Ashes

by Kathryn Lasky

  The incident on the beach became the next item in my Diary of Shame, which was now listed in an old, unused notebook of Mama’s she let me have.

  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

  6. Baby Hitler naked on mother’s fat shoulder

  And then I wrote this in my diary: The beach looked like a medieval encampment. But am I looking back in time, or forward? Papa looks back through his telescope and seeks out ancient light. Am I looking through the wrong end of the telescope?

  That night the sky was very black, and Papa was happy. The dark, after all, was his element. He would rise like those animals who prowl the darkness—the raccoon, the owl, the bat. Stalking the night sky he hoped to untangle the stars’ light and thereby their histories—where they were born, how they die. Rosa and I lay in the grass and watched the flow of the night. Around me were other creatures of the darkness—the firefly with its flickering incandescence, a whippoorwill with its cry. If I listened closely enough, could I hear the fluttering wings of a moth desperately seeking a house light? Not in our house. Our house was darkened.

  His cigar was extinguished but I smelled the tobacco in Einstein’s clothes as he approached. A fresh breeze brought the scent of sweetpeas. Mama was in the garden, barefoot. That was how she liked to work on hot summer evenings. She wove in and out of the merry chaos, putting the tomatoes, now heavy in their summer ripeness, on stronger stakes, untangling the snarl of pumpkin and squash vines in their inexorable scrambled march across the ground. August was just beginning. Everything was growing rotund, near to bursting in its lusciousness. Even the moon was now ripening, much to Papa’s chagrin.

  “Guten Abend—oops, sorry Gaby.” Einstein nearly stepped on me just like that night earlier in the summer.

  “No problem, Herr Professor.”

  “What’s happening up there, Otto?”

  “Albeiro—nice view tonight. You can see both stars. Have a look. . . . Hey, why are you wearing your handkerchief? Afraid of getting starburned?” Albeiro was the beautiful double star in the constellation of Cygnus the swan.

  I looked over at Einstein. He was indeed wearing the little knotted square of cloth on his head.

  “Oh, I banged my head trying to fix a pipe under the sink and it bled. No plasters, so I just put this on.”

  “Gaby, run in and get Herr Professor Einstein a plaster.”

  “Sure, Papa.”

  Two minutes later I came back with the first-aid plaster. I peeled off the adhesive tabs as Einstein removed the handkerchief and bent his head down. Rosa stood next to me.

  “Two fine nurses,” Einstein said. Rosa and I giggled. “When does your school start, girls?”

  “In about a week,” Rosa said. Mrs. Ebers had called up after we had been at Caputh a few days and asked if Rosa could stay longer because her grandmother was still sick. Mama said of course, and naturally we were thrilled.

  “Are you looking forward to it?”

  “Oh yes,” we both replied at once.

  Einstein’s hairline receded drastically, so there was not much hair to contend with. The cut was on the left side. I pressed the plaster onto his scalp. I suppose I should have thought more of this moment. My fingertips were centimeters away from the most brilliant brain in history. But all I remember thinking is that his head was really beautiful.

  chapter 20

  Folly, thou conquerest, and I must yield! Against stupidity the very gods Themselves contend in vain. Exalted reason, Resplendent daughter of the head divine, Wise foundress of the system of the world, Guide of the stars, who art thou then, if thou, Bound to the tail of folly’s uncurbed steed, Must, vainly shrieking with the drunken crowd, Eyes open, plunge down headlong in the abyss. Accurs’d, who striveth after noble ends, And with deliberate wisdom forms his plans! To the fool-king belongs the world-

  -Friedrich von Schiller,

  The Maid of Orleans

  translated by Anna Swanwick

  Summer never ended abruptly as I always thought it should when the first day of school arrived. It was hot and humid. We sat in our first class sweaty, and Uta Grasse had just gone to raise the window when the classroom door creaked.

