Mara and Vicki remained seated, squarely facing each other.
“You’re always saying it shouldn’t matter—where you come from, your religion, and now you say this?”
“It does matter who you marry, my little zumer-feygele.” With the back of her hand, she stroked Vicki’s pale, soft cheek. The electric fan whizzed, its brass blades slicing the thick air.
Mara leaned in closer, her cloying perfume tingling Vicki’s nostrils. “You are one of us.”
Vicki frowned, doubtful of this.
She clutched Vicki’s wrist with her steely grip. “There will always be us and them.”
Vicki resisted the urge to argue, and instead she said it was too hot down here and proposed to buy Mara a glass of cold cider, her favorite drink.
Undeterred, Mara kept talking on the way out about how blood never lied, and Vicki shared this blood, no matter how blond her mother was or how German Lev claimed to be. Walking up the concrete steps to street level, Mara described the Cossack hordes that careened through her village when she was a child, in their black boots atop black horses, “as if a black wind perennially swept through the streets, taking some of us with them, leaving others of us for dead. And all I could do was watch through a broken window.”
Vicki tried to reason with her, but the busy street, with its honking cars and lumbering buses, only seemed to bewilder Mara more. “That sort of thing happened in the countryside among the uneducated where modernity hadn’t yet reached,” Vicki explained in a soothing tone. She led her grandmother across the street, toward a café. “It’s like still being afraid of the dark in a city where streetlights blaze every night.” A policeman blew his whistle, stopping a car so that Mara and Vicki could cross the street.
Stepping onto the curb, Mara regained some of her composure. “Look what happened to Rathenau.”
“That was ages ago, Nana.”
“Only five years.” Mara shook her head in dismay. “A German Jew who made his distaste for Jews widely known, and still they shot him.”
“The foreign minister, or any public figure for that matter, is always someone’s target. Don’t forget, the killers committed suicide afterward.”
Mara nodded, muttering, “I suppose it was an isolated event.” As they entered the café, she brightened. “There’s Sammy!”
Sammy, the same young man who’d procured the fan earlier, ferried a crate of soda bottles out of the café. She whispered into Vicki’s ear, “A real prize, in my opinion. And a chalutz, no less. Training how to be a peasant when for generations we were so proud to work with our minds. They say he’s moving to Palestine.”
Sammy nodded to Mara and Vicki. Walking over to him, Mara appeared sprightly, coy. Vicki admired his bright blue eyes and how he held the crate with ease, his forearms strong and tanned from the sun.
“You got us that fan, and now soda too?”
“I’m bringing the comrades some soda, yes.”
Mara clapped her hands together. “A leader among men.”
Now, with Geza on her arm, walking into the damp wind, Vicki wondered if Mara would say the same about him. He was Jewish, a worker from Russia, her home country, and he wanted to immigrate to Palestine. Would she praise him the way she had praised Sammy?
They paused before the deserted courtyard leading into Mara’s house.
Ducking under the archway, Vicki said, “It looks dark inside.”
One of the cats had pressed himself into the windowpane, his orange-and-white fur smudged up against the glass. She tapped on the glass. The cat purred and purred. Then she rang the bell, feeling a rush of nervousness. What if Mara was home? What if she didn’t like Geza and then reported back to her father? Her parents still didn’t know about him.
They waited a few minutes. Vicki shrugged. “She’s probably at a KPD rally.”
“I love her already,” Geza joked.
Turning to leave, Vicki said, “Let’s go to that place Elsa likes. I’m hungry.”
