The Empire of the Senses

by Alexis Landau

  Since last night at the D’Abernons’, they hadn’t spoken except for clipped terse exchanges. At least Vicki’s presence ameliorated the icy air, but she too was lost in her own thoughts, twirling the ends of her hair, giving Lev a half-hearted smile when their eyes met in the rearview mirror.

  “Shall we stop for lunch in Nuremburg?” Lev asked.

  Josephine sighed. “It’s early.”

  “I’m getting hungry,” Vicki offered.

  Lev stretched his fingers out against the steering wheel. “Otherwise, it’s another five hours.”

  “Fine,” Josephine said, still avoiding eye contact. How impossible she is, Lev thought.

  As they drove into town, men in brown shirts paraded down the road holding banners high above their heads. They were singing and laughing and marching along, their young faces beaming with ebullience. The cerulean blue of the sky was piercing to look at; the color made Lev’s eyes water. Alongside the road, the lush vegetation of summer promised shade and respite. Lev inhaled the clean, pure scent of the country coming in through the open windows, and for a moment, he appreciated the surrounding nature, chastising himself for resisting its charms. The boys marched alongside the car, waving and smiling. Vicki waved back.

  The medieval town rose up before them, the spires strong and imposing, the stone buildings quaint and squat. As they pulled up in front of the hotel, the streets were alive with anticipation. People walked briskly. The shutters of all the houses were thrown open. Women stood on balconies stringing garlands of asters. Getting out of the car, Lev wondered aloud if there was some sort of parade today.

  They decided to walk into the center of town for lunch. Along the way, men tipped their hats at Josephine and Vicki. When Lev accidentally bumped into an older man, the man apologized profusely, clasping Lev’s hand in both of his. Lev joked that Berliners should come here and take a course in manners. For the first time since their fight, Josephine revealed a small smile.

  From three blocks away, they heard a laughing roar swelling toward them. A street band played, caustic brass instruments that made Lev wince. The noise grew in pitch as the crowd approached, moving down the street at a measured pace. Rippling in the warm wind, swastika banners hung from the facades of buildings. Moments later, the marchers came into full view, SA soldiers brandishing the black, white, and red flags of the Hohenzollern empire.

  Lev clutched Vicki’s hand. She flashed him an uncertain look.

  After the first row of men passed, two troopers strode behind, clutching a diminutive figure, head hanging down, flopping from left to right. Dressed in drab loose clothing, muted and rumpled, she could have been mistaken for a man except for the honey-colored hair that hung over her face. As the procession moved closer, Lev felt the crowd bristling with sharp excitement: warm bodies pressing into his back, people straining to see the spectacle standing on tiptoe, their hot baited breath sweeping over his neck. Lev saw her more clearly now—a young woman, her glassy light eyes flitting from face to face, jaw locked, her mouth screwed into a grimace. A semicircle of eager bodies had instantaneously formed around the girl, and the troopers did all they could to keep the people back from pouncing, from tearing at her clothing, her skin, her hair. The crowd clapped and shouted, hurling insults at the girl, urging the troopers on. One of the troopers, after a few excruciating minutes filled with heat and laughter in which the girl started trembling, produced a pair of rusted barber shears from his rucksack. All around, people roared with appreciation.

  Vicki stared at Lev, her eyes widening. “What’s happening?”

  He held Vicki close, one arm around her shoulders, the other one tense by his side.

