Instead they wait, eight young bodies sitting and standing motionless and ramrod straight. Sixteen eyes remain glued to the slow-passing street scenery as though it were a movie screen, and they were waiting for some monster—a trudging clay-trailing Golem, a maiden-clutching King Kong—to burst forth from the shadows.
For several stops they see nothing. But as they approach the Friedrichstraße the smell of smoke fills the air, and she hears a dull, rowdy roar punctuated by drunken singing and shattering glass. The trolley turns onto the main avenue, and Renate catches a glimpse of what at first looks like garbage strewn over the sidewalks and street. But as the tram pulls even she sees that it is not garbage at all but brand-new goods: clothing with tags still on it, some of it half ripped off headless mannequins. Cans of food, dented but unopened. Worst of all (for her): books, with pages and covers ripped.
And the glass. Everywhere, there is glass. Shards of porcelain, stained glass, crystal-cut pieces from a chandelier—it all sparkles sharply in the weak morning light.
The tram lurches onto the main avenue, where the view is partially obstructed by a double-decker bus at a dead stop in front of the action, its two-score-odd passengers watching the proceedings with the bemused expressions of opera attendees. As they pass the stalled vehicle Renate for the first time sees the full extent of the chaos. The hairs on the back of her neck prickle.
The stores are under siege by bands of men, egged on by a crowd of laughing, applauding pedestrians. Many of the rioters appear to be drunk, staggering as they shout and sing and smash. None of them are wearing the familiar brown shirts and red armbands, but most have the burly, beef-faced look of stormtroopers. And the songs they bellow about plunging knives and Jewish blood are as unmistakable as the SS’s signature Horst Wessel anthem.
Barely breathing, she stares out at the roaming marauders, a mix of young and middle-aged men and boys. Some of the latter are in Hitlerjugend uniform; others in civilian clothes. They are working as a group; as the number 8 stops for a signal she sees one boy smash a wooden table that has been dragged from a nearby furniture store, pounding and hacking at one of the legs until he manages to pry it off completely. This he hands to another boy, who bellows in approval before he unsteadily clambers onto what appears to be a matching dining room chair. He then begins to whack at the neon sign over the shop door, methodically destroying its two-word promise of Feine Möbel letter by glassy, shattering letter.
As he demolishes the l the others burst into applause, which is quickly picked up by onlookers. The boy leaps off the chair, tripping and falling flat but never once losing his giddy grin. A Polizist offers an arm to help him back onto his feet, then pats him jovially on the back.
Renate finally breaks her silence. “I can’t believe that all of this is because a Pole shot a German,” she whispers to Stella Goldschlag.
Stella, her blond braids as perfect and parallel as golden tram rails down her back, shakes her head. “It’s just an excuse.”
A man in a tan trench coat who has been smoking and reading Die Börsen-Zeitung looks up from his position against the carriage wall.
“An excuse for what?”
“An excuse to destroy us,” says Stella, her voice cracking.
“Get a grip,” hisses Gartner Rabin, who is sitting across the car next to Rita Oelburg, a thin and studious girl with bruiselike shadows beneath her eyes. “We’re not supposed to draw attention to ourselves.”
Stella tightens her lips and stares down at her neat black boots. “I hate being a Jew,” she murmurs.
Renate studies her sidelong. Stella is easily the prettiest female in the Jüdische Privatschule—or at least, the prettiest by German standards. With smooth pale skin and eyes as blue as the painted flowers on a Chinese teacup, she looks like a girl for whom nothing ever goes wrong. On a normal school day the boys try to outperform one another around her. In fact, Gartner, who has now returned to staring tightly out at the devastation, actually did a handstand on the railing of the school’s second-floor balcony in September, purely for Stella’s benefit. Losing his grip, he’d fallen right off and crashed into the hyacinth bushes below, ending up with an arm cast which, in fact, only came off last week. And yet somehow, it all seems like something that happened deep in the past already. An event in a book she’s all but forgotten…
The tram, which had finally started to move forward, stops again with a metallic shriek and a shudder.
For a moment no one moves. From outside comes the crystalline crash of another window shattering.
“Oh, wonderful,” mumbles a man in the rear corner of the car. “Right in the middle of it all.”
As if to underscore the point, a passing group of rioters slap their carriage, hard enough that it rocks slightly on its rails. As the marauders bellow with laughter, the Goldschmidt students stare straight ahead, and Renate realizes with horror that they are trapped here, mere meters from the violence. It would take just moments for the mob to shift their focus.
“What should we do?” whispers Stella, as another nearby window breaks. “Should we get off?”
“But what if they see us?” asks Rita, her voice shrill with fear.
“Shut up,” hisses Gartner, his teeth gritted. “Just shut up, all of you. Can’t you?”
