Then he saw Suse. She was seated beside a window with a couple who did not fit at all. The man wore a cloth cap and threadbare jacket, as though to disavow a lean, aristocratic face that could have comfortably carried a monocle. The woman had unruly brown hair cut short in bangs across her forehead and wore a plain gray coat. They were already sipping coffee and passing around plates of Linzer torte, double chocolate bars striped with cherries, and shortbread with almonds.
Suse looked and called, “There you are! As you can see, we waited for you.”
“Sorry, so sorry. I was held up arguing with some students.”
The man was standing and offering his hand. “Falk Harnack,” he said. “You probably don’t recall, but we met once, years ago, when we were boys. My old uncle lives next door to your parents.”
Dietrich did remember, and noted the family resemblance. He also under stood why Harnack was dressed like a workingman. He and his brother Arvid were notorious for their Communist sympathies, rare in men of their social class. They were entitled to style themselves von Harnack but refused to use this aristocratic prerogative out of principle.
“Oh, yes,” Dietrich said. “Your uncle was my first professor of theology. It has been a long time since we met. You’re not from Berlin?”
“No, no. I grew up in Munich. But I’ve been in Berlin the past year. The atmosphere in Bavaria is intolerable just now.” Harnack had sat back down and was pouring coffee. “Cream?”
“Yes, please,” Dietrich said, and sat awkwardly, but it was the woman who passed him the tray of cream and sugar, so he was forced to look at her more quickly than he had planned. He felt he must be blushing, and wished Suse had not been so clear about her intentions. He also wondered if the woman and Harnack had come together. He glanced at his sister, who was looking very pleased with herself.
“This is Elisabeth,” Suse said. “Elisabeth Hildebrandt, my brother Dietrich.”
He realized he had blundered by sitting so quickly, not like him at all to forget his manners, and stood quickly, knocking his napkin off the table. He took her hand, bowed over it, and hastily retrieved the square of white cloth. Elisabeth pushed her bangs back from her forehead, rested her elbow on the table and put a hand to her chin, and smiled. A face comfortable with smiling, he thought.
She said, “And what sort of argument were you having?”
“What?” It was so different from what he expected her to say that he wasn’t sure what she meant. “Argument?”
“You said you’d just had an argument with some students.”
“Ah, yes. I’ve just begun a series of lectures on the nature of the church. It happens at the beginning of each term—the new National Socialist students don’t know me and sign up for my lectures, then realize right away that I am not one of them.” He sipped from his own cup, and began to warm to his subject. “When I speak on the nature of the church, I make it quite clear that the church, and indeed God, should not be challenged to offer anything to twentieth-century man; rather we must ask how we may serve God, and that is how the church—”
Suse kicked him beneath the table.
He looked down quickly, pretended to choke on his Linzer torte, said, “Pardon me,” and dabbed at his lips with the napkin. “I’m sure I am boring you. Anyway, several students challenged me afterward and I had to make my own position quite plain. The long and short of it is, most of them won’t be back.”
“What is the theological position of a National Socialist student?”
“That the church exists to serve the Fatherland. That the Fatherland is a gift to us from God, and that God has blessed the Fatherland by raising up Adolf Hitler to lead us to our divinely ordained place at the head of the nations.”
Elisabeth was watching him closely. He liked her eyes, which were very dark, brave eyes that met his without looking away.
“And what,” she asked, “is your response?”
“That God does not play favorites with nations, and anyone who claims a divine blessing for his country is guilty of blasphemy and idolatry.”
She nodded, her smile gone. “You are in for something, aren’t you.”
It was Harnack who laughed. “As if there were a God who could fix the mess we’re in.”
“God isn’t a handyman,” Elisabeth said back. She looked at Dietrich. “Falk,” she said, “is an atheist and a Marxist.”
“And you,” said Harnack, stifling a yawn, to Dietrich, “remind me of my uncle. A Christian. How comforting in times like these.”
