Child of the Light (37 page)

The man swore at Sol as he and Miriam shoved past and entered the shop. "All his fault," someone said.

"No. He was a nice man. I liked him."

"Money-sucking Jews. We should rid Germany of the lot of them."

The inside of the shop was a shambles. Display cases lay overturned and broken on top of merchandise that would never again be salable. Herr Weisser, his face red and swollen and splotched with darkening bruises, lay amid strewn money and broken glass. His head was on his wife's lap. Leaning against the upside-down cash register, she wept and stroked his cheek.

Friedrich lifted a hand when he saw Solomon, then his head lolled and his hand fell to the floor.

"Fred offered them money. They wouldn't take it," Inge Weisser said. "They said it was tainted. Jew money. Can you believe, they called him a Jew? They beat him, kicked him. Four of them held his arms and legs and two others...two others...oh God! They dropped the cash register on him." She put her head in her hands. "It's his ribs. I think one has punctured a lung."

"A Jew they called me!" Friedrich Weisser wheezed and then caught his breath. "Me! A Jew!"

"If I had only been here," Inge Weisser told Sol. "I would have told them the truth, that they had the wrong--"

As if realizing what she was saying, and to whom, Frau Weisser covered her mouth with her hand. She is determined to blame this on us, Sol thought angrily as two burly men carrying a makeshift stretcher shouldered their way into the shop.

"I've been here before," one of them said, glancing around. "People like these never learn." He shook his head. "Waste of our time, if you ask me."

"What are we supposed to do? Leave the old man to die? He could be your father."

They knelt and eased Friedrich Weisser onto the stretcher. He whimpered. "Cover me with cheese and charge admission," he said through compressed lips.

His bitter humor made Sol wince. Weissenberg, the Weimar-Berlin healer considered by many to be a saint, had claimed he could resurrect the recent dead by applying cheese curds to a body. When cheese and corpse began to stink and the police stepped in, he ranted that his impending miracle had been circumvented by police interference.

"Anyone else hurt?" Sol asked Frau Weisser.

She shook her head. "Your mother was here when they came, but she's safe."

"Mama? Where is she!"

"At the apartment. She got away." There was a biting edge to Inge's voice. "Left my Friedrich to those animals!"

"I'll go and find her," Miriam said softly, touching Sol's arm as if to quiet his nerves.

Sol followed the stretcher out the door. Inge clung to her husband's hand.

"I'm sorry, Freddie. You said we should insist they send her away, but I wouldn't listen," she said. "That Miriam and her cabaret dancing! First we lost Erich because of her, now they came to finish what they started at the nightclub on Christmas Eve!"

"Did they mention me, Frau Weisser?" Miriam's voice was tight.

After a moment's hesitation, Inge Weisser shook her head. "Not exactly, but...but you may be sure they were after you!"

Miriam's shoulders sagged, and she looked very pale.

"Please, Frau Weisser," Sol said. "I know how upset you are, but watch what you're saying."

"I am watching! I'm watching my Friedrich here! Where were you when the Brownshirts arrived? Out on your nightly stroll!"

Sol leaned over Friedrich. "I'll find a way to get in touch with Erich--"

"No!" Herr Weisser's voice was amazingly strong. "I don't want to see him." He stopped and closed his eyes before he went on. "He did not come. Not even for Christmas...or for his birthday."

Sol patted the man's meaty hand. "I must check on Mama, then I'll come to the infirmary. You'll be all right."

"He'll be fine. We'll all be fine, won't we Solomon-the-Wise! Especially your papa over there!" Frau Weisser spat on the street. "My Friedrich might die, but Jacob Freund will be fine!"

Solomon looked sadly at the woman he had known most of his life, realizing he did not know her at all.

Miriam put her arms around Sol's waist and her cheek against his back. She leaned against him for a moment, warming him, then took his hand and led him to the apartment like a child.

