Too Jewish (5 page)

I noticed Letty was rummaging in her purse, ignoring her parents. She was striking me as a girl who tried to ignore her parents when she could. She pulled out a pencil and a slip of paper. The pencil was sharpened down to a nub with almost no eraser, and I liked her a lot for that. She scribbled something on the paper and handed it to me. "Maybe after sunset you could drop by," she said.

It was her address. I couldn't picture just walking up and ringing her bell. I'd known Jews like her parents back in Germany. I could imagine her un-Jewish Jewish parents crying out, "
Jude, jude
!" and calling for the secret police. I wasn't bothered. All I wanted to do was take their daughter to the movies, or maybe dancing. I told her if she wrote her phone number down, I could phone first. I handed it back, and she started to write on it again.

"I wasn't born yesterday, buddy," her father said. I wasn't sure what that meant exactly, but he called me
buddy,
so it couldn't have been too bad. He pressed Letty to move forward, and I saw them settle in only a few rows from the front. They were too late to sit with the Sterns, it seemed, because they spoke to no one when they sat down.

* * *

I'd told Ted how Letty's parents had acted. "It's the accent, man," Ted had said. "And probably the uniform didn't help. Her mother doesn't think a war makes being in the army any less low-class." Because of my accent I'd made Ted get Letty on the phone for me. As it turned out, it had been unnecessary, because, Ted told me, a colored woman had answered the phone, and he didn't think a colored woman would have the nerve to tell me I couldn't talk to Letty. He figured the maid would recognize a foreign accent all right, but she wouldn't stick her nose directly into Letty's business. "She might act like you're from outer space when you show up," Ted said, "but if she doesn't approve she'll tell Letty, not you." Maybe New Orleans was no New York after all. I was beginning to figure out that people in ports sounded as if their parents were Italian. If I'd had an Italian accent, I'd have been all right. But I had a German accent, which made me sound like a dumb immigrant, even though by then my English was built on aching fastidiousness. I never split my verbs, always used his-or-her, learned five new polysyllabic words a day. I figured one good conversation would show who I was. I'd long ago decided that until further notice I had completed my studies at the University of Mannheim. I wasn't a liar. At least not in my own mind. I was taking what a crazed
Reichskanzler
had taken away from me.

It was the maid who answered the door. I refused to be intimidated by the house. It was too large for a family with one child, a two-story French provincial on a quiet boulevard. I knew of Jewish families in Stuttgart with houses this large that were taken by the government. I wondered who occupied those houses now. Many of those families had hated themselves for being Jews. Letty's parents would have lost this house as fast as a family who observed all the dietary laws and obscure holidays.

I told the maid I was there for Letty. I was in my dress uniform, and I was holding a wrapped gift. I could feel the air was slightly cooler in the house than the unshaded late afternoon outdoor temperature, but I wasn't sure it was air conditioned. I expected to be able to walk in, but instead she closed the door in my face. I decided to wait. I remembered Ted had said the maid wouldn't dismiss me herself.

Before I could become unbearably hot out there on the step, the door flew open, and this time Letty was the one to open it.

"I'm so sorry; you have to come in," Letty said in a rush.

I was still holding the gift out in front of myself. "This is for your mother," I said. I hoped I didn't look like a sycophant. I was going by what I saw in the movies because I had no other way of learning about manners. In the movies, young men with continental grace brought lovely gifts, while boorish American boys drove up in front of girls' houses in open convertibles and honked the horn. I didn't have a car, but I wanted to have European charm no matter what.

"Mama!" Letty said

The maid came up behind her. "Girl, don't be shouting like that," she said.

Letty's mother came to the door from the living room. I still wasn't over the threshold. I noticed the maid didn't back off. I'd watched this scene in a movie or two, I was sure. I held out the box to Mrs. Adler. I'd bought thick white wrapping paper and a fine gold ribbon for it, then I'd put one of the Axel gifts into a box. Axel would have been fine with my doing that.

