The German House

Part Four

AT DUSK, as the men gathered in the dining room, Eva left the inn. She wanted to look for the house where she had lived with her parents for four years. There were no streetlights, and Eva stumbled through the darkening evening. She reached the outer boundary of the camp and followed it toward the west. Every fifty meters, a sign with a skull hung from the fence. Danger—High Voltage. Although Eva knew the wire was no longer live, she could hear it humming. The path was unpaved, and she tripped once. The fence turned into a concrete wall. She started to think she was headed in the wrong direction, when lights appeared before her and as she approached, she could make out a row of houses. One of the smaller ones had a markedly pointed roof. Eva stopped by the low hedge that bordered the front yard and peered through a big window into a lit room. Three people were sitting at a table, eating dinner. A man, a woman, and a child. A family. Eva walked a little farther, to the neighboring house, where the main defendant and his wife had lived. It was dark. Beside the house, where the rose bed had been, a car was parked on a paved surface. “Hello? You out there. Are you looking for someone?” a voice called in Polish. Eva turned and saw that the man, who had just been sitting at the table, had come to the door. He sounded wary. Eva moved in a bit closer and answered that she was from Germany, here with a delegation. She was about to say more, but the man interrupted her. Yes. They’d heard about the visitors from West Germany. His voice now sounded curious. His wife appeared in the doorway beside him. Eva saw that she was pregnant. The woman asked if Eva wouldn’t like to come in. Eva declined, but the couple was persistent and displayed the proverbial Polish hospitality. Eventually Eva crossed the threshold into the house, and the first thing she saw was the date chiseled into a stone in the floor: 1937. She remembered tracing the numbers with her finger as a child. And how cold the floor had been under her knees. Even in summer. This was the right house.

The Polish child came to the door, a piece of bread in hand, and stared at Eva curiously. The child had longish hair, and Eva couldn’t say whether it was a girl or a boy. She nodded warmly at the child before being led into the living room. She was given a plate and a large helping of stew. She ate out of politeness. Potatoes with bacon and cabbage. The child dug toys out of a crate under the window: building blocks, a colorful rag doll, and wooden beads that thundered across the floor. The man explained that he was a restorer. He’d been working here for half a year. It was his job to conserve evidentiary material for court. It wasn’t easy: hair remains were devoured by mites, there was rust gnawing away at glasses frames, and shoes were decaying, attacked by mold or the salts typical of human sweat. The woman swatted jokingly at her husband and told him that this wasn’t appropriate dinner conversation. The man apologized. Eva looked around but didn’t recognize anything.

“Did you renovate?”

The man nodded and told her, with poorly concealed pride, that nothing was like it used to be. He had torn down walls, put in new floors and windows, hung wallpaper, painted. His wife rolled her eyes, recalling the chaos. She asked Eva to tell them about West Germany, whether it really was so golden, whether everyone really was so rich. The man asked about the trial and whether those SS men would get the death penalty. Eva told him that the death penalty didn’t exist in Germany anymore.

“Too bad,” the woman said and began clearing the table. Eva stood up to leave. Back in the front hallway, Eva wasn’t sure it really was the right house. There must be others built the same year, with that date. She shook the couple’s hands, wished them all the best, and thanked them. At that moment, the child came running and held a balled fist up to Eva. Eva hesitated, then held out her hand. The child let something drop into it. Something small and red. The man looked at it.

“What is that?”

His wife shrugged. “No idea where it came from. I think it’s a present for you.” She smiled.

Eva swallowed. “Thank you,” she said to the child.

In her hand was the missing piece of the Christmas pyramid, the Moorish king’s offering, the little red wooden package.

THE DINING ROOM WAS WHITE with cigarette smoke, and there was a voice coming from an unseen radio that no one was listening to. It smelled of beer, schnapps, and men’s sweat. The prosecutors had joined the defense attorneys at a table—the White Rabbit was the only one missing. The chief judge had also retired already. They were telling jokes and sharing funny stories about the town that lay just outside the dingy windowpanes. The blond man had read that the Arab League had imposed a boycott on imports from the London-based raincoat company Burberry because one of the board members was a Jew. In a statement, the company had responded that it barely ever rained in Arab countries, anyway—and as such, they exported so few raincoats to the region that they could live with the boycott. Everyone laughed heartily. David sat with the men but wasn’t listening. A picture on the wall had caught his eye. It depicted a four-in-hand sleigh being pulled over an icy plain. The driver was cracking his whip, the horses rearing. It was unsettling to see the steamy breath from their massive nostrils. They had a destination to reach. David closed his eyes and yearned for Sissi’s embrace, for her bony breast, the subtly sweet, musty smell of raisins she had, even though he’d never liked them as a kid. The blond man regarded him, then clinked his beer glass against David’s. He opened his eyes and drank. Eva appeared in the doorway. She hesitated, then started for her room, but one of the young reporters spotted her and waved her in.

“Fräulein Bruhns! Come keep us company!”

Eva stepped into the dining room, into its familiar smell. She glanced at the bar to the right and for a moment, saw her mother standing there smiling, wearing her “sugar face,” as Stefan called it, her eyes tired but yearning. And her father poking his ruddy face out of the kitchen and scanning the room. Everyone satisfied?

Eva joined the men, who eagerly made room for her at the table. She took a seat and found herself sitting opposite David. They looked at each other. In the midst of the noise meant to dispel the memories of the day, they recognized themselves in the other’s helplessness. They both smiled, happy they were no longer alone.

The White Rabbit came into the dining room and approached the table. He looked despondent, as if he were hanging his long ears, Eva thought. The group looked up at him, and he told them his pocket watch was missing. He set it on the edge of the sink in the communal bathroom and forgot it there. And once he realized it half an hour later, the watch had vanished. The White Rabbit looked around the table: had one of the gentlemen, or perhaps the lady, taken the watch? They all shook their heads. He turned to Eva: could she please speak to the innkeepers and ask about the watch? Eva got up and went to the bar. The innkeeper and his wife merely shrugged. They didn’t know anything about any watch. “A likely story!” the attorney said and dropped heavily into the chair beside Eva. One of the reporters cracked a joke about Poles—everyone knew they’d rob you blind if given half a chance. The storytelling continued. The White Rabbit didn’t laugh, but kept fingering his vest pocket in disbelief. He turned to Eva beside him: his mother gave him that watch after he passed his law exams. A simple woman, who had sold her jewelry to afford it. Her son needed a watch that wouldn’t fail him in court, she said. Eva could see tears in the White Rabbit’s eyes. The blond man ordered another round of pils. Plus vodka. He clinked glasses with David again. Eva nipped at her glass, then she too shot back the harsh liquid. Two older men in dark sweaters entered the dining room. They sat down at the bar, but when they detected German being spoken at Eva’s table, one of them sidled over. He had a wide head and looked strong despite his age. He asked what they were doing there. Eva translated. He was offered a seat by her side. He sat down, while the other man leaned against the bar. The Pole said that he didn’t believe the Germans—of all people—could administer justice.

“The whole thing is just a show trial to ease your conscience.”

The men at the table were first dumbfounded, then felt affronted and all began speaking at once. Eva wasn’t sure whose response to translate first. The Pole continued: he had been a prisoner himself, and there was no avenging that suffering.

“I’m a Jew!” David interjected, his voice inappropriately loud.

The Pole, who understood him even without Eva’s help, shrugged and asked in broken German, “Were you at camp?” David blanched, and the blond man sat up and watched him attentively. David remained silent, and the Pole went on, “No? Did you lose family?” David began to sweat. The blond man tried to interject something, but the Pole said, “Also no? Then you have no idea!”

At that, David jumped up and struck the Pole in the chest with the flat of his hand; the man was thrown backward in his chair, and only just managed to catch himself. Several of the men at the table rose in alarm, as did Eva. The man at the bar sauntered over, rolling up his sleeves. The Pole planted himself in front of David threateningly.

“What do you want? A thrashing? That can be arranged!”

The blond man placed a hand on the Pole’s arm. “Please. I apologize for my colleague. Please calm down. We’re sorry!”

Eva translated, and added, in Polish, “You’re right. We can’t make amends for anything.”

The Pole looked at Eva and hesitated. David, on the other hand, was ready to fight. “Come on, what are you waiting for?! Hit me!”

The blond man grabbed his arm. “Stop it, David! Apologize to the gentleman!”

But David yanked his arm free, turned, and bolted out of the room. Eva exchanged a look with the blond man, who had impulsively started to follow. He forced himself to stay where he was.

“You go.”

The matte light of the full moon illuminated the street outside the lodge. Eva looked around for David. He seemed to have disappeared. Then she heard a thud, followed by a whimper in the stillness. She followed the sounds behind the building. David was standing by a wall, and as Eva approached, he rammed his forehead against the stones a second time. He howled.

“David! What are you doing?!”

Eva seized David’s shoulders and head and tried to restrain him, but he elbowed her off, leaned his head back, and slammed it into the wall a third time. He groaned in pain. Eva tried to get between him and the wall, but he screamed at her to leave him alone and slapped her, sending her sprawling. She lay on the cold ground for a moment, her cheek on fire, and suddenly she didn’t care anymore. She got up, brushed off her skirt, and watched as David again drove his head into the stones with all his might, then crumpled over sideways like a sack. Eva crouched beside him and turned him onto his back. His face was dark with blood.

“David? Say something! Can you hear me?!”

David blinked. “I have a headache.”