The café was inside a cozy boathouse on pilings over a lake. A handful of tables scattered around the small dance floor. They ordered simple food: onion soup, beer, cucumber salad. Geza ate pirozhki and herring. After lunch, they danced, although Geza danced haltingly, giving every step a long thoughtful pause. He preferred to just hold her close, his long fingers spreading over her back, caressing her thick wool sweater as if it were her skin, occasionally running a thumb down the length of her spine, which sent shivers through her. Vicki imagined his naked body pressed up against her nakedness, his bony hipbones skimming her pelvis, how she would cup his shoulders and urge him into her with confidence, as if she had done this many times, when in truth, she was still a virgin. At night, alone in her girlhood bedroom, she pushed a lumpy pillow between her legs and squeezed her eyes shut, pretending Geza lay with her under the creamy sheets, their bodies entangled in the darkness, his laughing eyes encouraging her, wooing her, loving her. When he held her close, she teased him, whispering into his ear, “Can you take me someplace?” He would gently stroke her hair and whisper back, “Not much longer.” “What if I can’t wait?” she pressed, only half teasing now. “I don’t want to take you like this,” he would say, sweeping his hand out as if she expected them to make love in public, on a café tabletop. “I want to make you my wife. Properly,” he would add with a touch of indignation. His resistance both charmed and frustrated her, but she accepted it, burrowing her face into his chest, embarrassed, flattered, and full of want.
After dancing, they walked out on the wooden deck that stretched over the water. They stood together at the rail and watched a chain of black swans gliding past.
Geza gripped the railing, his knuckles white. He gazed at Vicki.
She knew from his pained expression what he was about to say. They had been over this before, countless times.
“Come to Palestine with me. I leave in the spring.”
Vicki sighed and turned away from the lake, leaning her back against the railing.
“Don’t look like that,” he said.
The thought of not going with him made her whole body ache, but she also couldn’t imagine telling her family good-bye, Berlin good-bye, her friends and studies and all of Germany good-bye. Besides, her family didn’t even know he existed, let alone that she was in love with him. First, he would have to agree to meet her father.
A shot fired off in the distance.
She sighed. “You think it’s better for us to live there.”
He kissed her neck. “I like how you said us.”
Vicki snuggled her face into his chest, inhaling the smoke that always lingered on his clothing from the boardinghouse.
He stroked her hair. “And yes, better for us, because we are Jews.”
“My mother isn’t even—”
He pressed his lips to hers. She closed her eyes, willing the present moment to suffice, but it never did. He always had to talk about the future.
He ran a finger along her chin. “Your grandmother is both Jewish and a Communist. Two strikes against you!”
She laughed and pretended to punch him in the arm.
Someone had turned on the jukebox and a garish polka floated over the deck.
He set his forearms against the railing and stared out at the black lake. “In all seriousness, Vicki. What I’m about to say, you’re not going to like, but the fact is, you don’t understand the way things really are from your vantage point.”
“ ‘In all seriousness, Vicki,’ ” she repeated.
His jaw tensed. “I wish you wouldn’t mock me.”
She turned around and assumed his same position, knocking her elbow into his.
“The fact is, a new language is developing. Ubermensch means ‘superman.’ If you’re Aryan. And untermensch is ‘subhuman,’ for Jews. And then there’s strafexpedition.”
“Punitive expedition.”
Geza nodded. “That’s right. I’ve seen the storm troopers on their expeditions into the Jewish and Communist neighbo
rhoods. I’ve seen the men left behind, bloodied, barely breathing, badly beaten. It’s a pogrom.” He drew a breath. “Which is why we have to leave.”
A heavy mist gathered over the lake. Vicki shivered in her coat and thought back to the rally in Nuremberg, to the girl tossed high in the air, to the way her father pensively stared out the car window afterward, and how her grandmother had said she would move to Palestine, if only she were younger.
“We have a right to Palestine. Not because it was once our homeland but because no other country will have us.” He concentrated on the wooded forest across the lake, as if Palestine were just there, within reach.
She took his hand and kissed the top of it. From inside the café, a raucous laughter erupted.
“Is that a yes?” His voice vibrated with hope.
She bit her lower lip. The gunmetal sky tipped into evening. “There’s still time.”
He looked away, disappointed.
She caressed his shoulder. “Come to the house and meet with my father.”
After a long pause, he said, “All right.”
“Next Sunday?”
“Next Sunday,” Geza repeated.
33
Geza arrived freshly shaven, little nicks visible along the underside of his chin. He smelled faintly of lime cologne and wore his best suit. His polished oxfords with the square toes were new and stiff and creaked when he walked. Vicki spotted him though the living room window, striding nervously up to the front door, a bouquet of white roses accented with holly in hand. It was the Sunday after New Year’s, and the family was recovering from various celebrations and parties.