Mrs. Adler took the box and without opening it slipped it into the pocket of her jacket. I could see where not opening a gift might be proper manners, but not saying "thank you" confused me.

"Come on into the solarium," Letty said, and finally I was ushered in out of the direct sun. It was late afternoon, but it was hitting my back. Solarium wasn't a word I'd learned, but I knew Latin roots, and I wasn't optimistic about any room that had
sol
as its prefix.

The solarium was at the opposite side of the house, so it wasn't catching the sun at that time of day. It was all windows on two sides, but a ceiling fan kept the air circulating, and I was comfortable. Mrs. Adler directed me to a chair, making sure she sat on the chaise lounge with Letty instead of me. "So, Bernie, I assume that's short for Bernard." She said Bernard with emphasis on the second syllable. I pronounced it with emphasis on the first. It sounded terrible, the way she said it. "Ah, well, the way I always have said it, you say the first part more strongly, Ber-nerd. But everyone calls me Bernie." I surprised myself by not using more sophisticated terms. I wondered what I was doing.

"Oh, well, it doesn't really matter!" Mrs. Adler said.

"True," I said. After Kuper had become Cooper, a shift of syllables didn't matter much. But I had a feeling that Mrs. Adler thought it didn't matter because I didn't.

"Bernie's a captain in the Army," Letty said.

"Is that a very high rank?" her mother said.

Before I could open my mouth, Letty jumped in. "I wouldn't mention it if he were just a lieutenant."

Her mother gave her a look that said this soldering thing was not for nice people, even though my barracks were full of wealthy, right-minded boys. "So what did you do before you enlisted?" she said.

"Mama!"

"No," I said. "I've been in this country long enough to be in business."

"Is that so," Mrs. Adler said.

English was a funny language. I had vocabulary and grammar and all the idioms a badly behaved soldier could ask for, but nuances of common discourse generally eluded me. This was the first time someone had uttered that phrase to me, and all I could do was interpret it from context. The context was one of low expectation.

Letty's father walked in. "We were just discussing Bernard's business before he went into the Army," Mrs. Adler said.

"Before you came here?" he said. "I mean to this country."

I was puzzled for a moment. Any business I would have had in Germany would not have been worth mentioning. "No one has any businesses in Germany. I mean, no one who's over here now."

"You mean Jews," he said.

"Daddy!" Letty said.

"It's not a curse word," her father said.

"Well, you said it like it was a curse word," Letty said.

"I have a business in New York," I said. "Not a big one, but I think you can tell I've only been in this country a short time. Since September of '39. I'm a very lucky man." I had a business the same way I had a diploma from Mannheim. It was something I could say until the end of the war, and then I'd make the truth out of it. "We make a line of special gifts," I said. I hoped Mrs. Adler would remember I had given her one. She made no move. "I gave you one of our finest items," I said to her.

"In this country it's not polite to open a gift in front of the person who gives it," Mrs. Adler said.

"Mama!" Letty said, and her mother gave her a look I couldn't quite interpret. I had a feeling it was meant to silence her.

"But you're in the Army," Mr. Adler said.

"Of course," I said. "Our country's at war. But I have to make money now."

Letty's parents looked at each other funny. "It's not what you think," Letty said. "Bernie needs money because his mother's trapped in Germany."

I shot out of my chair as if Letty just had called me a dreadful name and told me to leave right that instant. "What?" I said. I started to move toward the front door. Letty blocked my way.

"What's the matter?"

"Where did you get that idea?" I said. Only one person knew anything about my mother, and that was Ted. I didn't even include myself in that number. I wasn't completely willing to come right out and admit how urgent my situation was.

Letty turned toward her parents. "Ted swore me to secrecy, and I wouldn't have said a word if I hadn't felt I needed to."

"I don't get it," her father said.

"What," Letty said.

Her father talked past me, as if I didn't exist. "This guy comes over in, what, '39? And he knows when he leaves there's going to be a war. So why doesn't he bring her with him? Hell, even over here we knew there was going to be a war, and we don't even pay attention to those things."