Eva pulled a handkerchief from her skirt pocket, cushioned David’s head in her lap, and wiped off the blood as best she could. David saw the dark outline of her head, and over her shoulder the full moon, which looked down on him like the chief judge. David chuckled.

“I don’t even have a brother. I’ve got two older sisters. They live in Canada, just like my parents and the rest of my family.” Eva listened as David told her that the Müllers immigrated to Canada in ’37 without any difficulty, and even managed to save their fortune. He didn’t even have relatives affected by the extermination. David sat up and leaned his back against the wall. Eva kneeled beside him and said that it was lucky he and his family were spared. But David responded that she would never understand the guilt one felt. He was a Jew because his parents were Jewish. But he wasn’t raised with religion. It wasn’t till he reached Germany that he tried to lead a faithful existence. But this God had ignored him. “And I know why too. I don’t belong.”

As daybreak neared and the rooster climbed out of the coop to prepare for his morning crowing, Eva brought David to his room, which was as small as hers. She helped him into bed and took his threadbare towel. She dampened it in the bathroom and used it to cool his swollen face. She sat on the edge of the bed and thought about what he had told her, about the fact that even those who escaped, even their children and children’s children, had to suffer the existence of this place. Eva stroked David’s hand. He pulled her close on the narrow bed. And then they did the one thing that might possibly be done to counteract it all: they made love.

The delegation was ready to leave and stood outside the lodge in a light drizzle. When Eva came out the door with her suitcase, bleary-eyed but coiffed and wearing a fresh blouse, the blond man approached her. “Where’s David?” Eva wasn’t sure. When the activity outside the door had woken her, David was no longer beside her. She had expected to see him outside. The blond man checked his watch. The bus was coming in twenty minutes. Time passed, and no David. Eva went back to his room. A chambermaid was stripping the bed. She looked at Eva with indifference. Eva was already no longer a guest she had to be polite to. Eva looked around and opened the warped armoire. No suitcase, no clothes. She asked the chambermaid if she had found anything. The young woman just shrugged. The bus pulled up outside and waited, its engine idling. The driver was loading suitcases into the luggage compartment. The men boarded, one after the other. The blond man stood by the bus and looked at Eva. She shook her head, at a loss. “He’s gone. His things too.” The White Rabbit, who was the last to hurry out, because he insisted on a proper breakfast, overheard Eva and grumbled, “The Poles stole him too.” He handed his suitcase to the driver and boarded the bus. The blond man followed him, and Eva saw him speaking to the chief judge, who looked at his watch and said something. The blond man came back out to Eva and said that the longest they could wait was half an hour. They had to catch their flight before their visas expired. He sounded worried. He offered Eva a cigarette, which she declined, and lit one for himself. The bus driver turned off the engine. The weather turned pleasant, and the rooster strutted across the street with a few chickens and disappeared into a bush on the other side. Eva lifted her face toward the sky. The drizzle was like a gentle touch on her skin. They waited.

Eva dozed on the flight back. She knew where David was: in a canoe on an expansive lake in Canada that reflected the entire sky. Eva woke up and gazed out at the clouds. She thought of Toker, the first dachshund her family had ever had. She was eleven and just starting middle school. She was having a hard time making friends, so one day she brought Toker with her to school, to break the ice. It worked. On the way home, however, Toker was hit by a car. He wasn’t even a year old. In confirmation class, Eva asked Pastor Schrader, “How can the good Lord allow something like that to happen?”

The pastor looked at her and responded, “God isn’t responsible for the suffering on earth. Humans are. How could you allow that to happen?”

Eva hadn’t liked the pastor after that; she imitated his limping gait behind his back and told people that he didn’t wash. Which they believed too, because he always looked a bit unkempt.

Eva turned away from the window and decided that she would apologize to him that very week. She suddenly understood why none of the defendants acknowledged their guilt. Why they only admitted to individual crimes, if that. How could one human possibly bear the responsibility for the deaths of thousands?

Sissi stood outside the gate at the airport and waited. The first thing she wanted to tell David—she could hardly contain herself—was that her son had gotten a C on his first German assignment in middle school. She always knew he was smart. Sissi was wearing her modest suit under a new, parrot-colored coat. It was a little big, since she’d gotten it from a friend, but Sissi felt pretty in it. Pretty and sophisticated. Perfect for the airport! she thought. The first travelers passed through the electric sliding doors, almost all men in dark overcoats. Married. Well-to-do. They were followed by a young woman with an outdated hairstyle—she was probably from a good home—and a face that appeared as if she were straining to hear something deep within herself. Maybe she also had a bolted chamber inside. She passed by Sissi without a glance. Only a few more people came out the sliding doors. The arrivals hall emptied as travelers, reunited families, friends, and couples ambled, arms interlocked, out to the parking lot. Sissi stared at the door that had stopped opening.

A yellow car was waiting outside the airport. Jürgen, Eva thought, and realized it made her happy. Then she recognized the gnarled figure of the attorney general in the backseat. A chauffeur sat at the wheel. The blond man approached and offered Eva a ride into the city. He let her sit in front, whereas he took a seat in the back, to report to his boss. The car drove off. The blond man explained that some witness testimony was refuted, given certain distances or vantage points. Most, however, were confirmed. They also received credible new documentation from Polish authorities. Driving permits signed by the main defendant. The blond man handed the attorney general a folder, which he looked through. Eva watched her city’s worsening traffic through the windshield. She was afraid of seeing her parents again and was grateful for every red light. As they turned onto Berger Strasse, the blond man reported on another unexpected occurrence: they lost one of their travel companions. The attorney general immediately knew who. That Canadian Jew.

“What the hell got into him this time?”

The blond man told him that they informed the Polish security police in Warsaw before their departure. The police would be launching a search of the area.

Eva got out of the car at German House and couldn’t believe her eyes. Through the windows of the restaurant she could see people—guests—sitting at the tables. She checked her watch. It was just before two. Lunchtime. She spotted her mother standing at one of the windows; Edith had stopped there, a few plates balanced on her arm, and was peering out at Eva. She looked anxious, as if she feared Eva wouldn’t say hello. Eva waved halfheartedly. Then she decided to get the reunion over with and entered the dining room, suitcase in hand. Edith was serving the plates. Eva lingered by the door. There was a pink porcelain pig on the bar, which was new. Edith came up to her.

“Hello, Mum.”

Edith moved in for a hug, but Eva deflected, holding out her right hand. They shook. Edith then took the suitcase and carried it to the door to the stairs. Eva followed. She noticed a little sign stuck to the piggy bank as she passed: Giordano family.

“Yes, your father made that,” Edith said, turning back to address Eva. “I tried talking him out of it, but you know how stubborn he can be.”

They stopped at the door. Edith stepped toward Eva and whispered, “And look around. Look how well it’s been received already. There’s an insurance company around the corner now. That’s those three tables right there. I’m working the bar myself, by the way.” Eva still didn’t speak. “Have you eaten? There’s beef roulade. The meat is so…” Her mother formed an oval with her thumb and index finger and kissed her fingertips. It made her earrings swing.

“I’ll go say hello to him first,” Eva said. She went into the kitchen, her mother following on her heels, as though she were afraid she might reconsider along the way and run off. Eva’s father was standing at the stove, his back straighter than usual, shaking a big pot in which he was browning the roulade. He periodically stirred the gravy bubbling in an oval saucepan. Steam rose and enveloped her father. Frau Lenze rapidly spooned mashed potatoes onto six plates that had been lined up on the sideboard and then heaped several small dishes with cucumber salad.

“Hi, Frau Lenze. Hi, Daddy.”

Frau Lenze looked up. “There’s our girl! Was it nice? Feeling better after some time in the sun?”

Eva frowned at her in confusion.

“Frau Lenze means by the sea,” Edith hastily explained.

Eva’s father removed the pot from the flame and came over. He looked bad, his eyes bloodshot and his face reddish blue. Nonetheless, he did his best to beam proudly.

“Well, I took the plunge! This corset is worth its weight in gold. Did you see how busy we are? We’ve already sent out eighteen orders of roulade.”

Eva just looked at her father. She didn’t know what to say.

“But I’ve got one set aside for you!” he continued. “Take a seat out there. You get the nicest one of all! Coming right up, browned to perfection.” He turned quickly back to the stove.

Eva took a seat at one of the back tables in the dining room. Her mother wiped the dark wooden tabletop with her dishtowel.

“I’ll bring you a glass of white.” It was a statement, not a question. Eva didn’t respond. Her mother went to the bar, taking a few new orders along the way. Eva observed the cheery guests, their bellies full and hearts happy, thanks to her father. She suddenly recalled that she had eaten lunch in the former officers’ mess during their tour of the camp. She remembered that none of them ate much. As they were leaving, David quietly and earnestly asked whether she didn’t at least want to peek into the kitchen. Eva had shaken her head and rushed outside, only to find her anxiety grow even greater there. Her mother returned with the wine and her plate.

“The mashed potatoes are made with extra butter, Daddy told me to tell you,” Edith said.

