The Prosperous Thief (9 page)

On the other side of the park Alice dashes ahead to the kiosk. She missed out on her ice before, perhaps now she can have one. But she sees the sign, ‘Jews undesired’, before her parents have caught up with her, and knows there’ll be nothing for her here.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Martin says, guiding her away from the kiosk.‘We’ll be at Katz’s soon for lunch.’

As they exit the park they see their tram and make a run for it. They are out of breath and laughing as they trundle down the broad Kaiserstrasse and then into Nordstrasse and the area where Renate grew up. She knows all the shops and houses here, all the landmarks. Martin glances at her, she looks just like her old self.

There are more uniforms about when they leave the tram at Goebenstrasse. Martin, now determined that this should be as normal an outing as possible, guides them to the end of the short street so Alice can identify the building where Oma and Opa used to live – ‘And where I grew up,’ adds Renate – the second and third floors now hung with banners, and the sound of a wireless where once had been Amalie Friedman’s music. The wireless is playing military music, German military music with a strong seductive melody, impossible to resist, and so majestic that to sing along is to swell the heart. Martin has heard German music these past few years that could mobilise the hordes no less effectively than the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Even now, standing in the street below the Friedmans’ old flat, he can hear the thud thud thud of boots behind the heavy beat of the orchestra. It’s annihilating and unstoppable and he doesn’t want to hear any more. He gathers his wife and daughter and hurries them back to the main thoroughfare.

They set off in the direction of Katz’s restaurant, but Alice, already very hungry, says her legs don’t want to move any more. So with half a kilometre to go, Martin swings her onto his shoulders. They continue on their way, Renate and Martin with arms linked and Alice surveying the world from on high, so she sees the Jews first. Martin feels a flinching of her body and in the next moment, in a space ringed by onlookers, he sees them too: two observant Jews and not a common sight in Düsseldorf, bearded men with long black coats and hats, not Homburgs like Alice’s grandfather used to wear, but – she’s so taut and still – to her eyes probably much the same. Two observant Jews similar in age to her grandfather, here in an area which Alice associated with him, being cornered by four Brownshirts. Martin doesn’t want to see what is happening, he doesn’t want to get involved. He just wants to protect his wife and daughter from the situation up ahead and deflect any danger that might spill onto them.

There is only one way clear, and that’s back the way they have come. In front are onlookers and buildings and the two Jews with the four thugs taunting them in snarls from the gutter. They tug at the men’s beards, pull on their curled forelocks, knock their hats and skullcaps into the filthy gutters. Four young thugs and two wizened old Jews.

‘Bloody Jew scum,’ they jeer.‘That’s what you get for attacking a German.’And start to throw punches, deliberately missing the old men’s faces by millimetres.

It won’t stop there, Martin knows it won’t stop there. He should help them, they’re old, they’re defenceless, they could have the life beaten out of them, they’re scholars not fighters, Martin should go to their aid. And in the next moment: why should he? If these Jews didn’t look so obvious no one would be threatening them now. These sorts of Jew with their ancient clothes and ancient customs make it worse for all Jews.

One of the stormtroopers, he doesn’t look more than seventeen or eighteen, lands a punch on the bare head of the shortest Jew. The man staggers but doesn’t fall. Another swipe and he is on his knees. Filth from the gutter spatters his spectacles.

‘Your hats, you Jew bastards, on your heads.’

They reach out, they replace their hats, mud dribbles down their old faces and snares in their beards. Again their hats are knocked off and trodden in the slushy gutters. And then the flash of a knife. Renate seizes Alice and pulls her off Martin’s shoulders, shoves her face into her skirts. Alice starts to wriggle, she twists around, she wants to see. Renate and Martin hold her with a grip so tight it must hurt. Now Alice is pulling – it’s not like her – she’s pulling in the direction of the old Jews. She has no idea of the danger. Martin hauls her onto his hip better to stop her from running off. Her curls slap his face as he swings her up. There’s a stillness in the onlookers as the blade of the knife catches the light and slices into the curls of one of the old men.

