Heidegger's Glasses_ A Novel Part 21

Nothing, said Elie. Just...how do you explain that the night has been broken?

No one has to, said Asher.

Elie nodded.

She suddenly remembered getting out early from a lecture and seeing Asher and Gabriela walking in a little park in the rain. They were bathed in mist, and Elie saw them the way one sees distant figures about to disappear. She'd raced to catch up, and all three of them had walked into the mist together. She hadn't remembered this moment in years. She loved and ached at the sight of the two of them. An ocean of fear swelled and subsided inside her.

What did you really see in Auschwitz? she asked.

Asher took a deep breath.

Everything, he answered.

Elie had an odd sensation that she and Asher shared a private universe-different from the one she shared with Lodenstein. This world was from long before the war-a world of unveilings, revelations, disclosures. She and Lodenstein were partners in a mission. They shared terror about the Compound and hope for their future. She looked at the mineshaft and a sliver of the kitchen where Lars once peeled apples in perfect spirals.

Can I talk to you alone? she said.

Asher nodded, and they walked down the hall.

Once more Elie was reminded of Asher's office in Freiburg. She saw papers with phrases in Dreamatoria Dreamatoria, as well as books. There were also typewriters in every stage of reconstruction and disarray and a blue and white coffee mug on a book. Inside the storage room, Asher lit the Tiffany lamp and handed Elie a gla.s.s of wine.

But Elie pushed the winegla.s.s away and told Asher that things were in a shambles: Mueller had just killed Lars. The Heideggers gave Goebbels her name. And Goebbels knew about Dimitri. Her voice shook. She was close to tears.

This place isn't safe, she said. And you and Daniel and Dimitri aren't safe. You have to find a way to take them to Denmark.

We'd all be shot our first night in the forest.

Asher, you don't understand. You're in too much danger if you stay. Elie began to cry. She couldn't stop and put her head in a pillow.

Elie, said Asher.

What? said Elie.

This, he said. And he put his arms around her.

Elie felt an arc of warmth through her body. Asher stroked her hair and held her as if he knew everything-the pine needles at her back, the sound of gunshots, the hiss of ripping silk. And how, in spite of hundreds of forays, she could never find the one person she was looking for.

When she had stopped crying, Elie stood up and looked at the stacks of books, the notes for Dreamatoria Dreamatoria, the cartridges, keys, spools-all manner of metallic shapes.

Thank you, she said.

Moments later, she was surprised that the cobblestone street looked the same. She walked to the main room, where Parvis Nafissian was working with some fabric. Years ago he'd apprenticed as a tailor with his father in Turkey, and sometimes it amused him to make clothes for people in the Compound. When Elie came in, he held up a lace bodice.

Perfect for Gitka, she said.

Our siren, said Nafissian.

No one took notice of their conversation. Nor did anyone notice when Elie sat at the school desk, writing once again in the dark red notebook. She wrote quickly, filling one page, then another, as if she didn't write fast enough the words would fly into the air. When she'd finished, she went upstairs and put the notebook in Lodenstein's trunk. He reached for her in sleep, and she got into bed, treasuring the careworn quilt, the sliver of forest-pine boughs on each edge of the blackout curtains. She could feel Lodenstein's strength. She could feel every bone in his body. And when he woke up and they made love, everything that happened in the forest disappeared. She recognized her own face only by the way he touched it-brus.h.i.+ng her eyelids, tracing her mouth, caressing the curve of her cheekbones. She recognized the room only by the feel of his body. No lovemaking could be deep enough. She could not find him enough, could not touch him enough, could not kiss him enough. They had always been part of something larger than the war-something timeless, secret, unrecorded.

He drifted to sleep holding her-a deep sleep, far away from her. The quilt felt soft when Elie untangled herself. She stood near the door for a long time watching him.

Lodenstein woke a few hours later in an empty bed, threw on his trench coat, and went outside. It was dawn, and sun fell in shafts through the pines. He looked for Elie in the vegetable garden and saw fresh tracks on the gra.s.s. Her jeep was gone.

