Heidegger's Glasses_ A Novel Part 8

The Scribes were getting ready for the night. A few who hadn't won the lottery for Elie's old room began to push desks together so they could make love in cramped tunnels. There were sounds of sc.r.a.ping, b.u.mping, paper cascading, and shouts of d.a.m.n! But better than a bed at Auschwitz. d.a.m.n! But better than a bed at Auschwitz.

Elie eased into layers of coats and sat with her arms around Maria. One lamp after another went out until the room was dark.

Dearest Joseph,I want you to know that I'm okay. The food is decent-better, they say, than at home. And there's a woods where they keep angora rabbits. Most of all, though, I miss our walks, our dinners-and seeing your face in the morning. I think of you all the time. I can't imagine life without you.All my love,Ernestine Late that night, Elie left the Scribes asleep on desks and in tunnels and knocked on the Solomons' door. Dimitri was sleeping on the velveteen couch, half-covered with a white afghan. Talia was asleep in the alcove. And the eternal crescent moon was shining outside a window. Elie adjusted the afghan so it covered Dimitri and felt a sense of peace. Until she saw a chess game on the piecrust table.

Was Gerhardt here? she asked Mikhail.

Good for five moves before he got furious. He said he would have gotten Maria if I'd asked him. Is she asleep?

I wouldn't have come here if she weren't, said Elie. In fact, she got a standing ovation. She's beautiful. It saved her life.

I know, said Mikhail.

And Gerhardt's right, said Elie. He would have gotten her if you asked.

I know that too, said Mikhail.

But you made a deal with Stumpf instead.

What makes you so sure?

Because Stumpf asked me to get Maria. And he told me everything.

Mikhail adjusted a lantern and leafed through a German dictionary.

Is that all you're going to say about it? said Elie.

I had to save my niece, said Mikhail. So I put teeth into my bargain.

More like fangs, said Elie, when you mess with a fool like Stumpf.

They looked at each other evenly, not without resentment: Elie, forced to travel, unable to stop saving people; Mikhail, in seclusion, hardly able to save his niece. Elie walked over to the window and lit a cigarette. Then she said: I was happy to save Maria. But now I want a favor.

In return for saving a child child? What's come over you?

I want you to write the kind of letter Asher Englehardt would never write, said Elie, as though Mikhail hadn't spoken. A letter to Martin Heidegger that doesn't make sense.

Those weren't the orders.

You've never been Goebbels's puppet. So don't be Englehardt's ventriloquist.

This is a letter, not a circus act.

A circus act is exactly what the Reich wants, said Elie.

I won't insult Heidegger's intelligence, said Mikhail. Or mine either, for that matter. Do you know what he wrote? You see a crooked picture and fall right out of the world. You see a crooked picture and fall right out of the world. That's a remarkable mind, even if he is a n.a.z.i. That's a remarkable mind, even if he is a n.a.z.i.

I know all about those crooked pictures, said Elie. But I brought you Maria. And if you write something Asher Englehardt would never write, Heidegger will see through it and make a fuss about finding him.

Since when have you lived in Heidegger's brain?

Elie hesitated. You mustn't tell, she said. But I knew him at Freiburg. And everyone knew that he and Asher Englehardt were good friends. Asher had a son. He must be seventeen by now.

So, still a kid, said Mikhail.

Close to Maria's age, said Elie.

She reached into her pocket and showed Mikhail the photographs of Asher Englehardt's shop and Heidegger and Englehardt in the Black Forest. The mountains and open air looked incongruous in the cramped, dark room.

Don't ever tell, she said again.

Mikhail's eyes grew soft. Of course, I won't, he said. But everyone knows a famous crackpot in the Party. I could name a hundred, and they didn't help anybody. Heidegger's not any different. And the Party doesn't like him anymore.

He still gets his way, said Elie.

Maybe, said Mikhail. But this letter you want me to write could blow up everything.

The letter you promised Stumpf you'd write could blow up everything too.

Elie held a gla.s.s paperweight by a lantern. And while light scattered on the walls, she told Mikhail about the Angel of Auschwitz. The story filled the room with a nearly totemic presence-but only for a moment.

There were rumors like that in Lodz all the time, said Mikhail. They came to nothing.

But I brought you Maria, said Elie. She's sleeping in the main room right now.

You could save Maria because they hadn't found her yet, said Mikhail. But getting someone from Auschwitz is a dream.

Maria wouldn't be here if it weren't for me. And now we could use these orders to save two lives.

Elie walked to the bookcase and picked up a photograph. It was a picture of Mikhail's son Aaron.

Everyone is worth saving.

Not if they're already dead, said Mikhail.

There was a knock on the door-it was Lars, ready to take Mikhail out to see the sky.

You cannot rescue the world, said Mikhail getting up.

Elie walked alone under the frozen stars and looked in on Maria, who seemed younger and smaller beneath the pile of coats. Then she took the mineshaft to her room with Lodenstein. He was drinking vodka and manhandling his game of solitaire by throwing cards on the floor. Elie stood at the door watching him. After a moment she said: So you're not talking to me.

Why should I? said Lodenstein. You went behind my back with Stumpf and brought two fugitives.

I'm sorry, said Elie in a low voice. I didn't have time.