Eva looked at the plate, at the roulade lying there in a thick gravy, a heap of light yellow mash beside it. Her father appeared in the kitchen doorway and watched Eva. Her mother stood behind the bar, pouring beers and keeping an eye on her too. Eva picked up her fork in her left hand, the knife in her right. She plunged the fork into the mashed potatoes. The tines disappeared in the puree, which glistened with butter. She pulled the fork out again. She cut a piece of roulade, which began to steam from the inside like a living body. Eva brought the skewered bite up to her mouth. The smell of the meat penetrated all the way into her forehead. Something crept out of her stomach and slowly made its way up into her throat. Eva put down her silverware and took a sip of wine, which tasted like vinegar. She swallowed and swallowed. Out of the corner of her eye she could see her father in the doorway, trying to catch her attention. He wanted to know how it tasted. Her mother started making her way over. Eva felt as though the guests at the other tables had stopped speaking and eating and were also looking at her expectantly. “I’m sorry!” she wanted to cry. But her mouth had filled with saliva, which she couldn’t get down. At that moment, the felted curtain at the entrance was thrown open and Stefan burst in. He wore his schoolbag on his back, and he looked around, spotted Eva, and dashed toward her table.

“We’re serving luuuunch againnnn!” he yelled as he ran, as if the family had won the lottery. Edith snagged him and held a finger to her lips.

“Shh!” She then led him to Eva’s table and took his knapsack. “Have you finally gotten your dictation back?”

But Stefan just bared his teeth and ignored the question as he hung on Eva’s shoulder.

“How was your vacation? Did you bring me anything?”

Eva shook her head. “Not this time.”

Edith looked at Eva’s plate. She was normally horrified when guests left a lot uneaten—“Was there something wrong with your meal?”—but she kept quiet this time, helpless.

“Stefan can eat it,” Eva said. “I’m not hungry.”

“No,” Stefan protested. “I get to have pudding today!”

Eva got up and opened the private door to the stairwell. “I’m going to go lie down.” She took her suitcase and left the dining room.

Stefan turned to his mother. “You said this morning that I could have pudding at lunch if I hurried!”

Edith didn’t respond. She took Eva’s plate and went into the kitchen. Ludwig was waiting there behind the door. He too saw that Eva hadn’t eaten anything. With the cutlery Edith scraped the food into the big metal trash can. Frau Lenze looked at her in surprise but didn’t ask. Ludwig was silent and returned to the stove. He pushed pots back and forth, stirring and turning things busily. But Edith saw that his shoulders were twitching—that he was crying.

Edith knocked on Eva’s bedroom door later. She entered and sat down on Eva’s bed and avoided looking at the hat on the shelf. Eva, lying on the bedspread, hadn’t slept. She didn’t look at Edith, who placed a hand on her shoulder.

“You can’t do this to your father.” Eva remained silent, and Edith continued, “It was twenty years ago. By the time we realized what was happening there, it was too late. And we’re no heroes, Eva. We were afraid—we had young children. People didn’t speak up in those days. It can’t be compared to how things are now.” Eva still didn’t move. Edith took her hand off Eva’s shoulder and said, “We never hurt anyone.”

It sounded like a question. Eva regarded her mother out of the corner of her eye. She looked small sitting there on the edge of the bed, and she smelled of flour and the expensive perfume from Paris Ludwig gave her every year for their anniversary. Eva detected wrinkles around her upper lip that hadn’t been there before. She thought of her mother’s dream role, Schiller’s Maid of Orleans. Feisty, but ultimately lacking her own will.

Edith tried to smile. “Your Jürgen called twice while you were gone. What’s going on between you two?”

Eva normally would have wanted to tell her mother about David, her strange friend, who had just vanished. And about Jürgen, whom she didn’t want to live with, but whom she probably loved. She had always confided in her mother. Her mother was the person she was closest to. Eva studied her mother’s hands, the fingers that were too short for playing the violin, the worn wedding band. Eva saw that the hands were trembling slightly. She knew that her mother wanted her to do what she had always done when they’d fought in the past—take her hand and say, “Everything’s fine, Mummy.” But she didn’t move.

AT THE HOSPITAL, Annegret had picked up her “naughty habit” again, as she called it. She had battled with her conscience. But Doctor Küssner, who had given his notice, pushed her over the edge, and her sister, with her lies, also pushed her over the edge. It was all quite clear to Annegret: she needed those pitifully fussy newborns who convalesced under her care. She had to save lives and receive the thanks for it. It was the only thing that quieted her heart and gave her the strength to endure everything else. Annegret had taken to carrying the reusable syringe again, its glass barrel filled with a brownish liquid contaminated with E. coli, which she either mixed into the children’s milk or administered directly. Annegret acquired this solution by means that disgusted even her. But it was the easiest way. Annegret wandered among the bassinets, assessing the little creatures cradled there. She stopped at one of the beds and looked at the boy pedaling his legs and gazing at her trustingly. Annegret listened for noise in the hallway—her colleagues had all gone to the cafeteria for lunch. A sunbeam stole through the window and threw a white spotlight on Annegret as she pulled the syringe from her pocket, stepped up to the head of the bassinet, and opened the boy’s tiny pink mouth with the index finger of her left hand and inserted the syringe with her right.

“You’ll be rid of me in three weeks. Just spoke with the boss.” Doctor Küssner entered the room and walked over. He looked at Annegret’s hand by the baby’s mouth, first in curiosity, then alarm. She pulled out the syringe and tried to stuff it back in her pocket, but Doctor Küssner seized her wrist.

“What is that? What are you doing?”

THE TRIAL CONTINUED. The days repeated themselves. In the mornings, children played in the schoolyard beyond the auditorium. The autumnal trees swayed outside the glass panes, their movement familiar. The defendants remained steadfast, while the public hungered for new bombshells. And the witnesses remained those who had to muster the most courage to enter the courtroom. Nothing appeared to have changed. In the same way that floodlights were installed after a certain amount of time to better see the defendants’ faces, however, the tour of the site turned the imagined into certainty. Auschwitz was real. The chair diagonally in front of Eva’s spot remained empty. Fräulein Lehmkuhl and Fräulein Schenke were stunned to learn from Eva that David had disappeared and the Polish police hadn’t yet located him. “He must have gotten lost,” Fräulein Lehmkuhl said in distress. The blond man also glanced at the empty seat from time to time. Someone else noticed David’s absence as well. The White Rabbit approached Eva during a break one day. Defendant Number Four wanted a word. Eva reluctantly followed him to the other side and finally saw the haggard-looking face up close. He asked her about the young man with the red hair. He had gone missing? Well, when was he last seen? Where? What efforts were undertaken to locate him? Eva could easily picture how this man had led his interrogations. She looked at him furiously.

“That’s none of your business!” she hissed.

She turned to leave, but the Beast caught her arm and said, “He’s a hotheaded young man. Just like I used to be. I’m worried about him.”

Eva would have liked nothing better than to spit in his face. Instead she replied, her voice strained, “I don’t think David would like it for you, of all people, to concern yourself with him!”

She freed herself and returned to her seat, thinking, He’s a criminal. A mass murderer. She couldn’t forgive him for that. Then what were her parents? What did she have to forgive them? Did she have to? Eva was floating, as though in a bubble—she could see her parents outside it, indistinct, their voices muffled. She wished the bubble would burst. But she didn’t know how to make it.

At the end of another day of proceedings, which had limped along in the tedious review of papers and petitions, and by the time most people in the hall had their minds set on dinner, the light blond-haired man presented the court with the documents he had acquired from Polish authorities. They were driving permits for the delivery of Zyklon B, signed by the main defendant. The forms were marked, “Materials for Jewish resettlement,” which served as a cover-up.

“Does the defendant still wish to claim he had no knowledge of the gas chambers?!” the chief judge snarled into his microphone. The main defendant turned his raptor head to his attorney, and they exchanged a few words. It then appeared as if they were both stealing a glance at Eva. But she must be imagining things. The White Rabbit stood up. He pushed up the sleeve of his robe with his right hand and checked his shiny new wristwatch. He stated that his client had always been against what happened at the camp. He had wanted to leave and had volunteered for the front—in vain.

“Trying to portray him as a resistance fighter now, are we?” the blond man interjected sardonically. The attorney was not deterred and added that he wished to call a witness to attest to his client’s disposition.

“The defense wishes to call the witness Priess to the stand.”

“Priess? There’s a different name in your written request,” the chief judge said.

“Just a moment…” The White Rabbit searched one of his documents for the name. “Yes, Priess is her maiden name.”

Maiden name, Priess. Eva felt as if someone had pulled the chair out from under her, the floor, the entire world. The defense attorney’s voice sounded over the loudspeakers.

“The defense wishes to call the witness Edith Bruhns to the stand.”

Eva stood up and clutched the side of the table. Everything was spinning. The blond man turned to her, his brow furrowed. Eva’s mind was racing: David must have said something! Given her away! But why as a witness for the defense? It couldn’t be! Eva sank back into her chair and caught someone’s eye in the crowd—the wife of the main defendant was watching her, squinting out from under her little hat like a mouse, a triumphant mouse.

“The court grants the request of the defense,” the chief judge now declared.

The blond man leaned over to Eva. “Bruhns? Is she in any way connected to you?”

But Eva just stared at the double doors being opened by the bailiff.

“MY NAME IS EDITH BRUHNS, née Priess. I live at three-eighteen Berger Strasse. I am a restaurant server by profession.”

“Frau Bruhns, when did you arrive at the camp?”

“September 1940.”

“And in what capacity?”

“I was accompanying my husband, who served as the cook in the officers’ mess.”

“How much did you know about the camp?”

“Only that prisoners of war were held there.”

“And what more did you discover on location?”