He went down the incline and rattled the diamond grating of the mineshaft, as if that would make it move faster. A few Scribes were making their way to the kitchen, rubbing their eyes. He heard someone mention the lottery, then the strike of a match for the first cigarette of the day.

He went to the kitchen: Elie wasn't there. Maria, in a moment of being only sixteen, put her head on his shoulder and said she'd had bad dreams. He patted her and went to the main room of the Compound. No sign of Elie. He opened the door to Mueller's old room. She wasn't there either.

He knocked on the storage room. Asher answered.

Have you seen Elie?

Asher shook his head.

Her jeep isn't here, said Lodenstein.

Just then Talia Solomon came rus.h.i.+ng from the main room of the Compound.

Dimitri's gone, she said.

His eyes met Asher's. Both shrewd, both blue, both like Elie's. Did this random resemblance bring her into the room? For a moment Lodenstein thought it did.

He went back to the main room, opened the top drawer of Elie's desk and saw a note that said To Gerhardt To Gerhardt. He put it in his pocket and went upstairs, racing past their room on the incline.

The late summer had begun to turn cold. Pine trees shook with the wind as if simple people lived in the shepherd's hut and an ordinary day without the war was starting. Once Lodenstein believed that the mind and the weather worked in tandem, but he'd come to realize that the weather was oblivious to everything. It shone and rained on atrocities and kindnesses, stinginess, violence, and generosity. It showed up for wars, weddings, peace treaties, and betrayals. For a moment he felt jealous of the weather because Elie would always feel its heat, its snow, its rain. Indeed, she must be somewhere now, feeling the violent wind.

He had never known this place without Elie. She'd driven him on the narrow road, shown him the forest, the shepherd's hut, taken him into the earth, and introduced him to the Scribes. She'd explained the mechanical workings of the sun and the architect's dream about the street and the city park. He'd never seen this place without sensing her presence-even when they were fighting, or she was on a foray. Now he looked at the forest alone for the very first time. It was blank, without dimension-not a forest, but a collection of trees. The feverfew waved in random cl.u.s.ters. The clearing where Elie parked her jeep reverberated with absence. He looked at the tracks of her tires and realized he would never again rush out late at night to make sure she was safe. And he would never wait for her to come back from a foray.

A few months ago, Lodenstein had taken another photograph of Elie in the clearing, which he always kept with him. Her hair was drawn back in a red bow, and she wore a white silk blouse with a white velvet rose pinned to the collar. He looked at it and felt her next to him. Everything about her came back to him-her delicate bones, her tea-rose perfume, the way she brought the entire world to the Compound.

Elie, he said, as if her name would invoke her presence.

THE TRUNK.

Dearest Gerhardt,I know my actions have brought tremendous harm to the Compound. It's hard to believe this happened because of a simple pair of gla.s.ses. I thought I'd be able to handle everything. But I couldn't. I wasn't even sure I'd be able to leave. But Dimitri is in danger-and I need to save as many people as I can. I hope you will understand. You must make sure that Asher and Daniel don't go out anymore and that they have a clear pa.s.sage to the room in the tunnel. There is extra flour hidden in the right-hand cupboard of the kitchen and five tins of ham in a crate underneath the sink. It's not very much, but I hope it will last.I can't begin to tell you how much I love you. I can't begin to tell you how much I've thought about what you did for me, for all of us, and how you stood by me even when I brought unspeakable risk to this place. I know we both agreed to be nearly invisible for the sake of other people. I also know you did this much better than I did.I wonder what people will think of the Compound after the war, and whether they'll remember us at all. I wonder if people will ever visit the cobblestone street piled with crates and the kitchen where La Toya made soup and the Solomons' house where Dimitri played with Mufti. Or maybe this place will be forgotten. How strange if no one ever knows about the room where so many people played word games and slept and cried out. How strange if no one ever sees the sun rise on pulleys or the fake stars that shone on Hitler's birthday. And how sad if no one remembers Dreamatoria Dreamatoria.Please keep everyone here safe for me. And please hold them close, as I will hold them close, as I will hold you close.Love always, Elie Kowaleski

Elie left eight months before the fall of Berlin. A week after Berlin fell, the Scribes smelled smoke and worried that fire would reach the forest. Only Asher and Daniel weren't worried. They'd both seen death up close.

