Thump.
Ella Fitzgerald was singing about why she loved Paris.
‘Did you leave the record player on?’ said Hannah.
‘I don’t-‘ but he never got further than that. Even if he had, the record would not still be playing. Suddenly he was afraid.
What if Isaac is right?
For an instant he wanted to turn back. The fear came to him in a way he had not experienced for years. In fact since after the war he had never been afraid. What was there left to be afraid of? He had seen and done the worst a man could do to his fellow man and he had lived. From then on he made sure that fear would never be a part of his life, never determine his actions and decisions. And now it was back to reclaim his body and mind.
Isaac and many others had never managed to do it and their lives were forever tarnished by the war. A restraint that limited how deeply you could breathe and how far you could see. What Isaac took in with his eyes and ears poisoned him and everything he touched. He transferred this poison to his children. Everyone they met could smell it on them as sure as they wore it like a chain around their necks.
Saul and Mark had tried to help him. For years they met regularly with their families, at least once a month for picnics and dinners, play-dates with the kids and birthdays. The three men also met alone to talk. The women boasting that the men needed their time alone to get drunk and do whatever men did when they met up. Lie about women and tell crude jokes probably.
Saul and Isaac drank. Mark had given up. Mark had turned his face back to God. Meeting alone was a necessity as Saul had not told his wife and neither had Mark. So they would meet and talk things over but in the end this self-help group brought them nothing but tears and pain. Regurgitating the past meant it was always present. Mark was forever trying to impose God on them and Saul was guilty of attempting to prescribe his method of mind control and Stoic principles.
Happiness by positive thinking was something that only Americans believed in. Such a state was never achievable: Saul had made it clear that trying to put a positive spin on everything was their first mistake. When things went wrong, and they always did, these positive images were the first to crumble. Tranquility was the best man could hope for and this was what the Stoics believed. Saul encouraged them to live in accordance with nature’s laws and accept the negative without judgement. There was no good or bad, there was only opinion and if they could get rid of their opinions and judgments they could be at peace.
The important point was to live in the present: the past could not be changed and no-one could tell what the future would bring.
But Isaac could not forget the past and Mark could not accept that all men were brothers destined to help each other and live in a community harmonious with “nature” whatever the fuck that meant. The Nazis were evil. What they had done was evil. Why was Saul trying to forgive them?
For Saul it was not a question of forgiveness. He argued that the only way the Nazis had done what they had done was by tearing their souls away from the fabric of nature and damaging their souls beyond repair in the process. A gas chamber was not evil. A gun was not evil. If they could accept their fate and not judge it, they could be ‘happy’ again. Only by facing the worst case scenarios could they begin to realise that they mean nothing in themselves. One could lose one’s job, wife, house, children and still live a contented life. Thinking about loss was not bad. It helped us love what we have when we have it and surely that was the point.
In the end both methods failed: Mark was no Rabbi and Saul was not studied enough or dedicated enough to answer their questions and overcome his own doubts in the system he proposed.
They began to resent each other. Instead of support they had argued: about God, about justice, about telling their wives and about all the if onlys. They had even argued about their work assignments.
Isaac claimed he had the toughest job. A dentist’s life was not easy. Do you think being a stoker was a piece of cake? Mark had argued. Both had agreed that Saul had it easy. Saul pointed out that neither of them had dealt with the living, neither of them had looked into those vital eyes and lied more convincingly than any politician ever could: They were all broken and this fact shamed them.
Saul cancelled on them once and that made the whole process easy. One missed meeting turned into two and then the phone calls to reschedule became fewer and fewer until they stopped even bringing it up. Once the kids were in school and had their own friends they even stopped meeting with their families; fifteen years later not one of them could even remember why they never met anymore.
Standing in the hall with his heart beating double-time and sweat pouring down his back Saul tried to free his mind enough from the clasp of fear to think through the options: They could go downstairs and call the police from the call box on the corner of the street. But how would he explain that?
He could shout into the apartment; letting them know he knew they were there, but if he opened his mouth now he was not sure any sound worthy of aggression would be produced.
He could go into the apartment first and face whatever there was to face alone and maintain some surprise; there were knives in the kitchen. At least Hannah could escape with the girl.
He selected the last option. He would stand and face whatever there was to be faced. But his feet had decided to grow roots and a sudden rush of fatigue washed through him. Fear is something that you get used to living with and he had let himself get old and out of practice. Stupid old man.
Aisha beat him to the punch and ran down the hall towards the living room.
No!
‘Aisha!’ he found his voice too late. She was in the living room. He bolted after her.
The scream took him by surprise. He stopped dead. In that instant everything stopped, he even forgot how to breathe.
Then the laughter came. She was giggling. Saul felt Hannah behind him, exchanging confused looks they walked into the living room.
Aisha was on the sofa writhing and screaming with delight as Aaron tickled his niece. Observing this was a stunning brunette that neither of them had seen before. The brunette wore a plain white summer dress, sandals and big smile that revealed some expensive dental work.