  First there was the scent—roses and narcissus—as the door opened. A long pale hand held the doorknob and there was a delay of perhaps fifteen seconds until Fräulein Hofstadt swirled into the classroom. She did not so much walk toward her desk as glide in one sinuous movement. We were all, every last one of us, transfixed.

  Rosa and I were sitting side by side in a double desk. She nudged me.

  “Shoulders!” She mouthed the word. Fräulein Hofstadt was everything we had anticipated. The chic suit, the beautifully styled hair parted on the side with soft finger waves, her makeup so carefully applied. It was so lovely to see a teacher dress up for her class. Most of our women teachers wore drab colors, never went to a hairdresser, and absolutely never wore makeup.

  Not only was Fräulein Hofstadt lovely to look at but she had brought cookies for the first day of class. She said that it was a custom in the village she came from. Somehow I could never imagine Fräulein Hofstadt coming from a village. She was so cosmopolitan, so sophisticated.

  “Good morning, students. We are going to have a wonderful term!” She walked up to the blackboard and took a piece of chalk. “Indeed we are going to have an extraordinary term.” She paused and wrote the word außerordentlich , “extraordinary,” in large letters. Fräulein Hofstadt had handwriting to match her elegance. Within days Rosa and I were both imitating it, adding curlicues and all manner of ornamentation to our script. But it didn’t end there. I also tried to no avail to finger-wave my hair. It remained limp and straight as ever.

  A small competition evolved between Rosa and me over the außerordentlichs, who could collect the most. Occasionally Fräulein Hofstadt simply shortened it to außer, and in some ways these little snippets pruned from the bigger word were the most dear.

  During those first weeks of school we began to speculate endlessly on Fräulein Hofstadt’s love life. And when she revealed one day that she had studied ballet, Rosa and I both felt that she would have been the perfect choice for the role of the ballerina in the movie of Grand Hotel. We rushed to tell her she should have played the part.

  “Did you know that they have made a movie of People in a Hotel?” Rosa said excitedly. Fräulein Hofstadt looked a bit blank.

  “People in a Hotel?” she asked.

  “Yes, by Vicki Baum.”

  “Oh, oh yes . . .” she said, her voice slightly breathy. “I have very little time for popular fiction.”

  “Gaby has read the book four times just this past summer!” Rosa said.

  “Have you now?”

  I nodded and looked into my soup bowl. I felt a slight wilting sensation deep inside. Was this the first chink in my bright armor of außerordentlich? Was this another item for my Diary of Shame—having read People at a Hotel four times? No! Never!I quickly banished such thoughts and I resumed my worship at the altar of Fräulein Hofstadt.

  Ulla had been studying quite hard lately, and she was constantly practicing the violin. Her enthusiasm for going to the conservatory had been rekindled. I am not sure why this happened. Perhaps she was seeing that there might be more to life than Karl or maybe it was that the date of the audition was fast approaching. It was impossible for her to be a conscientious student and work at the same time, so she had quit her job at the Chameleon and begun to practice in earnest for the audition in late November. Karl still came every Friday and Saturday night to take her out. He was actually very nice, and I tried really hard to obliterate that memory of him in the beer garden in Caputh. Maybe I had been wrong about his enthusiasm for the song, I thought.

  We h
ad been back in school for almost two months. It was a Monday night, and Ulla and I were both in our rooms, studying. I had whizzed through my math homework and now turned to literature, which was much more challenging this year because Fräulein Hofstadt, as everyone said, taught us on almost a university level. She had assigned several pages of reading, and now I opened the selected poems of Goethe and turned to page sixty, where there was his famous “Mignon” poem. I began reading the first line: “Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn.” I remembered that night at the Chameleon and once more was struck how truly subversive Max Weltmann had been. I had not yet confessed to Ulla that I had snuck into the Chameleon that night. But I was now bursting to tell her.

  I raced into her bedroom. She looked up from the book she was reading.

  “What is it? I don’t know if I have time to help you now with your homework.”

  “I don’t need help with my homework. I have to tell you something.” I plopped down on her bed.

  “What?”