The girls fall silent. Outside, the air fills with catcalls and wolf whistles, and reflexively Renate turns to see the source of the laughter. It comes from a group pillaging a storefront she recognizes as a lingerie shop her mother has frequented. As she watches, one of the boys reaches into the display he’s just broken into and begins tossing out handfuls of silky, fluttery clothing, which the others drape coyly over their jackets and sweaters before ripping them to shreds with their hands. A moment later the proprietor—a bearded, birdlike man who was once a dancer in the Paris Opera Ballet—appears at the front door, waving his thin arms. He is shouting something, but the looters don’t appear to be listening. Instead they begin to laughingly push him back and forth among themselves, a human pinball in some nightmarish machine.
At another nearby corner the crowd hurls cakes and pastries and loaves of dark bread from a shop Renate recognizes with a jolt as the Schloss-Konditorei: the once-beloved cake shop she and Ilse so often frequented on their way home from school. The same shop into which Ilse crossed the first SS boycott, in a moment that now seems not just from another era but from some other, alien planet.
Herr Schloss is a good baker. I don’t really care if he’s Jewish.
Renate thinks of the Mohnkuchen she and Ilse would share daily, like a sacrament; the display window always whistle-clean, filled with brightly fragrant delicacies. The cheerful train set and snow-capped model village in the winter, the pastel lambs and painted eggs in the spring. Now the shop lies in wreckage: a doughy bedlam of baked goods and broken glass. The destruction is no worse than that of any of the other nearby shops, but the sight hits like a clenched fist to her gut.
Swallowing, she cranes her neck, trying to glimpse beyond the broken display to see if Herr Schloss or his wife is inside. But all she can see is the laughing crowd, tossing food and plates, trays and tongs, light fixtures and framed pictures into a growing pile on the street. As she watches, one of them pours petrol over the resulting heap and lights a match, and in an instant they are standing around a small, man-made mountain of flame.
“They’re getting closer,” mutters Rita.
Renate shivers, remembering her question to Herr Lawerenz: What are we too easy a target for? She again sees Herr Lawerenz’s flushed, rough face again: Two-by-two. Why hadn’t they listened to him?
She is considering grabbing Stella’s arm and simply pulling her from the car when the vehicle resumes its lurching trek forward. For a few minutes a relieved silence fills their car. But then they reach the Tiergarten, and the Moorish-inflected arches of the Fasanenstraße Synagogue, and a collective gasp r
ises from the riders.
The synagogue’s entrance swarms with barbarous activity. The huge oaken doors are hanging open; silver ornaments and ancient-looking scrolls fly through the air, the lambskin parchment flapping like lopsided wings. Chairs and bits of pew rain down from one of the upstairs balconies, where a red-faced man wears a prayer shawl on his head like a turban and is doing a kind of drunken jig. As was the case with the shattered shops, policemen stand on the periphery but make no effort to intervene. Towering above the entire surreal scene is an enormous pillar of smoke that seems to stretch straight up to the clouds, so thick and dark it looks unreal.
“It’s on fire,” says Gartner, forgetting his own directive. His voice is hushed, reverential, as though he is witnessing the burning bush.
The old woman sitting next to him shakes her head, her soft white bun vibrating with the movement. “Such a shame,” she clucks. “Such a lovely old building.”
“Was?” The interjection is so abrupt and so loud that both Renate and Stella jump in their seats. Turning, Renate sees the man who’d been reading the newspaper in the corner striding furiously toward them. As he draws near, Renate clutches Stella’s arm in panic. But he passes them both, stepping up to the old woman and grabbing her frail arm.
“What did you say?” he shouts, yanking her to her feet, his mouth inches from her shocked face.
“Mein Gott!” she quavers. “What—what are you doing?”
He shakes her, so hard Renate hears the woman’s teeth rattle. “What. Did. You. Say.”
“I—I just…” The woman throws a petrified glance around the carriage. Help her, Renate thinks, to herself, no one, to anyone.
But no one, including herself, moves a muscle.
“You want to save the Jew house?” the man continues, shaking the woman again with each word. “You’re a goddamn kike lover? Is that it?”
His captive shakes her head. Two tears travel the fleshly channels of her wrinkled cheeks. If the man sees them they mean nothing to him. Still clutching her arm, he yanks on the emergency stop cord above the windows. “The building is a Jew house,” he repeats, pointing, spittle flying from his lips. “It’s where they gather to plan the demise of our country. Where they have their secret rituals of murder and sacrifice.” As the trolley slows, he pushes the woman toward the door. “But if you love it so much, Oma, you can go take part. Go join the rabbi. They love German women. I’m sure he’d even love a wrinkly old ass like yours.”
Yanking the door open, he shoves the woman out so that she falls sprawlingly on the curb, losing a shoe in the process. Stunned, Renate gapes as the man strides back on board, wiping his hands on his trousers.
“Anyone else have anything to say?” he demands, eyeing each of them in turn. “Any other kike lovers on board today?”
Beside her, Stella gives a small, terrified sob. Across the carriage Gartner stares at the floor, his face chalk-white. For a moment all Renate can think about is not vomiting before they get to her stop, which is next. But then she sees the woman’s shiny black purse lying like a wounded reptile on the trolley floor. She remembers the woman’s petrified face, almost childlike in its incomprehension.