‘Aaron!’ said Saul and Hannah simultaneously.
Aaron broke off his attack and stood to greet his parents with hugs.
‘Why didn’t you tell us you were coming?’ said Hannah. Her eyes turned to the lovely stranger.
Aaron straightened out his faded Live Aid T-shirt.
‘Mama, Papa, this is Mira Silberberg, my girlfriend.’
Saul shook her soft hand and searched her eyes. Clear and honest and the way she smiled was as if she had just thought of something funny.
‘Hello.’
‘Nice to meet you at last.’ There was an American accent to her German.
‘What a nice surprise for Sabbath,’ said Hannah. ‘For a moment I thought you were going to say wife not girlfriend.’
‘Easy, Mutti.’ Aisha had come back for more and Aaron picked her up. ‘And this bag of trouble is Aisha.’ He tried to give her a kiss but she squirmed away from him.
‘Nooooo.’
‘No more kisses I’m afraid,’ said Saul.
The song ended and another one started, Saul found the source of the music: A black box.
‘What’s this?’ said Saul, squatting.
Aaron came over and joined him, Aisha and the women not far behind.
‘It’s called a CD player.’ said Aaron proudly. ‘About time you stopped listening to last centuries technology.’
‘Will it play my - um..’
‘No.’
‘But-‘
Mira handed him a CD and Saul examined the object from both sides: No grooves and could be used as a mirror.
‘There’s all the songs on this?’
‘Right,’ said Mira. ‘You have to listen to it when you’re alone. It will be like Ella’s in the room wit
h you.’ She gave him a smile and fixed him with her large brown eyes. Her perfume had a distinct zesty bergamot tone to it which Saul found pleasing.
Saul smiled back and found himself thinking that his son had done well for a change. Much better than the tattooed girl with all the piercings or the one with green hair and holes in her stockings. Mira was a woman and Saul decided he was about as proud as any father could be when he realises his son had become a man.
Mira took the CD back.
‘Let me show you how.’ She ejected the CD that was playing, the music stopped abruptly and the door slid smoothly open.
‘You eject the CD by pressing this. Put the new one in and press the play button.’ The machine ate the CD and the music started. ‘You can skip to the next song or
go back by pressing one of these.’ She demonstrated.
‘No…thingy?’ Saul used his index finger and spun it around in a circle to indicate what he meant.
‘No needle. No hiss. No scratching. Just pleasure.’ She could sell these for a living thought Saul. He cleared his throat.
‘Let’s eat.’
#
Aisha had been put to bed kicking and screaming. She had wanted to stay up late like the adults. Hannah remained firm but promised to take her to feed the ducks at Schloss Charlottenburg the next day if she was a good girl and went to bed but Aisha was intractable. Finally, Hannah had let her cry alone for about fifteen minutes hoping she would calm down. It did not work. Saul went in as the B-Team (like the good old days) and held her until she was calm. A story was promised and Aisha, flexing her new found power had requested that Aaron read it. The deal done, Saul left the bedroom and informed Aaron he had been drafted. Thirty minuets later Aisha was asleep and Saul and Hannah had started on the red wine: This was the part of parenting they had forgotten about.
Whenever they dusted the album off and flicked through the photographs all they saw were smiles and grey skies; by the time Aaron was born it was smiles and blue skies. Never once was there a picture of a cut knee or a teething baby or chicken pox or a fight. Saul remembered that the girls could be incredibly mean to each other and he would not have been surprised if they had grown up to hate one another. However, the dawn of adulthood had proved his concerns unfounded and the young women had become good friends. How much of this was actually to do with them becoming adults or simply because they had a common enemy in Hannah, Saul was not sure. It was about this time that Hannah had opened up ‘the second front’ and Saul was a big believer in the notion that every group needed a hate figure to function well. In this case he thought it best never to push his daughters for the truth.
Hannah had outdone herself on this Sabbath; she had a guest to impress. There was enough food for eight and the living room table had had to be extended to its full length just to accommodate all the dishes. Judging by the way Aaron was eating she might need to return to the kitchen.
Aaron had completed a computer science degree but gone back for more; thinking that a Master’s would improve his chances in the workplace. Computers were the future and anyone who failed to educate himself or herself in a programming language would suffer in the years to come: This was his mantra. Try as he might, Saul could not see how a computer could help him bake bread, but he did not begrudge his son’s passion. He had a laissez-faire approach to parenting which on occasion put him at odds with Hannah’s more traditional Jewish mother stance. More often than not he would defer to her in a public spat, preferring to counsel his children on a one to one basis.
‘So you’re still studying?’ Saul asked Mira.
‘Yes. I read Jewish Studies at Columbia-‘
‘Jewish Studies?’ said Saul with surprise. Was there such a thing? Could you get a job with Jewish Studies?
‘That’s what I said,’ said Aaron with his mouth full.
Mira shot him a look and Aaron returned to his food, tail between his legs.
‘Our history and culture,’ Mira finished.
