Read Heidegger's Glasses: A Novel Online
Authors: Thaisa Frank
Heidegger's Glasses: A Novel (42 page)
Zoëlooked at the photograph for a long time. Then she looked at Heidegger’s prescription in her grandfather’s handwriting. How long ago had it been that the two of them were in that office; Heidegger looking at an eye chart, saying
Besser
and
Nicht Besser
, her grandfather pretending he wasn’t terrified of his shop being raided or of his family being deported? She looked again at the woman lit by sun. Her face was so compelling she wondered if there were more photographs and realized if she didn’t stop asking Lodenstein to send things, the exhibit would never be ready. It felt like a journey with no end.
Besser
and
Nicht Besser
, her grandfather pretending he wasn’t terrified of his shop being raided or of his family being deported? She looked again at the woman lit by sun. Her face was so compelling she wondered if there were more photographs and realized if she didn’t stop asking Lodenstein to send things, the exhibit would never be ready. It felt like a journey with no end.
But when she called him, Lodenstein sounded surprised that she didn’t want anything more. He was sure Asher would want to include everything he had. He kept running across objects in a desk, cupboards. Or relatives of Scribes sent him diaries.
Zoë told him that Asher once said the trunk was a magic trunk, and she’d never see the end of it. The prospect of getting more and more objects from him was overwhelming.
My head is starting to spin, she said. And every time you send something, I only get more interested. Like that woman with the rose. Was she a Scribe?
Lodenstein paused. When he spoke his voice began to crack.
She was the heart of the Compound, he said. Without her, no one would have kept going. We would not have survived.
She looks lovely, Zoë said.
More than lovely, said Lodenstein.
There was grief in his voice—grief imbued with hope. Zoë imagined him after the war, looking for her wherever people gathered—in lines, under awnings, in bookstores, waiting for buses, taking shelter in the rain. She imagined the woman looking too.
Suddenly Lodenstein said:
The red notebook was hers.
Zoë looked at the tattered notebook. The dark red cover had faded and the pages were brittle. Many were blank or had only a few phrases. Only two pages were filled.
Did you ever have it translated?
For a moment Lodenstein was quiet. Then he said: I never had the heart to.
My dearest Gabriela,I had to write you before leaving this place. If you knew what this place was, the things we have done here, you’d understand why—because if there’s a chance that you can ever read this letter, it would be from this place.I helped save a lot of people in this war, but I never brought you back. And I keep thinking about what I would have done if I’d paid more attention. Whenever I go to a new city, I imagine I’m going to see you. I see your face every night before I fall asleep.Once I drove to the town where you were shot because I thought I could find you. But all I found was a stain by a linden tree.I remember everything about being with you, Gabriela—making angels in the snow, swimming in the river, listening to ice crack in the spring. I remember the play where I forgot my lines, and you said them for me. I remember how you poked me when I fell asleep in Mass. And how we snuck eye shadow into the house and made each other into movie stars.Heidi told me how you died. She said you kept raising your head again and again after they shot you.Forgive me for not paying attention sooner. I should have known you were in danger. I should have helped. Instead, while you were forging passports, I was at Freiburg, acting as though nothing bad could ever happen to us. Never to dissenters. Never to Polish Catholics. And never, ever, to you.I’ll never stop talking to you, Gabriela. I’ll never stop asking your forgiveness. None of the people I’ve helped rescue ever made up for losing you.I love you forever,Elie
The translator shut the dark red notebook and handed the translation to Zoë.
I shouldn’t have done this for you, he said. Some things should stay between two people, whether they’re alive or dead.
Zoë nodded. I won’t let anyone see this.
Good, said the translator, pointing to the fragments on a page. Because she was trying to write this for a long time.
He pointed to the blank pages, the false starts, the spaces in between.
And then something—who knows what?—made her snap. Does anyone know what happened to her?
No, said Zoë. She disappeared before the war was over.
Like so many people, said the translator.
Zoë nodded. She was glad she didn’t know. She could almost hear ice cracking in the spring; see Elie and her sister making angels in the snow. She felt a sense of protection for both of them. She placed the dark red notebook in her bag.
The translator was wiry, well into his eighties. He lit a cigarette, Zoë coughed, he opened a window, and the Lower East Side wafted up. Zoë heard children’s voices, the sounds of traffic. She smelled the sharp fumes of exhaust.
You look upset, said the translator. Do you want a drink?
No, said Zoë, who was trying not to cry. I just need to walk.
It was late afternoon when Zoë left the small cramped office. She crossed Canal Street, where bins overflowed with paraphernalia. She saw cheap watches, fake designer bags, mysterious pieces of metal, and every kind of tool.
Another jumble shop, she thought, walking past one more clot of fake designer bags, neon T-shirts, beaded rings. She noticed a bin of small wooden boxes: one had dark polished wood, with a clasp like a trunk. She stopped.
It’s old, said the man behind the bin.
How old? said Zoë.
That I can’t tell you.
Zoë walked away, then came back and bought the box. Maybe for the translation of Elie’s letter; maybe for the dark red notebook. Or maybe just for herself—for whatever in her own life she wanted to keep.
She passed through Chinatown, Little Italy, and walked farther and farther north until it was dark and she was in Times Square among looming buildings, stale air, and its carnival of red and white lights.
Zoë wandered among throngs and hawkers and knew, as she’d never known before, that letters to the dead were for the living: They were justifications, records, appeasements, excuses, deceits, apologies, atonements, laments, confessions. They categorized. They beseeched. They invoked. Some told of unspeakable grief. Some tried to rewrite an entire history. And sometimes—more often than anyone could admit—even the most sophisticated letter writer imagined the dead could hear. Zoë was holding the translation of Elie’s letter and felt it brush against a stranger’s sleeve. For a moment she thought of letting it drift into the acrid air. Then she placed it in the wooden box.
The conversation with the dead goes on forever, she thought, and so does everything in the trunk: The spools and the candles. The letters and the lamps. The gloves and the roses. She wished the trunk were the Compound, and that everything in it could bring those people back. But nothing will ever do that. And there will always be one more thing left to add. And one more thing after that.
THANKS
to Dan Smetanka for unfailing patience, brilliance of vision, hours of encouragement, and for putting up with caveman script
to Diana Finch for being smart in the best of ways
to Elizabeth Rosner, Harriet Chessman, Sarah Stone, and Ron Nyren for supreme generosity
to Steve Gilmartin and Hat for impeccable advice
to Anne Fox for impeccable reading
to Casey for creative listening
to Tim for faith
to George Albion for references
to Maria Espinosa for stories
to David Blake for Heidegger’s Glasses
to WR for time
to David Galbraith for imagining space, and to Biliana Stremska for drawing it
to John Quick for support
to Sophie Biron for friendship and Europe
to Kevin and Mister Emery for showing up
and to my grandmother, Grace; her spirit illuminates this book
Copyright © 2010 Thaisa Frank. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Frank, Thaisa.
Heidegger’s glasses / Thaisa Frank.
p. cm.
Heidegger’s glasses / Thaisa Frank.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-582-43864-1
1. World War, 1939-1945—Germany—Fiction. 2. Scribes—Germany—Fiction. 3. Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976—Correspondence—Fiction. 4. Holocaust, Jewish (1939- 1945)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3556.R3345H45 2010
813’.54—dc22 2010006023
813’.54—dc22 2010006023
Translations by: Tamara Strelnik, Jessica Brownlow, Ada Arduini, Chris Kooi, Bert Zuidhof, Andrew Paulson, David Lenga, Marc Serges, Serge Krakowiak, Bojana Milojevich, Joseph B. Juhasz
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