Child of the Light (25 page)

"Here, Killi," she said, close to tears. Obediently, the shepherd came over and nuzzled her. "You'll like being with Vlad," she told the dog, more for her own sake than for the animal's. How she'd battled Erich about calling a female dog Achilles, she thought. The name, he'd insisted, had come to him out of the moonlight, so even if this was a bitch, no other name would do. Sad as she felt, she could not help but smile at the memory of Erich's appearance on her balcony that night with the puppy, his fumbling attempts at caresses, his pride in saying
bitch,
as if it made him older and taller to say it out loud in her presence.

That night was really the beginning of their friendship.

Why was it she found beginnings so easy and endings so difficult, she wondered. She picked up her journal from the top of her suitcase. There were so many memories.

She stopped herself, calling upon her pragmatic streak. There was much to be done before the train left for Paris; she could not allow sentiment to distract her, at least not until she picked up the boys en route to the train station.

Mentally she ticked off her list. Finish packing. Hand Killi over to Vlad, who had agreed to make things easier for her by meeting her at the cigar shop--

Dammit, what did Sol and Erich expect her to do now that she had graduated from school--hang around until they grew up too?
 
Her choices were clear enough. Go back to America, enroll at the University here in Berlin, or do what she was doing--join a dance company and start trying to earn her own living.

Not that she had ever wanted for anything, not even last year during the worst of inflation, when an egg cost eight hundred marks and even middle-class Jews like Sol were forever having to stand in long Gentile-first lines for milk and other staples. She wished her grandmother could live forever, but the truth was that, even if Oma died, she would not lack for money. Perhaps with her funds, she could assure that Sol would never again have to stand in lines. The estate would be hers, and Oma's jewelry and money--and the trust fund in Switzerland. Oma was there right now, making sure everything was in order before joining her in Paris.

Eventually it would all be hers, but that wasn't the same as earning it herself. Besides, she loved performing, and she had a right to her own life. Time to leave; time to get on with it.

Good intentions notwithstanding, she sat down on the bed and opened her journal, a gift from Sol for her sixteenth birthday. It bulged with mementos. Ticket stubs. A dark curl she had kept from the day she'd had her hair bobbed. Photographs: Vladimir holding a tennis racket, his eyes telling her he'd had a different game in mind for a long time; Oma, her arms filled with freshly cut roses, her shoulders bent with the weight of her sorrow for her sons--

And the boys. Always the boys--alone, together, she and Erich, she and Sol, the three of them--

The boys would be men when she came back. If she came back.

She leafed through the pages, stopping here and there as a word, a sentence, a pressed flower triggered memories of the last two years. Sol, his nose buried in a book; Erich in his ridiculous uniform. Erich and Sol under a tree in the park, picnicking on Braunschweiger and Pickart bread and arguing about Adolph Hitler's jail sentence for his part in the Munich Beer Hall Putsch--

She opened the journal at random.

Wedged between two pages was a letter from Sol, written to her the day after he had talked to her. In it, he spoke about his visions, about his fears for the Jews, about his dream of spending his life studying and interpreting the mystics in ways everyone could understand, and about his visions...
I remember the day Erich hurt his hand,
he wrote.
We were taking him to the hospital in a taxi. I was exhausted, and terribly upset. I thought I had fallen asleep in the car and dreamed about standing in line for hour after hour to buy two bottles of milk for Mama. In the dream, the milk cost a fistful of money; in the dream, Jews had to stay at the back of the line until all non-Jews had been served. And then, as we all know, it happened. Really happened. I wonder how many other things I have "dreamed" in that way will turn out to be visions of the future. Not too many, I hope, for few of my dreams are pleasant.

On the same page, and on half-a-dozen of the following ones, she had pasted photographs of the three of them at Luna Park. She read the captions.
Erich protecting me on the roller coaster. Erich being romantic on the Ferris wheel. Me, hugging the music box Sol won--after a lot of trying--at the pfennig-toss.
How jealous Erich had been over that!

