Shadows of Berlin

10.

The Shield of David

As the war drags into another year, the Jews of Berlin are considered aliens in their own land. Since the police decree regarding the identifying emblem for Jews was issued last September, all Jews over the age of six must, by law, wear the Judenstern. The details were published in the SS-­controlled mouthpiece, the Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt. “The Jewish Star,” it declared, “is a six-­pointed star, drawn in black lines made of yellow fabric, the size of the palm of a hand.” At the center, the word Juden is machine-­stitched in black, mock-­Hebraic lettering. Jews must display the star “visibly” on the left over the heart. No pinning of the star either. What a slippery Jewish trick that is! Slipping it on and off as it suits them? No! It must be sewn securely! The police will check.

And of course, everyone has had to pay for the stars that mark them as outcasts and pariahs. Ten pfennigs apiece. Rashka pricked her finger sewing one of them onto the ragged, oversized coat she wears. It’s a coat for a boy, but she wears it because it still has a heavy flannel lining intact. She pricked her fingers and left a drop of blood on the star, marking it hers. Rashka’s Star. Claimed by bloodshed.

Years before, when she was six years old, the Nazis had staged a boycott of Jewish businesses. They were new to power then, and their effort fizzled after a few days, but Rashka can starkly recall standing inside Ehrenberg’s Konditorei in the Lindenstrasse, staring out through the glass while a giant storm trooper in his dung-­brown Sturmabteilung uniform painted a sloppy Magen David across the shop’s window.

Her eema used paintbrushes too. Sometimes Rashka was even permitted to play with the old ones that had been retired from work. She liked smearing paint on a scrap of canvas in the shape of a hare or maybe a pony with a bristly mane. She liked the feeling of the brush in her hand. She liked the smooth application of the paint, just as she liked the broom of color, thinning into cartwheels as she smashed the brush’s head into a starburst. But to watch this behemoth storm trooper with his fat belly hung over his belt, using a paintbrush to mock the Jews? Terrifying. To single out Jews for ridicule! It was a stunning affront. A frightening theft of the power of a paintbrush.

Frau Ehrenberg was in tears behind the bakery counter, muttering “Eine Kulturschande” over and over. A culture shame!

But Eema was dry-­eyed. “Don’t be frightened, child,” she had commanded Rashka at the time, gripping her hand tightly. “Don’t be frightened.” But it was obvious that even Eema was swallowing fear. And Rashka? She was only a small girl, but it both enraged and horrified her down to her soul as she watched the paint dribble down the glass.

A thump of her heart wakes Rachel to the present. She finds herself in the rear of a taxi with Aaron, pulling up in front of Gluckstern’s on Delancey Street for dinner with the Weinstocks. The Barry Sisters sing the jingle over the radio: Let’s all sing! Let our voices ring! It’s East Side Gluckstern’s Restaurant and Caterers!

It’s just past twilight, when the city takes on the darkness from the ground up. Aaron puffs out his cheeks and straightens his tie as the cab pulls over to the curb. “Okay, so here we are,” he tells Rachel grimly. “Let’s get this fucking ordeal over with.” He had a few beers while they were getting ready. A few beers that nudged him into a surliness that he barely pretends to hide. Frowning, he leans his head forward to the cabbie. “So, buddy?” he asks, yanking out his wallet. “What’s this gonna set me back?”

Inside, the place is full and loud. An undercurrent of thunder thrums through the air as they’re seated at a four-­top, the two couples—­the Perlmans, Rachel and Aaron, and the Weinstocks, Cousin Ezra and wife, Daniela. Like many of the old kosher eateries, the place has a reputation for prickly service, as well as its corned beef and cabbage. There’s an old joke about a waiter circling through the tables of some neighborhood kosher restaurant asking, “Who wanted the clean glass?” But tonight, their waiter is a middle-­aged mensch who seems cheerful, even delighted to have them seated in his section. “H’boy,” Aaron grumbles. “Smiley the waiter. He must have us sized up for big tippers” is her husband’s explanation.