‘Well I’m glad you take an interest in your traditions. Some of us don’t care at all. Some of us work the Sabbath.’ Hannah had her eye on Saul.
‘Ouch,’ said Aaron with a smile.
‘Saturday is our busiest day,’ countered Saul and then to Mira, ‘All these years of marriage and she’s still trying to convert me’.
‘And I won’t stop.’
‘Heaven help me.’
‘See, Mama, it’s working.’
Hannah turned to Mira.
‘When did you come to Germany?’
‘Two years ago to start my PhD, with emphasis on the holocaust. I have even been to Poland to visit Auschwitz, working with some students on a dig.’ She turned to Saul, ‘Aaron tells me you were there?’
Silence.
‘Mira, I don’t think that’s appro-‘
Saul cut him off.
‘That’s okay. I don’t dwell on the past. Done is done.’
‘That simple?’ Mira enquired.
‘Simple is the wrong word, but how can you live if you can’t get beyond it? People sometimes ask why I came back to Germany, of all places. We tried to live in Israel after the war but I never felt at home there. This is my home.’ He took Hannah’s hand, gave it a squeeze and then ended on a lighter note. ‘Besides I could never get the hang of Hebrew anyway.’
The truth was not as simple as that. After the war his taste for learning and taking on new things had diminished. There was simply no enthusiasm left. He longed for home and despite what has happened to his family and many others, Berlin was still home. So he wore Hannah down - wore her family down and then they made the move back. For many years now all he had spoken was German and the trip to London had proved to him that despite believing his English was still good the reality was that all the finer vocabulary had gone. And English was a language he heard often in Berlin. He shuddered to think what his French was like these days.
It had taken some doing; convincing Hannah’s father that it would be safe to go back to Germany but once he had seen that his daughter was intent to follow her new husband he had no choice but to relent however, his feelings were so strong that he never travelled to Germany to visit his daughter or grandchildren. The travel was always one-way. This suited Saul, who relied on the excuse that he had the business to run and so could not go with them.
Convincing Hannah had been tough. She was happy in Tel Aviv. She had fallen in love and become a woman; she had friends and relatives. He was alone and had nothing to give up. He had argued that the country had changed. The people had changed too; whatever spell they were under had been lifted. They deserved another chance. Most importantly, they themselves were German and had every right to live there. If all the Jews left Europe it would be like the Nazis won. They had to go back. There was no better way of making a population understand your culture than living among them. The arguments had fallen on deaf ears but Saul was adamant and so she was left with the choice: Follow your husband as tradition dictates or leave him.
‘Well, you may want to forget and as a survivor I respect your choice,’ said Mira.
‘But,’ said Saul.
‘But for me it’s living history. I lost family there. My grandparents and some uncles and aunts. I would like to think that my work will bring justice to those who committed murder. Or do you think they should be forgiven? Done is done?’
‘Mira, no one is saying that,’ said Hannah.
‘They should be strung up for what they did,’ said Aaron vehemently.
Saul was astounded. Aaron had never been political, where was this coming from? He had brought his children up to be German first and Jewish second. He shot a glance at Mira, who seemed to be agreeing with Aaron. This was her talking through him; he was convinced of that.
‘Is it revenge or justice you are after?’ Saul’s voice had found command. He had not meant to put it so strongly but there it was: The conversation killer.
Everybody looked fo
r refuge on his or her plate, eating in silence. Hannah provided them with a release.
‘What’s it like behind the Iron Curtain?’
Mira took the bait.
‘Grey and the people have fangs and claws!’
They all laughed and like that it was back to normal.
‘No, the Poles were very welcoming and they have the best vodka in the world!’
‘Well, that’s it,’ said Aaron raising his glass. ‘What did he say today? “Mr. Gorbachev, let's tear down that wall!”’ Aaron drained his wine glass spilling some on his T-shirt.
They all laughed, except Hannah who was shaking her head with a wry smile. Saul was drawn in by Mira’s out of place laugh. In that instant she had reverted back to the friendly girl trying to make a good impression and it was as if Saul could see the internal mental adjustment she was making. No more probing or questioning for tonight - this was not an interview for her PhD. Her eyebrows were nicely shaped and her make-up applied with such a light touch that at first glance it looked as though she was not wearing any. Her nose was not particularly Jewish but he could find no hint of scars or other signs of plastic surgery that was, apparently, all the rage in America. He managed to avert his gaze before she realised he was staring.
#
The women were in the kitchen: Hannah had her hands deep in dishwater scrubbing the items that did not belong in the dishwasher that Mira was stacking. Mira had insisted on helping out rather than stay with the men in the living room. Hannah took this as a good sign; in this day and age it was hard to find a young woman who was still happy to lead a traditional life even if it meant working harder than the men. She understood that the woman of today had so many more choices than she had been given as a young woman and this was only just. They had come to expect more too, which was also proper but she did find herself worrying for the future of the family: If there was no family there was no future for society as a whole. At least her children were at an age to be left unsupervised when she started her work at the bakery. Mira and Aaron might not have the luxury.
The White House Page 4