But the forest around the Compound never caught fire. And a month after Berlin surrendered, Gerhardt Lodenstein guided the Scribes down the long tunnel, past the room with the bones, eleven kilometers in the dark next to the rus.h.i.+ng stream, until they climbed into the sunlight of a northern town. Emaciated women cleaning the streets, not sure if their part of Germany had surrendered to the Russians, looked in amazement as almost sixty people in fur coats, many of them wearing gla.s.ses, emerged from a hole in the ground. They also saw an enormous trunk, followed by a wheelbarrow. Last to come up was a tall pale man in a trench coat.

Before they left the Compound, Lodenstein asked each Scribe to put a memento in the trunk. The ceremony was done with impatience and indulgence. The Scribes had spent nearly eight months with almost no food, but Lodenstein risked his life to drive to town for the few rations they had and never wavered in his protection.

Into the trunk, Sonia Markova put a red glove. La Toya, two cigarette holders. Gitka, a fur coat. Mikhail Solomon, his chess set. Talia Solomon, a Tiffany lamp. Nafissian, a dictionary for Dreamatoria Dreamatoria. Some tore a page from a coded diary. Asher put in his blue and white coffee mug. And Lodenstein added them all, right next to the pair of Heidegger's gla.s.ses.

Now the trunk stood before them like a living thing, as if it were waiting for a chance to speak. No one wanted it, and no one could say so out of respect for Lodenstein. All they wanted was to leave the Compound for good-to walk on real streets and travel to places far beyond this town. They wanted to see if they still had families. They wanted to see if they still had houses.

Lodenstein gave the trunk to Daniel because he was the youngest.

Keep it, he said. Keep it safe.

Daniel nodded. He and Asher took the trunk, which was still on the wheelbarrow. The Scribes hugged, kissed, and gave each other addresses of houses that might not be standing. And Maria and the Solomons had an altercation-the first one anyone ever heard-because Maria wanted to leave with Daniel.

Absolutely not, said Mikhail. You belong with us.

Lodenstein watched Daniel and Maria hug and kiss and cry. Asher and Mikhail exchanged five addresses so the two could write. He watched Gitka and La Toya disappear with their cigarette holders. And Sophie Nachtgarten walk away, carrying Mufti. Indeed, he watched every Scribe leave him, feeling more and more bereft. For so long his focus was on protecting them, feeding them, keeping them safe. Now he knew he would begin a long search for Elie. There were so many Kowaleskis in the world, and so many hadn't gone back to Poland because Poland had as many bad dreams as Germany.

Dear Mother and Father,I am sending five copies of this letter to places that help people find each other. I am in a camp now where soldiers are feeding me and a lot of other people. I was lucky because I ran into the woods when they began to march us away. For a week all I had to eat was snow. And then the Russians found me. Where are you? I want to go home.Love,Nathalia Vernetti Elie never found a way to take Dimitri to Denmark. She went to a safe house in Berlin and stayed there until the city began to burn. For a few moments Elie and Dimitri saw preternatural brilliance from their window-an unholy illumination of roofs. Then flames leapt over chasms as if they'd lost each other and were reaching to reunite. A few days later when Berlin surrendered, Elie left the safe house, and she and Dimitri saw Berlin in a haze-not the filmy haze of the Compound, but the smoky haze of dust and rubble. Elie found an apartment someone vacated long ago-a four-room apartment with bombed-out windows and dead plants. The building had seven other apartments with new residents in every one, all of them living among artifacts of lives they hadn't known, ranging from unfamiliar photographs to upright pianos. And since three of the residents spoke no German, they never asked Dimitri questions but played him songs, taught him dances, gave him extra food from their meager rations. Perhaps this was why Dimitri began to talk more and more-about his parents, about his favorite foods, about walks he liked to take.