“So thank you for putting up with the menu here,” Daniela says. Daniela Weinstock is the mother of a brood of little Weinstocks and seems to Rachel to have spent the last several years vershtuft. Pregnant. Though vershtuft is not a very nice way to describe it. Blocked! You would think of someone constipated! How many times has Daniela been pregnant since Rachel’s known her? But Rachel never offers congratulations. That would invite misfortune. Umglik! Better to say b’sha’ah tovah. At a good hour. All should proceed at the right time: the pregnancy should be smooth, the baby should be healthy, and the birth should be without complication. All that comes at a good hour—­wishes for the future rather than blessings for the past.

Daniella is as sweet as can be. A good Jewish girl from Queens. Always patient with her little Weinstocks, never a harsh word, she is always ready to help out or lend a listening ear. And if she’s not exactly anybody’s idea of an intellectual, then so what? She has a talent for calming stormy waters. And she has wonderful hands. Competent and unhurried in her movements. Rachel is calmed just watching her fold laundry. She is currently pregnant with their fourth Weinstock child, and there is something so captivatingly, even biblically voluptuous about Daniela that Rachel often has to remind herself not to stare. Eyes like dark wine. The sensual nose. Her belly is round and low, and in her eighth month, her breasts are swollen tight. Just the sight of her makes Rachel feel underfed, flat, and empty. “I know you two don’t exactly keep kosher,” Daniela says with a soft smile.

“Hey, no problem at all,” Aaron replies. “How can you not love stuffed cow spleen, really?”

Daniela maintains her smile. “Well, if you’re tired of spleen, I think I can recommend the schmaltz herring.” And now everybody else is smiling too at the joke. But Rachel can see that underneath, Aaron is not really smiling at all. He is preparing to join battle in his never-­ending duel with Ezra. Who did more in the war? Who is the better Jew? Who is living the better life?

“You know, I love Gluckstern’s,” Aaron declares and then sings a verse of the radio jingle while glaring at the menu. Come on, Jews! Choose satisfaction, because it’s good, good, good! “Uncle Al use to take us here when Naomi and I were kids,” he says. “Pack us into the tiny back seat of his old Studebaker.”

“And which was Uncle Al?” Rachel must ask. “I get them confused.”

“Uncle Al. Chief garment cutter for D. L. Horowitz, twenty-­six years,” Aaron says. “Never married, but once a month, he’d bring us kids here for a meal.”

Daniela sounds pleasantly surprised. “Really? He was observant, Uncle Al?”

Aaron shrugs. “Well, nothing much got past him, if that’s what you mean.”

Another joke. But Ezra snorts disdainfully.

And here it comes. “You got a problem there, cuz?” Aaron wonders aloud.

Ezra Weinstock. The goodnik, or maybe a too-­goodnik as far as Aaron is concerned. “The Fucknik” works better for her husband, as in, “God, but do I have to spend another evening listening to the Fucknik lecture?” Always carping on the responsibilities of the Jew, as if Aaron doesn’t have enough to deal with already! A large, physically imposing man, with thinning hair and cloudless eyes, Ezra is given to wearing socks with sandals. In the war, he was awarded a medal for driving a Sherman tank in North Africa. “The holy Bronze Star,” Aaron calls it, as if it was some kind of big, combustive Magen David bulging through the firmament above Ezra’s head. And maybe it is. While Aaron was in charge of the logistics for the U.S.O. camp shows, busy pissing off Hollywood caterers in California, Sergeant Ezra Weinstock was chewing up Nazis in his tank treads.

“Problem? No.” Ezra shrugs back. “Who could have a problem with Uncle Al? Everybody’s pal, Uncle Al.”

Daniela offers a quiet correction by speaking her husband’s name. “Ezra.”

Aaron frowns at the menu. “Nothing wrong with the man as far as the Perlman household was ever concerned. He always did good by us.”

“That’s ’cause he knew your pop was an easy tap,” Ezra tells him.

And now the anger shows. “Hey, genius. My pop was a generous man. Fault him for that if you want, but at least he didn’t burn down his own goddamn business for the insurance.”

Rachel spits out a not-­so-­quiet correction. “Aaron.”

Their waiter returns. “You folks ready to order?” he wonders pleasantly.

Aaron jumps in, obviously making an ugly joke. “Uh, yes, how does the chef prepare the jellied calf’s feet?”