They found his parents and sister in the library. His mother stood in the corner, body pressed against the wall as if only it stood between her and collapse. Her left cheek was badly bruised. Recha, dressed in a white pleated floor-length gown, sat with her head tilted against the rocker back, staring at the ceiling. Her father stood behind the chair, gripping its scroll tops and staring blankly out the window toward the store front.

"Thank God you're all right, Mama," Solomon said.

"They called me a whore, Sol. Me! A whore!" His mother twisted a blond curl around and around her finger. Her voice was soft. Toneless. She was not crying. "They said any Gentile who was in partnership with Jews certainly copulated with them. As God is my witness, I didn't deny our--Him--but I didn't argue with them either. I wanted to live, Solly. For you and Papa and Recha."

"Anti-Semitic garbage talk." Jacob's chin was stubbornly lifted, his voice stronger than Solomon had heard it in years.

"They thought I was Frau Weisser and that Friedrich was Jacob. One of them hit me, then they told me to get out." She was twisting her hair with both hands now.

"I just sat here," Jacob said. "What kind of man would do that while his wife and best friend--"

"I'll have it cut." Ella Freund pulled her curls down in front of her eyes. "And dyed. What do you think, Sol? Recha?
 
Miri? How would I look with black hair?" She posed like a little girl pleading forgiveness for some silly infraction of family rules.

Recha rose from the rocking chair and faced her mother. "You will look beautiful,
Mutti,"
she said quietly.

"She's right," Miriam added. Hoping her voice had not betrayed her concern, she kissed Ella Freund's cheek. The woman smiled, her face strangely calm. She had the look of a piece of fragile porcelain, as if she could shatter from the slightest touch.

Sol looked gratefully at Miriam. She could see her own fear mirrored in his face.

"I sat and rocked!" Jacob lashed out at the chair with his foot. In his near-blindness he missed and kicked again, knocking the chair on its side. Kicking at it a third time, he splintered two spindles.

Recha put her arms around him. He twisted, then allowed his body to slacken. "They'll be back," he said. "What then? Shall I sit and smile while they rape my wife and daughter and plunder my shop whenever they choose? Or should I sell them pencils so they can write their names on our souls."

"I could take money from the till and go to Fenzik's," Sol's mother said. "He cuts hair so well."

"There could be a thousand tills, Ellie." Jacob Freund spoke in a measured tone. "You still could not go there. Fenzik's has been off-limits to us for a year. Jew hair, eyes, flesh. We have become Jewish shadows."

Recha kept her arms around her father. "You'll see, Papa. After the holidays, things will calm down."

Miriam silently applauded Recha's optimism as she watched Jacob Freund gently push his daughter away and shuffle toward the hall. His footsteps faded, stopped, returned. He was right, she thought. They had all become Jewish shadows, she thought, true children of the light.

"Pack!"

He dropped two battered suitcases at his wife's feet.

"Pack?" she asked. "Are we going to Mainz for a vacation?"

"You're leaving. You and Recha. Getting out. That's the least I can do for you."

He turned and plodded back toward the bedroom. Ella hurried after him. "I'll cut it myself, Jacob. And dye it too. Black as the Queen of Sheba's I'll make it."

"Pack!"

"Will you go too, Papa?" Solomon asked.

Jacob stood in the archway, one hand against the wall. "I've gone too many kilometers in that rocker to run now. Recha and
Mutti
will go to Amsterdam tonight, to your Aunt Hertl's." He glanced at Miriam. "She should go too."

"If Solomon stays, I stay." Miriam looked quickly at Sol. She was too involved with him even to think of leaving. No matter what.

"I'm staying too," Recha said. She picked up an ermine cape that lay on the desk and draped it around herself as if it could protect her from what was happening.

Waltzing up to Recha, Frau Freund whirled her around. "You too, my sweet," she sang, as if at a party. "We'll cut and dye your hair as well. Then Papa won't send us away!"

