Child of the Light (10 page)

Sol lifted his head and looked at Erich, who quickly put down his makeshift mirror. "Where did you hear that? At one of your stupid campfires?"

Erich narrowed his eyes. "You watch what you say about my camp."

"Then you watch what you say about my papa. He knows what he's doing." Sol raised himself to his full height and looked down at Erich.

Erich clenched his fist. "If you really want to know, Miriam told me." He opened his hand, but kept his fighting stance.

"I suppose that's what you talked about in front of her uncle and everyone."

"After you and your squeaky cello disappeared, Miriam walked with me to...to...the Tiergarten and back."

"Herr Rathenau would never let her walk with you or anyone else unchaperoned. Not at night--"

Erich gave a derisive snort and leaned back haughtily against the wall. "That's what
you
think. Go ahead, ask her!
 
We went for a walk and--"

"She didn't tell you those things, about the cabarets," Sol said, but in a softer tone.

"Well, something like that." Erich took a bent cigarette from his pocket. "Want to go outside with me and smoke this?" He straightened the cigarette, then dabbed saliva on the paper to help hold it together where it had torn.

"You said we wouldn't take any more. Remember, you were the one who got sick--"

"I took them for Miriam." Erich pulled several more cigarettes from his pockets, most of them damaged.

"Her parents let her
smoke?"

"They're dead, remember? She lives with her uncle." He thought about the way Miriam had looked, dancing in the lamplight. Funny how he wanted to tell Sol about that and didn't want to, both at the same time. He rolled one of the cigarettes between his fingers and remembered how she had taken his hand,
that
one, and kissed it. "Boy, I sure would like to do things to her."

"What things?"

"You know. Things."

"She wouldn't even let someone like you hold her hand."

"Bet she already kissed me."

"Liar!"

Erich felt his face redden. He shoved Sol against the wall. Sol swung wildly, managing a glancing blow off Erich's temple before Erich surged in with body punches.

"Be quiet, children!" Sol's father called out. "Look who has stopped outside. Herr Rathenau himself."

The boys dropped their guard and started into the shop, but Sol's father shooed them back into the alcove. Sol peeked around the curtain. "To see him twice in two days," he said in awe.

"Did he come in the limousine or the convertible?" Erich tried to see over Sol's shoulder. "Is Miriam with him? Maybe she suggested he come so she could see me," he whispered excitedly. His heart pounded at the possibility of being with Miriam again.

"Stop breathing down my neck." Sol shifted slightly so they could both have a clear view of the door.

The bell above the shop door jangled. With a theatrical wave of his hand, Herr Freund ushered in the Foreign Minister. Rathenau entered--alone. He wore a gray suit and maroon cravat and carried a walking stick under his arm. A huge diamond twinkled in its knob.

"How nice to see you again, Herr Freund."

The statesman surveyed the shop, breathing deeply as though savoring the rich aroma of tobacco that permeated the air.

Herr Freund slipped behind the counter and quickly removed the dice cups. "How might I serve you, Herr Rathenau?"

Now that the counter was between them, his tone was comfortable. Erich understood that feeling of putting something tangible between himself and someone to whom he felt in some way inferior; he had often wished he could do it with his Freikorps-Youth leader. He recognized the defensive gesture that allowed clerk and customer to maintain their separate worlds across the barrier of Meerschaum pipes and open cigar boxes and glass.

"A couple of cigars, to begin with," Rathenau said. "I'm to accompany my mother to the Schauspielhaus tonight. A troupe from Frankfurt is attempting
Faust
...mediocre talent, I'm told, but exuberant. Give me something light but full-bodied. Perhaps it'll help me forget that I'm allowing myself to sit through yet another butchering of Goethe."

Erich watched Herr Freund select two fine Havanas. Herr Rathenau paid for them with a banknote, then indicated he would take another, for immediate use.

"Perhaps you would honor me by accepting one of these." Reaching under the glass, Herr Freund produced a single cigar. He twirled it in his fingers, breathed in its aroma, and placed it on a small velvet pad, which he passed to the Foreign Minister.

"Something new?" Herr Rathenau asked.

"I have named a cigar for my son and a gold-tipped cigarillo for my daughter. We were about to name one for my partner's son."

"About time," Erich whispered, surprised.

"With your permission, however," Herr Freund said, "we should like to name this latest...a Rathenau."

Furious at having lost out to the Foreign Minister, Erich watched Herr Freund clip the cigar and light it. "Too early in the day to soak the tip in cognac," the tobacconist said, tossing the end in a trash basket and handing Rathenau the cigar.

I hope you choke on it, Erich thought, as the Foreign Minister moistened his lips with his tongue and rotated the cigar in his mouth, relishing it as one might a fine brandy.

"Excellent--and I am deeply touched by your tribute." Herr Rathenau raised his brows in appreciation, patted Jacob on the shoulder and blew a stream of smoke toward the ceiling's ceramic friezes. "You have proven yourself to be a seller of smokes without equal. And now, as to my main reason for stopping by--"

Herr Freund's smile remained fixed. He leaned forward, hands on the glass, shirt sleeves rolled up, the glow from the overhead lamps shining dully on the bald spot where his hairline receded.

"As I implied," Rathenau said, "I did not come simply for cigars. I came to see the boy."

"I was right." Erich poked Sol playfully in the ribs. "Miriam must have asked him to come."

"Is that you, Solomon, hiding back there?" Rathenau asked. "Come on out."

The boys exchanged startled glances.

"Go on!" Erich shoved his friend a little too hard and Sol practically fell into the shop.

"That was some performance you gave last night," the Foreign Minister said.

"I know I was awful, sir."

Erich secretly applauded Sol's honesty. Apparently Herr Freund felt otherwise, because his face tightened.