Rachel says, “He’ll have the Romanian cutlet with a fruit cup.”

Aaron says, “And she’ll have the lungen and milz stew with the chopped herring.”

Rachel goes about collecting everyone’s menus. “Don’t listen to him,” she tells the waiter, handing over the menu stack. “I’ll have the kasha varnishkes, please. Thank you.”

“And you, Mrs. Weinstock?” asks the waiter.

“The usual for us, Mr. Katz.”

“Wonderful. And how are we doing on the Almonetta?”

“I think we’re fine, Oskar,” Ezra decides, but Aaron is past accepting anything his cousin has to say about anything.

“Hey, hey, speak for yourself, Sarge,” he says as he empties the bottle into his glass. “Some of us have a taste for fine wine. Let’s uncork another bottle of ‘Man-­oh-­Man-­ischewitz.’”

The waiter gives him a suspect glance, but what’s he supposed to do? Argue?

“Sure. If that’s what you want, I’ll have the steward bring it out,” he says and leaves silence in his wake.

Leaning over to her husband, Rachel asks, “What are you doing?”

Aaron frowns to himself. “Nothing, nothing.” Then he turns to Ezra. “Look, I apologize, okay? That was a lousy thing to say about your old man.”

“No, no. You’re right,” Ezra admits. “Everybody knows my pop had the place torched. He practically admitted to it himself. But he was desperate. Ma, thank God for her recovery, was still in the sanatorium with the T.B., he had three kids to feed, and his business was in the toilet. It was wrong, no question. But maybe at least a little forgivable.”

The silence that follows is clumsy.

“I think I’m going to have the chocolate rugelach for dessert,” Daniela decides aloud. “It was so good the last time.”

“Well, actually, I’m not sure we will have the time for dessert,” Rachel decides to say in an apologetic voice.

“Oh, no?” Daniela sounds disappointed.

“Aaron has his fish market tomorrow, don’t you, Husband?”

“Yep,” Aaron responds, tight-­lipped.

“So he has to be up early. Very, very early.”

“Aw, well, that’s too bad,” Daniela concedes sympathetically. But then here comes Ezra wading in up to his hips.

“You know, cuz,” he says to Aaron. “You really are lucky you don’t have kids. They keep you up all night, the little stinkers.”

Aaron blinks. “And who was talking about having kids?” he wants to know. “Was that a topic I missed?”

Ezra only shrugs. “I’m just saying. You’re lucky. That’s all. So what that your mom’s going gray waiting on her share of grandkids,” he says. A little joke, that’s all. A little poke as he’s picking a roll to butter from the basket.

Aaron fails, however, to see the humor. “Hey! Knucklehead!” he objects, face reddening. “My mother’s doing just fine!” he declares, poking a finger into the air at his cousin.

“Sure. I’m sure she’s good, cousin,” Ezra says to Aaron. “I’m sure she’s just great.”

“Ezra.” Daniela speaks her husband’s name as if it’s a command. “Stop. There are two people in every marriage making decisions,” she reminds him. “And what they decide is none of our business.”

Ezra nods and raises his hands in surrender, holding a roll in one hand and a butter knife in the other. “Right. You’re right,” he agrees, expending a breath of regret. “I’m sorry. My wife is correct as always. None of my business, and I shouldn’t have brought it up. Okay, Sergeant Perlman?”

“I just don’t get why you feel like you can shoot your mouth off anytime you please.”

“Well, I won’t talk about the kettle or who’s calling it black,” Ezra says. Finishing his buttering, he sets down the roll. “But okay. Point taken,” he announces. “Mea culpa,” the man adds with the softened tone of any good public apology.

“And I think you should apologize to Rachel too,” Daniela points out.

The attention of the table shifts, and Rachel feels a sting of panic. Through all this, she has felt herself shrinking. Growing smaller and smaller until she feels like no more than a gnat flitting about the table.

Ezra is only too happy to concede. “Apologies, dear lady,” he says, making praying hands as he makes one last stab at a joke. “It must be tough enough to be married to this guy without me kibbitzing in.”