  The girl jerked back in refusal, her eyes squeezed shut. The trooper—a boy barely older than she was—grabbed a fistful of honey hair. Then he methodically, almost tenderly, started clipping off chunks, following the curve of her skull, careful not to nick her. Head tilted to the side, she kept her eyes closed. The closed eyes, the tilted head oddly reminded Lev of an early-thirteenth-century painting of the Madonna and Child, peaceful, flat dimensionless hand over heart, a halo of gold shimmering around her head as she sorrowfully holds her child in her arms, riddled with the foreknowledge of his crucifixion. Perhaps it was this young girl’s passive resignation that triggered such a strange comparison. He didn’t know. He only knew he had to leave—witnessing such a disgrace brought bile into his throat, made him want to retch on his shoes. But he couldn’t move, packed on all sides with these lusty people who pressed into him, demanding blood. And he must protect Vicki. He didn’t want to draw any attention, and trying to push through the crowd at this pivotal point might steer the crowd’s focus away from the girl and toward them. And then, who could tell what might happen once this collective hungry gaze shifted to Vicki? He stood paralyzed with these thoughts, clenching Vicki’s shoulders, hoping she didn’t fully realize the severity of the situation, how awful it was. Strands of the girl’s hair fell on the hot cobblestones. After the first fistful had been sliced off, people erupted into frantic applause, shouting for more. The trooper paused, held up a hand, and nodded to the crowd—he wasn’t finished yet, not nearly. He would cut it all off—neuter her. A middle-aged woman next to them, her cheeks florid from the heat, sweat stains on her silk blouse, shouted, “A lesson indeed!” She was utterly enthralled, her predatory eyes watering with excitement when the trooper clipped off another chunk.

  Vicki tightened her grip around Lev. “Papa, what has she done?” she whispered.

  The woman overheard and pronounced with an authoritative air, “That girl has been associating with a Jewish man.”

  Lev glanced over at Josephine, standing on the other side of Vicki. She held her head high, staring impassively ahead, as if surmising the sunset or some other benign natural phenomenon. How did she not feel shattered by this? She, who had also committed the sin of loving a Jewish man, now gazed stonily at the poor girl. Perhaps she’s afraid too, Lev thought, and she’s trying to put on a strong front for Vicki, as I am. Or perhaps she’s oblivious to the implications of this, thinking it unfortunate but impersonal, as if witnessing a half-dead bird twitching on the side of the road before speeding by, already on to the next thought.

  When they’d finished, a few patches of uneven hair clung to the girl’s scalp, her light eyes opaque and hooded, her body limp as the troopers dragged her down the street. Gone was that furious refusal, that teeth-grinding fear, as if a filmy membrane encased her, growing over her, a necessary shield against the terror of her circumstances. As the storm troopers went past with the woman, the crowd surged from the sidewalks onto the street behind her. The band struck up the “Deutschlandlied,” and in all directions everyone came to attention, right arms extended in the Hitler salute, singing, Germany, Germany above all. Lev caught Josephine’s eye—he thought she might actually sing along with her arm extended, but she only reached into her purse to retrieve her fan. She fixated on unfolding it, and then used it assiduously, as if the fan and the need for air, for relief from the heat, were the only reasons why she wasn’t singing with the rest of them.

  When the song ended, the procession moved on down the street. Vicki still clung to him, her eyes trained on the cobblestones, but he felt a deep sigh pass through her. Asters fell from overhanging balconies onto their shoulders. Lev touched the soft white petals, clenching a flower in his fist. When he glanced up, two women blew him kisses with both hands, their eyes laughing.

  Afterward, they sat in the bar of a hotel but no one wanted lunch. Josephine pressed a glass of ice water to her forehead. Vicki kept rubbing her face. Tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes. Lev went up to the bar and ordered a vodka. He asked the bartender what had just occurred. The bartender leaned over the counter and lowered his voice. “Especially in Nuremberg, you see, it’s risky for a young gentile woman to openly take up with a Jew.”

  “I don’t understand,” Lev said, heat flooding his face.

  “The mayor of N
uremberg?” When Lev shook his head, the bartender continued, “Hermann Luppe—he authorized the parade. Especially after what was printed in Der Stürmer.” Der Stürmer sounded vaguely familiar to Lev. Perhaps he’d seen it on a few newsstands, but it was a tabloid, the kind of paper read by laypeople who didn’t know any better. But what did the paper have to do with the poor young woman, whose name, the bartender informed him, was Britta Kroll? He noticed the confusion on Lev’s face and added, “Recently, it was printed that two Jewish men from Nuremburg killed a little Christian girl and drained the blood from her body for their religious rituals.”

