Heidegger's Glasses_ A Novel Part 16

The least of what?

The least of anything. Mueller knows.

Knows what?

Mueller knows that you left Auschwitz with two fugitives. He says it's all over the Reich. People are gossiping.

People gossip all the time, and nothing comes of it, said Lodenstein. Don't think about it. Have some more wine.

But he even saw Dimitri.

Don't worry, said Lodenstein. Dimitri's safe. Asher and Daniel are safe. We're all safe.

He set down the wine and repeated the words-Don't worry, Don't worry-so often they seemed like a lullaby. Elie opened the covers, and he fell against her. It had been so long since he'd felt her supple strength. And so long since he'd felt that sensation of light, binding them together. Making love felt like the long culmination of all the moments when he'd thought about her-in the brick-laden jail, in the vast bed in the Reich holding her rose, traveling on an empty train from Auschwitz. Elie fell asleep. He stroked her hair and began to drift, feeling the tension from his body ease out onto the floor. But just as he came to the edge of sleep, he clamored awake. In his exuberance at being with Elie-hearing her voice, sharing wine, making love-he'd forgotten they were in Mueller's old room. Now he saw the posts of the rosewood bed like masts of a ghost ship. He saw Mueller's knife. He felt his huge leather glove. He heard Mueller's voice talking about fugitives. An unspeakable act of treason An unspeakable act of treason, he could hear him saying. An arrow of death pointing to everything below the ground. An arrow of death pointing to everything below the ground.

Lodenstein threw off the covers. Here, in the heart of the Compound, he felt buried under ten meters of dirt. He'd gone to jail, weathered Goebbels, traveled to Auschwitz, endured Heidegger, rescued two people. But the danger was boundless, infinite. He had no idea what to do. He only knew he had to breathe.

Lodenstein took the mineshaft and pa.s.sed Lars, who looked untroubled asleep on a pallet, into the freezing night. At that moment he despised everything about the Compound: the fake hut, the cobblestone street, the playing cards from people who'd been ga.s.sed. He despised the front path with stones broken purposefully because Hans Ewigkeit wanted them to look old. He despised the fact that something that never should have been there in the first place had been made to look like it belonged.

He heard his own boots break the ice that filled the brittle field and climbed the narrow ladder to the watchtower. It was dark, and the stars were faraway, small white flies he could never touch. He looked for cigarettes on the platform and found a stub. Thank G.o.d he had matches.

All at once he became aware of his hands, his legs, his whole body. He hadn't been alone since he'd driven to Berlin, and the sensation was familiar and unsettling. His breathing slowed. He touched the wooden railing and looked at the wide night sky. It was clear, with a panoply of stars. He looked at the ground where mounds of snow billowed in the moonlight. Then back at the sky, shot through with distant light.

It occurred to him that stars had always fallen in and out of the world. Sometimes they were lights. Sometimes they were angels, animals, or G.o.ds. Sometimes they were dazzling. Sometimes he couldn't see them at all. He took a deep breath, watched thin smoke float from his mouth, and decided that Heidegger probably understood what it felt like to fall out of a world made safe by human meaning. A fragile world, he thought. Poised to fall apart.

This sense of union with Heidegger's philosophy, however tenuous, and however much he disliked Heidegger, made him feel sure nothing would ever get worse than it already was. But his sad sense of tranquility was destroyed as soon as he finished the cigarette. He pawed the wooden platform for more discarded b.u.t.ts and got splinters in his hands.

The woods rustled-a deer darting through the pines. Lodenstein looked at the stars again and wished he could believe they were angels so he could ask them to keep everyone here safe. But he'd spent enough time in the Compound to know that everyone had a moment of believing in something or other, and was sure he could only believe in what he thought would probably happen: The SS would take them by storm, discover Asher, drag every Scribe and fugitive to the cobblestone street and shoot them, one by one. He and Elie would be forced to witness every death before they themselves were shot because they were the most responsible.

He looked for cigarettes, couldn't find any, tore a rotting beam from the watchtower, and hurled it below. Every pine tree was a Gestapo. Every clearing a minefield. He climbed down from the watchtower, tripped on the plank, and hurled it to where Mueller had parked his Kubelwagen. He wished the plank were a gun, and he could shoot Mueller between the eyes.

When he came downstairs, Elie was sitting up in bed.

Are we safe? she said.

No, he said. We aren't safe at all.

