mask in front of me, suspended in the mist, just laughs, opening its mouth wider and wider until I can see all the square yellow teeth.

  “Heil Hitler!” it screams, and the words ricochet from the slot. The mask’s slit eyes stretch open and become round holes. One eye suddenly pops out. I watch transfixed as it hits the pavement and begins to roll toward a storm sewer.

  “Meine Auge, my eye, meine Auge, my eye. Meine Glasauge ! My glass eye!” The mask contorts in fear, not rage. Like a baby it wails. I want to comfort it as one would a toddler with a broken toy. I want to pick it up and cuddle and kiss it. I am so ashamed.

  I woke up from my nightmare shocked and trembling. I looked over at the twin bed where Rosa slept. I hoped I had not cried out. I wondered if Rosa was having nightmares too. We had not talked about the incident in the alley when we got home, and except for one time, neither Rosa nor I would ever mention that night again.

  We had taken baths when we returned to Rosa’s apartment. Luckily there was no sign of her mother. She was still upstairs at Rosa’s grandmother’s apartment. But now I wanted to take another one. I felt dirty. I wondered if it would wake Rosa up if I ran the water. The bathroom was down the hall. She might not hear it. I decided to try.

  As I lay in the cool water of the tub, I wondered about my dream. Why was I naked in that alley? Was it something to do with the naked girls in the cabaret? But their nudity hadn’t seemed bad when I saw them onstage in that living tableau of the Brandenburg Gate. It didn’t seem dirty or shameful, just clever, although I would never want to stand up that way on a stage or even wear that scanty little skirt of Ulla’s. Why in the name of God was I always feeling ashamed?

  When I got out of the bathtub, I went into the parlor of the apartment and found a piece of writing paper. I began to list those terrible moments in recent weeks when I had felt dirty or shameful. Thus began my Diary of Shame. At this point it was just a piece of paper, but when I got back to Caputh I planned to copy it into a notebook.

  The first item was the day on the Kurfürstendamm when the SA officer had called Rosa a vamp. He hadn’t called me a vamp, and yet I felt ashamed for some reason. The second—well, here is my list.

  1. SA officer on Kurfürstendamm

  2. Beer garden in Caputh when boy sings “The Watch on the Rhine”—K’s eyes

  3. U doing it with K

  4. K’s spitting in our basin; K’s toothbrush

  5. “Heil Hitler” in the alley; alley dream. Paint squad boy

  And after the list I wrote this: I feel as though I am seeing things I shouldn’t see. I feel that somehow I have stumbled into the wrong place, the wrong world. I am a peeper, a voyeur. . .

  Rosa came back with me the next day to Caputh. She was going to be able to stay for a while. This was good news for Rosa and me and also for Rosa’s mother, who would be busy taking care of Rosa’s grandmother.

  We took the noon train from the Alexanderplatz station. The train was always packed with people during the summer, and that day was no exception. We were in Caputh in time for lunch. Before we even walked into the dining room, I heard a voice, a high, shouting, strained voice. It was Hitler on the radio. When we came in, I saw that Uncle Hessie was there. No one greeted us, as they were all listening intently to the radio broadcast. Papa raised his finger to his lips. Mama had a grim look on her face. I went up to kiss her.

  “Hardly good for the digestion,” she muttered, nodding at the radio.

  “Unfortunately our radio seems to be able to pick up a station we don’t ordinarily get.”

  “Which station?” I asked.

  “It must be from southern Germany, near Munich or maybe even Austria. He’s so popular there. I doubt Berlin would put him on . . . at least, not yet!”

  “Shush! Elske,” Papa said.

  “Nothing new here. Heard it all before,” Hessie said in a scathing whisper.

  Rosa and I sat down. Hitler’s voice was so loud that even the water in the glasses seemed to tremble.

  “Can’t we lower the volume?” Mama hissed at Papa. She was clearly angry at Hitler for dominating our lunch. Mama thought mealtimes should be peaceful affairs; she never liked to have the radio on when we were eating. Papa held up a finger as if to say just a minute more. Now the voice was almost screaming.

