Child of the Light (30 page)

"I used a stage name."
 
Again Miriam waved her hand in the broad gesture that encompassed fate and the universe. "Every time I handed someone a portfolio of my American performances, they looked duly impressed--and slammed the door in my face. Eventually I realized that people were afraid my name would attract Nazi attention. All I had to do at
Nouvelle
was audition, so I became Mimi de Rau. Like it?"

"Mimi, you make me sad and dreamy,"
he sang softly.

"Chevalier you're not." Miriam laughed with delight. "I am
très Parisienne, n'est pas?
So, verree Frrench." She rolled her 'rrs' and tried to look like a seductress.

"So, has the company come to perform in Berlin, Fraülein de Rau?" Sol asked as they reached the apartment house.

"Hardly!" She gazed up at the barred windows. "We made the mistake of performing in Munich. The Chamber of Culture shut us down." She frowned at the Minister of Propaganda's latest lunacy: a few weeks before, Goebbels had formed the Chamber
to protect the public from non-Aryan influences in the arts.

"The company's director was Jewish?"

"No, but they decided he was because of his nose. Next they'll be
measuring
everyone's noses."

Though Sol laughed as he held open the door, he did not sound amused. He had doubtless heard the rumors that the nose-caliper test was a reality in some places and that circumcision examinations were a possible next step. "Failure to fit accepted parameters" and "Jewish tendencies" had become familiar catch-phrases.

"If you don't have work here, why did you come back?"

Miriam reached in her purse. After some digging, she produced a large latchkey. "I came across the keys to Uncle Walther's house the day we were notified the company was being disbanded, which was also the day your letter found me. The front door key fell off the ring and into my hand. I took it as an omen."

"Think of it this way--you would rattle around like a ghost if you lived in that mansion...alone."

"Good old Solomon--always finding something positive, even in evil. If I could afford to live there, I could also afford servants, Solomon." She kissed an index finger and pressed it to his lips, then turned her palms up in mock despair. "But that's all moot, isn't it. I'm penniless. Can you love a Poor Little Match Girl?"

"You're not bitter about the estate?" Sol sounded shocked.

"Bitter? No. Furious! But later, Sol, please."

"Just one question. Didn't your grandmother leave you anything?"

"Everything she had left, which was mostly jewelry. Didn't take me long to spend it. You know me--used to the good life!"

"What about your trust fund?"

"Gone. After Oma's death, I found out inflation had eaten up most of her fortune. The Nazis took what was left. She and I lived on the trust. I couldn't deny her anything, Sol. She was old, and used to a certain way of life. I just figured, when it was gone, it was gone. I probably should have sold the estate years ago but, to cut a long story short, Princess Miriam 'Mimi de Rau' Rathenau has been paying for her own bread and butter--and precious little jam."

Sol put down the suitcase and gave her a hug. "I can't promise you butter, but you are always welcome to whatever bread we have."

She kissed his cheek. He reddened slightly. After fishing in his pockets for the key, he opened the front door.

"Mutti?
Recha? You'll never guess who's here!"

No one answered. Sol peered into the music and sitting rooms. "They must still be in the food lines."

"Hello?" Miriam called. "Herr Freund?"

Sol sent Miriam a cautionary look and signaled her into the library. The room had two tall narrow windows. The one nearest the door was trimmed in Dutch curtains and spilled light onto a table cluttered with papers. The other was covered by a shade.

Seated near a corner, facing the darkened window and slowly rocking back and forth, was Jacob Freund.

"Oh my God!" Miriam thought of Jacob Freund as she had remembered him. Gentle. Dapper. Resolute.

This couldn't be the same man.

Jacob stared straight ahead, face set as though sculpted. Though not yet sixty he looked eighty. His cheeks were sunken, his cheekbones protruded. He stared toward the window shade through eyes that, clouded with film, seemed distended from their sockets. His hair was white and butchered; liver spots mottled his scalp. His right hand lay motionless on the blanket across his lap. His left forearm was on the rocker's arm. A silk ribbon dangled from his left hand, which hung as if it had no bones; attached to the ribbon, moving like a pendulum with each slight twitch of his hand, was an Iron Cross.

Try as she would, Miriam could not stem the tears. "Is he always...like this?"

"It comes and goes." Solomon put his hands on the old man's shoulders. "Miriam Rathenau's here, Papa."

The chair continued its rhythm. Sol motioned Miriam aside.

"His eyes.... Is he
blind,
Sol?"

"He has chosen to be blind."

She looked at Sol in horror. He gripped her arms as if he wanted, needed to hold her. "Accept it," he said. "I have."
 
He stared at the carpet. "At least I think I have."

They waited helplessly for a response or any sign of recognition from Sol's father. When none came, Sol guided Miriam into the kitchen. He poured them each a buttermilk.

Miriam turned and stood in the archway, staring at the old man.

"Seems like everything is a rare treat these days." Sol handed her the beverage. "It's hard to buy anything, what with 'We do not serve Jews' signs going up everywhere. At first it was only, 'Don't buy from Jews'...."

"What do you mean 'chosen'?"
 
Miriam kept her eyes on Jacob as she drank. "How can he have
chosen
to be blind?"

"His eyesight's been failing for years but he can still see--with glasses. However, he refuses to get another pair. He says there's nothing left he wants to see."

"Then he's not completely--"

"Not yet." Sol's voice faltered. "He broke his glasses the day von Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor."

Nine months ago, Miriam thought. Some people give birth to sweet-smelling babies; we Germans bear tyrants.

"That evening," Sol said, "Papa placed his glasses under the chair and rocked back, crushing them.
 
Since then his condition has worsened rapidly--"

"What's the prognosis?"