“Oh great.” Aaron nods, frowning. “That’s a great apology. Just terrific. You should carve that one in stone.” He lights up a cigarette and blows out smoke that settles with the silence over the table until he says, “You know, I think I will have the stuffed cow spleen after all. I mean, why not? I’ve already got heartburn thanks to the nudnik here,” he says, shrugging his head toward Ezra. “So what the hell?”

In the taxicab on the way home, Aaron and Ezra with Rachel in between are all squashed into the rear seat in imitation of ten pounds of baloney in a five-­pound sack, while pregnant Daniela sits up front in the passenger seat. Not a word passes between them. In the hallway of their building, the women exchange brief farewells, but the men remain silent. Ezra is already trotting up the stairs to the fifth floor, Aaron already digging his key into the door lock of their apartment.

Sorry, Daniela mouths with a sad little smile and touches Rachel’s arm.

Inside the gray light of the apartment, Rachel slips off her coat one arm at a time. “I don’t understand,” she is saying. “Why must you compete so?”

“Because he’s an overly competitive dope,” Aaron answers, tossing away his hat and roughly scratching his head of curls.

“He is?” says Rachel, closing the door behind them.

“Hey. People compete in this country, Rachel,” Aaron says, yanking off his coat. “It’s the American way,” he declares, aggressively hooking his coat on the hall tree and flipping on the light switch. “It’s why America is America. It’s why we’re the richest country in the world and have never lost a war.”

“All I’m asking is this: what do you hope to gain by this war between the two of you? He’s not an enemy. He’s your cousin.”

“Twice removed,” he corrects.

“And what does this mean, ‘twice removed’?”

“Twice removed from the list of people I can stand to socialize with. At least twice I removed him, probably ten times, and yet he keeps coming back. Honey, the man is a judgmental dope, even when he’s ‘apologizing.’ My mother’s always said that Ezra’s a first-­class tumler, just like his old man, and she’s always been right.”

“Tumler or not,” Rachel says, picking up the cat who comes meowing toward her. “He’s still your family. And this is how you treat him? You should be glad you have family.”

“H’boy, here we go.”

Rachel turns, hugging Kibbitz in her arms. “Here we go what?”

Aaron loosens his tie, lights a cigarette from a leftover pack on the coffee table. “Nothing. I know. I’m lucky to have family left.”

“That’s right. You are,” she says and shifts the cat’s weight onto her shoulder. “So don’t you be the judgmental dope.”

In the bedroom, discussion continues as they prepare for bed. Aaron sits slouched on the bedspread, jacket gone, collar opened, tie pulled apart and hanging from his neck, cigarette smoldering in the bedside ashtray. He sighs as he tugs off each shoe and tosses it. “H’okay, h’okay,” he surrenders. “I get it. Family is family. He just gets under my skin is all. Always acting like the almighty goodnik. ‘My responsibility as an American Jew,’ with his big bronze star gleaming.” Kibbitz is mewing on the bed. Aaron picks him up and plops him on the floor. “Like he single-­handedly routed the whole friggin’ Nazi war machine.”

Rachel turns her back to Aaron, lifting her hair so he can unzip the back of her dress for her. “Maybe he takes being a Jew seriously.”

Reaching up and zip he’s done. “And you’re saying I don’t?”

“I’m saying that maybe you think you don’t. And that’s why he gets under your skin.” She slips her shoulders free. “And by the way, it certainly was not Ezra Weinstock routing the Nazi war machine.” Rachel steps out of the dress. “It was the Red Army doing that.”

Aaron yanks off a sock, tosses it. “Yeah? Well, tell him that, why don’t you?” Yanks off the other sock. “No, on second thought, don’t. In fact, don’t tell anybody that, okay? The last thing I need is a Commie lover in my bed.” Suddenly he seizes her and pulls her onto the bed on top of him. She yelps, but then her eyes go wide when he kisses her.

“I know,” Aaron admits, an intimacy entering his voice. “Even though it’s not easy to believe, considering the tribe from Webster Avenue. I know that I am lucky to have family. But luckier to have you.”

A second kiss goes deeper.