She took the music box off her vanity and placed it next to her handbag. She was leaving enough behind; she could surely afford to take a few things for no reason other than sentiment. The memory made her smile, and she opened the lid and listened to "Glowworm."

So sweet, those boys. She closed the music box.

Again she opened the journal but this time there was nothing random about her choice of page. She ran her finger along an electric-blue peacock feather. Pulling it off the page, she attached it with a hat pin to the soft felt cloche she had picked for the journey--the same one she had worn on the ferry to Pfaueninsel--Peacock Island--that Saturday....

She and Erich had gone to the island alone, leaving Sol to his renewed studies with the beadle. She had probably learned more about Erich that day than before or since, she thought as she picked up her journal and skimmed what she had written. They had talked about Sol's visions and about Erich's views of the world and the Great War. At first, listening to him, she had thought him against war, but she had slowly come to realize that he imagined himself as a member of the German nobility, willing to sacrifice himself for his king or his lady and doing battle for both to prove his heroism. What had surprised her was his clear perception of his own shortcomings--his need to control others and the temper that would not allow him to live up to his conception of what he would like himself to be.

And what he could be! Miriam thought. A pressed lilac blossom fell from the journal and fluttered onto the bed, wafer thin and diaphanous--like the dress she had worn in celebration of free-love advocate Isadora Duncan and her marriage to the Russian poet, Sergei Esenin. She had packed the dress. She would wear it on some stage somewhere, when she needed to be close to Sol and Erich.

She riffled through the pages and found her description of the day she had worn the dress. The limousine ride to Wiesbaden, the three of them, Achilles, and the ever-obliging Konnie. A picnic in the park....

Erich stood stiffly upright and held the rough army blanket to one side like a toreador's cape. Sol grinned, put down the picnic basket and took out his harmonica, which he kept wrapped in one of his father's Reichsbanner handkerchiefs.

"Play the 'Toreador's Song'," Miriam said, positioning herself.

Sol played--badly--but that didn't matter. It was drizzling slightly--that didn't matter either. Miriam could feel the rhythm through the thin strains of the harmonica. She stamped her feet, swirled, charged the cape again and again. At her side, watching them, was a small statue of Pan. She danced around him, paying tribute to Isadora, her free-flowing movements inspired by Sol and Erich, and by the music of friendship. Erich watched, forgetting to move the blanket and lusting after her body. She liked that. Most of all she liked the way Sol watched her, loving her being.

"I'm starving." Erich threw the blanket on the ground and reached for the picnic basket.

But Sol played on and she danced just for him. When the song was over, he shook the harmonica and put it back in his pocket. Smiling, he walked over to a blooming lilac, plucked a flower, and presented it to her.

"The star must have flowers," he said.

Not to be outdone, Erich pulled off a whole branch. Soon they were plucking the blossoms and throwing them at each other, tumbling around on the blanket like puppies.

Later, emptying out the picnic basket, she found blossoms among the crumbs....

How carefully she had orchestrated that day--and others too. Like the time she had arranged to meet the boys in front of the Siegessäule for an on-site debate about the stupidity of putting up a
victory
monument after a defeat. Or the time the three of them had pedaled all the way to the Grünewald, she and Sol together on a borrowed bicycle-made-for-two, to visit the estate of a close friend of her family.

They had entered the estate through wine vaults so enormous that they pedaled through the rooms. In the vaults they used the bikes for a jousting tournament, Erich proclaiming himself Tannhäuser and Miriam the Lady Venus. Sol astonished himself by winning and Erich astonished her by laughing in appreciation of his friend's skill. What fun they'd had among the dusty bottles, playing hide-and-seek in the darkened cellar...until Sol's ghosts came. She remembered his face, pinched and drawn, as he turned away from Erich's attempts to cajole him back into the spirit of the game.