  “That conclusion is forced upon us if we look at the world today: We have a number of nations which through their inborn outstanding worth have fashioned for themselves a mode of life which stands in no relation to the living space—the Lebensraum—which in their thickly populated settlements they inhabit.” Then there was a staticky sound, obliterating his shrill
voice. Mama was about ready to jump up and turn off the radio when the broadcast became clear again. I noticed that the door to the kitchen was open just a crack and I could see a narrow slice of Hertha’s face. She was so still, it was if she was hardly breathing.

  “In an era when the Earth is gradually being divided up among states, some of which embrace almost entire continents, we cannot speak of a world power in connection with a formation whose political mother country is limited to the absurd area of five hundred thousand square kilometers. . . . We must hold unflinchingly to our aim . . . to secure for the German people the land and soil to which they are entitled to on this Earth.”

  I caught another glimpse of Hertha. A slight smile played across the wedge of her face just as Hitler spoke of securing the land for the German people. I felt something turn in my stomach.

  Papa now jumped up from the table and turned off the radio.

  “Thank God, Otto!” Mama exclaimed.

  “I knew it, Hessie. What did I tell you?” Papa sat back down. His eyes were hard. I had honestly never seen such bitterness in my father’s face.

  “Knew what, Papa?” I asked.

  “Lebensraum, living space. He goes on about it constantly in Mein Kampf.”

  Hessie picked up his napkin and patted his lips almost primly. Then he carefully put it back in his lap. “I hate to tell you, Otto, but businessmen like those in Düsseldorf love Hitler. Who do you think arranged the Düsseldorf speech?”

  “Who?” Papa asked.

  “The steel magnate Thyssen, and Krupp, and many others. They are all financing Hitler. They think he’s good for business.”

  “Fools.” Papa nearly spat in his soup plate.

  “But what does he mean by living space? He doesn’t think there’s enough room?” I asked.

  “Exactly,” Papa replied.

  “Hmmm . . .” I said, studying my napkin. Then I looked up and smiled. “Why doesn’t he go talk to Professor Einstein?”

  “Why in heaven’s name?” Mama said.

  “The universe is expanding. There’s definitely room for everyone,” I replied.

  At this they all burst out laughing, even Papa.

  It had been raining when Rosa and I arrived in Caputh, and it continued for the next few days. Papa seemed distracted during this time. He went over to Einstein’s sometimes as often as twice in one day. On the morning before Hessie went back to Berlin it was still raining, and I saw Hessie and Mama hunched under an umbrella, taking a lakefront walk. I think maybe Mama was telling him something—worries about Papa, the university maybe, Jewish physics. I wasn’t sure.

  The rain was a great disappointment not simply because swimming and sailing were out of the question but also because Rosa and I were eager to wear the new bathing suits we had bought at Wertheim earlier that spring, which we thought were quite glamorous. Rosa’s was a wonderful aquamarine and mine was a deep pink. Most bathing suits were rather dreary colors. Ours were not the usual flannel or cotton but were made of a very sleek material and with shoulder straps that could be let down for tanning if the sun ever appeared again. But because of the bad weather we pranced around in them inside the house. Papa, who had to test some film, even took a picture of us scampering around on the lawn when the rain let up one day. We looked a bit idiotic, for it was cold and we were hugging each other to keep warm. Professor Einstein was off to one side in the picture, laughing at us.

  Mostly during this rainy spell Rosa and I devoted ourselves to preparing for the new school term. We were excited about the new curriculum, the library, and most of all about Fräulein Hofstadt.

  “You know,” I said, “Ulla told me that Fräulein Hofstadt likes to give surprise quizzes where we have to stand up and recite a passage in class.”

  “Really?” Rosa said.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh dear, I’m terrible at that.”

  It was a dismal afternoon when it was not, as the expression goes, raining cats and dogs. Instead, it was a softer rain, which I called raining kittens. I looked out the window and saw no promise of the sun.

  “We might as well start practicing. I think I could do part of ‘The Old Dream.’ That’s a pretty simple poem of Heine’s.”

  “Try it,” Rosa urged me.

  “Well, first I have to get The Sun Also Rises out of my head, since Heine is very different from Hemingway.” I had finished it, but Baba lent me her copy, and I had started to reread it. I closed my eyes tight. “All right, I’m ready.”

  “I’ll count to three, then you can start,” Rosa said.

  “This isn’t a track meet, Rosa. I’ll just start.

  “The old dream comes again to me

  With May-night stars above,

  We two sat under the linden-tree

  And swore eternal love.