Lev sat in the living room reading the paper. He said, in a droll tone, “So you say I know this young man?”
Vicki caught her reflection in the gilded mirror hanging on the opposite wall. She looked older, more sophisticated, a bit leaner. Love had fashioned her into a woman.
The doorbell rang before she could reply.
Marthe opened the door, ushering Geza inside and taking his coat. He paused in the foyer.
Lev raised his eyebrows expectantly, a slight smile playing on his lips.
Vicki sat upright in her chair. “Where’s Mutti?”
Lev motioned upstairs. “Changing.”
Geza hesitated in the archway separating the foyer from the sitting room. He held the flowers awkwardly away from his body. Marthe, sensing his unease, took the flowers and said she’d put them in water straightaway.
Vicki smiled at Geza and motioned for him to come into the room.
Lev didn’t bother to look up from his paper. Perhaps, Vicki thought, he was trying to act unimpressed, but it was rude.
Geza took two loping strides into the room, his shoes creaking along with him. “Hello, Herr Perlmutter?” He extended a hand.
Lev glanced up from his paper. For a moment, neither one of them said a word. Vicki glanced at her father. The color had completely drained from his face. He gripped his chest. “Geza—what are you doing here?”
Vicki went over to Geza, taking his arm. “This is the young man I’ve been telling you about.”
Lev ran a hand through his hair. “I’m shocked to see you. I had no idea you were in Berlin.” He remained frozen in the armchair.
Geza shifted from one foot to the other. “If anything, I tried to stay away, but …” He glanced guiltily at Vicki.
The sound of Josephine running down the main staircase and calling out to no one in particular, “Are we finally going to meet Vicki’s beau?” interrupted him. Color rose up into Geza’s face, and he stared down at the floor. Vicki had gone to great lengths to describe her mother to him, but she always ended up criticizing her for her rigidity, her allegiance to a disappeared world, her inability to understand the new way of things. “She’s impossible—just impossible!” Vicki would say, pouting after yet another disagreement they’d had. And now he was about to see Josephine for himself.
Josephine burst into the room, flustered, her hair twisted into a chignon. She wore a long burgundy crepe skirt with a wide belt cinched at the waist. Peering around the room, she touched her earlobe, checking to confirm the back of her earring was securely fastened. “Marthe didn’t bring tea? And please—turn on the lights! It’s dreadfully gloomy!” She shook her head. “I’m sorry—no one ever seems to do anything around here unless I tell them to.”
Geza extended a hand. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Frau Perlmutter.”
She smiled politely, but Vicki recognized the tightening of her facial muscles due to his strange Russian accent, poorly cut clothes, new stiff shoes, and the fact that he was, at the moment, trying too hard. She gingerly took his hand.
“Geza Rabinovitch,” he added.
More tightening of the facial muscles. “Geza Rabinovitch,” she repeated airily.
“I knew your husband in Mitau. He’s a good man.”
Lev lit a cigarette and then immediately put it out. “Yes, we tried to help the local population when we could.”
“What a coincidence,” Josephine said.
Attempting a smile, Lev grimaced.
Vicki switched on the lights. Above them, the chandelier buzzed before emitting an amber glow.
Marthe brought in tea and ginger biscuits, placing the tray on the low glass coffee table. For a moment, no one spoke as Marthe arranged the teacups. Vicki tried to read her father’s face, but he assumed a noncommittal expression of neutrality, as if listening to a radio program on winter gardening methods. When Marthe left the room, a tense silence hung there. The bleak white sky cast a dull pallor over everyone’s faces.
Josephine busied herself with squirting a wedge of lemon into her tea before asking Geza where he lived and what his line of work was. He explained that he had been trained as a bricklayer, but now he taught various agricultural methods to those wishing to immigrate to Palestine at the Berlin Zionist Bund.
Lev frowned. “Are you planning to move there?”
Geza hesitated. Vicki gave him an encouraging nod. “Yes,” he said.
Josephine winced. “The tea’s extremely hot.” She blew over her teacup. “A shame, after only just meeting, to be separated by such a great distance.” Then she looked up and smiled brightly.