‘Cut mine,’ Alice cries out, tugging at her ringlets. ‘Cut mine instead.’

Martin slaps his hand across her mouth.Was he quick enough? Did they hear? Did anyone hear? And hisses in her ear she has to be quiet. Alice must catch his terror, because when he loosens his hand from her mouth she no longer struggles, just watches the thugs with the old Jews. The man with the knife finishes the job and is about to start on the other Jew when a clock tolls. He stops and checks his watch.Turns away from the Jew to face – surely not them? Surely the thug is not looking their way, surely he’s not going to single out a child for a silly mindless comment. Quick quick. He’s coming their way. Excuses. Her grandfather. Yes, her grandfather, a decorated soldier, just died. She’s a little girl. She doesn’t know some old men are good and others aren’t. And she doesn’t understand about the Jews.

The thug draws closer, Martin knows he will say anything to save his child. He holds her hard to his hip. The thug has stopped in front of them and Martin tells himself to smile, smile into the face of danger. Renate is stiff, if only she did not look so terrified, and Alice, well Alice is just watching.And now the thug is smiling, not at Martin but at Alice, and in that moment Martin realises he didn’t hear her call out. His daughter is safe.

‘How old are you?’ the man asks. And Alice, revealing an understanding of the situation that many adults don’t have, smiles back and tells him she is six. It’s the same age as his daughter, he says with a pat to her head. ‘And she has lovely long curls just like you.’ Another pat to her hair and he turns away, beckons to his mates and moves off.

The old Jews are sprawled across the gutter, one is bleeding from his mouth. Two women, plain-dressed like Quakers, leave the crowd and attend to the men. The rest of the people disperse. Martin can’t think of the old men, only his daughter and how close she came to the knife. He and Renate put Alice between them, holding onto her tightly. As they head down the road towards Katz’s, he feels the knife ripping into his child, ripping into them too. They have to get out of Germany as soon as possible. Anywhere. Any way. Now. Before harm comes to them, his daughter most of all.

They hurry down the main thoroughfare and turn into the smaller street where Katz lives. There they stop and both Martin and Renate kneel down to Alice’s height. They explain the dangers to her as they have so many times before, explain what brutes these Nazis are. They tell her she must never shout out like that again, she must never under any circumstances invite attention from Nazis. And it is not that Alice doesn’t understand – she does, all too well – rather she knows the men wouldn’t hurt her.

‘What? At six, you have intuition?’ Renate says.

‘What’s intuition?’ her daughter asks. And then a moment later: ‘They would have looked silly cutting a little girl’s hair in the middle of the street.’ And that is her final word on the subject.

With Katz’s building now in sight she runs ahead of them. Martin and Renate pick up their nerves and follow more slowly.

‘She has to learn to be more careful,’ Renate says.

And while Martin agrees, he doesn’t want her to be so careful that like her father she can’t breathe without fear.

How best to protect his daughter from the SA and the SS? he finds himself thinking. Indeed, how to protect her from the entire military might of Germany? It is an utterly ludicrous situation. His daughter is only six years old. He looks at her running ahead, tiny in her neat navy blue coat, her legs thinner than his wrist, her feet much smaller than his hands. She’s just a child, he keeps saying to himself, knowing that many Germans see just a Jew.

She has stopped in the doorway of Katz’s and is waiting for them to catch up. As they approach, her face opens into a smile, and Martin shoves his anxiety aside. The three of them enter the building together.

This is not Katz’s restaurant as in the old days, not the huge timbered space filled with tables and noise and separated from the street by a wall of steamy windows, but Katz’s apartment building. When the restaurant was forced to close earlier in the year, Katz moved the business into his own home. It was fortunate for him that most of the other residents were Jewish and long-time patrons of his restaurant, for while some Jewish doctors have transferred their practices to their homes without complaint from gentile neighbours, a restaurant is quite a different matter.

They walk up stairs worn concave from more than a century of feet. As they climb, Alice runs her hand over the delicate chill of the wrought-iron rose pattern, looking as always for the unicorn in the middle of every third panel. With each unicorn she makes a silent wish. On her very first visit here she missed a unicorn and a week later her grandfather was dead. Now her attention does not wander even for a second.

