04
“You want me to distribute these?” he asks me, letting the
05
flyers drop to his desk.
06
I nod, and somehow I explain to him about Joshua, about
07
the lawsuit, about Bryda Korzynski. “She is missing a finger,”
08
I hear myself saying, as if that means something. It does,
09
though what I’m not sure. But I tell him this anyway, and he
10
listens carefully.
11
Rabbi Epstein listens the way a rabbi should. He nods his
12
head, and he lets me talk. When I finish speaking he looks at
13
the flyer again, creasing his brow in concentration so similar
14
to the way Joshua always does. He pulls on the bottom of his
15
beard a bit, just like Ezra. “And you are involved, in this case?”
16
I shake my head. “I am just a secretary, for the lawyer,” I
17
say. “I am just a messenger.” You cannot shoot the messenger,
18
can you? Especially one cloaked so deeply in her second skin
19
that her Jewishness has all but evaporated; this place is for
20
eign to her.
21
He nods. Maybe he believes me. Maybe he doesn’t. I don’t
22
know if he cares. “I will hand these out on Saturday,” he says.
23
“Thank you,” I say, and I open my mouth as if to say some
24
thing else, but then I don’t.
25
“There is more?” he asks, looking at me. His eyes are
26
brown, like almonds, like my sister’s eyes, though not quite,
27
because they are lacking the small green flecks hers had.
S28
They do not look through me, like Bryda’s did, but they look
N29
01
at me with the kind of shrill intensity that makes me want to
02
tell him more.
03
I had a sister,
I suddenly want to say.
I love her. I miss her.
04
I writhe with guilt. You might have heard of her. She was a Jew,
05
and now she is famous for it. I was a Jew once too.
06
But what I say is this:
07
“I have a question.” I’m not even sure why or how these
08
words escape my lips, except they do, and before I can stop
09
myself, I am asking him, “What would happen to a Jew who
10
pretends not to be a Jew?”
11
He raises his eyebrows. “What would happen?”
12
I nod.
13
“Well, this is America in 1959. Not Germany during the
14
war. The Nazis are gone now.”
15
Are they? Are they ever gone? I think about what Bryda
16
said, that her boss, he is a Nazi. And I think about that gang
17
of hoodlums beating up Jewish children, the swastikas still
18
drawn on synagogues. The firebomb. At the thought, I feel
19
myself sweating, I nod at the rabbi and move toward the door;
20
my instinct to run is back.
21
“Miss,” the rabbi calls after me, and I stop and turn and
22
look at him again. “God knows,” he says. “You can’t hide
23
from God.”
24
25
26
27
28S
29N
01
02
03
Chapter Thirty
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
I know that I should eat dinner, later, when I am back
14
at my apartment and the skies are dark. I know that I should.
15
That I should be hungry and want and enjoy food as I must
16
have once, as a girl on the Merwedeplein. I am certain, I did.
17
Mother’s chicken soup. I feel I craved it once, before the war.
18
The scent of dill and carrots and chicken fat stewing for
19
hours on the stove. Only now I can barely remember what it
20
is like to enjoy the taste of something. Most of the time I eat
21
because I know I have to.
22
I am still thinking about the rabbi’s words, that God knows
23
who is a Jew and who is not. If that is true, then does He also
24
know what happened with my sister, what I did? I shake my
25
head, because I am not sure that I believe that God knows
26
anything anymore.
27
But I think about Eduard’s words as we’d stood together
S28
by the destroyed Judischausen:
You are who you are
.
N29
01
Oh, Eduard. If only it were that simple now.
02
I don’t think Eduard knew about the publication of my
03
sister’s book before he died, and he certainly never knew what
04
my American life would become, how really, truly, deeply I
05
would continue to hide myself.
06
You are who you are,
Eduard said.
07
I was hiding that day when I showed up at his doorstep
08
after the war. I was dressed in a nun’s habit, Brigitta’s idea—
09
just in case.
10
“Yes, Sister?” he’d said, staring at me then. Eduard was tall
11
and handsome, with thick black hair, and he seemed
12
unchanged by the war, except for the streaks of silver dancing
13
just around the edges of his ears. “Can I help you?”
14
I remembered the habit, and I shook my head. “I am not a
15
sister,” I whispered, the words catching in my throat. For a
16
moment I could not breathe. “I am Edith’s daughter,” I finally
17
managed to say, and I was surprised by how small my own
18
voice sounded.
