by Belva Plain
With his mouth dropped open, Joachim stood and stared. Paul grasped his arm.
“Let’s get the hell out of here. Which way can we go?”
Now it was he who propelled the other along. But the throng behind them was surging forward again toward the marchers. Elated by the triumphant bugles and drums, gleeful and cheering, it rushed to march with the columns. Joachim and Paul were moved along with it, swept into a surge of violent energy. Paul stumbled and fortunately caught himself. To fall here would be fatal; one would be trampled by these people who, in their frenzy, would be as indifferent to a single human being as a herd of stampeding beasts would be.
The march emerged into a square. The marching mass melded into the mass already there, as it forced its way through a crush of human beings. In the center of the square, on a platform, another brown-shirted man was speaking. His threatening tone and threatening gestures now willed the people into silent attention.
“Streicher,” Joachim whispered into Paul’s ear. “His picture was in that paper you bought.”
Joachim’s eyes were bright with excitement and curiosity. Paul saw no fear in them. But he himself was terrified and not ashamed of it.
“How do we get out of here? For Christ’s sake, you know these streets. I don’t!” he whispered back.
He tried to turn around, to press his way out, but it was impossible; no one would move to let him through. So they were forced to stay and hear the speaker to a finish.
Happily for Paul, who knew by now what the man must be saying, he was able to hear almost none of it. The raucous voice, bawling in a foreign language, was a considerable distance away; besides, despite the attentiveness of the listeners there were crowd sounds, coughs and shuffling feet. There were intermittent shouts of approval, which he tried to shut out of his mind, to concentrate on the moment when the dispersing mass would set him free.
The end came at last, a peroration with a raised arm salute. The crowd moved, probably without even knowing where it was going. It simply melted out of the square, while Joachim and Paul, propelled ahead, found themselves entangled with a remnant of armed and uniformed marchers, squeezed into an old narrow street beyond the square.
Paul was tall enough to see above most of the heads in front of him. So it was that he realized, before Joachim could, that they were headed into a trap. At the end of the street, there waited a phalanx of police with guns at the ready.
“My God!” he heard himself cry, and tried to push his cousin toward the side of a building just as chaos broke out.
Some of the marchers attempted to flee in panic when they recognized the situation. Some, in defiance, beat drums and upheld the swastika banners, while others, with guns leveled to fire, headed straight toward the leveled guns of the police.
Shots crackled, sounding far away. People who didn’t know expected them to sound enormous, but actually they made a toy explosion like firecrackers: all this went through Paul’s head as he flattened himself, wanting to crawl through the stone wall of the house to shelter. For a second, his heart stopped: Am I to die, then, on this street in a strange city, for no reason at all?
Then he saw a man fall, and another; then a policeman fell, and the defiant ones, routed and hysterical in their terror, turned and fled. More shots crackled. More men fell. Others stepped over them. Almost none stopped to raise the fallen.
There was a piercing whistle and ping! A ricochet: Joachim fell.
He fell queerly, just slid and slumped against the wall. Panic, a giant hand, closed in Paul’s chest. In a few seconds this had happened, a few seconds. Death in a crazy instant, on a mild morning.
He knelt, staring at Joachim. He rummaged for a handkerchief. Joachim’s dapper breast-pocket handkerchief was bloodied, while Paul’s own had been used. He took his jacket off, removed his clean shirt and tore off a sleeve to make a clumsy bandage, thinking, He’s dead, I don’t know what I’m doing.…
As suddenly as it had begun, the firing ceased. Now came the shattered cries of the wounded and the sound of feet scurrying to save themselves. No one even stopped to look at the two men on the sidewalk.
Paul searched up and down the street. At the far end there was a flurry of movement; the injured were being cared for by their comrades at that end and hastily carried out of sight. But here where Joachim lay, a sudden, almost eerie stillness had followed the commotion. Doors and windows were shut. He tried to think coherently.