In early autumn, Elie found a job as a translator in a hospital, an apartment with intact windows, another calico cat, and a school for Dimitri, who had developed a surprising gift for making friends. And all during this time she searched for Lodenstein. Berlin was an eerie switchyard where sometimes showing a photograph to a stranger led to a reunion.

Men and women whom Elie met-in restaurants, in banks, walking in the park-looked at Lodenstein's photograph and nodded. She'd been to beer halls, apartments, offices, and looked through hundreds of files-files with names of people in the 19th century, files of pardoned officers. She even knocked on doors of tenants with the last name Lodenstein Lodenstein. Nothing.

The hospital where Elie worked was near the center of Berlin, and a few times on her lunch hour she walked through the Brandenburg Gate. Dust rose through its columns. They were pocketed with holes from grenades. Elie walked on to Wilhemstra.s.se and the burned, bombed hulk of the Reichstag: Here was the jail where Lodenstein had been thrown. And Goebbels's office where Lodenstein had bargained. Elie watched birds fly around beheaded statues on the roof and sometimes went close to the boarded-up buildings, as if she must pay homage to Lodenstein and might even find him. Then she walked back through the befuddled city, smelling of lilacs and dust, lush with arching linden trees. Every cobblestone street had been blown to bits. She tripped over rose-colored shards.

Elie kept looking for Lodenstein-dragging Dimitri to the border of West Berlin on weekends or to different neighborhoods after school. No matter what their route, they saw houses with windows that opened to the sky, empty doorways that led to rooms without floors or smoky halls and shattered furniture. A few had only one side standing, as though they'd been amputated.

Elie looked at every house, as well as every man on the street. One was as tall as Gerhardt. Another had his blue eyes. Another his shambling walk.

Tonight a man with brown hair waved, and Elie waved back. She knew him because they'd been in the same safe house. But strangers waved, too, because they a.s.sumed they'd met in a dark bas.e.m.e.nt during a bombing. The long hours in the shelter-the dark, the anonymity-had compelled strangers to confide secrets. It was not that different from the Compound at night.

Elie stopped a neighborhood policeman to give him an illegal order for a Brotbaum Brotbaum-bread tree-the only way Berliners could get enough food. Tonight she'd written: chocolate, fresh bread, potatoes in exchange for translation of Polish, French, Dutch, German, English, Russian, Czech, as well as expert advice about finding missing relatives. chocolate, fresh bread, potatoes in exchange for translation of Polish, French, Dutch, German, English, Russian, Czech, as well as expert advice about finding missing relatives. As always, Elie walked slowly, hoping that when they came home, Lodenstein would be waiting on the steps. She imagined him in his rumpled green sweater-tall, tense, looking in her direction. But the steps were empty. They were always empty. As always, Elie walked slowly, hoping that when they came home, Lodenstein would be waiting on the steps. She imagined him in his rumpled green sweater-tall, tense, looking in her direction. But the steps were empty. They were always empty.

She began to search for her keys and heard excited voices inside the foyer. They were male voices and spoke with urgency.

Elie rummaged through her purse, found her keys, dropped them, and waited while Dimitri found them in the dark. She worked the lock and clamored to the landing as though she'd been trapped in ice, racing-as she always did-with antic.i.p.ation. She was sure one of the voices had Lodenstein's pace and timbre-the way he emphasized words when he was making a point, or talked quickly when he sensed danger.

But all she found were her landlord and another man, a man who was not Gerhardt Lodenstein, talking about the price of potatoes.

Two months later, Elie took Dimitri to the least bombed out place she could find-a neglected city park where gra.s.s had begun to grow in patches. It was a damp spring evening; the air was filled with the smell of lilacs and moist earth, and she and Dimitri pa.s.sed through a rusted wrought-iron gate to an enclosure. Dimitri carried two fresh roses, and Elie carried-with some difficulty-a rough piece of granite. She put the granite in the earth and placed a white rose on top of it. She had tied her frayed red ribbon around the stem of the rose. Engraved on the stone were the words: Gabriela. You are always with me. Your loving sister, Elie.

Is she really dead? Dimitri asked.

Yes, said Elie. Why?

I don't know. I just wondered.