Marianne,I don't know if you'll get this letter in this mad house. People are on the verge of escaping, then lose heart, then try to escape anyway, only to be shot. The other day two people knocked two SS men out, put on their uniforms and drove off in one of their trucks. It looks like they made it across the border. There were ten hangings from their cellblock. With so many making plans, I was able to sell my extra shoes for a loaf of bread. So I have more for you.Love,Luca Ever since he'd been brought in, shrouded under blankets, Asher Englehardt hadn't known what to make of the Compound. The frozen sky and the enormous room where over fifty people in fur coats and fingerless gloves spent hours answering the dead or writing an imaginary language-not to mention bizarre word games, lotteries for half-smoked cigarettes, and cries during the night-was the stuff of purgatory. What was once obviously a mine now contained a cobblestone street, gas lamps, and wrought-iron benches. Even the sky was confused: The moon was always a crescent. The sun groaned when it rose and set. The stars were the same, night after night.

At times it was hard for Asher to know whether the people here were alive, dead, or in a limbo. A woman with whom he'd once had an affair and hadn't thought about in years had mysteriously reappeared and now left food outside his door. Letters to the dead sat outside his room in crates. The guard with the SS uniform wore wooly slippers.

And two people and a wraith of a child lived opposite his makeshift room with a Tiffany lamp in a little house with a number, even though the street didn't have a name. Asher made a point of avoiding them because Daniel, who heard gossip, said the woman had forged his signature, and the man had written the utterly ridiculous letter to Heidegger-a letter that might have saved his life, but nonetheless had frightened him at Auschwitz. He made furtive trips to the kitchen for coffee and steered clear of the water closet that concealed a secret cavern in its ceiling. He never went to the main room where the Scribes talked and slept and instead kept to himself, reading the detective stories Lodenstein gave him.

Daniel, on the other hand, discovered the main room on his third day and began to look human after two weeks of eating everything Elie brought him. He also learned how to fix typewriters and sometimes showed them to Asher, littering the floor with keys, spools, carriages-amazing Asher with his ability to take them apart and put them back together. He'd also begun to sleep with Maria, creating a scene with Parvis Nafissian, who yelled at him and called him a putz putz.

Daniel told Asher that the other Scribes were in awe of him and viewed him as nearly mythic. He'd come from a place they'd managed to avoid and was proof that such a place existed-and proof that some people could survive there and return.

At first, the Scribes asked Daniel if he'd seen any of their relatives and friends. They mentioned name after name, places and cities halfway across Europe, described faces in detail. When they realized he'd never met them, not even one, they began to ask about the camp. Invariably, they asked the same question: Were there real chimneys with real smoke?

Yes, Daniel would say. There were real chimneys. And the smoke coming from them smelled sweet.

He complained to his father that no one ever asked about beheadings by candlelight or people getting shot at morning roll call. Asher said this was because chimneys used to be part of something safe, and every house with a fireplace had one.

So if there are chimneys, he concluded, people understand how something safe can turn into something dangerous.

It had been almost a month since they'd arrived at the Compound, and it was the first time they'd talked about Auschwitz. For over three weeks, it had been enough to share real food, gossip about the Solomons, go to sleep knowing there wouldn't be roll call, and not wake up to discover that eating utensils had been stolen by another prisoner.

You should come out of this room and tell them about the chimneys, said Daniel.

Never, said Asher, dipping some knackebrot in soup. I'm sure this place is like Theresienstadt. It looks nice so people can be ga.s.sed without knowing it, until they can't breathe.

It's not like that at all, said Daniel. People are friendly.

I don't want to be part of an exhibit.

You wouldn't. You'd like it.

I've been too many places people told me I'd like, said Asher.

You could learn Dreamatoria Dreamatoria, said Daniel.

I'd much rather read.

Daniel stood in the doorway, half-lit by the kerosene lamp. His hair had begun to grow-lank and blond like his mother's-and he wore a dark green trench coat that could have belonged to one of their neighbors. He smiled at Asher.

Sometimes I think you don't want to see the woman who met us at the door, he said.

What are you talking about? said Asher.

Elie, said Daniel. Elie Schacten. The one who's always with that little kid. Is she the one who helped saved us? Who is she?

An old student, said Asher. Someone I knew at Freiburg. And I'm happy to see her. I'd just rather read. He paused and took a deep breath. Then he said: I notice you don't sleep in this room much these days.

I like the main room better, said Daniel.

Is there someone there you like too? said Asher.

You already know there is, said Daniel. Are you angry?

Asher shook his head. Suppose Daniel didn't survive the war? This would be his only chance to lie next to someone in the dark and share the intimate durations of sleep. His only chance to feel the warmth of another body.

Just be careful, he said. The last thing this place needs is a baby.

Daniel looked insulted: It was the Compound of Scribes. There were French letters everywhere.

A few minutes after Daniel left, Asher heard a knock and opened the door. Talia Solomon stood in front of him with some resentment in her eyes-after all, she'd forged his signature without ever being thanked. But in a moment she smiled and said: How would you like to come over and play chess?

On a Friday evening? Aren't you Orthodox? Or-Asher smiled-maybe you don't bother anymore.