Edith remained silent. Someone called out from the gallery. Eva thought she heard the words “Nazi whore.” But maybe she was just hysterical. Up there at the witness stand, not three meters away, sat her mother. She wasn’t wearing any jewelry. She had put on her black suit, which she only wore to funerals. She was serious and pale. She bore herself as if she were onstage, but Eva could see she wasn’t acting—she was making an effort to be honest. She had placed her handbag in front of her, the handbag Eva had emptied so many times as a child and the contents of which she knew by heart: a comb, a handkerchief, eucalyptus lozenges, hand cream, and a wallet with the most recent photos of her children. Eva’s heart raced. Her mother’s voice reverberated throughout the hall. “I discovered that normal people were imprisoned there too. I mean, who weren’t criminals.”

“Did you not wish to leave, then? You had two young daughters.”

“Oh, I did,” Edith responded. “I told my husband that he should request a transfer. But then they would have conscripted him. They were desperate for soldiers at that point, you see. He feared for his life, and I stopped trying to persuade him.” She once witnessed a woman being shot, because it happened directly beyond her yard. She figured the woman was trying to flee. Eva could see the yard, the neighbors’ rose bed, the fence, the woman crumpling. She looked at her mother, here in the auditorium, and recalled the last time they’d visited the municipal building together. The play The General’s Trousers had consisted of little more than lewd one-liners, but they couldn’t help laughing and kept egging each other on. That was an entirely different lifetime. Edith was now telling the court that she first learned about the gas chambers from the main defendant’s wife. They were neighbors. She called her attention to the smell.

“Does that mean you were also acquainted with the main defendant?” the chief judge asked.

“Yes, we encountered each other from time to time. Outside the house or at social events.”

The defense attorney now stood and fumbled in the folds of his robe for the pocket watch he no longer possessed. Then he glanced at his wristwatch.

“Ma’am, did you encounter each other at the camp officers’ Christmas party?”

“Yes.”

“Do you recall a specific incident from around that time?”

Eva saw her mother duck her head, trying to shrink like a child who doesn’t want to be seen, but knows: I’ve been spotted.

“I’m not sure what you mean.” Edith grimaced. She looked like Stefan when he was lying.

“Is it not true that on the following day, you filed a complaint with the Reich Main Security Office against the main defendant?”

“I don’t remember.”

Edith stared straight ahead. She hadn’t looked at Eva once. The room filled with whispers. The hands on the large wall clock ticked audibly. Five o’clock. Normally at this hour the chief judge would adjourn proceedings till the next day. Instead, he asked incredulously, “Frau Bruhns, you don’t remember? Surely you are aware of what such a complaint could mean at that time.”

The blond man leaned over to Eva and whispered, “Are you related to the witness?” He looked at her intently. Eva blanched and shook her head repeatedly.

The chief judge, the man in the moon, asked loudly, “Why did you denounce the main defendant, Frau Bruhns?”

At that, Edith Bruhns turned to face her daughter, as though taking her leave.

EVA RAN DOWN THE SIDEWALK, the evening commuter traffic beside her flowing like a dirty river of metal. Everyone in the auditorium that day now knew that in December ’44 her mother denounced the main defendant after he criticized the speech the propaganda minister had delivered to the Volkssturm militia in Berlin. Among other things, the main defendant said, “That firebrand is contributing to Germany’s demise.” Her mother had quoted this line in court. She composed the letter together with her husband and sent it off, although it could have meant a death sentence for the main defendant. An investigation followed, and the defendant with the raptor’s face was demoted, but then came peace. Peace! Eva was thrown backward—she started crossing the street, but now stood face-to-face with the hood of the car that had just hit her. She checked her body, which appeared unscathed, then looked at the furiously gesticulating driver behind the windshield. The man tapped his temple at her madly with one hand while repeatedly honking with the other. Then he leaped from the vehicle and rounded the front threateningly.

“I’ll turn you in! I’ll turn you in if there’s a single scratch!”

Eva watched the way he feverishly examined the car’s pristine body, the way he checked the paint from every imaginable angle above and below, smoothing his hand over it. He was wearing a checkered hat that was too small for him. Eva recovered from her shock and began to laugh.

“I don’t know what’s so funny, miss. This car just came from the factory!”

Eva couldn’t stop. She walked away laughing, covering her mouth with her hand as her eyes filled with tears and she struggled for air. She didn’t calm down till she reached German House. She stopped out front. On the other side of the street, a dark-haired woman was pushing a stroller over the sidewalk, then maneuvered it into the entrance of the apartment building there. Before the door closed, the woman noticed Eva in the distance and waved warmly. It was Frau Giordano. It seemed the family had managed to buy a new stroller with the money collected at German House. Eva entered the stairwell.

Inside the apartment, Eva went to her room and hauled her big suitcase out of the wardrobe. She fetched her toiletries bag from the bathroom and packed clothing, her dictionaries, a few favorite books, the folder containing her identification papers, and a photo she took from the wall above her desk. It was a picture of Stefan balancing Purzel on his head. Purzel looked unhappy. There was a knock on the door. Ludwig, wearing his white chef’s coat, came in; he was out of breath, as if he had charged upstairs from the kitchen, and he looked at the suitcase.

“I told your mother she should tell you beforehand. But she said it wasn’t even certain the court would call on her. And then she would have caused an unnecessary commotion.”

Eva noticed a little fleck of green stuck to her father’s cheek. Probably parsley. She turned her back on him and didn’t respond. She added the hat and her blue notebooks to the suitcase and closed it.

“Where on earth are you going to go?”

Eva passed by her father wordlessly. As she stepped into the hallway, the front door opened, and her mother entered. She was in miserable condition and had clearly been crying. Her eyes fell on the suitcase in Eva’s hand.

“Let’s talk, Eva.”

Eva shook her head and went for the door.

“Please,” her father said.

Eva set down her suitcase. “I don’t want to live with you anymore.”

Edith stepped up to Eva. “Because I testified for the main defendant?” she asked in despair. “But they just arrested him! My testimony didn’t even help. And I had to respond to the summons.”

Eva looked at her mother in disbelief; she was playing dumb, refusing to comprehend.

“Child! You’re acting so…” Ludwig started. “You’re making it seem like we’re murderers,” he stammered.

Eva gazed at her father, at his white jacket and soft red face above it. “Why didn’t you do anything, Father? You should have poisoned every last one of those officers!”

Edith reached for Eva’s arm, but she recoiled.

“Eva, they would have shot him then. And me. And you and Annegret.”

“And child,” her father said, “it wouldn’t have made a difference. They would have just sent new ones to replace them. You wouldn’t believe how many of them there were. They were everywhere.”

Eva lost control. “‘They’? Who’s ‘they’? And you, what were you? You were a part of the whole. You were ‘them’ too! You made it all possible. You may not have murdered anyone, but you allowed it. I don’t know which is worse. Tell me which is worse!”

Eva looked at her parents standing there so pathetically and waited for an answer. Edith just shook her head, turned, and went into the kitchen. Ludwig searched for words but found none. Eva picked up her suitcase, effortlessly pushed past her father, and opened the door. She left the apartment and stumbled down the polished staircase, through the lower entranceway, and out of the building. Two boys were approaching on the sidewalk, Stefan and his best friend, Thomas Preisgau.

“Eva, where are you going?” Stefan asked.

Eva gave Stefan a quick squeeze. “I’m going on a trip.”

“For how long?”

Eva didn’t answer, but grabbed her suitcase and hurried away as fast as she could. Stefan watched her in alarm.

Annegret had been lying on her bed, a bag of pretzel sticks on her belly, and listening to everything as she chewed. When she heard the door close, she got up, the nearly empty bag slipping to the floor, and went to the window. She watched Eva leave. Her pretty little sister. She started to cry, then angrily pounded the windowpane once with the palms of her hands. “Just go, then!” Annegret pressed her forehead against the cool glass, sniffed, and thought, It’s better that she go, she wouldn’t leave us alone, making such a fuss about the past, playing the great moralizer, clearly clueless about the shortcomings of human nature! Annegret couldn’t see Eva anymore, and she turned away from the window and picked up the pretzel bag. She dumped the remaining crumbs into her cupped hand. She slowly licked them up and thought about her conversation with Hartmut Küssner after he caught her in the act. They went into one of the examination rooms, and Annegret confessed that in the past five years, she had employed various means to infect nineteen male newborns and babies with E. coli to nurse them back to health. Doctor Küssner’s face was ashen with horror and disgust. She had killed a child! But Annegret swore that she had nothing to do with Martin Fasse’s death. She hadn’t given him anything. She had only ever chosen babies she knew were stable enough. He had to believe her! Annegret begged him, pulled her hair, and threw herself at him as he turned to go report her to the director. She would go with him, she stammered. To Wiesbaden or wherever he wanted. Live with him, bear his children. But he couldn’t destroy her life. Doctor Küssner shook her off and left the room, but he took a left down the hallway, rather than a right toward administration. Annegret had been consumed with fear since, but so far, she hadn’t been called in. She knew that Hartmut wanted nothing more than to believe she didn’t have a child on her conscience.

