Heidegger's Glasses: A Novel (11 page)

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Authors: Thaisa Frank

BOOK: Heidegger's Glasses: A Novel
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Tonight he looked at the sky for a shorter time than usual. On that day Stumpf had given him over thirty letters from children. He’d read a few, answered none, and didn’t feel like being inventive. Most of the letters had been passed over the chain-linked fence of the Lodz ghetto before a cattle car carried the children to Auschwitz. Were these children pious because they used the Hebrew alphabet? Mikhail didn’t know what the word
pious
meant anymore. All he felt was relief that he hadn’t recognized any of their names.
Lars sat next to him quietly. They’d built an easy friendship during nights when Mikhail read the stars. Lars could sense when Mikhail—who was about the same age as his father—needed time to think and when he wanted to talk. After a while Lars said:
Is there a message for the night?
Mikhail smiled. Lars had the same intense green eyes as his son and the same curiosity.
The angels are sleeping, he said.
But you told me they worked in shifts, said Lars.
Sometimes they do, said Mikhail. But even angels have to rest.
Lars climbed on a railing and stared at the sky. He looked younger than his eighteen years.
Didn’t they tell you
anything
?
Just one thing, said Mikhail. Haniel, guardian of the West Gates, said: Why bother to answer letters at all? It’s better for the dead to be curious.
I bet they’re right, said Lars. I never sent my grandmother thank-you notes, and she’s never bothered me.
You see? said Mikhail.
But what do
you
think? said Lars. Do the dead ever read those letters in crates?
If the dead do anything, said Mikhail, it’s plugging their ears when Stumpf starts to talk.
Lars laughed, and they sat on the wooden platform and shared a cigarette. Neither wanted to go back to the Compound. At night it gave up any pretense of being a place to live and became a mine with an overwhelming mineral smell. When they finished the cigarette, Mikhail lit another and asked Lars if he’d heard from his father.
Lars shook his head. His father was a pastor and had been jailed three times for criticizing Hitler. He was afraid letters could get Lars into trouble and hardly ever wrote.
It must be hard for him without you, said Mikhail.
Hard for me too, said Lars.
On the way back they stopped at the well to take a long drink of water from the tin dipper. Lars shone his flashlight into the woods.
Be careful, said Mikhail. You could tempt someone.
You don’t believe in ghosts, said Lars.
No, said Mikhail, but I believe in the SS.
Mikhail and Lars reached the hut, walked down the incline, and took the mineshaft to the cobblestone street, where Elie and Stumpf were on a wrought-iron bench. Stumpf wore his wooly bedroom slippers and was extending his hands in a pleading, importunate gesture. Elie was shaking her head.
I need those glasses, he was saying. Heidegger deserves to see.
You’ll only bury them, said Elie. And you’ll never send the letter.
Anyone who finagles a talk in Paris knows you can’t expect an answer from a Jew, said Stumpf.
Lars hurried Mikhail down the street. He thought it was hard enough that Mikhail worried about reading letters from people he knew and didn’t need to hear Stumpf bemoaning Heidegger’s glasses and the damned Jew-optometrist. But Stumpf raced to catch up with them, and all three walked beneath the frozen stars.
What do you think? said Stumpf to Mikhail, not pretending he needed to explain.
There are a lot of good Aryan optometrists, said Mikhail. Heidegger must have new glasses by now.
I’m tired of hearing about Aryan optometrists, said Stumpf. A man orders a pair of glasses and never hears a thing.
Heidegger likes the unknown, said Mikhail.
We aren’t talking about the unknown, said Stumpf. We’re talking about glasses. Besides, they were friends. They wrote letters.
How do you know? said Mikhail.
I did research.
Stumpf was always telling Mikhail he did research.
They’d come to the white house with the four artificial rose bushes, the artificial pear tree, and
917
on the bronze metal plaque. Mikhail walked around a flowerpot and opened the door. Stumpf shoved Lars away and touched Mikhail’s shoulder.
Can I come in?
Stumpf’s face appeared pinched, the way people look when they think they might be shot. Mikhail knew that look. He’d seen it in Talia’s eyes when the SS raided their house. He’d seen it in his son’s eyes when the ghetto police pushed him to the front of the Lodz square.
For a minute, he said. But first let me say goodnight to Lars. You know he worries about me.
Dear Ania,
I have waited to write to you for days because the trip was long. But the countryside is beautiful, and there are woods and places for children to play. Please come and join me.
All my love,
Christofer
Oil lamps from the 19th century, a time to which the interior designer, Thorsten Ungeheur, thought the Solomons were still confined, lit a room that both Mikhail and Stumpf had seen only in engravings—a room of dark wood, polished brass, and velveteen furniture. The living room had purple velveteen chairs, a purple velveteen couch, a rocking chair with a crocheted antimacassar, and tables with copper-based lamps. The walls had pictures of bearded men in skullcaps—supposedly pictures of ancestors—painted by order of Thorsten Ungeheur who didn’t know orthodox Jews don’t allow graven images. There were also footstools covered in needlework with Hebrew letters that didn’t spell anything. Talia was sleeping in an alcove off the right-hand corner of the living room.
Mikhail lit one of the lamps, and the two men sat on tufted velveteen chairs. Stumpf sat stiffly with his wooly feet on the floor. Mikhail sat casually with his legs crossed. Stumpf offered him a cigarette. Mikhail lit it and said the end was brighter than the stars.
Agreed, said Stumpf. But you can’t snuff out stars.
With the right kind of smoke you can, said Mikhail.
Stumpf didn’t comment. Instead he handed him a reproduction of Heidegger’s letter, which he’d written from memory.
Mikhail nodded when he read about the Reich not understanding the Being of technology and looked bemused when he read about the importance of German root words. When he was finished reading, he put the letter on a piecrust table.
What mental embroidery, he said.
But you can embroider back.
I don’t think so, said Mikhail.
Why not? said Stumpf. The letter is straightforward.
Really? Then you answer it.
I’m a practical man.
Mikhail smiled at Stumpf.
But I’m an
Echte Jude
, he said. I only answer letters in Hebrew and Yiddish.
But you can write a good letter in German, said Stumpf.
Really? said Mikhail. Do you think someone who’s studied the Talmud can take any topic and stand it on its head and rattle out a bundle of words that would make any philosopher happy? Besides, my handwriting isn’t the same.
Stumpf waved the end of his cigarette: a shooting star.
The letter can be typed, he said.
Goebbels decided
Echte Juden
shouldn’t know how to type.
I’ll decide differently, said Stumpf.
Mikhail began to talk about typewriters: How so many were brought to the Compound. How they lined the main room in hedgerows. How over fifty people typing sounded like artillery.
Stumpf listened without understanding, until Mikhail said the issue wasn’t typewriters, but a bargain. Indeed Mikhail had a condition—something only the two of them could know about, and he would write the letter only if Stumpf would meet it.
THE BARGAIN
Dear Uncle Johannes,
I’m writing to you after a wonderful journey to Theresienstadt. It’s very beautiful here. There is a place where I can play hide-and-seek with other children and we are going to be in an opera on a real stage. We all miss you. I haven’t seen mama and papa for days, but the beds here are warm, and mama and papa have told me to tell you that there is also a lot of tobacco so you can smoke your pipe.
Love,
Pieter

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