Two floors up and they reach Katz’s apartment. The former dining and lounge rooms, both with high ceilings, huge chandeliers, heavy-framed paintings and an intricate frieze forming a band around the rooms, are crammed with tables. When his customers first came here, they took in the surroundings and accused Katz of overcharging them at the restaurant. Such grandeur, they said, such riches.And where, they would ask, are our chandeliers? Where our priceless paintings? And Katz as genial as ever would soothe them with sweet words and a sweeter muscat and soon they were settled to food and conversation with the same gusto as of old.

There are few seats left by the time the Lewins arrive, yet the atmosphere is oddly subdued. Jews fill every available space with as many words as possible: as the old saying goes, two Jews, three arguments. But not today. There are newspapers spread on the tables and Herschel Grynszpan’s attempt on vom Rath’s life is the main topic. As they wait for seats, Martin and Renate listen to the conversations around them. Of major concern is the manner in which the attempted assassination has been reported and the consequent repercussions on Germany’s Jews. Of major interest is the identity of this Grynszpan and why he chose a nobody like vom Rath.

‘Of course it might have been a simple act of desperation,’ a woman seated nearby says.‘Look at his name. The reports say he was born in Germany, but the name’s Polish. I suspect all his family have been banished to that place just over the border – can’t remember what it’s called except it’s Polish and unpronounceable. A town where the Nazis have been transporting Poles who’ve been living in Germany.’

‘Zbaszyn,’ her companion says. ‘It’s called Zbaszyn and I hear it’s dreadful. Shocking overcrowding, and an epidemic of suicides.’

‘Exactly,’ the woman continues.‘Imagine how you’d feel if you just heard your family had been dumped in some godforsaken foreign hole. And for many of them it would be foreign. Some of these Poles have been here for generations. They’re as German as we are.’

‘I doubt that,’ the man says.

The woman shakes her head.‘Forget your prejudices, Karl, just for a moment forget them and imagine how you’d feel if the children and I were imprisoned in some backwater, where if disease doesn’t finish us, despair will.’

The Lewins listen and imagine and are grateful that between them there is not a single drop of Polish blood.

‘But a hundred per cent Jew,’ Renate says.‘So how lucky is that?’

Martin is saved a response with the arrival of Katz. Hermann Katz is a short, rotund man with a glossy hairless head. Among Jews he is known as the funny man of Düsseldorf – although today, with his drooping features and solemn greeting, it is hard to believe and, under the circumstances, greatly regretted. For Jews need their comedians. Perhaps in biblical times when, apart from a strict and irritable Yahweh, the going was pretty good for Jews, they might have had little need for humour – certainly the Old Testament is not known for its laughs. But as soon as persecution began in earnest, with life swinging between despair and impending death, Jews seized on humour as a useful ploy for living with perpetual disaster. So it happens that in any Jewish community from Düsseldorf to Dresden there are jokes, and at any one time the latest joke.‘ Have you heard the one about – ?’ someone will ask, and whether you have or not you’ll listen, because with each retelling there are embellishments and improvisations which make the original joke funnier. God resides in the details as any Jew knows, so a joke that takes a minute on Monday will have inflated to five by Friday. By Sunday, listeners might think they’re listening to a novel, and a few days later the new joke will have sunk into the general swirl and another emerged as the latest.

Katz was a legendary joke-teller, and as a very funny man many jokes actually originated with him. Hermann Katz was the reason why the Lewins chose to eat here today: with an appeal both to adults and children he was always good for a laugh. But there are no laughs today, not as he guides them across the room, nor when he seats them at a table. No jolly Herr Katz today, just the information with a mournful shake of his shiny head that he’ll be closing early.

‘This vom Rath business,’ he says, with a hand to his pate and polishing, ‘it’s not good for Jews.’

‘Surely it can’t get any worse?’ Renate says.

Katz shrugs, nothing is for certain but he’s heard rumours.‘Go home when you leave here,’ he says.‘Go straight home.’