The light blond-haired man sat in his office with his colleagues. They were working on the criminal charges. Dirty coffee cups perched atop towers of file folders, their saucers overflowing with stubbed cigarette butts. The enormous skeleton of the new building next door was visible through the windows. Tarps flapped in the wind. The construction site appeared deserted, as though the owners had unexpectedly run out of money. The blond man observed one of the younger lawyers, who was searching assiduously through a statute book, and thought of David Miller, who had vehemently declared at the start of the trial that nothing short of a life sentence could be sought for each defendant. Every last one of them had committed murder! The young prosecutor was now saying that the most they could likely prove was complicity in murder—according to German law, the main perpetrators were the uppermost commanders of the Reich. Furthermore, the defendants would all plea superior orders, which was difficult to repudiate. Several in the office nodded, and the blond man said yes, requesting life sentences would not be possible in all cases. He waited, but no one challenged him. David had left a void. There was a knock on the door, and then Eva peeked in.

“I don’t mean to interrupt.”

The blond man stood and waved her in. “Come in, Fräulein Bruhns, we’re finished for the day.”

His staff rose and filed out of the office, every last one greeting Eva warmly as they passed. The blond man gestured toward a chair. Eva sat down and said that she was sorry, but she would no longer be able to continue working in the trial.

“Your fiancé again?”

“No, it’s because of my parents.” Eva then confirmed the suspicions the blond man had expressed during Edith Bruhns’s testimony. Eva confided that she could no longer meet anyone’s eye in the courtroom. She carried her parents’ guilt within her. The blond man said that, from a legal stance, that was nonsense. One couldn’t view an entire nation guilty by association. Besides, it would be difficult to find a replacement for her. Eva remained resolute and got to her feet. The blond man didn’t push her any further. All he could do, then, was to thank her sincerely for her good work. Eva said that she had just one final request. She wondered whether he could find anything out about a certain prisoner. His name was Jaschinsky. His number had been 24981. The blond man jotted down a note and said that he would be in touch.

Eva took the elevator down. As she crossed the foyer, she noticed a thin woman in a strikingly bright coat outside the glass door, running her finger down the doorbell nameplates. Eva had seen this woman before, outside the municipal building. She had been standing outside at the end of proceedings one day, clearly waiting for someone. Eva stepped outside and asked the woman if she could help. Sissi looked up.

“Where is the public prosecutor’s office?”

“Who are you looking for?” But Eva already knew the answer; she could see the concern in Sissi’s eyes.

The two women walked through a park set back from the street. The first yellow leaves of the season spiraled down around them. Eva told her about the trip. That she was with David that night, that he was distraught, and that she stayed by his side. She didn’t include that she slept with him, but after a quick sidelong glance at Sissi, she realized that there was no hiding it from her.

“We’re not a couple,” Sissi said. “But I’m very fond of him, and he likes me. And my son doesn’t mind him. That counts for a lot.” After a pause, she added, “Do you think he took his life out there somewhere? Or will he come back?”

Eva was silent and thought of the telex that had arrived two weeks earlier from the local police in Poland, which she had translated: a male body was found in a swamp not far from the camp. The condition of the body, however, was such that identification of the deceased was impossible. One of the authorities even suggested it had been lying there for years. Eva refused to believe it was David. The blond man also had his doubts. Eva told Sissi that David lost himself to that place. But that he would come back someday.

When they arrived back at the entrance of the park, Eva smiled. “You know, the thing is, he’s got to come back! He still owes me twenty marks.”

But Sissi remained solemn and opened her purse. She pulled out her wallet and said, “I can pay it off.”

“No, thank you, that wasn’t what I meant,” Eva insisted, refusing the offer.

The women shook hands good-bye. Eva watched Sissi walk down the street. It took a long time for the colorful coat to disappear. Like a bouquet of flowers upon the ocean, it rocked up and down, up and down, till a wave came and washed over it.

AUTUMN ARRIVED. Eva had rented a room in a boardinghouse run by two older women. One of the women, Frau Demuth, was never around, whereas the other, Frau Armbrecht, was all the more curious about this unmarried young woman. The furnishings in her room were tossed together carelessly, and the window opened onto nothing more than a whitewashed firewall. That didn’t bother Eva, though. She started working for Herr Körting at the agency again. Of the girls who had worked there a year earlier, the only one left was Christel Adomat, who had a crooked nose and smelled bad. All of the others had gotten married in the meantime. Eva interpreted in meetings and business discussions, and back in her room, she translated contracts and instruction manuals at her narrow desk. There was a job for her once at Schoormann’s, but she asked Christel to take it. Eva tried not to think of Jürgen anymore. She continued to follow the trial; she bought the daily papers and read that the evidentiary hearing had concluded. Following closing arguments, the prosecution sought life sentences for fourteen of the defendants, including the Beast, the “Injector,” the medical orderly, the pharmacist, and the main defendant. The defense then requested acquittals, in particular for those who had engaged in the selections. Eva had to reread the passage several times to understand what it was the White Rabbit argued: that these men had clearly acted in opposition to extermination orders and saved a great many lives by virtue of their selections. He also entered the plea of superior orders, stating that the accused had been soldiers acting according to prevailing law. In the boardinghouse common room, crowded with furniture, Eva watched a televised interview with the attorney general. “For months, prosecutors, witnesses, and spectators have awaited a humane word from the defendants,” he said. “It would cleanse the air, if a single humane word were finally uttered—but it has not been uttered, and it will not be uttered.”

On the day of sentencing, Eva stood at the mirror in her room and slowly buttoned her suit jacket. Behind her, Frau Armbrecht was nervously brushing off the furniture with her favorite feather duster and asking, “So what do you think? What’ll they get? Surely nothing short of life?! Life in prison! Don’t you think?” Frau Armbrecht stopped talking and looked at Eva in the mirror, concerned. She had asked Eva, shortly after she moved in, about the black hat she had placed on one of her shelves. “Did it belong to your father?” And Eva had told her about Otto Cohn and the others. She now turned to Frau Armbrecht and replied that she, too, hoped for a just verdict.

In front of the municipal building, where the whole city, if not the whole world, appeared to be flocking today, Eva paced up and down the sidewalk a little off to the side. She didn’t want to run into anyone. She looked at her watch: nine fifty. Just ten more minutes till the chief judge called the final day of proceedings to order. Eva recognized many of the people entering the building: the wife of the main defendant, the wife of the Beast, and Andrzej Wilk, the witness who was forced to watch his own father’s murder. At one minute to ten, Eva approached the entrance. The foyer was crowded with reporters and spectators who didn’t get a spot in the gallery. The double doors to the auditorium were already closed. The sentencing would be announced over the loudspeakers; the gray box mounted beside the door sputtered. Eva stayed back, in an alcove by the glass entryway. One of the hall attendants recognized her and beckoned her over to the auditorium door, which he opened a crack. Eva declined with a wave of her hand. The attendant appeared vexed, then pointed at a chair by the door. It was where Otto Cohn had so often sat, as if keeping watch over what transpired inside the hall. Eva hesitated, then walked over and sat down. The speaker above her head crackled: “The High Court.” A scraping and rustling droned out of the box. For the last time, everyone in the auditorium got to their feet, the defendants, defense attorneys, prosecutors, joint plaintiffs, and spectators. Eva involuntarily stood up with them. The voice spoke: “Please be seated.” Again, the sound of murmuring and chairs moving. A tense silence followed, even in the foyer. The speaker static provided the only noise. Outside the big windows, a few children scurried across the front courtyard. Eva realized then that vacation had started, and that Stefan had probably gone to see their grandmother in Hamburg. The chief judge’s voice then began to buzz over the speakers: “Over the many months of this trial, the court has experienced vicariously all of the pain and suffering that the people endured there and that will forever be tied to the name Auschwitz. There are undoubtedly those among us who will for some time find themselves unable to gaze into the happy, believing eyes of a child…” The voice that had—for all those months—remained so firm began to tremble as he continued, “without recalling the hollow, questioning and uncomprehending, frightened eyes of the children who took their final steps there in Auschwitz.” His voice broke. Even out in the foyer, several people bowed their heads or hid their faces in their hands. Eva pictured his familiar face, the man in the moon, who was only human, himself. A son. A husband. A father. What a difficult task he had taken on. After a pause, the chief judge continued, composed: culpability for crimes committed during the Nazi era was subject to the laws existing at the time.

“What was lawful then cannot be considered unlawful today,” a reporter beside Eva quoted.

The voice continued, “It is according to these precepts that those involved in the Holocaust will be sentenced. Only those perpetrators who acted in excess, who killed contrary to orders or of their own accord, may be sentenced to lifelong imprisonment for murder. Those who simply carried out orders are deemed accessories. I shall now impose sentencing.”

Eva had disappeared from her spot by the door by the time the floodlights were extinguished in the auditorium. Hall attendants rolled up the map of the camp, while technicians dismantled the microphones. The blond man was the last to leave, gathering his papers together and lingering for just a little while longer in the hall. He smoked a cigarette, which wasn’t allowed. Today, though, no one said a thing.

Eva wandered the streets. She wasn’t in any hurry to get back to the boardinghouse, and she took several detours. Suddenly it seemed as though David were walking beside her. He was beside himself and spat at her, “When in doubt, for the accused?! I can’t believe it! Take the pharmacist—accounts of his involvement in selections on the ramp and of his managing the toxic gas were corroborated by dozens of witnesses! But he’s found guilty only of being an accessory to murder?! Defendant Number Eighteen and the medical orderly, who single-handedly killed their victims with a shot in the back of the neck, or the men who administered the gas in the gas chambers—you’re telling me they’re nothing more than accessories?!”

Eva got the feeling she had to hold David’s head still, look into his uneven eyes, and say, “At least Defendant Number Four got a life sentence.”

But there was no calming him, it seemed. “Shooting and gassing thousands of defenseless victims is punished with four to five years?!”

