Child of the Light (29 page)

"Do not concern yourself with me, little sparrow," she said softly. "There are paths we each must walk. Mine lies in that direction, yours...."

"Could we--"

"Meet again? I think not."
 
Head down, she limped off.

Sol let her go. The truth was, he was afraid of hearing anything more of what she had to say. Hands balled into fists in his pockets, he made his way through the Tiergarten, his route a palette of memories splashed on a canvas of autumn leaves, his mind an amusement park where the thin strains of a calliope echoed the pianist's lively rendition of Lincke's melodies.
Shine little glowworm,
it mocked. Shine on this fool who for a decade has thought himself free of the voices, believing them sealed in the sewer, left behind except in memory when Kaverne closed after Rathenau's murder.
Glow and glimmer
on the nightmares that will not, after all, die childhood's natural, gradual death.

Still shaken by the afternoon's events and by the Gypsy's knowledge of him, he reached the Zoological Gardens, near the Bahnhof Zoo Station.

In a gazebo decorated with lights, a woodwind quintet was playing Schubert for passers-by. Sparrows twittered in the trees; grebes, with dusk approaching, called a warning from the ponds. Men and women in trench coats strolled arm-in-arm toward Lochau, the intimate café as famous in its own way as Kranzler's for its coffee-cake conversations. In the Hansaviertel--where the rich frittered away their days--wealth, fame, and love always seemed possible, as though the wealthy could mold hope into reality out of the gray air. How often he and Erich and Miriam had wandered here, talking of the future and of a pre-war past that, of the three, only she clearly remembered. How often they had hiked and bicycled to the Reichstag! How often he had watched Miriam stare wistfully at the Siegessäule and say that the lady with the golden wreath, her arm lifted high over the city, made her long for New York.

A train hooted its way into the Zoo Station as Sol trudged through the gate that separated the gardens from the street. He stood for a moment to watch with growing loneliness as people detrained--men with satchels, women lugging hatboxes and children, all of them with somewhere to go and circumnavigating him as they might a pole or a tree.

"Solomon? Sol?"

Miriam's voice sang out his name, its cadence lilting above the street noise. Sol dipped inward for its source, into the well of visions in the sewer and nightmares in his bed, certain that now he was dreaming in the streets.

"Need help with your suitcase, pretty lady?"

Miriam shook her head at the overweight, overcoated man. He had sat in the seat across from her all the way from Paris, and again during the journey from Frankfurt, where she had changed trains for the last part of the trip home. Though he had stared fixedly at her ankles, he had made no previous attempt to talk to her. Her suitcase was heavy and she was tempted to let him help her as far as the taxi rank and worry about getting rid of him later. Not that she could afford a taxi, but what the hell.

Apparently sensing her hesitation, the man stepped closer. The look of delighted anticipation in his eyes quickly changed her mind, and she shook her head again. "Thank you, I can manage," she said politely but firmly.

He made no effort to hide his disappointment.

For the thousandth time Miriam wondered why she hadn't contacted Sol or Erich. They had never been far from the periphery of her consciousness in the nine years she'd been away. She had written to Erich a couple of times and he had always responded, but through Sol. Eventually, she gave up the effort except for a birthday card once a year which he dutifully reciprocated, never so much as adding anything but his name.

Sol was a different story. They corresponded regularly at first. His letters had been a great source of pleasure and comfort for her, especially after her grandmother died. Through him she learned that Erich had given up his veterinarian apprenticeship in favor of an appointment to the Reichsakademie. As of Sol's last letter three years ago, Erich was hopelessly devoted to dogs, making progress in the Abwehr, and conquering attractive, influential women. At the time, Sol was enrolled at the Language Institute, studying the Talmud and the Kabbalah, and helping in the tobacco shop. In deference to practicality, he was also studying bookkeeping and accounting.

When she sold the last of her grandmother's jewelry and her life began to sour, she stopped writing to Sol. Running through the money so fast was her own fault, she thought. Somehow she'd convinced herself that the well was bottomless.

There followed three years of silence, then she'd received the letter that had brought her back here. She dug it out of her handbag and read the beginning again:

29
Junie,
l933

Meine Liebe
Miriam,

It has been so long--so very long--since I last heard
 
from you. When half-a-dozen of my letters went unanswered, I at first worried that perhaps something terrible might have happened to you. Finally, I decided that you were simply too busy with your new and glamorous life and that the best thing I could do was send you warm thoughts, keep loving you, and pray that someday our lives would once again intertwine.

Now, I have heard news that I feel I must impart to you. Forgive me, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but someone had to tell you--they are gaining more power every day, if not every minute. Some time ago, Erich told me that it was the good Dr. Goebbels' intention to conscript your home and use it as his headquarters--mostly, I fear, because it is far enough away from Wallotstrasse and the ever-vigilant SS that his bedroom activities with every willing star-struck blonde in Berlin will be overlooked.

Whatever the reason, I begged Erich to intercede on your behalf, as I did last year when--as I wrote and told you--I found out that the most valuable of the paintings and furniture in the house were appropriated. Whether or not Erich could have done anything to help without significant injury to himself is something I cannot judge.

I do know that by early October the move into your estate will be well underway--if not completed....

Miriam folded up the letter and put it in her bag. She knew its contents by heart. The letter had taken more than three months to find her; three days later she had booked her ticket home.

Standing alone on the steps of the station, she asked herself why she had really stopped writing to Sol--and answered herself in the same way she had done for three years. In Erich's case, it was annoyance; in Sol's, she had found herself unable to reply. She wanted the ink of her adolescence to blur...wanted her future to be a tabula rasa. The past, which held the pain of youth's broken promises, needed to be relegated to the past.