"Neither of you will touch your hair," Jacob said. "These days it is a blessing to look like
goyim.
It will help on your trip."

"Ernst says that with my looks, if I legally change my name and move in with him, no one need know," Recha said.

"That you are Jewish?" Jacob was picking up the rocker. Now he lifted it off the floor and set it down, face rigid with rage. "My daughter would deny her heritage so easily?"

Recha backed up. "I have no intention of denying anything, Papa, not in the long run. But Ernst says I'm destined to become a star. A star, Papa! He's the best in the business. He should know."

"He knows what is in a father's heart? He knows what is in the mind of God, who made you one of His Chosen People?" He raised his arm as if to strike her. Sol stepped between them, ready to take the blow.

"Please, Papa," Recha said.

The arm Jacob had raised faltered, and he lowered it. Recha picked up her cape and fondled it, as if it were a living thing.

"I wish I did not love you so much," Jacob said, gripping the chair. "Do this thing for me, Recha."
 
He closed his eyes as if in prayer. "Take your mother to her sister, to safety. For almost three years I have sat here, thinking myself half-blind and sick because the world is blind and sick. But it is my beloved wife who is not well. I have made her that way, too dependent on hope. Take her to your aunt, then do whatever you must."

Recha had been so proud when her agent gave her the ermine, Miriam thought, remembering the day, a few months ago, when the girl signed the contract to pose for Mercedes advertisements. The golden-haired sylph who had sniffled her way through the evening at Kaverne, so in awe of Miriam, had blossomed into a beauty. Her bootpolish-brown eyes had attracted the producer of UFA films and landed her a bit part in
The Blue Angel.
Her parts since then were small but important, as she put it. She had begun to be noticed. Miriam remembered Recha's confidence about an affair with a rich playboy associated with the film industry. He smoked opium and could make love only if the lights were on; he believed the dark brought out the devil in a woman. Rachel Roland, as Recha called herself, was all grown up, and entitled to make her own choices.

Or was she? Wasn't it her duty to go with her mother, who appeared to be verging of some kind of breakdown?

Recha trembled and looked at the floor. Sol started to move to her, but she lifted her hands and moved away from him, as if she were so filled with despair and the knowledge of separation that she wanted no one to touch her. "I love you, Papa."

"I know you do."

He gazed at her quietly, then lowered himself to his knees and drew back the ancient Oriental rug. Using the fingers of one hand to feel the nubs of the numbers while he worked the dial with the other, he opened the safe he had recessed into the floor. He removed several bundles of paper. Lifting out a tray, he reached further down and took out a wad of currency and a leather pouch.

"Here are your birth certificates, what money and jewels we have left, and a few odds and ends of sentimental value." He held them out, waiting for someone to take them.

Recha did so. "The final audition for the
Lady Moon
revival is this weekend, Papa. It's a major role. Ernst will kill me..."

"Would you rather the Nazis killed you...and your mother?"

"I'll have Ernst talk the studio into a late call," Recha said after a lengthy silence. "I'll take Mama to
Tante
Hertl. But I'm coming back when she's settled. Life is dangerous, Papa, but I intend to live it as fully as I can. The mistakes I make will be my own."

"Even if they are fatal ones?"

"Especially those."

The comment brought silence. They packed in silence, closed the apartment door silently behind themselves, walked somberly to the station. New Year's Eve was not a popular night for travel. On one hand, it meant seats might be available; on the other, it meant the Freunds would be conspicuous. Recha was elected to purchase the tickets while the rest waited near the train, which was huffing steam by the time they arrived.

Relatively few people boarded the gray-brown Amsterdam-bound train. Miriam stood with Sol and his parents, terrified that Recha would have difficulty buying tickets. She heaved a sigh of relief when she saw the young woman run toward them along the platform, waving two tickets.

"No trouble," she called out breathlessly. "The clerk recognized me. He was too busy trying to get my autograph and make a date with me to look at our passports."