Elie knew why Dimitri wondered. He lived in tenuous hope because he didn't know if his parents were alive. It was the hope of imagined reunions, and Elie lived with this hope every day, knocking on doors, going to beer halls, looking through files and letters that would have delighted Stumpf. The dead and the missing still haunted her: except now they were above the earth. Sometimes she wondered what had happened to the crates. Sometimes she thought about the Scribes: what had happened to Dreamatoria Dreamatoria; if Gitka and La Toya were still together; if Maria and Daniel were writing each other. She remembered the twilit room, the pounding typewriters, the kerosene lamps, the cold. But she always returned to Lodenstein.

Now she lit incense by the grave. It smelled cold and sweet, reminding Elie of childhood cathedrals in Poland, where Gabriela poked her during Ma.s.s when she fell asleep. It was unthinkable that she had been killed-something she couldn't tell Lodenstein or even Asher. For this was the truth about her sister, told by a friend who had seen it ten years before the war: Gabriela had been marched to a small town square near Berlin and shot almost seven years before the Reich came into office. Her head rose up again and again in a pool of her own blood, and her body had been carted off in a wagon and dumped somewhere in a field.

She had been in the earliest part of the Resistance-intercepting messages and sending them to England, starting to forge pa.s.sports. You should help too You should help too, she'd told Elie more than once. As soon as she heard the news, Elie had gone to the town to look for Gabriela's body, not believing her friend who said it was dragged off in a cart. But all she saw was a rust-colored stain in a town square surrounded by linden trees. A few months later she left Freiburg, with only a note to Asher and the university. She began to go to Party meetings. She charmed her way into the inner circle of the Party until she found Goebbels, who needed a linguist. She was driven to rescue as many people as she could-an impossible, insatiable penance for Gabriela's death.

Are we done? said Dimitri.

Not quite, said Elie. She handed him the fresh red rose.

But she's not my sister!

It's for all the people you love.

What if I don't love anybody?

I love you enough for both of us, said Elie.

She leaned down and hugged Dimitri. He hugged her back. Now give this to my sister, she said.

Dimitri put the rose on the grave.

Do you remember how you found me? he asked.

I'll always remember, said Elie.

And how you brought me to that place?

I'll always remember that too.

And how all those people wrote letters?

I remember.

Dimitri stepped back and looked at the grave. That guy with the chins made me write them, he said. To kids. Did you write letters too?

Only one, said Elie. But I kept it in a notebook.

As for the trunk, it began a diaspora: First to a Russian refugee camp with Daniel and Asher. Then across the Atlantic to New Jersey, where Asher's sister taught piano lessons on a tree-lined street in Hackensack. Then to an apartment in Greenwich Village, then to one in Brooklyn, then to a typewriter shop on the Upper West Side. The trunk stayed in attics, in bas.e.m.e.nts, in houses with yards, in cramped, one-room walk-ups. No one bothered to open it. The contents began to grow rife with mold. Forgotten.

Asher remarried. He refused a teaching job, saying philosophy was only an endless series of invented arguments, and set up a typewriter repair shop on Broadway in the Upper West Side. Daniel got a doctorate in chemistry. Maria, who came to New York when she was nineteen, became an art historian. In their early twenties, they were married in a small ceremony in a Brooklyn temple. They kept the trunk but argued about throwing it away.

Why not the East River? said Maria.

Or a lake in the Berks.h.i.+res? said Daniel.

But throwing the trunk in the water seemed unthinkable, and one hot summer day, when they couldn't stand the sight of it, Maria and Daniel gave the trunk to Asher, who kept it in the back of his shop. It sat among the spools and ribbons, the keys, and dull metals.

It was Daniel and Maria's youngest child who was responsible for opening the trunk. She was a surprise, an accident, born when Maria was forty-six. Her name was Zoe-Eleanor Englehardt-everyone called her Zoe. Zoe was thin, blond, liked mathematical puzzles, accepted the adoration of her older siblings with bemus.e.m.e.nt, and was fiercely independent. At least once a month, after school, she walked into her grandfather's typewriter repair shop with the commanding presence of someone distracted by something important.