  “Blood libel. We’ve been accused of such crimes for centuries.” Lev sipped his drink, the alcohol burning his chest. He drank more. It was strange, how easily he had said “we,” pointing out his affiliation to the most hated race on earth, something he would not have done in the past. And yet we had fallen from his lips so naturally, after witnessing such a disgrace.

  The bartender scanned the room. “It was a kind of retaliation, I suppose, for the little Christian girl.”

  “The little Christian girl who never existed.”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s right,” the bartender said.

  He finished his drink, his head lighter. “And the poor girl, the real live one I saw being tossed about like a ragdoll, she’s ruined.”

  The bartender turned around, using a cloth to wipe the inside of a glass clean.

  Josephine said, when they walked to the car, not to take it too hard; it was merely an isolated incident, nothing that reflected the whole of Germany. Lev shook his head, opening the car door for her. “They’re as blond and stupid as young bulls, carrying heavy cudgels.”

  “Precisely my point. There’s no reason to overreact.”

  Vicki slid into the backseat, pretending not to listen, her eyes averted under her straw hat.

  Lev started the car, raising his voice over the engine. “Barbarism is contagious. Did you see the euphoria on their faces? The joy?”

  Josephine laid a hand on his arm. “They’re young. You just said so yourself.”

  Through the bay window of the lobby, Lev could see the bartender arranging bottles in neat orderly lines.

  He made a sharp right, pulling out of the gravel square. “Like Franz.”

  “Franz has nothing to do with this.”

  “Which is why he’s joined up with the Freikorps.”

  “Der Stahlhelm, actually.”

  “I thought he was on a nature retreat,” Vicki said.

  “It’s all the same,” Lev snapped.

  When they exited the main gate of the city, a column of brown-shirted young men marched past the car and gave them the Heil Hitler salute.

  Josephine smiled brightly.

  Lev pressed down on the gas. “Don’t encourage them.”

  Vicki twisted around, watching the receding figures.

  Josephine rolled down her window, her hand dangling in the humid air. “I’m not encouraging anyone or anything. Do you really think someone who hasn’t even finished high school can do much?”

  Vicki turned back around, waiting for her father’s answer.

  He ran a hand though his hair. “Anything is possible.”

  With all the windows down, the sound of the engine drowned out any opportunity for further conversation, making the silence less noticeable. Vicki stared out the window, the color gone from her cheeks. Lev pretended to concentrate on the road, but his mind raced: what would happen to the poor girl? The people had stared at her with bloody lust, as if they wanted to rip off her skin, crush her bones. She looked about Vicki’s age—nineteen, maybe twenty. His stomach turned. He quickly checked on Vicki in the rearview mirror. She sat passively in the backseat, watching the trees.

  24

  “Cat.”

  “Fur.”

  “Water.”

  “Ice.”

  “Bath.”

  “Baby.”

  “Milk.”

  “Warmth.”

  “Sun.”

  “Shadow.”

  “Husband.”

  “Male.”

  “Sex.”

  Josephine hesitated to answer. She was lying down in her usual position in Dr. Dührkoop’s office. The coffered ceiling, she thought, must be impossible to clean, with all of its cavities. She heard his timer ticking and realized she’d been stalling. “I’m sorry. I lost my train of thought.”

  “All right.”

  She turned to face him, her cheek pressing against the scratchy wool pillow. “Shall we start again?”

  He sighed, picking off a bit of lint from his trouser leg. “It’s curious how you came to a full stop with the mention of sex.”

  “There were so many associations.”

  “Yes, but what was the first thing to enter your mind?” He took off his glasses. His face looked so much younger and more relaxed without them. And she could see his eyes more clearly, the dark-green color, almost amber when the light hit his face.

  “Clean,” she lied. But what could she say? She couldn’t say the truth: sex=doctor=Dr. Dührkoop. Countless times, she had envisioned how in a fit of uncontrolled passion, he would shove the coffee table out of the way and throw her down onto the rug, admitting that yes, he was disrupting the process of transference and countertransference, but sexual repression was also extremely harmful to the doctor-patient relationship.