  “I, well, Rosa and I sneaked into the Chameleon last summer and we saw you and . . . and Max Weltmann . . . and . . . and this poem. . . .”

  “You what?”

  The story spilled out. Ulla was suitably amazed. “You would never breathe a word to Mama and Papa, would you—about the costume I had to wear and all?”

  “No, of course not. You weren’t naked like the girls on the stage . . . but Ulla . . . Ulla, I’m proud of you.”

  “What?”

  “That place. Max Weltmann . . . it’s subversive.”

  A shadow seemed to pass across her bright blue eyes turning them almost gray. “I know, I know.”

  “I think it’s very daring of you.”

  “You do?” She laid her hand softly on top of mine.

  “Yes, I do.” She looked as if she might cry. “Ulla, really, believe me. I am so proud of you.”

  “You are?”

  “Yes, Ulla, really.”

  She shook her head quickly and her eyes turned bright again. “So what are you reading for Fräulein Hofstadt? Goethe?”

  “Yes, lots of Goethe and other stuff.”

  “Schiller?”

  “Not much. I was hoping we’d do the play that you did. The Joan of Arc one. But I don’t think we’re going to.”

  “Bring me the course outline. It will be fun seeing what you’re reading.”

  I went and got the outline.

  “Hmmm,” Ulla said. “Shakespeare . . . Hamlet. That’s the play you’ll be doing, I guess.”

  “Yes. Fräulein Hofstadt says she really feels that Hamlet is a perfect hero for these times. He went to Wittenberg University.”

  “What does Wittenberg have to do with being a hero?”

  I shrugged. “How should I know? I think she likes it that it was a German university.”

  “As opposed to an English one or a Danish one?” Ulla murmured as she studied the course outline.

  “She’s so nice. And I think I’m doing well.”

  “Yes, she’s the only teacher who seems like she has a life outside of school.”

  “Does she have a boyfriend?”

  “I don’t know if she has a boyfriend now, but there was a rumor that she did have a fiancé who was killed in the Great War—at Ypres.”

  “Oh, how awful. The battle where they used chlorine gas.”

  There were many stories about the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, but one of the saddest was that of Fritz Haber and the chlorine gas. Haber, director of the Chemistry Institute, was a colleague of Papa’s and had the dubious distinction of being the inventor of poisonous chlorine gas near the beginning of the Great War. He was of Jewish descent and as a reward for his war efforts he was made a captain in the German army. Papa was telling the story once to a visiting English scientist who came to our house for dinner. He said that Emil Fischer, one of the founders of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, was so irritated with Haber that upon learning of his commission he “wished him failure from the bottom of his patriotic heart.” I think Papa did too, because the chlorine gas was one of the most horrendous weapons of the war. It burned out the lungs of the men. My mother said that Haber’s wife committed suicide because she was so ashamed of her husband’s invention.

  “That is so sad about Fräulein Hofstadt’s fiancé. No wonder she has never married. I suppose she still might, although she’s pretty old—maybe thirty-five.”

  “Yes, it is sad,” Ulla agreed.

  “But anyhow, Ulla, I think maybe during Christmas holiday when you have more time you should go back and work at the Chameleon. I mean, not as a naked girl. Just, you know, as the bookkeeper and the cigarette girl.”

  “I don’t think so.” There was a weariness in her voice.

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, it’s complicated.”

  “Mama and Papa?”

  “No, not really. Although I doubt they would approve of the nude Brandenburg Gate tableau.”

  “But Hessie has already told them that the place was all right. They don’t know about the gate thing and—” The tune of the cabaret song came back to me. “It’s not Karl, is it? He’s not the reason, is he?”

  Ulla’s entire demeanor changed. Her eyes hardened. “No!” she barked. “Let’s just drop it, please.”

  I was taken aback by her sharp tone. It was not like Ulla.