"Maybe she had a mind of her own, Daddy."

No one said a word. I did an astonishing amount of thinking in those few seconds. Letty just had given me a modicum of peace about my mother that had eluded me for two years. And this one time she'd silenced her parents.

* * *

We transferred from the Broadway bus to the St. Charles streetcar. "The last time I rode public transit was when Louise had to pick me up from school one time," Letty said. For a second I wondered how someone even younger than I was could get around without buses. Then I remembered automobiles.

"Who's Louise?" I said.

"The person who slammed the door in your face," Letty said. We had handed over our transfers at the back of the streetcar and were walking toward the front. We had to pass the wooden sign that said "Colored." "I had to sit behind the sign because I was with Louise," she said.

As we slid onto a side-facing bench, I said, "This place sure has a lot of funny ideas about inferiority."

"Well, Louise acts like she buys them when she's out in public, but I've been to her house."

"Oh?" My
oh
was full of pleasure.

"Louise rules the world. To tell you the truth, she's been ruling my world since I was five."

I told her I was surprised her mother let her go to Louise's house. I'd seen the Negro neighborhoods. They seemed dangerous, if only because there were no curbs.

"It's funny, if you talk politics, my parents are great liberals," Letty said. "At least they talk about Abraham Lincoln as the best president in the history of this country. Now my father voting for FDR is another story. I'm sure he voted his pocketbook."

I smiled. I had a feeling money wasn't the Adlers' only exception to the rules.

"Now if you
don't
talk politics, I wouldn't call them liberals," Letty said. "They pretty much hate everybody except people just like themselves."

Ted had warned me.

"Trouble is," Letty said, "I'm definitely not just like them."

I patted her hand. Even with a breeze coming in the open front window of the streetcar, it was too warm to put my arm around her, but I wanted to do so. I liked her attitude. We rode in silence for two stops, and then she said, "I have to apologize for saying that about your mother. I was all kinds of wrong."

"I think I can see why you say things you don't mean to your parents."

She didn't look at me. "It's still no excuse to violate a secret. Especially a secret I wasn't even supposed to know."

I nodded. Simply talking around the subject of my mother made my mind start whirring. That was the way I was handling it, trying to think of what I could do. I was beginning to have concrete facts, and with concrete facts, options narrowed.

My mother had learned that for 400 deutschmarks, which was about 160 dollars, a man could help her get to Portugal, and from there she could get to the United States. My mother had that fact straight. The money part, at least. Whether this man would take her money and run off, I didn't know. I also didn't know whether he could succeed. Because one thing I did know, from Axel who was in the part of America that paid attention, was that something had changed in Germany last summer. The United States might have thought that Pearl Harbor day was the day of infamy in 1941, but for Jews it probably was June 22. No one ever mentioned June 22. But that was the day Germany invaded Russia, and something tipped. I didn't know why, and I didn't care. It wasn't spoken, it wasn't written. It certainly wasn't broadcast to a world where anyone would have cared. The Germans quit thinking that emigration was the way to rid Germany of the Jews. My mother wasn't going to be able to go down to the hilfsverein and make arrangements for the government to strip her of all ability to survive in Germany so she could go away to live out her days elsewhere. The government didn't want her to live out her days.

My mother's last letter was frantic. There was no other way to put it. She was an out and out mother whose son was not paying attention when he needed to be listening for all he was worth.

I know you have friends on Park Avenue who are very, very rich. And you brag about Axel. If people are millionaires in America, I think 400 deutschmarks is what they carry in their pockets. I need to come to you. I'm sure you see the news. I think about you many times every day. I hope even when you are not paying attention to Germany, you remember your mother and want to be with her. Please help me come to you in America. I am terribly concerned.

She didn't care about the censors anymore. She didn't care about pride at all. And I understood. The moment her letter came, I rounded up as many coins as I could and placed a long distance call to Axel. When the letter went into the packet, I had a different feeling than I'd had when I first began saving mail from her. I wasn't sure the day would come when I could discard the letters.