  “There!” I said.

  “That’s it?” Rosa exclaimed.

  “It’s the first stanza. That really wasn’t too hard. The trick is to find a poem with a really simple rhyme scheme. Then it’s much easier to memorize.”

  Rosa and I decided to try to memorize at least ten passages or poems. I still kept rereading The Sun Also Rises. It was a very sad book. Something had happened to Jake Barnes in the Great War so he couldn’t do it with a woman. That must have been what Baba meant when she said “Let’s just leave it at ‘or something’ ” in reply to my comment “You mean there might be sex or something?”

  The problem was that Jake was in love with Brett Ashley, but she couldn’t fully love him back because she liked sex so much. All this made me think a lot about Ulla and Karl. I liked Jake. And it was not just that I liked him more than Karl, I suspected that in the long run despite his wounds, maybe Jake was more of a man than Karl.

  chapter 19

  He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once

  -Albert Einstein,

  “The World as I See It”

  The sun finally peeked out. The air cleared, and yet there always seemed to me a point around the end of vacation when summer grows slightly stale. The July thirty-first election hadn’t helped the mood. Hitler gained a few seats in the Reichstag, just as we’d feared. Rosa and I were both anxious to get back to school. School seemed safe somehow. Nonetheless, the sunny weather justified wearing the new sleek bathing suits, so we went out sailing in Ratty. Our intention was to sail to a nearby beach and actually go swimming in these new suits, causing what we imagined would be a wild sensation.

  There was very little wind, and our progress toward the beach was achingly slow, so we began to practice reciting our Schiller and Heine verses in anticipation of Fräulein Hofstadt’s class. We were both determined to make the highest marks. The sails flapped languidly, and the day was very hot. We drifted in toward the public beach hoping the water would get shallow enough for us to drop our anchor and swim. From off the shore the beach looked like an encampment, for there were clusters of the huge wicker beach chairs with their hooded tops that people could rent. It was customary for the families on German beaches in the holiday season to fly their city flag. So there were of course several from Berlin, and a couple from Leipzig and Dresden, as well as some from Frankfurt. In addition to the wicker encampment there were sand castles, and they too were flying flags.

  The scene looked so festive and cheerful it took Rosa and me a minute to actually register what we were seeing from our gently rocking little vessel. A breeze suddenly sprang up, and like some terrible rash we could see amidst the city flags the Blut und Boden, the blood and earth colors of the swastika, its broken arms in their deadly right-hand spin snapping in the fresh wind. In front of one cluster of wicker beach chairs, half a dozen children, young enough to wear no clothes, were marching about with their arms raised toward the sky, crying in their singsongy little voices “Heil Hitler.” Then a mother came out
from under the hooded beach chair. She was large—very tall and fleshy. Her skin was a coppery rose color from a summer of beach tanning. She had stuck a small Nazi flag at a jaunty angle in the coronet of white braids that were wound on top of her head. She picked up a naked child, put him on her shoulders, and began leading the march. He took the flag from her hair and started waving it. The woman’s voice sailed out across the beach as she sang the opening lines of the “Horst Wessel Song.”

  The flag high! The ranks tightly closed!

  The SA marches with a firm, courageous pace.

  Yes, the flag is truly high, I thought, as I saw the little naked boy atop his mama’s shoulders.

  “Don’t drop the anchor,” I said to Rosa. Rosa turned to me. Her eyes were grim, and then she looked back toward the beach. I saw her shoulders drop and she shook her head ever so slightly in disbelief.

  At just that moment a teenage boy’s face broke from the water ’s surface not five feet from the bow. Rosa and I both gave small yelps.

  “Don’t leave, girls. I’ll tow you ashore!”

  “We don’t want to go ashore,” Rosa called back in a steely voice.

  I pulled the tiller toward me, Ratty caught the breeze, and we slipped away. Now, this was the odd thing: When the teenage boy surfaced, I saw in my imagination the face of the singer from the beer garden. But Rosa saw another face.

  “Those square yellow teeth.” That was all she said. And that was the only time the incident in the alley in Berlin with the painting squad was ever referred to by either one of us.

  We were reluctant to land on any of the other beaches, and for the rest of the afternoon we sailed aimlessly about until the sun set and we made for our dock at the cottage.