19
His green eyes curled in confusion, then, all at once, rec
20
ognition. “Edith Hollander?” he said, referring to Mother by
21
her maiden name. I nodded.
22
“Annelies?” he asked first. I shook my head and told him
23
my name. He raised his eyebrows, and I thought,
My sister
.
24
She always was the memorable one.
25
“You can stay here,” Eduard told me, after I told him about
26
the Red Cross lists, the rest of my family. Eduard placed a
27
large hand on the protruding bone that had once been my
28S
shoulder. His green eyes, they were rivers. “Really,” he said.
29N
“This can be your home. For as long as you like.”
I stayed for nearly six years. While Eduard was at work
01
during the day, I read my way through the volumes that
02
filled his library: mostly literature, written in English. The
03
only German books were the classics, which were the
04
only German books we’d allowed ourselves in the annex too.
05
And I understood, for Eduard, who was not a Jew, that maybe
06
this was his small act of rebellion. I spent afternoons in the
07
sunlight and privacy of his backyard rose garden, perfecting
08
my English, sometimes reading the English words aloud,
09
practicing them in my voice. In the evenings Eduard ate a
10
hearty supper, prepared by his housekeeper, while I would
11
take a few bites. Like Ilsa, he urged me to eat more, but I
12
could not.
13
Sometimes I miss the simplicity of those days, the quiet
14
ness of Eduard’s house in Frankfurt, before I came to the
15
United States, before the book, before the sweater.
You are
16
who you are,
Eduard said. Yes, living there with him, for that
17
time, I was.
18
19
20
The phone rings, and I jump. I am on the couch, stroking
21
Katze, and I think it cannot be a member of the Beth Shalom
22
congregation. Already. But of course, it is not. It is Ilsa again.
23
“My dear,” she says, when I pick up, “you’re not in the
24
middle of eating, are you?”
25
“No,” I lie. “I’ve already finished.”
26
She hesitates for a moment, and then she says, “You have
27
been eating well, haven’t you?”
S28
“Of course,” I lie again.
N29
01
“Well, anyway, I just wanted to check up on you, see how
02
things have been going this week.”
03
“Fine,” I say, forcing the word from my lips in my perfect
04
imitation of cheeriness.
05
She hesitates for a moment. “Are you sure?” she says.
06
“Because I have just had a feeling that something isn’t right
07
with you.”
08
“Oh, Ilsa.” I force myself to laugh and fight the image of
09
Rabbi Epstein’s face, staring, staring, staring at me. Eduard’s
10
strong voice, echoing in my head.
You are who you are.
“You
11
really do worry too much.” I imagine Mother or my sister, if
12
they were here. They too would say:
I can hear it in your voice.
13
Something isn’t right. Stop being such a ninny. Stop lying to us,
14
Margola.
15
But Ilsa chuckles, and I picture her on the other end of the
16
line, sitting in her country kitchen, tugging on her earlobe.
17
“Bertie says I am a mother hen. And that I annoy you.” She
18
pauses. “But it’s just, you know if you ever need anything.
19
Anything at all, my dear.”
20
“I know,” I tell her, and this much I do know. “Thank you.”
21
“Did you decide on your car yet?”
22
“My car?” I ask, not at all sure what she means at first.
23
“Your pink Cadillac?”
24
“Oh,” I say, “that. No, not yet.” I close my eyes, and I can
25
see it again, in the drive at 2217. I have been too chicken to go
26
back there again, too afraid of what and whom I might find.
27
And besides, I have been consumed with Joshua and Penny,
28S
and this case.
This case.
The rabbi.
God knows.
29N
“Oh,” Ilsa says, “my dear, we have been thinking more
about our trip, and we think we might like to do a whole tour
01
of Europe.”
02
“How nice,” I murmur.
03
“Bertie is going to call an agent to book us a package. Ger
04
many, France, Switzerland—”
05
“Switzerland?” I ask, and it is a word that barely forms in
06
my throat before it wants to choke me there.
07
“Yes, I have always wanted to see the Alps, my dear.”
08
“The Alps,” I say. “Yes, of course.”
09
“You will come with us, won’t you, my dear?”
10
“I don’t think so,” I say slowly, trying not to let on to Ilsa
11
that it is very hard for me now to breathe.
12
“Well, at least give it some thought. I’m not going to let you
13
off the hook that easily. I’d really love for you to come. Bertie
14
and I both would.”
15
Long after my phone call with Ilsa is finished, I find myself
16
lying in bed, wide-awake, thinking again of the letter I have
17
never written.
Switzerland,
I think.
My father.