"The last doctor who came said it was acute depression, complicated by what we've known for some time. He has
retinitis pigmentosa.
Basically, a splash of melanin on the back of the retina." He struggled to finish. "I'm afraid it's degenerative."

"There must be something...other doctors..."

"There's nothing we can do. It's getting harder and harder to find a doctor willing to come to a Jewish household."

"There must be Jewish doctors."

Sol shook his head. "Most have left the country. The rest have to employ constant watchfulness to preserve their own safety, for all our sakes."

"He just sits and rocks?"

"Sometimes he putters around the house, but he doesn't go to the shop anymore. I've taken over for him. Mother helps with the books. I'm a linguist, not an accountant, despite all thoseclasses."

"You're a student, Sol. It's all you should ever have to do."

Sol wiped off her buttermilk mustache and she chuckled despite herself. They eased into the table's corner-bench and deliberately talked of pleasant things--sunsets in the Alps, where she had learned to ski, and of how she had performed an excerpt from
The Dying Swan
in a rainstorm on a Rhine tourist barge. As they washed and put away the glasses, she asked him to come with her to the villa.

"Why torture yourself?"

"I want to see what dust has gathered and what insults the sparrows have deposited. We'll be back before dark, in time to celebrate
Shabbas,"
she told him. "Promise."

Still, he hesitated. "Why not wait until tomorrow? You'll be more rested."

"What is it, Sol? What's really bothering you? We both know they have taken what's mine. I've had to face that. There is something else. Isn't there."

"Miri." Sol took her hand. "When we--Erich and I--heard about this, we talked about it. He was very upset. He said he would do what he could to stop it, but he doesn't have that kind of power."

"Erich..."

"We have to talk about him. He's there, Miri. At the estate. In charge of guarding it for Goebbels--"

"No!" She hadn't meant to shout but the word rang out like an alarm. She lowered her voice. "Why Erich? Explain it to me."

"He'll have to do that himself. I just wanted you to know. We could bump into him--"

Miriam glanced in Jacob Freund's direction. "Let's go. Now!"

Outside, they stood hand-in-hand as Solomon flagged a taxi.
 
"I need to find work," Miriam said as they slid inside. "A cabaret, anything, it doesn't matter."

Sol gave directions to the driver. She leaned close to the window and looked across the street at the cabaret's faded awning. "If only Oma had not closed Kaverne."

If only, she thought, wondering if her life would always be filled with those two words.

Suddenly all she wanted was for this day to end. Her emotional bucket was filled to overflowing; she envied the taxi driver his isolation, closed off from them by a glass partition and separated from the outside by glass and metal. It had all been too much. The news about the house, the company disbanding, the long train rides back to a hate-filled city that had once been home. Seeing Sol was wonderful, but Jacob...When she'd insisted on going to the villa
now,
she'd failed to realize how tired she was. She wasn't at all sure she could handle anything more; under the circumstances, she was especially not sure she could handle seeing Erich again.

She glanced at Solomon, grateful that he understood her need for silence. With any luck, Erich wouldn't be at the estate--

Luck hasn't exactly been your middle name of late, she reminded herself. Her only hope of making it through this day was to set aside her feelings. There would be time enough to examine those. For now, the best thing she could do was to act and react, and leave the thinking--and the feeling--for tomorrow.

The cab rounded the last S-curve before the estate. Heart racing, Miriam waited for the villa to come into view. Even had the place still been hers, she reminded herself, she could not afford to park so much as a dog in the driveway. It took wealth to maintain an estate, not just income--all of which was moot, since she had neither. Her uncle had kept the place immaculate. The lawn was always manicured, the chestnut that shaded the west chimney pruned, the ivy that covered the gate and guardwall-ironwork trimmed. There never seemed to be an end to the work that needed to be done. The east wall re-grouted, the trim of the front-door canopy touched up. Always something.

The cab stopped and she stepped out. While Solomon paid the driver, she walked over to the east gate and gripped the bars, inhaling the richness of newly mown grass. The place was even more beautiful than she remembered. There was so much to the villa she had taken for granted. Red-and-black brickwork graced each corner and set off the entryways. The wrought-iron grills over the windows nicely contrasted with the limestone. The black, red, and gold cobblestones in the crescent-shaped driveway had been chosen to match the colors of the Weimar Republic.

She remembered the wording of Uncle's will.
Meine Vorfahren und ich selbst haben sich von deutschem Boden und deutschem Geistgenärt
...my forefathers and I myself have nourished ourselves from German earth and spirit...
should death of inheritee occur before liquidation of my estate, the grounds and buildings shall revert to the German people, to serve as a showplace for art and artifacts by Germans of Jewish descent....

On the roof, a man in a carpenter's apron hoisted a flag from the flagpole on the southeastern turret. The cloth unfurled in the breeze.

Red, with a white circle and a black swastika.

"Take that down!" Shaking the gate, she thrust an arm between the bars. "You hear me, you bastard? Take it down!"

She dug into her handbag for the keys to the estate and tried each of them in the lock. None worked.

"Stop it, Miri." Sol took hold of her arm. "They are not going to fit. You can be sure they've changed all the locks." He pointed toward two workmen opening the western gate for an army truck. "If someone sees you, we could be turned in."

"Turned in? This is
my
home!"

"This
was
your home!"

Furious, Miriam shrugged off his hand and hurled the keys through the bars of the gate. They clinked as they landed.

Covering her mouth with her hand, she watched a tar sprayer enter the other gate and move along the driveway, suffusing the air with stench. A yellow steamroller with a puffing exhaust followed, its driver waving frantically and shouting invectives at the workmen as if he were in charge of smoothing out the broad boulevard of the Unter den Linden during rush hour.