But time for me to tie your ribbon. I was good for that.

Gerhardt, please. I rescued two children. That's what matters.

Then why was Stumpf part of it? He doesn't care about rescuing anyone. Why didn't you ask me? Why did you leave me out of it? You put us all in danger.

Elie sat on the bed and put her hand on his arm.

Because it happened too quickly, she said.

Lodenstein tore one of the cards.

You never answer, he said. I never know who you are. Maybe there are two Elies.

It's Mikhail's niece, Gerhardt. He was frantic. And the little boy was alone in the safe house.

You still lied to me, Elie. And if I'd called the outpost because I thought you were there, we all could have been shot.

He got up and emptied a bureau drawer. Ties and camisoles and socks scattered around the room. When the drawer was empty, he yanked it from the bureau and threw it against a wall.

How could you connive with that a.s.shole? How could you even think of it?

It wasn't like that.

What was it like then?

Mikhail was frantic.

You've already said that.

Lodenstein threw the mattress on the floor. The grey quilt crumpled next to it. He opened a weather-beaten trunk, took out a wool carder, and broke it over a chair.

Don't! said Elie. That's for our house after the war.

What house? We'll be shot for hiding fugitives.

No one's going to find out.

And suppose they do?

We can hide the children. And they weren't your orders.

Whose then? Stumpf's? He can't give orders. Did you blackmail him so you could do another rescue?

Are you crazy?

Then why didn't you tell me?

I can't explain.

You never can.

Elie began to drag the mattress to the bed and stopped.

I'm sleeping downstairs, she said.

You don't have a bed there.

We don't have one here either. I'll sleep on coats.

Take mine. It's warm.

I don't need your f.u.c.king coat. I don't need your anything.

Pieter,You say you are fine, but there's no real address for you-just an office in Berlin. Please tell me where you are.I love you and miss you,Eleanora Mikhail might have never written the letter Elie wanted him to write if more nightwalkers hadn't shown up a week later. This was the name for fugitives who walked under cover of darkness at night and slept in safe houses during the day. They abandoned everything they had except jewels they could sew into their clothes and walked on unmarked paths to ports where a ship might take them to Denmark. A town near the Compound was by the sea. Now and then Elie arranged for nightwalkers to sleep in the old officers' quarters.

It was five-thirty in the morning when a dozen bedraggled people emerged from the mineshaft. Mikhail, who was in the kitchen making tea, watched them stare at the sunrise-a maneuver Hans Ewigkeit never got right, so the yellow sphere groaned and wobbled on a pulley, and its silver rope was illuminated until floodlights wiped out the stars. The nightwalkers huddled near the mineshaft.

You can sit on those, Mikhail said, pointing to the benches.

In this inferno? said a woman wearing two hats and three scarves. We could melt.

Mikhail sat on a bench, and when they saw it didn't melt, the nightwalkers sat down, too, and began to unpeel layers of clothes. They wore coats under other coats, three or four sweaters, extra trousers, skirts, blouses, socks. A few people checked waistbands where they'd sewn jewels.

Because there was a warning about the SS on their trail, the nightwalkers stayed an extra day while Elie found a guide with an SS uniform. They played chess, learned words from Dreamatoria Dreamatoria, and drank schnapps Stumpf forgot to hide. On their last night, there was a modest feast: Elie lit candles. La Toya cooked spicy potato soup. Lodenstein made a toast.

After dinner, people stayed in the main room talking. At first they talked about the war-how hard it was to find forgers and how astounding that people still believed ga.s.sings were a rumor. Eventually they began to talk about friends who disappeared without warning and children who never came home from school. One man talked about seeing his daughter beaten to death on a city street.

You mustn't think about these things, said Sophie Nachtgarten.

Who are you to talk? said the woman who'd called the Compound an inferno. You lead a charmed life down here.

Not that charmed, said Sophie.

Charmed enough, said the woman. My uncle was seventy years old, and the SS threw him right against the gla.s.s of his shop-he looked like a bird falling against a window. Then they shot him.

When the guide with the SS uniform arrived, the nightwalkers left, and the Scribes scrambled to sleep. But Elie and Mikhail stayed on, watching the candles. When they started to sputter, Mikhail put his hand on Elie's arm.

I'll write the letter you want, he said. For Asher Englehardt's son. And I'll write it for Aaron. I'll write the letter for Aaron too.

Dear Mother and Father,Did you see me leave with all the other children? I hope you did. Have you seen Lucia? I can't feel you anywhere.Love,Leokadia Talia was annoyed when Mikhail said he was going to write the letter Elie wanted him to write and she ought to practice Asher's signature. She was an expert forger and had made ident.i.ty cards early in the war, but she resented being part of a harebrained scheme.

What makes you think a letter would get anybody out? she said. Or even that they're alive?

I have to write it anyway. Stumpf keeps bothering me, and if I don't, he could turn Maria over to the SS.

You can't get people out of Auschwitz, said Talia. Look what happened to Aaron in a town square. And it was hard enough to get Maria.

Lodz was a ghetto, said Mikhail. And maybe the story about the Angel of Auschwitz is true. Anyway, I have to write something. And Elie will bring the letter.

Elie's no Angel of Auschwitz.