The Fifth Column

by Andrew Gross

  It was my Thursday with Emma and we were sitting around the kitchen table working on a jigsaw puzzle I had brought with me. A Swiss mountain scene in the Alps with a large Saint Bernard dog, since Emma suddenly seemed in love with all things Swiss.

  Mrs. Shearer stayed in the other room, putting away her newly ironed clothes.

  “Aunt Trudi says the Saint Bernard is the national animal of Switzerland. ’Cause they always save people in the mountains. And they always come with a cask of schnapps around their necks.”

  “I thought it was cognac,” I said.

  Emma looked at me quizzically.

  “It’s a liquor. It burns going down so it’s supposed to bring people back to life.”

  “She called it schnapps,” she said, and placed a piece in the puzzle. “Look, Daddy, it fits.”

  “Very good! So have you learned any more German words?” I asked her.

  “A few. Let’s see. Blume,” she said. “It means flower. And Himmel. That means sky.”

  “Sky, huh? Look at this.…” I fit a large blue-and-white squiggle myself right into where the snowcapped mountain met the blue sky. “Voilà!”

  “Very good, Daddy. Oh, and lebens … Lebens to Betsy it sounds like. I like that word.”

  “Lebens…?” I said. It sounded familiar. “You mean ‘heavens to Betsy’?”

  “No, lebens. Lebens-room. Lebens-roof…” She tried to squeeze in a puzzle piece around the green meadow, but it wasn’t fitting. “Daddy, this is hard.”

  “It is hard, honey. I agree. So, listen, lebens…?” I asked her again. She had said room or roof? “You don’t mean lebens-raum, do you?” Where would she come across such a term as this? I figured there wasn’t a chance in the world that this was right.

  “Yes, that’s it!” Emma said brightly. “Lebensraum.”

  I stared at her. That was the word I’d heard the other night on the newsreel. Lebensraum. Living space. Uttered by Adolf Hitler. It had sent a half million Germans into a frenzy of joy.

  She continued to try to fit pieces into the puzzle without answering.

  “Honey, listen to me a second.” I held back her arm to get her attention. “Where would you hear such a word? Lebensraum.”

  “From Uncle Willi,” she said. “Where else? I heard him say it.”

  “Willi?” I put down the puzzle piece I was trying to find a home for. “Heard him say it how, honey?”

  “I don’t know.… He was talking to Aunt Trudi. Daddy, what makes the snow stay on the mountains when it’s warm?”

  “A lot of it is the altitude. It’s cold that high up. Did he tell you what it means?”

  “Who?”

  “Uncle Willi. About Lebensraum. Did he tell you what the word meant?”

  She didn’t answer. She just continued trying to fit pieces in the puzzle without much luck, repeating, “Lebens-room, lebens-raum. Lebens to Betsy,” in kind of a distracted, singsong voice.

  “Emma, listen to me, honey.” I took hold of her arm. “Did Uncle Willi tell you what it means?”

  “He told Aunt Trudi.” She put in a piece neatly and looked up with a grin of satisfaction.

  “And what did he say?” I said.

  “He said it was ‘the future.’”

  “The future.” My heart stumbled to a stop. Mrs. Shearer came back in and seemed to hover near the kitchen, tidying up. And I didn’t want to involve her. I thought back to the newsreel speech I had watched the other day. A half million Germans cheering wildly. Hitler pounding his fist. Lebensraum. As soon as she left I went back to Emma. “I just want to be clear, honey. Lebens-raum? You’re sure of that?”

  “Yes, Daddy, I’m sure. Why, is it a bad word?” She looked up at me.

  “No, of course it’s not a bad word,” I said, with a glance to Mrs. Shearer. “But let’s not use it. Someone might get the wrong meaning.”

  “All right,” she said. She tried a piece in the Saint Bernard’s face and it fit perfectly. “Look, it fits!”

  * * *

  As I was leaving later that day, I knocked on the door of the Bauers’ apartment across the hall. Willi Bauer came to the door. He was dressed in a vest and tie with his pocket chain showing. A pipe in hand. His ruddy face lit up in a wide smile. “Why, Mr. Mossman! How good to see you. Please, we were just having some coffee. Come in, come in.” I heard classical music in the background.