To pick him up and try to carry him? But carry him where? To leave him and look for someone? Then Joachim vomited. His eyes flickered, he opened them and retched. Then he sank back. After a minute or two he gave Paul a twisted smile.
“Not dead! You thought I was.”
Relief surged through Paul; he had been on the verge of tears.
“A flesh wound. That’s what it is,” he whispered. Yet how could he be sure? It was a head wound, after all.
“There’s a doctor … a friend … two streets over … I’m awfully weak,” Joachim murmured.
“I’ll help you. Can you walk at all? Lean on me.”
“Wait. I feel faint.”
“We can’t wait too long. I’ll pull you up.”
And Paul had a shock of recollection: One night he’d crept from no-man’s land with a wounded man on his back, only to find, when at last he reached the trench, the man was dead. Five years ago that happened, and here he was caught up again in madness.
“Lean on me. We’ll take a few steps at a time.”
So, unaided, they crept, pausing and resting, through the unreal city.
Dr. Ilse Hirschfeld, a small woman in her early thirties, behaved as though there were nothing strange in the sudden appearance at her office door of two disheveled gentlemen, one with a bloodied head, staggering, while the other, trying to hold him upright, gasped out their story. Slight as she was, she at once took half Joachim’s weight from Paul’s sagging back, and together they got him to a couch.
Relieved of responsibility, Paul took a seat in a corner while the doctor went to work. She was quick and also silent; the silence gave Paul a sense of calmness. He watched her slim fingers—which he imagined must be cool to the touch—examine and cleanse the wound; the ticking of a clock was steady and reassuring; he began to feel his own heartbeat slow down and strength run back along his shaking arms and legs.
At last she dressed the wound, took Joachim’s pulse and blood pressure, and gave a shot of brandy to him and another to Paul.
“Ah, Joachim Nathansohn, luck was with you today,” she exclaimed. “Another fraction of an inch, my friend …” Her wide, unmarked forehead was creased, for an instant, by a frown. “What were you doing on the street with all those savages, anyway?”
“We were caught,” Paul said quickly. “We didn’t know.”
“So. We shall all be caught in one way or another if we’re not careful. However, one problem at a time.” She poured another drink into a small glass and gave it to Joachim. “You need this. You’ll be all right. I want you to lie down for a while, and when I think you’re ready to go home, I’ll tell you. Your friend may stay here with you if he wishes.”
Joachim made apology. “Excuse me, I didn’t introduce you. Paul Werner, my cousin from America. And Dr. Hirschfeld.”
“Joachim, this isn’t a party. Lie down. How do you do, Herr Werner?” She closed the door and left them.
Paul laid his head back on the chair. He had begun to feel a touch of hysterical humor. I do seem to walk right into trouble, don’t I? Dan last month at home, and now after I cross an ocean to get away, comes this business! I suppose it’s just that the world is still not settled after the war. The ocean stays restless long after the storm has passed over.…
“A remarkable woman,” Joachim said after a while. “Do you think she’s good-looking?”
The question seemed completely incongruous in the circumstances, and Paul had to laugh. “You must be feeling a lot better. Yes, when you consider that she’s absolutely unadorned
in her white coat.”
“Elisabeth says she has classic features. Personally, I prefer more curls and ruffles.”
Paul was curious. “Is she married?”
“She’s a widow. Came from Russian Poland with her little boy. Didn’t want to live under communism. She’s built up a good practice here, mostly with women, but some men too. They say she’s excellent, but I myself, you know, I don’t feel I have the same confidence in a woman. Although for a flesh wound like this, she will do very nicely.”
Paul made no comment.
The door opened and the doctor appeared again. She was smiling this time. “You want to hear the news? It came over the radio just now. Also some friends called me. Göring, the fat one, was wounded. Hitler, the brave one, saved himself by falling down, and the rest of them ran away. And that’s the end of the big revolt,” she finished scornfully.
“I don’t understand what it was all about,” Joachim said.