Beginning to feel maudlin she snapped the journal shut, but not before she allowed herself a final memory--

She flipped to her last journal entry.

Wedged into the page, not yet pasted in, was a photo of Erich and Sol taken at the estate less than a month ago. The three of them had been sitting holding hands amid the dying roses of an Indian summer day. As dusk turned the sky pink she had told them of her decision to leave Berlin. First one and then the other, unembarrassed by the other's presence, swore to wait for her.

"I can't marry both of you," she had said.

"Ja, but would you if you could?" Erich had asked.

"I would."

He had plucked three long grasses and wound one around her ring finger and another around his own. The third one he handed to Sol. "Now, say 'I do!' and the three of us will be joined forever."

Sol, his eyes dark and intense, looked at her and then at Erich. Tossing aside the strand of grass, he had released her hand and walked away to stand by himself. She had wanted to go to him and comfort him, but Erich had held her back with a look that almost frightened her...and the moment passed--

"Almost time to leave, Fräulein Rathenau," Konrad called from downstairs. "May I collect your suitcases?"

Panicked, Miriam looked at her watch. "Give me another fifteen minutes, Konnie."

She threw the rest of her things in the cases and slipped into her clothes. In fifteen minutes, exactly, Konrad was back.

"I...I will miss you, Fräulein Rathenau." His usually implacable face wore a saddened expression.

Impulsively, Miriam hugged him. "And I, you, Konnie. Will you be here when I return?"

His face scarlet, Konrad nodded. "Your grandmother has been kind enough to give me a retainer. I shall stay here and take care of things as...best I can. I am not so young anymore and it would have been difficult...."

He stopped, as if embarrassed by his sudden garrulousness. He picked up the smallest of her cases and tucked it under his arm, lifted the other two as if they weighed nothing, and left the room. Achilles followed him to the door, then stopped and turned around as if waiting for her to come. She picked up her handbag, hat, and gloves, and glanced around one more time. Swallowing hard, she left the room and went quickly down the stairs and out the front door.

"Shall I wait right here?" Konrad asked when they drove up to the shop.

Miriam got out of the car and nodded. Taking Achilles by the leash, she tethered her to a pole outside the shop.

Sol sat at the table, the
Book of Formation
open in front of him. When he saw her, he simply stared.

"You look beautiful, Miriam." Jacob Freund stepped from behind the counter. "You will doubtless turn Paris on its ear."

Miriam had already said her farewells to him and to Sol's mother and sister. She had said less fond farewells to Erich's parents, who had long since forgiven her--or so they said--for "corrupting" their son. Despite their forgiveness, there had never been any love lost among the three of them.

"Where's Erich?" she asked. "We don't have much time. As soon as Vlad gets here I have to go."

"Why don't I tell him to hurry?" Herr Freund said.

"Thank you, Herr Freund," Miriam said.

"There is one condition," Jacob Freund said seriously. He opened his arms and smiled. "An extra hug for an old man, if you please."

"That's easy." Miriam was happy to oblige. She liked Sol's mother and sister, but her fondness for them did not equal the way she felt about Jacob. She really did love him, she thought, enjoying the smell of tobacco and Aqua Velva as he put his arms around her.

"Hey--come back with that!"

Miriam and Jacob whirled around to see Sol give chase to a little boy in uniform. Sol did not get very far, for he bumped head-on into Vladimir, who had stooped to pet Achilles.

"Thieves!" Jacob muttered. "There are more of those these days than customers." He glanced over at the table. "If my son does not start paying more attention, there will soon be no more pieces left." He walked over to the ivory chess set. "The ivory queen is missing!" He shrugged. "Ah well! The ebony one has been gone for months."

"I'm sorry, Papa." Sol limped back into the store.

"Today I forgive you," Jacob Freund said. "You have reason to be distracted. Tomorrow, you will not be as easily forgiven. Leave your books at home, Solomon. There will be plenty of time for you to read those things when you are older. Ah, here's Erich at last."