Eva nodded. “You’re right, David, you’ve got to appeal!”

But David wasn’t there anymore. Eva walked on alone. She, too, felt disappointed and empty.

That evening, Walther Schoormann sat slumped in a chair in the living room of his mansion, staring blankly at the television. They were covering the sentencing on the late news. In the next room, Frau Treuthardt was clearing the dinner table and whistling a Schlager pop tune, “You Aren’t Alone.” The anchor read the verdict: six sentences of lifelong penal servitude, including for the defendant known as the Beast, who had an instrument of torture named after him. The formal main defendant, the commander’s adjutant, was given fourteen years for aiding and abetting murder. Three defendants were acquitted for lack of evidence. The rulings had triggered widespread outrage, the newscaster reported. Jürgen came in from outside, and Frau Treuthardt met him in the front hallway, where she took his coat and briefcase. What would he like for dinner? But Jürgen declined; he had eaten in the cafeteria. He went in to his father and dropped a catalog in his lap. On the cover was a woman changing bedclothes with gusto. A child was playing with a doll in the foreground.

“Our special edition, ‘Laundry’ catalog. Hot off the press. And with a kid on the cover.”

Walther Schoormann mechanically turned the pages without looking at them. Jürgen went to the television and turned it off. “Our circulation has reached a hundred thousand,” he added.

“Everything hurts today,” his father answered. He rubbed both hands on his chest, then his shoulders, and grimaced. Then he began tearing pages out of the catalog, crumpling them into balls, and rubbing his torso with them, as if trying to remove a stain. Or blood. Jürgen stepped over and took away the catalog.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Would you like a pill?”

Walther Schoormann looked at his son. “Why doesn’t that young woman come by anymore?”

“You ask me that a hundred times a day,” Jürgen griped.

“Why doesn’t she come by anymore?”

“She called off the engagement, Father!”

“Why?”

“Because our house reeks of chlorine!”

“That’s true.”

Jürgen left the room. He met Brigitte coming through the doorway, wearing a fashionable new dressing gown and a towel twisted into a turban on her head. She had clearly been swimming.

“And my wife reeks of chlorine too,” Walther Schoormann said. Brigitte went over to her husband and stroked the top of his head.

“Someone’s very charming today.”

“I’d like a pill.”

Brigitte studied him. “I’ll go get you one.”

THAT SAME EVENING, Doctor Hartmut Küssner showed Annegret their new home together. They paced through the empty rooms of the Art Nouveau mansion. Bare bulbs dangled, illuminated, from the ceilings. Their steps echoed, and the yard outside the windows was hidden in the dark. Annegret pointed out that they had barely any furniture, and asked how they were going to fill all these rooms. She suggested leaving the upstairs empty. Küssner agreed. The pediatric practice at the front of the house was outfitted with white steel furniture. It smelled strongly of camphor and rubber. Annegret said that the space felt too clinical and that they should paint the walls in color. “Whatever you say,” Doctor Küssner repeated. He was happy. A few days earlier, he had gone to the nurses’ lounge to take his leave. But then he refused to let go of Annegret’s hand and asked her, right in front of Nurse Heide, whether she would come with him. Not once had he brought up “Annegret’s misconduct,” as he secretly referred to it. And they both knew: they never would speak of it. They would marry the following year. Annegret would stay fat. Hartmut would love her unfailingly. She would get pregnant and give birth to a baby boy in her early thirties, under life-threatening conditions. The parents would spoil and neglect their son in turns. When he reached adolescence, he would dye his hair green and then one night, with his friends, sneak into the tennis club where his father was an active member—his mother a passive member—and take a pickax to the courts, tear through the fencing, and set fire to the nets. Against the establishment!

That’s where he got stuck. Jürgen couldn’t count the number of times he had started this letter. He never managed to get past the opening sentences. He crumpled the paper and threw it in the trash. It was almost midnight. Jürgen sat at the desk in his room. He, too, had heard about the sentencing in the car on the way home. He could imagine how Eva was taking it. He wanted to write to her. He took out a new sheet. Dear Eva, I heard about the verdict on the radio and… There was a knock on the door. Brigitte poked her head in.

“Jürgen, I can’t get him into bed.”

Jürgen stood up and followed Brigitte into the dimly lit living room, where Walther Schoormann was still in front of the television, sitting rigidly in his chair. He looked like a worn-out doll.

“Come on, Father, it’s late.”

Jürgen tried to help his father up, but Walther gripped the armrests with both hands. Brigitte tried to loose his fingers, while Jürgen took hold of his father under the arms from behind, to lift him from the chair.

“On three,” he said quietly and counted. Brigitte then pulled on Walther Schoormann’s hands, and Jürgen hoisted him up. But the old man howled so wretchedly, as if they’d inflicted terrible pain on him, that they both let go, and he dropped back into the chair.

“What’s wrong with him?” Jürgen asked Brigitte over his father’s head. She shook her head helplessly. “Father, are you in pain?”

“You’ll never get me to talk!” Walther Schoormann said.

Brigitte looked at Jürgen. “I already gave him two pills. I don’t know. I don’t know,” she repeated. Then she placed a hand before her face and said, from the bottom of her heart, “I can’t do this anymore, Jürgen.”

“Go sleep. I’ll stay with him.”

Brigitte regained her composure, nodded, assumed her near-proverbial optimism, and left the room. Jürgen looked at his father, who stared straight ahead, at the television.

Then he walked over to the sweeping panoramic window and peered out. Several of the trees in the yard were recently attacked by a fungus and had to be felled. It looks like the yard has cavities, Jürgen thought.

“Why doesn’t that young woman come around anymore?” his father asked.

Jürgen shook his head in exasperation. “Do you know who I am?” he asked in response.

“It’s so dark in here. Are you my brother?”

Jürgen took a step closer to the window. As he spoke, his breath appeared on the glass. “I killed a person. It was a week after I learned of Mother’s death. I ran away from the farm. I wanted to find my way to you and rescue you. It got dark. I was in a field, and then these low-flying aircraft flew over, Yanks on their way toward Kempten. The sirens started howling, and I saw the flak firing on the horizon, and one of them turns back, burning in the air. I see a man fall out. A parachute opens, and the Yank lands right at my feet. He lay before me and couldn’t get up. ‘Help me, boy.’ There was blood running out of his mouth. And I kicked him, first in the legs, then in the stomach. And finally in the face. I was screaming with a voice I didn’t recognize, kicking with all my strength, and it was fun, hellishly fun. I ejaculated. It was my first time. And then the man was dead. I ran away and holed up somewhere. I went back the next day. I always thought, I didn’t do that—evil did.” Jürgen listened to his father’s silence, then continued. “But that was my powerlessness, my revenge, and my hatred. It was all me, and only me.”

Jürgen fell silent. The room stayed quiet behind him for some time, and then a voice said, “My boy.” Jürgen turned around. Walther Schoormann had gotten out of his chair and was reaching a hand toward Jürgen. “Help me.”

Jürgen went to his father and placed an arm around his shoulders. He guided him slowly toward the door. Walther Schoormann stopped suddenly.

“That’s why you wanted to become a priest.”

“I think so, yes.”

Outside his bedroom door, Walther Schoormann looked up at Jürgen. “It’s hard being human.” Then he opened the door and disappeared inside.

In late November, Eva came across a postcard-size ad in the paper: Christmastime is Time for Goose! German House, Your Destination for Good Home Cooking for Family and Business Gatherings. Also Serving Lunch. Reservations Required. Proprietors: Edith & Ludwig Bruhns, 318 Berger Strasse, Tel: 0611–4702.

Eva cut out the ad, then didn’t know where to put the slip of paper. She placed it on the narrow table she had pushed up to the window as a work space. A few days later, the clipping was gone. Maybe Frau Armbrecht had cleared it away or a draft had pulled it out the window. The first Sunday of Advent was approaching, and Eva thought about decorating her room for Christmas. Ultimately, Frau Armbrecht made the decision for her and placed a pine arrangement with a yellow candle on Eva’s table. Now, when Eva translated her instruction manuals (This machine to be operated by trained professionals only! Keep area around master switch free of foreign objects!), the light flickered and gave off the delicate scent of beeswax. Sometimes she had to blow out the flame, because it made her too sad. In those moments, Eva cursed the decoration and Frau Armbrecht and Christmas as a whole. One afternoon, there was a knock on the door. Frau Armbrecht poked her head in and trilled that there was a “gentleman” here to see her. For a moment, Eva hoped it was Jürgen. But then a small figure in an orange hat appeared in the doorway. Eva opened her arms, and Stefan ran in. She squeezed him tightly and breathed in his boyish smell, which reminded her of grass, even in winter.

“This is my brother,” Eva explained to a curious Frau Armbrecht. She waved and withdrew. Stefan wandered around the room, taking everything in, but he wasn’t interested in anything he saw, beyond the picture of himself and Purzel.

“All that’s left of him now is bones, isn’t it?”

Eva took Stefan’s jacket and hung it on a hook behind the door. Stefan sat down in her only chair and stretched his legs out. He looked at Eva.

“You’re so skinny,” he said.

“It’s true, I haven’t been very hungry lately.”

“Do you think it’s going to snow soon?”

“Definitely.” Eva smiled. She asked if their parents knew he was visiting her. Stefan shrugged. They thought he was at Thomas Preisgau’s. But he wasn’t even his best friend anymore.