  “Thanks. I can’t stay,” I said.

  Trudi Bauer stuck her head out from the kitchen, wearing an apron. “Good afternoon, Mr. Mossman, what a nice surprise. We were just about to have an afternoon coffee.”

  “Call me Charlie, please,” I said.

  “All right, Charlie. But please, come in.”

  I stepped inside the apartment. Their place was considerably larger than Liz’s. The living room was spacious, with a window looking out over the street; it was decorated with antiques, a navy embroidered couch and love seat, and a brass-filigreed coffee table. There was an arrangement of silver-framed photos on a front table and some oils, mostly landscapes, on the walls. A large phonograph sat on a side table; it sounded like Mozart playing. Willi went over and lifted the needle. The smell of pipe tobacco wafted in the air.

  “Mozart’s Jupiter. One of our favorites. Come…” He pointed to the love seat. “Please sit.”

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” I said, taking a seat. “I’m just curious about a word I heard Emma use today. Something in German.”

  “Of course,” he said curiously. He put his pipe down. “I hope you don’t mind us teaching her a bit. And what is that?”

  “Lebensraum.”

  “Lebensraum?” Willi’s face turned serious. “Are you certain that was it?”

  “Yes. I asked her specifically. She repeated it several times. She even made it into a little song. Lebens to Betsy.”

  “Lebensraum. Not a phrase I would ever use,” he said, somberly shaking his head.

  “I only heard it myself for the first time the other day,” I said, “in a newsreel at the Orpheum. In a speech given by Hitler.”

  “Who else, of course.” He nodded with a frown. Trudi Bauer stepped out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. “That man … He’s giving everyone with a German heritage a bad name.”

  “Where would a child hear such a thing?” Trudi said, taking a seat next to her husband.

  “Actually,” I said, looking at Willi, “she said she heard it from you.”

  “From me?” Willi Bauer’s eyes grew twice their size. He looked as shocked and dismayed as I had. “Impossible.”

  “Yes. In fact, she said you called it ‘the future.’”

  “The future! Mein Gott. Not a future I would ever be a part of. She must have been mistaken.” He looked at Trudi, trying to put it together. “Liebsnatur, perhaps—a similar-sounding word. The love of nature, or something like that we may have said. I recall you were reading her a poem by Goethe, weren’t you, darling? About the linden trees.”

  “Yes, yes,” Trudi said. “I recall now. So many German words, they are all long and sound alike. For her to have heard Willi say such a thing … The future … Ach, we would never say anything like that around Emma. She’s like a part of the family to us.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” I said, outwardly giving in. But inwardly, I wasn’t as sure. Liebsnatur … That wasn’t even close to what Emma had said. Lebens-room, lebens-roof, she had playfully sung. Still …

  I said, “Who knows what a six-year-old picks up? And where? Anyway, I’m sorry to have bothered you with this.” I stood up. “But you can imagine, if such a word was heard at school and interpreted the wrong way. With all that’s going on.”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Willi Bauer said, standing as well. “We understand perfectly. Surely not any future we would want any part of, right, dear?” He placed his hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Of that you can be sure.”

  8

  Over the next month, there were many things that kept bringing my mind back to
Willi and Trudi Bauer. After hearing their feeble explanation on Lebensraum, how awkward it was, and how nervous they seemed, I found myself focused on little else.

  First, there were the visitors, all of whom seemed so uncomfortable to be discovered there on the landing outside the Bauers’ apartment. Who always seemed to avert their eyes whenever Emma and I stepped out. In the following weeks, we encountered two more of them. “Customers,” Trudi Bauer had sighed wearily, “they come at all hours.” They both looked so awkward and fidgety and unhappy to be discovered there. They didn’t have the look of customers to me.

  Then, there was Emma’s use of the word I’d heard. Lebensraum. And the Bauers’ nervous and uncomfortable explanation for what it was Emma must have surely meant. It wasn’t just the word, but Emma picking up that they had called it “the future.” Not any future we would want any part of, they were quick to defend themselves. But where else would that have come from? I even took the opportunity to ask Emma about it again, when Mrs. Shearer had stepped out to do some cleaning. “Are you sure that word was Lebensraum, honey, and not something else?”