“No,” Dietrich said. “I am a theologian who would like to be a Christian. And it is not comforting at all.”
“Funny,” Elisabeth said. “I am a Christian who would like to be a Jew.”
Suse, who had been fidgeting at the beginning of this exchange, looked happily around the table. If she and Falk were put off, it was clear Elisabeth and Dietrich were not.
“Well,” she said, “whatever our views, we all have an interest in this youth club. I’ve told Dietrich a little about it and he’d like to help, wouldn’t you, Dietrich?”
“Yes,” he agreed. “But one thing has been bothering me. Suse says you’ve found some rooms in the Schloß Straße. But why Charlottenburg? Why near the palace? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have it in Prenzlauer Berg or Wedding? Charlottenburg isn’t exactly a working-class quarter.”
“That’s just the point,” said Harnack. “The presence of our club will be a calculated insult thrown into the face of the bourgeoisie. Poor youth should be able to congregate in Charlottenburg, or anyplace else they damn well please.”
“But isn’t it out of the way for them? Can they afford the S-Bahn?”
“Are you concerned it’s out of the way, or that they’ll offend bourgeois sensibilities?”
Dietrich had been about to bite into a square of shortbread but he set it down on his plate. “My concern,” he said, “is that we reach as many of these young people as possible. Or do you have a different agenda?”
“Actually,” said Elisabeth, “I agree with Dietrich. But there’s another consideration. You should have mentioned it, Falk, instead of waving your Marxist rhetoric like a bloody flag. Look at Hamburg, seven thousand storm troopers attacking working-class homes in Altona, and it’s happening in P-Berg and Wedding as well. We thought we might more easily avoid that in Charlottenburg.”
“It may be no different in Charlottenburg,” Dietrich said. “It’s the middle-class youth who are most caught up in this brownshirt frenzy. I see it every day at the university.”
“Then why not confront them where they live instead of the other way around?” Harnack leaned forward. “These working-class young people are our only hope. They see through the fascist lie. Ask them who they support in the elections. Thälmann and the Communists. They adore Thälmann, they name babies after him. And the few who aren’t for Thälmann are Socialist. Although those few are getting fewer as they watch this government sell out over and over to the rich, and cower before Hitler and his thugs.”
Elisabeth said, “Falk, we’ve told you the club will be open to everyone. We want open discussion and tolerance. You said you would work with us on a theater project. That’s it. No pushing ideologies.”
“You are an actor?” Dietrich asked, glad for a change in subject.
“And a director,” said Harnack. “I’ve worked with the National Theater in Leipzig, but I’ve started to feel that’s all irrelevant. I want to bring art to the masses, and use theater as a weapon against fascism.”
Elisabeth glanced at Dietrich and rolled her eyes. He relaxed. “And where,” he asked, “do I fit in?”
“Anywhere you like,” Suse said. “You’re a wonderful musician, and you can tell stories, or give tennis lessons—”
“Tennis lessons!” Harnack chortled.
“Shut up, Falk,” Elisabeth said.
“Sorry.” He was suddenly contrite. “I don’t mean to rag you so much, Bonhoeffer. Suse here is such a good sport, and she d
oes speak so well of you.”
Dietrich wondered if Suse had kicked Harnack beneath the table.
Then Suse looked at her wristwatch, as though suddenly remembering something, and announced, “Oh, dear, Falk and I must run. He’s taking me to a rehearsal of his latest play. Dietrich, can you see Elisabeth home? Oh, and can you get the bill as well? There’s a dear.”
Elisabeth, Dietrich noted, looked as startled as he. Harnack and Suse were already standing, pulling on their coats, waving goodbye.
“I think,” Elisabeth said, “we’ve been set up.”
“Suse means well,” Dietrich said miserably. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“No,” she said, “I don’t believe I do.”
It was not until he walked beside her that he realized how tiny she was. The top of her head did not quite reach his shoulder, and when she brushed the hair from her forehead, which she did often, he noted the slenderness of her hands. He guessed he could circle one wrist easily with his thumb and forefinger.