She laughed at herself.

Those were fine thoughts, or at least pragmatic, but the truth was she wanted to see Sol
and
Erich. Wanted? No, longed! Dammit, she missed them both. Loved them both. Her love for Erich, she had long since decided, was perverse. When she thought of him, she felt aroused; loving him was stupid but exciting, like walking by a river during an electric storm. Worse yet, he made her dislike herself.

Sol?

Sol was mist and rainbows and the smell of Frau Freund's
latkes.

Thinking about those made her remember her hollow stomach, growling with hunger. She hadn't eaten anything more nourishing than a sweet roll in days.

She inhaled deeply, but the smell around her was hardly that of potato pancakes; as usual, Berlin's sidewalks were splotched with dog droppings. Still, it was Berlin. Whatever else that meant, she was home.

Dropping her suitcase at her side, she massaged her shoulder and congratulated herself for having had the good sense to leave the rest of her things to another ex-member of her troupe. She leaned sideways to pick up the case again and noticed a young man across the street. He was standing motionless in the path of the other passengers, who had crossed over and were moving around him as if he were a tree that had taken root in the sidewalk.

Come on, Miriam, don't be an idiot, she told herself, aware of her pounding heart. Nevertheless, she squinted to see more clearly in the encroaching dusk.

"Solomon! Sol Fr--!" She stopped. It was too much to ask of the Fates and, besides,
Freund
was too Jewish a name to yell.

The young man turned his head in her direction but did not react. Embarrassed, she changed her gesture into a wave and smiled as if she had recognized someone behind him. She was beginning to feel like an absolute idiot. Such happy coincidences were the stuff of dreams.

Then again, she'd made a fool of herself before, she thought as he took one step, and another, until he was running toward her.

"My God, it
is
you!" Sol grinned widely as he dodged a car.

"Who did you think it was? A ghost?"

She opened her arms and he embraced her, lifting her up and whirling her around.

"Miriam Rathenau at your service, sir." She laughed and held onto her hat.

"You look wonderful." He let go and stepped back to admire her.

And you
feel
wonderful, she thought. "What do you think?"
 
She executed a pirouette. "Is Berlin ready for my return?"

"If the city's not, I am."

She smiled at his open appreciation. The worse she felt, the more carefully she dressed, as if looking good worked some inner magic that forced her to take a more optimistic view of her life. She had put on a stylish calf-length tweed skirt and matching jacket. Her legs were stockinged in black silk, and a white silk blouse and cloche cap completed the outfit. Aside from a tall feather, the cap resembled a Pilgrim's bonnet and would have looked very proper had she not turned the edge up saucily on one side.

"Can it really be you?" Sol made no attempt to hide his pleasure. "You were a girl when you left Berlin."

"I'm twenty-six, Sol."

"Well, you look seventeen, at most."

"I'd
love
to believe you, darling, but you need to have your eyes checked."

For an instant she sensed a change in Sol, as if she had said something tactless. Then he said quickly, "I feel like I should spout poetry or say something philosophical to mark the occasion."

"You could give me a kiss for starters." She smiled. "And maybe carry a disgustingly heavy suitcase?" She folded her arms around his neck and stood on her toes.

To her surprise, his lips tasted of beer; his kiss was warm, but that of a brother. He was a man now, not the tentative boy she had left behind; tall and handsome, with that kind of brooding intensity in his eyes that many women found irresistible. Was there someone else in his life, some other woman--a wife? She glanced at his left hand.

The extent of her relief at seeing a ringless finger shocked her.

"You've come home...for good?" he asked

"For good or bad. Depends on your point of view." She linked her arm through his and he lifted her case with the other. "In answer to the question in your eyes, my Sol, yes, I received your letter. I got it a few days ago." She stopped. There would be time for all that, and for asking about Erich. "Could we be serious later?" she asked.

Sol looked relieved. "Been in Paris all this time...I mean, since your last letter?"

"Paris, Amsterdam, Zurich...everywhere." She waved as if to include the universe in her experience.

Sol looked at her slim waist. "Aren't world travelers supposed to get fat from sampling all sorts of delicacies?"

"Me, fat? Never! Matter of fact, you could take me to your parents for a
Shabbas
meal. It will be my first in...too long."

She laughed and nuzzled her head against his shoulder. Clutching the post of a street lamp, she swung around it at a tilt.

"It's so good to be back, Sol! So good to be with someone I know." She looked toward the Brandenburg Gate. "We share so many memories."

"Mother and Recha were sure you had become the toast of Europe. When we stopped hearing from you, we decided you had gone to Hollywood and married Errol Flynn or someone. We kept expecting to see you on the Movietone News, wearing furs and posing for photographers."

"Why an American?" She pouted coyly and once again tucked her arm through his. "Why not Willy Fritsch? I'm sure I could have dazzled him into a trip down the aisle. But I've simply been too busy to take time off to marry a star!" More seriously, she added, "Actually, for the past three years I've been with a dance company from Stuttgart."

"The Stuttgart Ballet?"

"I wish. You see before you the star of that traveling talent showcase,
La Varieté Nouvelle."
Star ballerina of third-rate theaters, she thought as she bowed grandly to hide her unease. "Danced excerpts from every great ballet on Europe's worst stages, for a lot of applause and little else. Did a bit of everything. Lehar. Lincke.
Giselle,
the Sugar Plum Fairy, you name it."

"Even so, Recha's such a balletomane I swear she gets programs from Siberia. We should have seen your name
somewhere."