She could ruin her life quite easily, or at least her madness could. It wouldn’t take much to drive her entire existence on West 22nd Street over a cliff. She could light a match and drop it on the sofa upholstery and sit back. The simplicity of it both terrifies her and entices her. She knows that it’s her guilt that pushes her to mad thoughts. But her desire for a just atonement is strong. Biblical, even.

Do not let guilt for the blood of the innocent remain among Your people, Israel.

Both wife and husband lie together naked under the covers. Comfortable in their marriage bed, Rachel allows herself to drop her guard enough to feel the heat of their intimacy. That is, the intimacy that she is so desperate to maintain and so tempted to ruin. Without Aaron, without her marriage, what is she? A refugee. A mental case, as they put it in Flatbush. A resident nut of the booby hatch. She needs to be Mrs. Aaron Perlman, even when she resents the need. It’s the shelter she has built for herself against the storms of her own mad guilt. So she loves him. She does. She loves him, she puts up with him, she serves his humble husbandly requirements—­answering the telephone, shopping the grocery, making the coffee, washing dishes—­when she must. Wifely chores. Yet she is compelled to thwart him in his greatest desire.

She has, once again, taken measures to block his ability to deliver a belly, as is said. She has performed a certain operation with a rubberized insert that will permit him to be satisfied but prevent her from absorbing his deposit. And this time, even with all this argument about who has given whom grandkids, Aaron doesn’t complain. He seems to have grown stoic about her measures. Perhaps because, like her, he’s simply happy to have the connection. The escape. The release. Now he begins snoring dully. But Rachel stares into the darkness of the room above, searching out the ceiling crack, listening to the train cars of the West Side elevated line as they pass.

***

By the end of February 1943, there are very few things Jews are still permitted to do. Starving is one of them, but at least for now, so is eating. If one can call it eating, that is, what they’re forced to consume! Jews are not permitted meat or milk. No white bread, chocolate, tea or coffee, or most anything that would make up a normal Berliner diet. No fish, eggs, or butter, only black bread and gruel and stews made from rotting vegetables are on the menu. Yet even on the diet of scrapings and stale loaves, Rashka is changing physically. Her body maturing from a stick to a shape. She’s growing up. Her eema says so. “Rokhl, you’re growing up,” her mother tells her as if it’s perhaps not a crime but probably an unavoidable liability. Rashka employs the reflecting glass of passing shop windows as mirrors, and these mirrors agree: time is busy transforming her into a young woman passing the glass with the yellow Shield of David sewn to her breast.

They have long ago lost the villa in Wilmersdorf, auctioned off from under their feet after the laws stripped Jews of most of their property rights. Since then, they have been forced to inhabit various ramshackle flats in various ramshackle locations. The villa feels like a distant dream of her childhood. Rashka has learned to live with leaking roofs and drafty windows, polluted plumbing, bedbugs, and the skittering rats from the gutters. But she can see how this daily squalor is paring down her mother. Whittling her body to bony poverty, carving her face into an ax blade.

Eema’s eyes now are brutal black buttons, and she no longer paints. Of course she doesn’t. Her palettes and brushes were stolen from her and thrown onto the rubbish heap. But she seems to have lost the will, the desire to paint as well. God has robbed her of her gift, Eema declares. “Living now is by the minute only,” she explains to her daughter. “To think an hour ahead is impossible.” Though, in fact, it seems to Rashka that Eema never stops thinking about the next hour. Where they can lay hands on a few scraps of food, some bread, another blanket, a pair of shoes, paper for the toilet, matches for a candle. Meanwhile, God has taken her gift. For safekeeping perhaps? This is a theory Rashka wishes she could propose, but she is too fearful. What if it turns out that God is just a little bit vengeful? What then? Maybe He’s punishing Eema for some sin she has committed. Some secret transgression. And if so, what might He do to Eema’s little goat?

The latest of their residences is a so-­called Judenhaus. An officially designated house for Jews located on the corner of the Duisburger Strasse and the Konstanzer Strasse. Jews are still permitted bus passes if the distance to an assigned workplace is seven kilometers away or more, but the distance, west to east, from the house to the factory where they must work is only six kilometers, so they walk. And in their travels to and fro in the cold, they are often jeered at, spat upon, struck, or otherwise assaulted due to the stars they wear. Once, a shopkeeper suddenly shoved a broom at them and demanded that they sweep the sidewalk of his shop.