I'm asking you to play chess, said Talia. Not have a hair-splitting discussion.

Asher hesitated. On the one hand, he loved chess. On the other, he didn't want to be part of a world where people lived in an eternal limbo, and the Solomons were clearly among them, especially since they'd written the letter to Heidegger.

Lodenstein said to ask, said Talia. He says you live like a mole.

Asher reconsidered when he heard that name because Lodenstein was the only member of the Compound he was sure to be among the living. He'd come to Auschwitz, seen Auschwitz, and had driven him and Daniel away from Auschwitz. So he followed Talia. But when he saw the Solomons' living room, he was in shock all over again: it mimicked an earlier century with velveteen chairs, antimaca.s.sars embroidered with nonsense in Hebrew, and portraits of men in skullcaps who would never have posed in the first place because they believed graven images were blasphemous.

There should be a piano, he said to Talia.

Why? she said. Neither of us plays.

Because. It would complete the picture.

What about a harpsichord? said Mikhail.

That would be too much, said Asher.

A violin then?

No. A piano. With some sheet music.

Not Wagner.

No! Scarlatti.

They all laughed. Talia and Asher began to play chess, and Mikhail played Beleaguered Castle-a game of cards Lodenstein had taught him. Just before Talia took one of Asher's bishops, she told Asher he might not realize how much Elie had worked to save him.

What does this have to do with chess? he said.

Nothing, said Talia.

Asher took Talia's knight.

Why did you mention it then?

I was just thinking of Elie, said Talia.

Asher took another knight. He was sure they wanted to tell him about the letter and then ask if he really had known Heidegger. No matter where you were in this war, there was gossip. It kept people going.

But no one said anything, and Asher was the one left to think about Heidegger in the Commandant's room wearing a ski outfit and an Alpine hat, while Mozart drowned out gunshots and Solomon's letter waved in front of him. Asher had a vivid sense of Auschwitz-corpses like sheets on the barbed-wire fence, melting snow that revealed blood, his daily, heartbreaking fear over Daniel's safety. The idea that everything was infinitely reversible seemed far away, just as Heidegger's agitation about never getting his gla.s.ses seemed absurd. As did his visits to the optometry shop in Freiburg and his incessant joking about the irony of Asher becoming an optometrist. He thought about the real laughter between them when he taught at the university, and the hills and valleys around Heidegger's hut-the walks they would take in the Black Forest, their moments of joy and exhilaration. But that all felt remote, a world he no longer believed in. He would never walk with Heidegger again.

Armesto,It has been so long since I've seen you and now they say that prisoners with unlucky numbers are trading ident.i.ties with prisoners with lucky numbers in exchange for bread. But how can you know what number's lucky or unlucky? And who can change luck when those numbers are on your arm forever?Love,Tahari To the left of the window, hidden from Lars, Elie was watching Asher play chess. On the one hand, she felt illicit because watching people who didn't know they were being watched felt wrong. On the other hand, she felt innocent because she wanted to be sure this emaciated man really was Asher Englehardt-the one she had known. The lead-paned gla.s.s on the window was thick, making the interior seem cast in waves, adding to the sense that perhaps nothing inside it was real. She'd hidden behind the artificial pear tree, and its dappled light shifted as the sun rose in its jagged ascent. Elie inched closer to the bench.

Without question this man played chess the way Asher had-appearing to be indifferent but not indifferent at all. He didn't seem to concentrate on the board and surrendered pieces with abandon. Elie saw him look amused when he checkmated Talia, just as he once checkmated her. He challenged Talia to another game-which she accepted with some annoyance. Asher was drinking tea-a procedure Elie watched with great absorption. He held a piece of sugar in his mouth and stirred first to the right, then to the left. He once told her that his grandfather drank tea by holding sugar in his mouth-a custom that belonged to peasants-and he liked to think about the tides when he stirred because he was sure that one day scientists would discover tides in something as small as a teacup. Watching him was like reading a book she hadn't opened for years. She leaned closer to the window and stepped back when she heard footsteps in the hall. They belonged to Lodenstein and Stumpf- who both looked ponderous-and Dimitri, who ran ahead. She kissed him and told him to go inside.

I have such regret, she heard Stumpf say in a mincing voice. If I ever can do anything....

You can never stop being a fool.

Stumpf slunk away like a dog that's been hit on the nose. As if a more formal appearance would undo the disaster he'd helped create, he'd begun to wear his black SS jacket in the Compound. It was too tight to b.u.t.ton and billowed behind him when he walked. He still wore his woolly slippers, which made his appearance even more incongruous and out of sorts. Lodenstein walked toward her, and she felt unhinged, as though she had traveled back to Freiburg, played chess, gone to Heidegger's lectures. She hadn't believed there would be a war, then. She'd even told Asher she was sure his wife was safe. Yet someone she herself thought had been killed in that war was walking toward her now.