  “Yes, Daddy, you already asked me,” she said. “Lebensraum. But don’t worry, I haven’t used it again.”

  “That’s good, peach. That’s good.”

  I even questioned the building’s maintenance man, a large, hulking lug named Curtis, from Minnesota or South Dakota or somewhere, who lived in the basement apartment, as he was outside having a cigarette on the street. I had bumped into him once or twice, and the conversation had never gone further than the Yanks or the weather. He never looked very happy in his job. At some point, I took a risk and asked him about Willi and Trudi. How nice they were? How long they’d lived in the building?

  “For as long as I’ve been here,” he said. He had a kind of a “home-country” Scandinavian accent I couldn’t place. “All I know is that they’re good, decent people. Always treat me well. Nothing to spend your time on. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have this drain to fix,” he said, pointing to an outside runner that had backed up. “Happens every fall.”

  “Sure.” I thanked him. He seemed like a pretty square guy.

  And then there was the time the following week when I was sitting in the Old Heidelberg again on Third Avenue having a coffee. I’d just left Emma for the night, and was at a table at the outside café, the weather being unseasonably warm, paging through the afternoon Sun (reading of the sinking of the American destroyer the Kearny in the North Atlantic by a German U-boat, many calling it an act of war), yet a part of me was keeping an eye on the street for Liz, in the silly hope I might catch a glimpse of her as she came home. I’d noticed the bags from the A&P where she shopped for groceries, just down the street. Some good things had happened for me and I wanted to tell her. I’d found work grading the occasional paper for Otto Brickman. Really, all I wanted to tell her was how great I thought Emma was, and to be back in her life.

  Next to the Old Heidelberg was another café called The Purple Tulip, with an outdoor café as well. Before I went away, the place was one of those spots that hosted local meetings of the German American Bund and had speakers there all the time spouting America First and pro-Nazi propaganda. Now the Nazi flags were gone, of course, but everyone knew it was still a place you could have the right conversation over a beer.

  It was going on seven and I hadn’t seen any sign of Liz. I was just about to get up and leave—I thought maybe I’d catch a show at the Orpheum down on Eighty-sixth—when I suddenly spotted her across the street in her beige coat, heading home. My heart springing to life, I jumped up, and for a moment, thought I would rush over and intercept her. I reached in my pocket and threw a few bucks on the table.

  But then she went up to a man who was waiting on the corner. A nice-looking man in a brown suit and hat. They kissed on the cheek. There’s someone I occasionally see, she had said. He works for an advertising company. Suddenly I realized how foolish it might seem, having to explain who I was. Or maybe she already had, and it wasn’t so complimentary. So I just stood there. He took her arm and they headed downtown on Third Avenue and I sat back down in disappointment.

  My gaze drifted over to the café next door, and it seemed to fall, like a heavy weight drawn by gravity, on the face of someone sitting barely ten feet away, in a brown pin-striped suit, legs crossed, a cigarette in an ashtray.

  At first, of course, I had no idea who he was. Casually sipping his coffee. His eyes lifted and for an instant we locked on each other, two people I was sure who had no idea who the other was. Like happens to anyone a thousand times in the city.

  Until suddenly through the fog it dawned on me precisely where I’d seen him before.

  And this time my heart came to a stop.

  It was the first man I had seen on Emma’s landing. At the Bauers’ apartment door. When we were heading out for ice cream and I had taken Trudi Bauer’s letters from her to mail. His long, gaunt face and deep-set eyes and the mole on his chin brought it all back for me. A customer, she had called him. He had tipped his hat to Emma and me. And here he was at The Purple Tulip, a place popular with the pro-Nazi crowd, not even a week after the Bauers had had to explain away their use of a word associated with the Nazi cause. A tremor ran down my spine. He glanced my way one more time. This time I averted my eyes. It was simply too much of a coincidence to believe. I had no idea if he had recognized me. If he was on his way to the Bauers’? Or if he somehow lived in the neighborhood. No, My meeting ended early, I recalled him saying. But I was sure it was him. Though there was no crime in it, of course. Any of it. It was a public place, the same as any restaurant on the street, and normally it wouldn’t have aroused a second thought in me, except for how the Bauers had been occupying my mind lately.