Inside the house, it’s overcrowded squalor from corner to corner. Everyone is hungry, everyone is sick, everyone is afraid because of the rumor mill that says that Berliner Jews are being shipped like cattle to a ghetto in Occupied Poland called Litzmannstadt. Trains leave on a weekly basis from Bahnhof Grunewald, the rumors inform them. “Transports” they are called.

Uncle Fritz, meanwhile, has excelled at becoming a privileged Jew. Two years before, he had wangled membership on the board of the Jewish association organized under the control of the Gestapo’s Jewish Desk, Referat IV B4.

“We’re trying to save what we can,” Feter Fritz explains in a serious tone to his sister.

“You’re trying to save yourself, Fritz,” his sister counters.

“Well, that’s a rather vile thing to say to one’s own flesh and blood, Lavinia. Even for you.”

“Vile it may be,” she shrugs. But true.

“There are many good men. Important men. Courageous men. Good, solid, salt-­of-­the-­earth menschen who have taken on the thankless responsibility of representing our communities to the SS. Do you doubt that?”

“It’s you I doubt, Fritzl,” she says. “You.”

Now, on a cold February night, Feter Fritz stands on the steps of the interior stairwell of the Judenhaus. He is here to prove his worth. Eema and Rashka stand with him. Rashka is silent, her hand in her mother’s grasp. Her uncle’s chin is poorly shaven. His once immaculately manicured fingernails are dirty and ragged. His hair is greasy, and his clothing hangs on him like he’s dressed in a bag of rags. But the most alarming element of his appearance is not what he’s wearing. It’s what he’s not wearing.

“Friedel, you’re not wearing the star,” her eema is saying, her voice low, concerned for him, yes, but also with a note of panic. But Feter’s mouth is set. His eyes are dark with determination. He speaks closely to them.

“You must listen to me now,” he instructs. “Are you listening, Lavinia? I need you to listen to me.”

“I’m listening. Yes, for God’s sake.” Her eema’s eyes are wide. Her expression raw.

“Tomorrow morning,” Feter Fritz begins, “before you leave for work, I want you to pack whatever you have of value and take it with you.”

“What do we have of value any longer?”

“Listen, Lavinia,” he scolds her impatiently. “Don’t talk. Anything of value. Any food you can carry without drawing attention. Fill your pockets. Sew what you can into the linings of your clothes. Whatever money. Whatever jewelry. Anything of value that you can lay hands on. But do it covertly. You don’t want to encourage questions from anyone.”

“And why am I doing this?”

“Because tomorrow morning, you are not going to work,” he informs them, followed by the unconscious tic of the German glance—­his eyes darting from side to side to safeguard against eavesdroppers. “The Gestapo,” he whispers grimly. “They’re planning an aktion. In the factories.” An aktion on a scale that dwarves everything that’s past, he says. Raids all over town. Gestapo and Kripo men. Companies of Waffen-­SS troops dispatched with empty lorries to fill with Jews. “Are you understanding me, Vinni?” He so seldom calls her by this name from their childhood.

Eema, however, appears confused, maybe a bit incensed. “But. But that’s nonsense,” she insists. Her grip on Rashka’s hand is steadily tightening. “We are doing their labor. For the war, Fritzl. Why would they take us from this? It’s meshugaas!”

“Meshugaas, perhaps, but it’s happening none the less. Listen to me. I can’t stay much longer. The story is that Goebbels is champing at the bit to declare Berlin ‘Jew-free.’ So he doesn’t care if you and Rashka are vital labor for the war. He simply wants you out. And you should know this too—­the SS have quit sending people to the ghettos. Now they are shipping them straight through to camps in Bohemia and Poland. This is not what you want for your daughter, Lavinia,” he assures her. “Fortunately, your little brother has a plan. We are diving under.”

“Under?”

“Submerging, Vinni, beneath the surface. As of tomorrow morning,” Uncle Fritz announces with a spark of his old playful confidence, the Macher, the maven of deals who gets things done with a gleam in his eye. “As of tomorrow morning, we are U-­boats.”