  She looked down again at the course outline. “Too bad that you won’t get to do The Maid of Orleans. But I guess it’s to be Hamlet. You would have made a good Joan of Arc. Remember the year my class gave it? My friend Anna was Joan.” Ulla tapped the outline with her finger. She got a very faraway look in her eyes that was almost wistful. I wondered if she was missing that time in her life. I realized that Ulla now didn’t seem as different to me as she had last summer when she and Karl had come to Caputh. She had lost a bit of that languorous quality, some of her ease, and maybe some of her confidence. Maybe she was just nervous about her audition for the conservatory, but that was still about two months away.

  However, yet another election was just one month off, and everyone was nervous about that. Would Hitler gain more seats? Could he possibly lose seats, and if he did, would that be the end of him and his party?

  chapter 21

  The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.

  - Albert Einstein

  On the morning of November seventh when I came to the breakfast table Mama and Papa were almost jubilant. “Look at this!” Papa held up to the Vossiche Zeitung with a headline NAZIS LOSE 34 SEATS!

  When Hertha came in with the eggs, I tried to judge her demeanor. I had remembered that shadow of a smile when she had listened behind the kitchen door to Hitler on the radio in Caputh. Would she betray any emotion now? No—her face was expressionless.

  There was a picture in the paper of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s right-hand man, looking quite dour. This was the first time in a long time that the strength of the Nazi Party, the great flood, seemed to begin to ebb. Papa cocked his head and looked thoughtful.

  “I just hope . . .”

  “What is it, Otto? Please, pass the cream, Ulla,” Mama said.

  “Well, I just hope that this defeat doesn’t cause a backlash—like in twenty-nine.”

  “Do you mean the stock market crash?” I asked.

  Mama waved her hand dismissively. “Otto, you cannot compare this to nineteen twenty-nine.”

  “Hrrerf!”Papa made a growlish sound deep in his throat. “In nineteen twenty-nine, we were just beginning to recover from the poverty of the Great War and here we were getting poor again. Millions were thrown out of work. People were looking for scapegoats. Jews were a handy target—books by Jews, ideas that were not Aryan. It was a backlash and it certainly gave Hitler an opportunity. The right-wing National Socialist students at the university began a campaign to ‘cleanse’ the university.” He growled again.

  “‘Cleanse’?” I asked. “The stone front of the main building was just scrubbed last year. It g
leams now, it’s so bright.”

  Ulla dipped her head down and stared straight into her coffee.

  “Not that kind of cleansing,” Papa replied. “A purge of offensive books. They confiscated several before it was stopped, somehow. Goebbels was behind it, of course. He is a master at this kind of thing. He knew how to exploit the despair and manipulate the student union. If Hitler didn’t have Goebbels, he’d be lost.”

  I stood up and went around the table to look at the picture in the paper of the man who was often called the dwarf.

  “Why do they always call him a doctor in the paper?”

  “He has a doctorate in literature,” Mama said, “unbelievable as it might seem.” It did seem not just unbelievable but almost fantastical to me. Had Goebbels read Goethe? Written analyses of the imagery of Goethe? Studied Shakespeare and reflected on the tragic flaws in characters, or in exams been asked to compare the meter of Heine to the iambic pentameter of Shakespeare? And now this man worked for Hitler.

  “What does he actually do for Hitler?” I asked.

  “He is officially the Gauleiter, the regional party leader. But he does much more than a normal party leader,” Papa said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Well, for one thing he made the ‘Horst Wessel Song’ the anthem of the Nazi Party. His most important job is that he directs propaganda—that is where his real talents lie. He loves a fight. And now the dwarf has got one.” Papa tapped the paper with his fingers.

  “How come people often call him a dwarf?” I asked looking at the newspaper. “He doesn’t look especially short. It’s just an insult, right?” Giftzwerg, poisonous dwarf, was a common slanderous term.

  “Yes, just an insult. He’s not really a dwarf. He has a clubbed foot that perhaps makes him scuttle along a bit. But dwarf or not, he’s one to watch. If Hitler didn’t have him, things would be a lot better. But Hitler would probably find another Giftzwerg!”