And before she realizes fully what she’s doing she has leapt up and grabbed the bag, and is throwing her weight against the door. She battles with it for a moment until it reopens with a sigh, spilling her onto the glass-littered street.
The fall knocks the wind from her. At first she simply lies there, purse clutched to her chest, eyes glued to the yellow, smoke-filling sky. She hears the noise of the riots and the strangled gasps of the woman weeping. Then the clamor fades slightly, as though someone has twisted the volume knob. A constellation of dull white light points dances before her eyes. As Renate sits up slowly, though, they dissipate, and the noise of the chaos returns.
Climbing to her feet, she brushes dirt and glass from her coat. Beside her, the woman has stopped sobbing and is straightening her coat and hair with trembling hands.
“Here,” says Renate, realizing as she holds out the bag that she left her own school satchel on the tram floor.
The woman takes the purse, still staring glassily across the street. Renate holds out her hand. “Here. Let me help you up.”
The woman allows herself to be pulled to her feet. Clutching Renate’s arm, she fumbles for the missing shoe, then freezes as an unearthly sound—like a thousand geese, honking breathy death knells—fills the air. Turning, Renate sees the wreckage of the enormous organ that had led the congregation through song and mournful prayer each weekend. Its silver pipes are bent and smashed, its ivory keys shattered. Sheets of music slip and float through the hot air like a school of startled fish, dispersing.
“Madness,” mutters the woman, working her stockinged toes and heel back into her shoe. Two fire trucks rumble and screech into view, looking like black ladder-backed beetles. As they stop in front of the synagogue the woman tips her head back, taking in the thickening smoke stream. Then she turns and looks back up at Renate.
“I’m not a fan of the Jews,” she says dully. “Frankly, I don’t care one way or the other. But this…”
She waves her hand helplessly, shakes her head. She is incapable of finishing the sentence.
Renate licks her lips. What she plans to say is: It’s all right. The fire department will take care of it now.
But what she says is this: “I’m a Jew.”
She has no idea where the words come from, has no comprehension of having even thought them, much less deciding to give them voice. In fact, she has never thought of herself in these terms. Not after being declared a “full Jew” by Agent Schultz; not after three years of name-calling and isolation. Not even after entering a fully Jewish school and occasionally slipping into evening services at this very synagogue—just (she always told herself) out of curiosity.
And yet here they are now: four indelible syllables, a terse incantation into the acrid air. Ich bin Jude. And here, too, is a strange new certainty inherent in the utterance, one born of these battered storefronts, these shattered windows, the flaming synagogue rooftop before her. As the firemen leap nimbly from their benches, their hoses unspooling and stiffening like waking snakes, Renate finds herself repeating it, defiantly holding the woman’s gaze:
“Ich bin Jude.”
The woman blinks.
Very carefully, she removes her hand from Renate’s arm.
“Get away from me,” she says coldly.
And turning away, she limps off down the devastated street, cradling her purse before her like an infant.
Renate stares after her, her throat tightening and her eyes tearing in the smoke. A children’s taunt she’s heard lately runs inanely through her head: Jew, Jew, spit on your head. Jew, Jew, better off dead.
For a moment, she almost agrees. For a moment, she almost does want to die.
But very slowly, though it feels as though it takes all of her strength, she turns back to the burning building.
The firefighters have taken positions on either side of the structure and are hanging off their hoses like competing teams in tug-of-war. But as the jets start to spray, Renate realizes that they are aimed not at the flaming synagogue but at the buildings on either side of it.
She makes her way toward one of the Polizist, who has been watching the scene with evident satisfaction. Hesitantly, she grasps his sleeve. “They’re not spraying the fire,” she says. “Why aren’t they spraying the fire?”
He looks down at her, almost indulgently. “Because that’s not their job, sweetheart. They’re only paid to protect German buildings.”
“But…but what if there are people trapped inside?”
He shrugs. “Let them figure it out. After all, the Yids brought this on themselves, didn’t they? They’re only getting what they deserve. All over the city, it sounds like.”
&nbs
p; Then his expression shifts, hardens. “Hey!” he shouts. “Stop that!” And he is running toward the inferno and a man who is plucking and scattering pages from a prayerbook the way he might pluck and scatter petals from a daisy. His target is not the book ripper, however, but a man with a camera who is taking pictures of the devastation.
Renate stares after him, her thoughts tangling, her breath heavy. He means us, she thinks numbly. He means we are only getting what we deserve….
Then she thinks: all over the city.
A terrifying thought strikes her. No, she tells herself. Surely not…
Turning on her heel, she starts running as fast as she can.
* * *
When she reaches Bismarckstraße she’s run over two kilometers and is panting so hard she starts coughing. Clutching her throat, she pushes her way through a small crowd of neighbors that has gathered across the street. They are people who used to smile and greet her and ask after her parents, but now quickly look away as she passes. When she reaches the far curb she sees what they were watching: another gang of boys and men, standing in a semicircle around another man who is wearing only a bloodstained undershirt and briefs. From somewhere in the background comes a woman’s clear, outraged voice: “Let him go! Do not touch him!”
Wunderland Page 26