Alain,Sometimes I imagine you. You are never doing anything remarkable-just going to the refrigerator for milk, or letting in the cat-yet I find these memories precious just because you are yourself. I do not know if I' ll see you again.Love,Sylvie In the dark, under the soft, grey quilt from Rotterdam, Elie and Lodenstein still found each other in bed. They made love as if at any moment the Gestapo would break down the door, and they must hold each other so tightly nothing could separate them. During these times, Goebbels, Mueller-the notion of danger itself-became the stuff of inflated fears. But during the day, when sun shone through the clerestory windows and light seemed to chase them, they worried. Lodenstein interrupted games of solitaire and patrolled the forest, afraid that a group of SS or Gestapo were using the pines as camouflage. Elie made lists of people who might help Asher, Dimitri, and Daniel find a boat to Denmark, and burned them in the forest. Once Lodenstein found her burning names under a pine tree.

Don't burn those anymore, he said. You never know who's watching.

You shouldn't be out there, either, said Elie.

I always carry a gun.

I do too.

But I'm patrolling. And you write the same list over and over. Why?

Because it calms me.

They both felt paralyzed from taking action and talked in circles. If what Mueller said was true, the entire Compound would be implicated for harboring fugitives. Perhaps Maria was safe-she could blend in with the other Scribes during an inspection. But they had to get Dimitri, Asher, and Daniel to Denmark. Elie often repeated what a Resistance fighter once told her: A fugitive is like a puppet with a red string. The Reich can trace it to the end of the world. A fugitive is like a puppet with a red string. The Reich can trace it to the end of the world. To which Lodenstein replied: To which Lodenstein replied: We can't think like that. It's like focusing sunlight on paper on a hot day. If we do it long enough, there will be a fire. We can't think like that. It's like focusing sunlight on paper on a hot day. If we do it long enough, there will be a fire.

They would eventually decide that Goebbels was too preoccupied to care. The Russians had penetrated Silesia. Allied troops were close to the Rhine. And the Germans hadn't been able to split the Allied forces in the Ardennes. Furthermore, there hadn't been any mail from the outpost since Asher and Daniel had arrived.

These rationalizations soothed them. But only for a while. And the next time they were caught by daylight, they found themselves terrified all over again-not just for Asher, Daniel, and Dimitri-but for everyone in the Compound. The Reich had become more brutal with every failure. There was talk of a scorched-earth policy and more plans to blow up the gas chambers.

Sometimes, as if the artificial sun could comfort them, they went downstairs, sat on a wrought-iron bench, and tried to strategize-about finding money to offer a bribe for safe pa.s.sage to Denmark, or discovering a hiding place for Asher, Daniel, and Dimitri. One day, Stumpf came out of his s...o...b..x to join them. He sat on the very edge of the bench, as if he didn't deserve to take up any s.p.a.ce. Then he said: If only I'd brought the right gla.s.ses! I could have left without a trace, and Goebbels would be happy.

Elie said he should never have meddled in the first place, and Lodenstein stayed quiet. Why bother to mention that Elie should never have gone behind his back? But when Stumpf talked about Elie getting Frau Heidegger's recipe for bundkuchen, he shouted to him: Go back to your f.u.c.king s...o...b..x! I never want to talk about this again.

Then he went to the kitchen and poured a gla.s.s of schnapps.

You're angry with me too, Elie said.

Maybe, said Lodenstein. But I don't love Stumpf.

You're still too hard on him.

At this very moment, Asher and Sophie Nachtgarten came from the main room and walked to the mineshaft. Elie began to stop them from going upstairs, but Lodenstein held her waist.

Let him get some air. Nothing will happen today, he said.

As if you were sure, said Elie.

Sophie and Asher disappeared into the mineshaft, and Elie felt an ache in her heart-not jealousy, but pain. Seeing Asher with Sophie made her think about other people she'd seen with Asher-people she could never bring back.

Dear Tessa,A soldier who says you know him has asked me to give you a message: When the war is over, come meet me. But be careful, Tessa. You don't know what's happening with people deserting right and left.Love,Lottie Asher had come to the main room that day, after a month in which the only people he saw were Talia and Mikhail. He resented their writing the letter to Heidegger. Yet the Solomons were a link, a tether to Auschwitz, and superst.i.tiously-although Asher despised superst.i.tions-he was afraid if he forgot Auschwitz completely, some unexplained force would send him back there. He also loved chess and the illusory justice of detective stories where every criminal was punished. But one day he closed a book and realized he'd been immersed in a world of antiseptic murders, as well as tiny conquests on a wooden board.

I'm restless, he said to Talia. And that's the only virtue of living in fear. There's no such thing as monotony, tedium, or ennui.