She lived alone, in a flat at the top of a building on the Ludwig kirch platz. The weather was fine, so rather than take a tram, they wandered through the Tiergarten, past the Neuer See and across the Landwehrkanal to the zoo.
“Let’s go in,” she said. “I haven’t been in years.”
Dietrich hesitated. He always felt uneasy in the zoo, for it reminded him of his childhood and the war.
“You don’t have time?” she asked.
“I do,” he said. “Why not?”
Inside, they stopped on a small bridge and leaned against the rail, watching ducks dive beneath the surface, as though obliterating themselves, and then bob back up.
“They may be the luckiest creatures in the world just now,” Elisabeth said. “They have everything they need, including safety.”
He said nothing, remembering the distant screams of starving animals. The ducks would not have suffered long. They would have been among the first creatures to be caught and eaten.
She was watching him. “You look very sad. Are you often?”
“Sometimes,” he said. “Not always.”
She was quiet for a while. He liked that. Many people would have pressed him to share what was on his mind, but Elisabeth moved away a step and brushed fallen leaves from the railing into the water. He glanced at her to see if she was put off by his mood, but she was smiling to herself, watching the ducks dive and reemerge as new creatures. After a time he placed his hand on her elbow. She looked up at him, and he led her off the bridge.
She invited him to eat with her. Upstairs in her flat, she set out plates of bratwurst, cheese, bread, and sliced cucumbers in sour cream while he stood in the front room and studied the spire of Ludwigkirche. When she brought the plates of food to the table, she said, “Suse told me you were in America last year, at Union Seminary.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Then we have a friend in common, I believe. You were there with Jean Lasserre.”
“Good God, yes. You know Lasserre?”
“I worked with him one summer, four years ago. When I was at the university in Bonn, I used to spend summers in the Ruhr. It’s a branch of the institute Jean works with in Artois, a mission to mining villages, and once I went to Bruay instead of the Ruhr, as a sort of exchange. Trying to promote better understanding between Germans and the French.”
“That sounds like Jean. What kind of work did you do?”
“I taught literature classes to miners’ wives in the Ruhr, but in Bruay my French wasn’t good enough, so I had an art program for children.” She pointed to a row of framed charcoal drawings. “The students did those, and the one above the fireplace is mine.”
He stepped closer to examine her drawing. The stooped figures of the miners were faceless, their clothes a pastiche of black melting into light gray. But their helmeted heads were pierced with shafts of light like the halos of angels.
“I used to watch them emerge from the pits in the evening, after dark,” she said. “Their lamps would still be lit to show the way home. I’ve always been drawn to miners. I’m in awe of the way they work underground, always in darkness, always in danger. And yet they come out of that place and go on about their lives as if it were nothing. They eat their supper, bounce their children on their knee, play chess or drink beer with their friends, make love. As though there were nothing at all to be afraid of. And the next day they are back underground never knowing which breath will be their last. You would think they’d go mad. But they don’t.”
Dietrich was once again in the back of the truck, riding on a mattress of dead men. “I know something of what you mean,” he said.
“I used to think their lives terribly different from mine,” she said. “Until the last few months.”
“Perhaps the government will hold firm,” he said.
“I’m not sure the government wants to hold firm.”
She led him to the table and passed him a plate of food. They ate awhile in silence, then she said, “You know I am Jewish.”
“Suse mentioned it.” He tried to sound nonchalant.
“Does it bother you?”
“I wouldn’t be here if it did.”
She set two wineglasses on the table, handed him a bottle of Riesling and a corkscrew, and said, “My grandfather Nathan converted to Christianity, and my father was baptized when he was ten years old. I myself was baptized as an infant. I think they are ashamed of the religious Jews, the poor ones who cling together in the Scheunenviertel and wear black hats and earlocks, still eat kosher, and speak Yiddish. Those are the backward ones, they think, the fanatics. They themselves are rational men. Physicians. Their Christianity is not passionate, but practical. When I decided to study theology, they were appalled.”