“How come?” Eva asked.

“He told me his parents don’t want him playing with me anymore. Herr Paten quit too.”

“Herr Paten…” Eva repeated pensively. She didn’t ask any further, and Stefan had already changed the subject.

“Mummy hit me.”

Eva looked at Stefan in shock—that had never happened before. “Why on earth did she do that?”

Stefan hemmed and hawed, then admitted, “Because I called her a toothless granny. She has teeth she can take out now.”

Stefan got up to climb on the bed. Eva grabbed hold of him. “Stefan, you can’t say things like that. It hurts her feelings.”

“Yeah, I know that now!” he responded impatiently, then jumped onto the bed.

Stefan bobbed up and down. “I’m getting a bike for Christmas. And a dog from Annegret. I already know everything. Annegret is coming with her new husband. She has a husband now and you don’t. Weird, huh?”

“Yes. Do you want some cookies?”

Stefan’s mouth twitched halfheartedly, but then he nodded. Eva took a tin off the shelf, where she kept the cookies. She bought them a few weeks earlier, when Fräulein Adomat and their new co-worker came over for coffee. They discussed getting a work anniversary gift for their boss, Herr Körting, and settled on a wicker rocking chair. Since both of her colleagues were dieting, there were lots of cookies left over. Stefan chewed listlessly on one of the dried-out treats but reached for a second. To be polite. Eva looked at her brother and was surprised to realize that he had matured.

“How are you doing, Stefan?” she asked.

“Daddy hasn’t been singing any Christmas songs this year,” he replied.

“He always sang them wrong, anyway.” Eva began to sing, “While shepherds watched their clocks at night,” but she got a lump in her throat. She swallowed.

Stefan didn’t laugh either, and slid off the bed. He stood before her on the cheap rug and asked her bluntly, “What did Mummy and Daddy even do?”

“Nothing.”

How could she explain to her brother just how true that answer was?

When Eva brought Stefan to the front door and pulled the orange hat back over his ears, he said, “I don’t want the bike or the dog. I don’t want any presents. I just want you to come home for Christmas.”

Eva gave Stefan a quick hug and quickly opened the door to the stairwell. He went out and trotted down the steps. Eva watched the orange hat slowly disappear.

A few days before Christmas, Eva received a piece of official mail: her visa for a four-day trip to the Polish capital had been approved. Eva went straight to a travel agency; the older woman, who also had a pine arrangement with a lit beeswax candle on her desk, shook her head incessantly as she paged through tables and made phone calls. It was impossible, she said. Too short notice. And certainly not by way of Vienna; those flights had been booked for weeks already. Was she not aware it was Christmas? Eva didn’t respond to her stupid questions. But ultimately the woman managed to cobble together a connection that was inconvenient but doable. Eva packed her bags, which also proved a challenge. Nothing fit anymore. The skirts slid off her hips, the jackets hung in loose folds around her torso. Wearing her pale plaid wool coat was like standing inside a tent. But Eva liked her slow disappearance, she liked running her hands over her back and feeling every last rib. She thought it only appropriate.

Eva flew to Berlin-Tempelhof on a full flight. The woman innkeeper at the Auguste, a hotel on a cross street to Kurfürstendamm, eyed Eva warily: she mistrusted all women traveling solo. Eva ignored the look. She lay down on the bed in her room and listened to the distinct voices coming from next door. (“If you don’t want to buy me the stole, that’s your decision. But this one time I really hoped you wouldn’t let me down!” a woman’s voice yelled.) Eva got back up and left the hotel. She mindlessly followed the people and lights on the street and ended up at the Christmas market set up in the shadows of the ravaged Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. Strains of “O Du Fröhliche” could be heard. It smelled like food everywhere. Grilled sausages, candied almonds, chicken. Greasy. Eva forced herself to eat a bratwurst at one of the stands. She thought of Schipper’s sausages at the Christmas market back home. Every year she ate one of those with Annegret, enjoying the delightful feeling of doing something forbidden, because their father was convinced that Schipper the butcher was a swindler. Eva stood opposite two tiny old people—they barely reached the top of the standing table. They were not speaking, each concentrating instead on their food, although they did bite down and chew their sausages in unison. When the woman finished her mustard, the man held out his paper plate, which still had mustard on it. He’s done that a hundred times before, Eva thought. Not far from them, a brass band began playing “Unto Us a Time Has Come.”

“This is the most beautiful Christmas carol,” the woman commented.

The man looked at her and smiled. “You don’t say.”

The ensemble played well, with far fewer slips than the group Eva and Jürgen had once laughed at so uncontrollably. Then the woman began to sing in a quiet, unsteady voice.

And her husband watched her as she sang, and listened.

Eva suddenly knew what to do. She had passed by a phone booth earlier. She retraced her steps, entered, picked up the receiver, tossed coins into the slot, and dialed a number she knew by heart. It crackled and tooted. She waited. Tooot-tooot-tooot. And then finally, “Schoormann residence.”

It was Frau Treuthardt’s self-assured voice.

“Good evening. This is Eva Bruhns…”

“How may I help you?”

“I would like to speak with Jürgen, please.”

“Herr Schoormann is away on business. He won’t return until tomorrow. Would you like to speak with Frau Schoormann?”

“No. No, thank you. But where is he? Is he reachable elsewhere?” A lengthy pause followed. “I… I was his fiancée.”

“He’s in Vienna, at the Hotel Ambassador.” She sounded affronted.

“Thank you, and—”

But Frau Treuthardt had already hung up. Eva leaned against the glass wall; the booth stank of urine and damp ash. She counted her change, then asked the operator to connect her with the Hotel Ambassador. The front desk suggested she try reaching Herr Schoormann in his room. The phone crackled and tooted again. The coins dropped. Eva was about to hang up, the receiver suspended above the cradle, when she heard Jürgen’s voice. “Yes?”

Eva still hesitated.

“Hello? Who’s there? Brigitte?” Jürgen asked.

Eva brought the receiver back up to her ear, her heart pounding heavily. “It’s Eva.” Jürgen didn’t respond. “I’m in Berlin, on my way to Warsaw, and I was just at the Christmas market, and I just wanted to talk to you,” she continued rapidly. The final coin clattered, and Eva inserted a mark.

“What are you doing in Warsaw?”

“There’s someone I want to look for, a prisoner from the camp. The lead prosecutor found him and called me.”

“And why? Why…?” The connection sputtered and began to echo. Why? Why?

Eva remained silent and added another mark. “I don’t have much change left.”

“Can I call you back?”

Eva examined the pay phone and found a metal plate engraved with the number at the bottom. “That must be it.” She read off the numbers for Jürgen, then they both fell silent. “We can still talk,” Eva said. “I already paid.”

But they both waited and listened to the clicking over the line. The final coin tumbled, and Eva quickly said, “Wouldn’t you like to come to Warsaw?”

Click. Tooot. Eva hung up and waited. She watched the lights of passing cars through the streaked glass of the phone booth. The headlights turned into stars, then burned out. At last the phone made a strange buzzing noise. Eva answered. “Hello?”

“It’ll be tricky with the visa,” she heard Jürgen’s voice say. Eva was silent. Outside it began to snow.

EVA WAS UP by five o’clock the next morning. The border crossing, the woman at the travel agency had told her, would take at least two hours. The train to Warsaw departed from Ostbahnhof at ten thirty-five. Eva got out of the subway at Friedrich Strasse. Armed border guards patrolled the station, scrutinizing everyone they passed. Eva walked up to a booth and pushed her documents through a narrow opening. The young uniformed man behind the glass studied her identification, visa, and passport photo for an unnecessarily long time, only to wave her through impatiently. Eva walked down tiled passageways that seemed to have no end. It smelled like the zoo back home. Like the hippo area, where the hippos emerged from their “poop soup,” as Stefan called it, an expansive mass surfacing and just as slowly opening their enormous mouths, as though they wanted to devour the entire Bruhns family.

Eva came out of the catacombs on the eastern side and blinked in the winter glare, as if she had been underground for weeks. She had never been to East Germany. She was curious about life there, about the people’s earnest activity. Everyday life existed here too. For its citizens, the GDR was normal. Eva recalled the two lawyers from the East who had represented joint plaintiffs in the trial. It always seemed to her that they behaved as if they had a handicap, as if they especially had to prove themselves. They always spoke a bit more loudly, more insistently, than the other lawyers. An hour later, the train was clattering its way out of East Berlin. Eva looked out the window and tried not to think about the other trains. Cranes twirled on the horizon, as though the wind was carefully playing with them.

After they crossed the border into Poland, the snowy fields grew larger, the forests endless. Later, in the dining car, Eva drank a beer that was so flat, bitter, and lukewarm that her father would’ve thrown it in the waiter’s face. The waiter was exceptionally friendly, though, bowing to Eva with a flourish of his white napkin. When he discovered that she spoke Polish, he couldn’t contain his delight. And by the time they pulled into the capital’s central station, Eva knew his whole life story and even more about his brother, who’d had a lot of rotten luck in life. The ladies were his bane.

The hotel was a modern high-rise. Eva had stayed here before, two years ago, when she traveled with the executive board of a machinery company as their interpreter. She and the director’s secretary were the only women. The secretary warned Eva about her boss: he made a pass at everyone. And sure enough, that evening at the bar, the man took a seat beside Eva and launched into his jokes. He was entertaining and told such funny stories that Eva couldn’t help but laugh. Suddenly his tongue was in her mouth. She was in such high spirits and drunk. She wanted to finally experience it for herself, and took the company director up to her room. He’d been her first.