“Don’t understand? Why, they’re supposed to be saving the country from communism, though they’re just as bad, God knows. I ran away from it and just in time, too. But I don’t want to live under these maniacs either.” Her hands searched and refastened Joachim’s bandage. “You can go home. I’ll call a taxi for you. By the way, I wouldn’t let the baby see this until the blood stops seeping and you can change the bandage. It’ll frighten her.”
“I hate to walk in on Elisabeth like this. And when she finds out how it happened! She’s such an alarmist.”
“Elisabeth,” Dr. Hirschfeld told him sternly, “is a realist. There’s a difference.”
“I fear so for the future,” Elisabeth said. She was knitting a sweater while sitting close, leaning against her husband on the sofa.
It occurred to Paul that Marian would be embarrassed by such intimacy.
“Liebchen, as I always say, with you every cold is pneumonia.”
“My God, you went for a walk and you could have been brought back to me dead.”
“You forget, I could have died any day during my four years in the army. But I didn’t.” Joachim turned to Paul, dismissing the subject. “I’m annoyed that we missed a good lunch with Franz, that’s what I’m annoyed about.” He was making light of the horror, not only for his wife’s sake, but partly too for his own; Joachim did not want to think that the sweetness of life could be spoiled.
Elisabeth, however, was not to be dismissed. “Do you realize that in Berlin at the students’ elections more than half the vote went to Nazi candidates? And that in the universities they still read that crazy lie, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?”
“Ach, who reads it, who buys it?”
“They’ve sold thousands and thousands of copies, Joachim.”
“Ach, we’re being scared out of our wits by a pack of gangsters. Don’t you have them in America, Paul? I read about Chicago and Prohibition.”
“It’s not the same.” Paul knew he sounded lame, but he felt in no mood for complicated explanations.
“And if anyone thinks,” Elisabeth went on, “that Jews will be the only sufferers from this violence, he’s wrong. We will only be the first and the most, but plenty of other blood will be spilled too.”
Joachim was irritated. “So what do you propose doing?”
“That we take it seriously and try to stop it or else leave the country before something comes of it. Go to Palestine or someplace. Are there many Zionists in America?” she asked Paul.
“I don’t think so. I don’t know any myself.”
Joachim laughed. “Does Paul look like a Zionist, for goodness’ sake?”
Elisabeth flushed. “What does a Zionist look like? It is the one thing we argue about,” she said seriously to Paul, and put her knitting away.
“Our friends all tease her,” Joachim said. “Elisabeth, my pretty blonde, with a gun in one hand and a hoe in the other.”
“It happens I don’t want to go there,” Elisabeth said, “but I can understand those who do. Yes, I can. I have some very good friends who are Zionists. My friends, not Joachim’s.”
Joachim was scornful. “Poles, naturally. Immigrants! Not Germans. Ach, enough! We shall go on as we always have, you with your babies”—he leaned down and kissed her forehead—“and your poor wounded hero.” He laughed again. “Sorry your visit had to end with this mess, Paul. Listen. Why don’t we have a little celebration to clear the atmosphere? I’ll dress myself up with a fresh bandage, get concert tickets and make dinner reservations for tomorrow night. How does that sound?”
“Fine, provided that you let me be the host. Otherwise, no.”
“If you want it like that,” Joachim agreed. “I’ve already learned that you’re a man who gets his way.”
“Wonderful!” said Elisabeth, and suggested that it would be nice to invite Ilse Hirschfeld. “She’s always so thoughtful. And she doesn’t get out very much, I’m afraid. You have no objection, Paul?”
“None at all,” Paul said.
Often Paul found himself examining people, especially women, as though he were studying a painting, reaching toward the meaning under the surface. More and more as the evening progressed, this woman interested him; her type, in spite of his considerable experience, was new.