"Well, you're no virtuoso, but Miri liked your Haydn. Judging by your degree of discomfort with performing, however--" Rathenau smiled and put an arm around Solomon's shoulders--"I rather suspect you might be persuaded to give up playing in public."

Seeing them side by side, Erich was struck with how diminutive the man was; Rathenau had been seated at the party, and his stature and bearing had lent him an illusion of height.

"Sir?" Sol frowned, his face a study in puzzlement.

The statesman released him and laughed out loud. "Just teasing, young man. You did a fine job, under trying conditions. It is not easy to follow an act like my Miriam's."

He glanced curiously toward the curtain.

"Ah, young Weisser!" Rathenau looked directly at Erich and chuckled. "Took a fancy to my young lady, did you not?"

Erich had been holding the edge of the curtain and peeking around it. Feeling as if he had been reprimanded for staying suspiciously long in the bathroom, he jerked his head back behind the curtain.
 
He would not go out there now, he decided, even if they tried to drag him out.

Then he heard Rathenau say, "I have taken a liking to your Solomon, as has my niece," and he was filled with such hurt that he stepped back against the wall as though someone had pushed him. His face burned and his heart thudded ferociously.

"With your permission, Herr Freund, I would like your son to join me for lunch today at the Adlon." The Foreign Minister's voice dropped toward the end of the sentence. "I have no son of my own, and probably never will have. I was impressed by his effort last night and I wish to reward him--"

Pretend Sol's a dog, Erich told himself. Send him a message.
Get him to invite me. Don't go without me.

"You
liked
my performance?" Sol sounded amazed.

"Sol--" Jacob Freund said.

Erich crawled forward and, parting the curtain just enough to peek out, saw Rathenau hold up a hand in a gesture of forbearance. "Quite all right, my friend. The boy is naturally confused."

The Foreign Minister reached out and touched Sol's cheek. Erich put his hand against his own face.

"I shall explain myself further at luncheon, young man," Rathenau said, "unless, of course, you have other plans. Or perhaps you'd simply rather not come."

"Oh, no...I mean yes...I'd love to come, but--"

"But?" Herr Freund sounded dumbfounded.

"Herr Foreign Minister," Sol said, almost too softly to be heard, "...could...do you think...could my friend, Erich, come with us?"

The Foreign Minister eyed Sol's father, who returned the look without a sign of emotion. There it was, Erich thought. What Papa called the attitudinal interchange between classes. Herr Freund, the impassive merchant; Rathenau, his statesman's gaze bespeaking loftier aspirations and ideals than the sale of cigars, even to customers of wealth and power.

"Solomon will be honored to go with you, Herr Rathenau," Herr Freund said, his expressionless voice and face masking what Erich was sure must be a racing pulse. He remembered what he had heard the night he'd awakened and his mother was crying and his father was shouting,
That Jew is humble-ambitious, I tell you. Humble-ambitious!

"What time should we have him ready?" Sol's father asked.

Have
them
ready, Erich corrected. Surely Rathenau would include him in the luncheon, now that Sol had asked--

"We have established that it is all right with you, Herr Freund," the Foreign Minister said. "Now let us hear from the boy."

Not
boys.
Erich felt his heart plummet and he chided himself for ever having admired the Foreign Minister.

"I am...honored," Sol mumbled. His hand trembled as he pushed his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose.

Ask him again,
Erich begged mentally.

"Good. I shall call for you at--" Rathenau opened his watch-- "shall we say twelve?"

Father and son nodded in unison. Herr Freund walked around the counter and opened the door for Rathenau. Sol looked back, grimaced, and followed the two men into the street.

Erich crept along behind the counter for a better look. The statesman's chauffeur, a massive, homely man, leaned comfortably against the limousine. When he heard the bell above the door, he straightened up. He smoothed back his hair, which hung to his collar, slicked it beneath his cap, and held open the car door. Rathenau ducked inside and slid open the glass panel that separated the front seat from the back. Then he leaned against the plush, fawn-colored leather upholstery, gloved hands resting on the head of his walking stick, and his horseless carriage rolled away.

Thinks he's a king but he is just a little man with too much money and power, Erich thought. Like Papa says they all are.

"You see?" No longer impassive, Sol's father gripped his son by the arms. "All that practicing paid off. I told you it would!"

"He can't truly want me to play for him again, can he?"

"Who knows what he wants? Just that he
wants
is what's important." He put an arm across Solomon's shoulders. "You're a good boy, Solomon Freund, the best, but you listen to me. I know your intentions are good, but if Herr Rathenau wanted Erich to go with you, he would have said as much without your prompting." He patted Sol on the rump as if to give him a running start across the street to the apartment. "Go! Get ready!"

Sol glanced into the shop and shrugged his shoulders. His body said,
I tried.
"Must I take my cello, Papa?"

"Questions, always so many questions. No, my son. No cello." Herr Freund took out the long black key attached to a silver chain dangling from his belt loop, and shut the door.

In disbelief, Erich listened to the key rasp in the lock.

"Papa, you're locking Erich in!"

There was a second metallic scraping, and Jacob pulled open the door. Erich waited until Herr Freund had stepped back before he exited the shop. Keeping his gaze on the merchant, he eased around him as if around a large cat.

"I'm sorry, my boy. It seems we forgot you in all the excitement." Jacob smiled.

"Just forget you forgot!" Hands in pockets, Erich backed several steps up the street before turning and stalking away.

"Erich?" Solomon called tentatively.

Erich kept walking. No use going home, he thought. Papa would be mulling over his racing forms, downing sherry like beer to compensate for not having enough money to go to Mariendorf and bet on the trotters. Once he heard Rathenau had chosen to take Sol to lunch instead of Erich, he would start complaining again, and yelling, and his mother would cry. Why did they always have to be so predictable?