  He raised his shapely eyebrows. “Clean?”

  She shifted positions, leaning her head into the crook of her arm. “Well, yes, you see, when I was lying faceup, I noticed your coffered ceiling, and I suddenly thought how difficult it must be, to keep such a ceiling clean.” She paused, gauging his reaction. “With all the crevices and such.”

  He glanced up for a moment and then refocused his gaze on her. “Didn’t you say your mother was obsessed with cleaning the silver and the china?”

  “It was the only thing she cared about.”

  “And it was quite obsessive, this cleaning?”

  Josephine nodded, trying to anticipate where he was heading.

  “She must have been especially concerned about cleaning when company came over.”

  She sat up even though he gestured for her to remain in a supine position. The blood rushed to her head and she inhaled deeply.

  “Are you all right?” He leaned forward, touching her knee with the tips of his fingers, as if steadying himself.

  She nodded.

  He kept his hand there. She could think of nothing else and thought how he must feel the heat gathering under his fingers and hear her heart beating through her blouse in loud rhythmic bursts.

  “Well,” he said, moving his hand away to adjust his glasses. “I was only considering the possibility that the memory of your mother cleaning the silver could be linked to the appearance of Herr K, in the sense that for such social calls, your mother went to great lengths to clean the cutlery, even though, as you said, she had various maids who could have done it.”

  “Yes, but she never trusted they’d clean thoroughly enough.”

  “And when you saw your mother take out the polish, you then dreaded the subsequent appearance of Herr K, knowing that cleaning the silver also meant company was expected, and if Herr K was present, he would try to molest you, hence your subconscious association of the word sex with cleaning.” He leaned back into his chair, pleased with himself.

  She heard the next patient enter the waiting room. His eyes darted to the clock on the opposite wall. Ten more minutes. And then she would have to wait an entire week to see him again.

  “I forgot to ask—how was Rindbach? Did you have a restful time?” He smiled warmly, and she felt as if they were now friends chatting over coffees. It was strange how he could unearth a deeply private childhood memory and then discuss holiday spots and music concerts in the same breath.

  “Oh, Rindbach was …” She couldn’t possibly tell him how terrible it had been—the incessant arguments with Vicki, the ever-widening rift betw
een Lev and herself, made infinitely worse by that horrid parade in Nuremburg. She shook her head, looking down at her long skirt, feeling her naked knees just beneath the light wool fabric. He touched her hand again. “It’s all right. The next patient can wait a minute.”

  “Really?”

  He stroked her hand. A surge of gratitude rushed through her. Swallowing hard, she said, somewhat breathlessly, “There was this terrible parade in Nuremberg—we stopped there on the way back. Something to do with a girl having relations with a Jewish man. Lev was visibly upset, as was Vicki. I could tell they all thought I was acting quite cool about it when in truth—”

  He interjected, “You were struggling with your own horrid history—the parade on flag day with Herr K on the balcony.” Again, that satisfied look of triumph.

  “Precisely,” Josephine said, although she wasn’t entirely sure this was the case, but she wanted him to feel good about his diagnosis. And she wanted to be his best patient, his most prized patient, the patient he would write case studies about someday, after he had cured her.

  “It must have been very difficult,” he lamented, noting the clock.

  They’d gone five minutes over the hour. Josephine collected her purse and her parasol. Even though fall had arrived, it was unseasonably warm and she burned easily.

  Walking her to the door, he added, “I did read about it in the paper.”

  “The parade?” A faint trace of pipe smoke emanated from his clothing.

  “Lev must have been beside himself even though it was innocuous. An isolated event.”

  “He absolutely refuses to see how harmless the whole thing was.”

  “But you must know,” he said, turning the brass doorknob, “Jewish brains are formed differently. After so many centuries of persecution, of witnessing war and bloodshed, nowadays with even the slightest disturbance to their environment, their pituitary gland sends fight or flight signals to the brain, thus activating the sympathetic nervous system.” She waited for him to place his hand on her back, as he always did at this point.