  I averted my eyes back to my paper.

  Did he recognize me?

  A minute or two later it became moot, as the man stood up, tossed a bill or two on the table, took hold of his raincoat, and made his way out of the café, never even looking my way. At a lull in the traffic he crossed the street mid-block and turned down Eighty-eighth. Toward where the Bauers lived. Where Liz and Emma lived.

  My heart continued to pound until he finally turned the corner and disappeared.

  I felt no more nervous than if I’d discovered a Nazi spy.

  9

  The next time I came to visit Emma I stayed on until after six. Ironing, Mrs. Shearer subtly reminded me of the time. “Five thirty, Mr. Mossman,” she announced, looking at the clock. Then, a quarter to six. Then not so subtly: “Mr. Mossman, don’t you think it’s time you got along your way? Mrs. Mossman will be home shortly.”

  “I’m aware of the time, Mrs. Shearer.”

  Emma seemed happy to have the extra time with me to read through a Ginger comic book I had bought her, about a buxom teenage girl who batted her eyes at every boy in school and had quickly become America’s high-school sweetheart.

  Around six twenty, I heard Liz’s key in the door.

  She stopped in the entrance, both smiling slightly and slightly cross, surprised to see me there. I could read on her face the exhausted demeanor of someone at the end of a long day. But she quickly lightened at the sight of Emma and me paging through the adventures of the country’s most flirtatious teenager.

  “Charlie, she’s six,” she said in a mildly rebuking way, putting the groceries down. “I didn’t see that on her first-grade reading list.”

  I said, “You know, I was told someone asked Ginger, ‘So what do you consider to be the most outstanding development in recent years in history?’” I held up the cover, showing Ginger mooning over a boy at her desk. “‘The history teacher,’ she said.” Then, the moment the words got out of my mouth I realized how insensitive it had sounded, given Marymount and Natalie. “Sorry.”

  “Well, I’m so glad that’s what you’ve got my daughter reading,” Liz said, seeming not to take offense. “I didn’t expect to see you, Charlie.” Instead of upset, her eyes actually appeared
pleasantly surprised.

  “Actually, there was something I wanted to talk to you about…,” I said.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Shearer. Has Emma had dinner?”

  “She has, ma’am. I tried to tell Mr. Mossman it was time to get her in her pj’s,” she said, putting the groceries away. “And, that the choice of reading was not altogether appropriate.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Liz said, taking off her coat. “My husband’s never been particularly appropriate.”

  I wasn’t sure she took it as a joke. “Well, I’ll be going then if it’s okay with you,” Mrs. Shearer announced. “I’m late as it is for my bus.” She slowly put on her coat, taking her time, but I waited in awkward silence while she tidily put her things in her purse, went through with Liz a list of things that were needed from the market, and finally said goodbye. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.” I waited until I heard her shoes heading down the staircase before I said anything else.

  “That woman barely trusts me with five minutes with my daughter,” I finally said, shaking my head.

  “I admit, she does feel a bit proprietary toward Emma. She’s had her to herself these past two years. Emma, darling, would you go get into your pajamas for me?”

  “Yes, Mommy. Look how Daddy helped me with my writing.” She showed Liz the lined composition book. “You know how I always have trouble with my Gs.”

  “I was always a whiz at Gs,” I said. “Goya. Galileo. Gregory IX…”

  “Gregory IX? Who’s that?”

  “Famous pope. Lived around 1230 AD. Responsible for decreeing the Inquisition.”

  “Lovely, Charlie. A legacy to be proud of. I might have said Betty Grable myself,” Liz countered. “Anyway, good work, sweetheart.” She draped a hand against Emma’s cheek. “We’ll go over it later. Right now, just get yourself together.”

  “Okay, Mommy.”

  Emma left and I waited till I heard her open her chest inside to say, “Basically I just wanted to tell you how great Emma is, Liz.”