Vicki scooted to the edge of her chair. “Well, yes, that’s the thing, you see …”
Lev’s hands curled over his knees, his fingers tensing. “And when do you plan on moving to Palestine?”
“May,” Geza said.
The two men stared at each other.
Josephine clapped her hands together. “Actually, I heard cigarette cases are manufactured in Palestine, by Jews slaving away in workshops.”
“We’re beginning to build up some industry, that’s true,” Geza said, holding Lev’s stare.
“The other day on Friedrichstrasse I saw the most charming little cigarette case in the window of an antique shop—it was inlaid with mother-of-pearl—and I thought to myself: did a Jew make that in Palestine?”
Lev glared at Josephine, who continued, “But then of course, it was overpriced. The man wanted to bargain with me, but I think that sort of thing is vulgar.” She delicately selected a biscuit from the tray and offered it to Geza.
When he declined, she said, “Oh, please take one—you look hungry.”
Vicki stared at her mother, mortified.
Lev stood up. “I need to speak with Geza in my study.”
Vicki shot him a defiant look, and Lev added, “Alone.”
34
I’m going to marry your daughter,” Geza said once the door closed.
“This is how you ask permission?”
“I’m not asking for permission.” Geza touched the edge of the imposing walnut desk behind which Lev sat, arms crossed, his lips pressed into a grim line.
“I’m asking for your blessing.”
“Speak German,” Lev said sharply, but then he felt guilty. He should soften his tone. He had known Geza and liked him as a boy. And Geza could tell
him about Leah. His pulse raced at the thought of this, and yet he feared to ask: Did Zalman and Leah live happily as man and wife? Had Leah forgotten him entirely? Was he alone holding the vigil, nursing the past back to life when there was nothing left of it? He felt his ears burn. Contesting thoughts ran though his head, blending into a chorus of confusion: Did Geza tell Vicki about his affair with Leah? Or had he the tact to withhold such details? Did Leah still love him? What was her life like now?
Lev rubbed his eyes, his head pounding. “I find it peculiar how the two of you”—he paused—“came together.”
Haltingly at first, Geza explained how he met Vicki at the state library. “She forgot her pocketbook on the desk, and so I brought it out to her.” Growing more animated, he dipped back into Yiddish, relating how he never wanted to meddle with Lev’s life, but after seeing Vicki not only at the library but then again on the street, near her ballet studio, he couldn’t ignore such a string of coincidences. “I had no idea she was your daughter,” he lied, thinking back to that spring day, Vicki on Lev’s arm in her white dress, the melodic enticement of her voice ringing through the trees.
Geza continued, “And so, when Vicki finally agreed to have a coffee with me, I was overjoyed. Because for months—I promise you—I avoided her when I discovered you were her father, but I thought of her constantly.”
Looking at Geza, who now rested both hands on the edge of his desk as if he would dismantle it, Lev remembered his own boldness, how unthinkable it was to ask for Josephine’s hand in marriage. Her father had hated him, but maybe it wasn’t so much hate as pain. Pain that now seeped into Lev’s bones at the thought of losing his daughter to this man—to any man—who might take her away. Even worse, Geza planned to take her to a strange land where Jews carved matchboxes in the blistering sun. Didn’t he see it was safer here than in that hotly contested stretch of earth parceled out between Arabs and Jews?
In addition to this, Geza was not who he imagined for Vicki. He worked with his hands. He spoke Yiddish and wanted to grow fruit in Palestine. Vicki had been raised for an entirely different life—one filled with ballet recitals, art exhibitions, silk dresses, and soft lighting. Eventually, she would live nearby, in her own large house with housemaids and cooks and wet nurses for her children. Her husband, refined and reflective, would have a profession that required skilled training—a doctor, a lawyer, a musician. Lev thought he had secured this, exposing Vicki to various cultural pursuits, steeping her in luxury. She studied French at the university, and only a few months ago, she had described how much she loved translating Flaubert into German. Now she had chosen the exact opposite: dirt, heat, labor.
The Empire of the Senses Page 39