“Classic,” Joachim had said. Her face was very white and her straight, shining hair, parted in the center, was very black. Her dark blue dress was plain, adorned only by a heavy twist of pearls around her throat. She wore pearls in her ears and no rings on her narrow hands. This total simplicity extended to her manner. One saw that she had no wiles. Her black eyes, faintly Asiatic, made straight contact; her full mouth opened wide in unaffected laughter.
Conversation, during the supper after the concert, was general if one-sided, for inevitably it was Joachim who commanded. Only a few facts about Ilse emerged: that her boy was ten years old, that she was a serious tennis player, and that she was studying endocrinology in the hope eventually of specializing.
They had not yet had coffee when Ilse looked at her watch. “It’s late and you’re looking tired, Elisabeth. Why don’t we leave now?” And when Elisabeth protested, she scolded, “You needn’t be so polite. I’m your doctor, after all.”
Joachim promptly stood up. “Yes, listen to your doctor. She had a miscarriage last time,” he explained to Paul, “and she mustn’t get tired. But you two stay, have your coffee and pastries—they’re delicious here. You can get a taxi right at the door.”
When the two had departed, Ilse remarked about Elisabeth, “She’s a darling. A sweet, intelligent woman.” There was a pause. “But he adores her.”
Paul, silently filling in what had been left out—and far more intelligent than he—betrayed his thought with an unintentional smile. And Ilse, apparently aware of what she herself had unintentionally revealed, smiled also. The two smiles, meeting, collapsed into mutual laughter.
“I’m very fond of him all the same,” Paul said, after a minute.
“And so am I. Do you know, he has no nerves? I really believe he’s forgotten how close he came to death just yesterday.”
“Forgotten! I wouldn’t be surprised to have a dream about it when I’m eighty.”
Abruptly, Ilse turned somber. “I wonder where it’s all heading. This kind of violence can mean nothing much, or it can grow into a reign of terror, as I saw in Russia.”
“My grandparents were in Paris in 1894 when Dreyfus was convicted. They used to tell about the jeering mobs. But, after all, that was France, they always said, not their beloved Germany. I wonder what they would say if they could see what I saw yesterday.”
Ilse, not replying, finished her coffee. Holding the cup between both hands, she sipped it thoughtfully for a minute and then abruptly changed the subject. “How about a liqueur?”
“Of course. What shall it be?”
“Not here. I meant at my house. That is, if you’d like to.”
“I would like to, very much.”
It had been a long time since Paul had felt the brig
ht anticipation of going home with a stranger and having a drink together to bring an evening to a festive close. He had, truly, no thought beyond just that.
Ilse’s little parlor was, like her, without pretense. The room could have been in Dan and Hennie’s house. People who lived in rooms like this one were obviously not concerned with owning things.
Books, not leather-bound sets or handsome bindings, but books for reading, lay about among journals and magazines. A bag of knitting stood by the sofa and under a table lay a pair of ice skates. Snapshots were stuck into the frame of a mirror. He was looking at them when Ilse came back from the kitchen carrying a small tray with a bottle and glasses.
“That one’s my son,” she told him.
“He has your eyes, hasn’t he?”
“Yes, but he’s like his father. Filled with ideals. He wants to improve everything.”
“At ten?”
“Oh, yes! Right now he’s heard so much about Palestine, and he wants to go there.”
“Would you go?”
“No, no. I’ve seen enough turbulence. My husband was killed on the Russian front. I’m settled here. No more upheavals, if I can help it at least.”
She took a seat opposite, curled her feet beneath her, and warmed the glass between her palms. The sunny liquid tilted under the lamplight. Then she sighed.
“This is very, very pleasant for me, Paul. May I call you Paul?”
“Of course. But you surprise me. Germans are so formal.”
“You forget, I’m not German.”
“Sorry, I did forget. Well, this is very pleasant for me, too, Ilse.”
“But different for you. You’re married. A quiet drink together in a warm room on a chilly night is no novelty to you, while to me, it is.”
He thought, Marian doesn’t drink and she goes to bed long before I do. He said instead, “I shouldn’t think it hard for you to find a companion.”