Dietrich tugged at the bottle, enjoying the release of pressure as the cork came away. “This does sound familiar.”
“Yes. Suse told me how it is with your family.”
“It seems Suse has laid the groundwork very well.”
She poured the wineglasses half full. “Did she tell you I studied with Karl Barth at Bonn?”
“You’re fortunate. Barth is the greatest theologian in Germany.”
“Perhaps. But in the end I have been more interested in Martin Buber.”
“Buber. Ah. I And Thou. I must admit I have not read Buber closely. He is very much the fashion these days, and that tends to put me off a bit, though I know it is unfair.”
“A Jew.” She sipped her wine. “Though many of the Orthodox don’t care for him.”
She did not tell him that she often walked through the Scheunenviertel, past the gold-domed New Synagogue in the Oranienburger Straße, bought a pickle and a thick salt beef sandwich in a grocery and ate her lunch on a bench across from the Old Cemetery. She watched the passersby, most of them poorly dressed working-class Jews, and tried to catch snatches of conversation in Yiddish, which she only partly understood. She felt like an eavesdropper, a spy. She would always be a Jew with no one in the Scheunenviertel. But though the Scheunenviertel seemed a world away, she did not live far from the synagogue guarded by stone lions in the Fasanenstraße, lions more imposing than their flesh-and-blood counterparts in the nearby zoo. She was often tempted to enter and worship, but she did not tell Dietrich this either. Instead she continued to speak of the theologian Buber.
“So you avoid what is fashionable,” she said, “even though it may have great worth.”
“I admit that it may. But this is my mood of late.”
“So where do you turn?”
“To scripture,” he said. He made a sandwich of meat and cheese and ate without tasting his food. “I read the Bible constantly. I have been preaching sermons quite often. Not very good ones. And just now it seems to me more important than anything to preach a good sermon.”
She rested her chin on her hand and watched him. “Why?”
“Because in America I worked at a Negro church in Harlem where I encountered the power of the spoken wo
rd. Because since I have been back in Berlin I have been unsettled by what is happening in Germany. The instability of the political situation, the terrible hardship caused by the economic depression. People are frightened and hungry, and yet what they truly need is spiritual. They need to hear the Gospel preached.” He stopped. “You will think me a fanatic,” he said.
“No,” she said. “I think I know what you mean.”
“Do you?” he said, not believing her. He had grown used to assuming that he was unfathomable.
When they had finished eating and she poured the coffee, he asked, “Would you like some music?” and nodded toward the gramophone which stood against the far wall.
“Certainly. You choose something. The records are in the cabinet.”
He opened the oak door, pulled out a sleeve, and saw he was holding Mozart’s Great Mass in C Minor. At once he was back on the sofa at the Berlin Conservatory, Kreuzer complaining Dietrich played with no passion while the parents nodded their heads.
Elisabeth had turned to watch him.
“That one is lovely,” she said.
“Yes,” he lied, “but I heard it just the other day,” and replaced it quickly. He fingered a few more, Bach, Handel, Mendelssohn.
Elisabeth said, “If you want something new, look at the other end.”
He removed another record and brightened. “You like American music?”
“I love it. What do you have, Gershwin? Marvelous!”
He laid the shiny black disc flat and swung the arm above it. The cool metal rested upon his fingertip for a delicious moment, and then he let it drop. He asked shyly, “Do you dance?”
They circled the small room to “Embraceable You.” Neither tried to look the other in the face, and when the song ended, each took a step back. Dietrich clicked his heels and gave a small bow.
TO HIS SURPRISE, Dietrich was invited to preach the Reformation Day sermon at Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church before Hindenburg and other members of the government. He owed the honor, it turned out, to a government minister whose wife had been successfully treated for hysteria by Karl Bonhoeffer.
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