Now, Eva couldn’t sleep. Her room was on the third floor, right above the lobby. She could hear muffled dance music coming from the neighboring bar. She thought of Herr Jaschinsky and of how he had lost his daughter, the girl with the funny nose. The Beast had summoned her for interrogation, because she was supposedly passing on secrets. She was shot three days later at the Death Wall. Eva stared at the gray nighttime ceiling and missed her Don Quixote. To be perfectly honest, she didn’t know what she was doing in this city. The closer she came to her goal, the less she understood the purpose of this trip.

The next morning, Eva walked down a lively street with many small businesses, lined up like a string of beads: shoes, potatoes, coal, milk. It was cold, the air a hazy gray, and people wrapped their faces with scarves and hid them under fur hats. It’s snowdusting, Eva thought, as she scanned the numbers on the doors. She knew it wasn’t flakes of ice floating through the air, though, but rather bits of soot belched out of the countless chimneys dotting the rooftops. The hairdresser’s was number seventy-three. Eva spotted it on the other side of the street and froze. Her heart was pounding. She hadn’t managed to eat any breakfast, and now she had a knot in her stomach. The words “Salon Jaschinsky” were written in blue above the door. It was a small shop, and hanging in the front window were two pastel photographs of a woman and a man with hairstyles like cast metal. Like helmets. Two figures moved inside the salon, one a younger woman with towering teased hair who was serving a client. The other was an older, gray-haired man sweeping. Herr Jaschinsky. Eva crossed the street.

A little bell tinkled above the door. The young woman, who was shaving the back of her client’s neck with a straight razor, didn’t look up as Eva entered. In practiced motions, Herr Jaschinsky took her coat and hat and led her to one of the chairs. A numbing smell of soap and hair tonic pervaded the room; the shop was utterly spotless. Eva sat down, and in the mirror, she could see a little girl bouncing excitedly in a chair, Herr Jaschinsky watching her with a smile. She turned to him. He returned her gaze languidly, his eyes magnified behind his thick lenses.

“What will it be today?”

Eva began haltingly: she was from Germany. Herr Jaschinsky started, then took out Eva’s updo. He began to brush her hair in practiced motions.

“Shampoo and trim the ends?”

Eva felt naked. But she was determined and continued, “We’ve met. I was still a child, and my mother brought me along. To the salon. At the camp.”

Herr Jaschinsky slowly kept brushing her hair. Then he paused and looked at the oblong scar above Eva’s ear, where the hair didn’t grow. He lowered the brush, his face ashen, and for a moment Eva feared he might faint. The young woman looked over. Eva turned her gaze up toward Herr Jaschinsky.

“I want to ask your forgiveness,” she said quietly. “For what we did to you. You and your daughter.”

Herr Jaschinsky peered down at Eva, but she couldn’t tell what was going on inside him. Then he regained his composure, shook his head. He started brushing her hair again, more vigorously than before, and said, “You must be confusing me for someone else. I was never at any camp. So, what will it be today?”

“I’d like for you to cut off all my hair and shave my head. Please.”

Herr Jaschinsky’s expression hardened. He set aside the brush. The young woman, whose client had left the shop, came up and asked something Eva didn’t catch. Herr Jaschinsky waved her off.

“I won’t do that,” he then said to Eva. “It isn’t right.”

He strode over to the coat rack and retrieved Eva’s coat and hat. He came back to Eva, who was still sitting in the chair, and held out her things. He looked at her resolutely. She nodded, twisted up her hair, and stood. The little bell above the door tinkled.

Inside the shop, the young woman stepped up to Herr Jaschinsky. He stood by the window, watching Eva in her pale plaid coat disappear in the haze. He looked agitated, and tears welled up in his eyes. The young woman had never seen her boss like this. Perplexed, she asked who that woman was. He didn’t respond.

“What did that woman want?” She put a hand on his arm. Herr Jaschinsky calmed down some. “What did she want from you?”

He turned away from the window. “Consolation. They want us to console them.”

Eva ran down the street; everything around her seemed louder and more garish than before. The city seemed adversarial to her. She ran faster. She was out of breath, kept running. Her feet hurt, and her hair came undone beneath her hat. She wheezed, her pulse hammering. She ran and ran, as if running away from something. She eventually had to stop. She struggled for breath where she stood, in front of a monument apparently honoring some Polish national hero. Her chest ached, and she coughed, then gagged and swallowed. She sobbed suddenly in despair and forced herself to admit what Herr Jaschinsky had truly said to her, which was not, “It isn’t right.” What he’d meant was, “It isn’t your right.” Eva stared, breathing heavily, up at the stone figure covered in a thin layer of snow like icing. Its eyes looked back coldly. Eva realized now that she truly didn’t have any concept of the life, love, and pain of others. The people who had been on the right side of the fence would never comprehend what it meant to be imprisoned at that camp. Eva felt ineffable shame. She wanted to cry, but couldn’t. An ugly wheezing was all that crept out of her throat. I have no right to cry, either. Hours later, when Eva finally found her way back to the hotel, the concierge had a message for her.

The next morning, Eva waited in terminal two at the airport for the delayed flight from Vienna. She walked back and forth outside the barrier and wasn’t sure whether to be excited or nervous. Whether what she had blurted out so spontaneously was a good idea. But when the board registered that the flight had landed and the first passengers emerged from behind the light blue wall, and when she glimpsed Jürgen—his tall, dark figure—he appeared so familiar to her that she broke into a smile of relief. Jürgen was also moved by the sight of her, something she could tell the moment they spotted one another from across the barrier. And as he stood facing her, she discovered something new in his eyes: openness. They didn’t know how to greet each other after such a long time. They ended up shaking hands.

The childlike roundness in her face has gone, Jürgen thought. Then he asked, “Don’t you eat anymore?”

They waited at the carousel together for his suitcase. A little hatch in the wall industriously discharged pieces of luggage that then twirled onto the belt as though being displayed on a cake plate. Jürgen’s suitcase never appeared. They went to one of the counters, where they were told to go have a cup of coffee and come back in an hour.

Eva and Jürgen stepped into a futuristic café of chrome and glass that overlooked the airfield. They sat down beside each other on a bench upholstered in silver leatherette and took in the view. Pale clouds were gathering on the horizon, the skies above promising snowfall. Jürgen told her that during his flight he had read in the paper that the people setting fire to baby carriages in Eva’s neighborhood were caught. It was a group of students, brothers in a fraternity apparently. They stated that they did it to draw attention to the threat foreigners and migrant workers posed, and to the imminence of miscegenation.

“And were they arrested?” Eva asked. They had to pay damages, Jürgen responded. There wouldn’t be any trial, though. The whole thing was being written off as a boyish prank. Eva looked at Jürgen incredulously. Yes, he said, and it seemed the students’ influential families played some role in it too. Eva took a sip of her coffee, which looked blue in the café lighting.

“That’s terrible.” Then she told Jürgen about her visit to Jaschinsky, what he had said, and what she had realized.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Eva,” Jürgen said. “You’re very brave.”

Eva looked at him and again; it seemed like he had changed. He seemed vulnerable, like he’d set aside some heavy armor. Jürgen briefly stroked her cheek, then her hair.

“I, for one, am quite pleased that Herr Jaschinsky reacted the way he did.”

“How long does your visa last?” Eva asked.

“I fly back tomorrow morning. It might be the last Christmas Eve I have with my father. He and Brigitte didn’t go to their island this year, for the very first time.”

“How is your father doing?”

“He can’t speak anymore. No, that’s not quite true. There are two sentences he still says: ‘Please help me’ and ‘You’ll never get me to talk.’ Like in a spy movie.” Jürgen laughed cheerlessly. Eva was silent. He looked at her. “What about you? You don’t want to see your family?”

“Stefan visited me and said that he would give up all his presents if I came. My return ticket is for Friday.”

“Christmas will be over by then. We could ask if there are any seats available in the flight tomorrow. Then we’d fly home together.”

Instead of answering, Eva dug through her coat pocket, pulled something out, and placed it on the glinting chrome tabletop. It was the little package of red-painted wood.

“What is that?”

“The gift brought by the Moorish king.”

“Myrrh,” Jürgen said, taking the little red cube and turning it around in his fingers. Eva told him the story behind it. As she did, she could see her mother before her, setting up the Christmas pyramid on the cupboard in the living room. Fitting it with four red candles. Going through the motions silently this year, for the first time ever failing to recount the story of the missing package. Eva saw her father sweating in his kitchen, preparing the best goose for his family, all the while knowing that his daughter would not be coming to share in it. She saw her family leaving church on Christmas Eve, skidding over the icy streets in a row, their arms all linked. She was missing. That evening, her parents would sit in the living room till her father said, “I’m sure she’ll come next year.” Her mother would remain silent, wondering whether her life was actually over.

“What is myrrh used for?” Eva asked.

“It’s a resin. It was once used for embalming dead bodies. And it represents human nature. For the earthly realm. It is both bitter and healing.”

Eva put the little package away. She took Jürgen’s hands firmly in hers. If nothing else, she knew this much was good. “There’s no shaking this feeling of love inside me.”

It was time to check on the lost suitcase, but they sat close for a while longer in the futuristic café. They looked at each other from time to time and thought that they really would be good together, while planes descended onto the airfield and others climbed calmly into skies heavy with snow.