Wunderland(33)

“No,” she manages. “No, that can’t be right. Even Ilse said it was a mistake.”

“I’m afraid it’s not.”

Nonono. “But…but how can that be? We have photographs from my baptism!”

He shrugs. “There are photographs from Vati’s baptism. They mean nothing.”

“They mean he’s Christian!”

Beside her Sigi starts, then turns to gaze at her with liquid-brown concern. Renate realizes that she was nearly shouting. Franz presses the air down with his palm: softly.

“Not if his parents were Jewish,” he says quietly. “Which they were, originally. They converted to Christianity together just before they married. A lot of Jews were converting around that time. It was apparently quite the fashion.” He lets out a low, long stream of smoke. “Before that they’d both grown up in practicing Jewish homes.”

Practice, Renate thinks numbly. What do Jews practice? Piano? Violin? She pictures the somber-looking, dark-dressed people who live near Hackescher Markt and Mulackstra?e: the women in their false-looking wigs and heavy, unbecoming clothing. The men with their corkscrew curls and furry hats. It’s like trying to connect her cultured, Christian father to aliens.

“How long—how long have you known?”

“Vati told me last winter.”

Renate gasps. “Last winter?!”

He holds up his hands again, once more pacifying. “He had to. Not only did I need the information to register at Friedrich Wilhelm, but it’s common knowledge there now that he’s a Jew.” He takes a final drag of his cigarette, then uses it to light a second before dropping the spent stub after its ash. “He managed to survive the first few rounds of firings because of his wartime decorations. The word now, though, is that with the new law about civil positions he’ll be out of a job by December.” Grimacing, he hefts his bad leg up with both hands to shift it. When it stays still for too long—which it often does, since he forgets to move it—it’s susceptible to pins and needles.

Renate presses both temples with the heels of her hands. She imagines cracking her own skull like a walnut, if only to stop the sickening spinning in her head. But her mind keeps whirling and swirling, pausing sporadically and only briefly on things she’s seen every day without really registering them: the troops of Brownshirts who swagger their way down the streets. Der Stürmer’s announcement boards, with their lewd cartoons and vehement headlines: The Jews Are Our Misfortune! Women and Girls, the Jews Are Your Doom! When You Recognize a Jew, You Recognize the Devil!

“It makes no sense,” she whispers, or at least she thinks she whispers it. The blood roar in her ears is deafening.

“They wanted to tell you when it became more…relevant. I think they knew they’d have to break it to you soon.” Seeing her face, he leans forward. “Look. At least for the moment, it doesn’t really change anything for you.”

“Are you insane?” She gapes at him. “It changes everything. My God. Everything.” Nausea forces a path up her throat; she presses her handkerchief against her lips. Other moments are rushing to mind now, ones she’d barely noticed because she’d assumed they didn’t apply to her. The new government quotas on the number of Jews in German schools. The bizarre and (she’d thought) silly prohibition on using the names David or Samuel to spell out words on the telephone (Dora and Siegfried are to replace them). Rudi expounding on a scientific study he’d read into what he described as “that unique Jewish smell”: “It’s a bit sulfurous,” he’d told her. “Like rotten eggs. Though these days, they’re more adept at covering it up—it’s why Jew women like that fancy French perfume.” Franz noting at the dinner table last week how a sign had appeared on the Friedrich Wilhelm Student House, announcing that Jewish students and staff were no longer allowed to write or publish in German. What are they supposed to write in, then? Renate had asked.

Hebrew, he had said, and laughed as though it were the world’s funniest joke.

“I thought about telling you myself last month,” he’s continuing now. “But it was going to come out anyway, sooner rather than later. Especially if all this talk about limiting the number of Jews in schools is true.”

She frowns. “But if we’re only half Jewish…”

“To be honest, I’m not sure how much that will matter.” He smiles dryly. “Their logic can be somewhat hard to follow.”

The room is suddenly too small, too stuffy—that familiar Franz-scent no longer comforting but suffocating, like being trapped in a closet filled with rotting candy. For a moment Renate almost thinks she does detect a hint of sulfur. The thought is enough to make her want to retch.

“I have to go,” she says, and she is somehow already on her feet, the kerchief floating gently to the floor.

He lifts a brow. “Go where?”

“Out. Air.” Not trusting herself to say more, she picks up her bag and slings its leather strap over her shoulder.

“Wait,” he’s saying. “Sit a moment. I know it’s hard to…”

Renate just shakes her head, making her stumbling way to the door, ignoring the peripheral glimpse of him struggling to shift his leg, to get up; ignoring the heavy thump of Sigmund dropping down from the bed and making his tail-wiggling way after her. Slamming the door in his furry face she rushes down the stairs, past the murmuring parlor, to the white-painted front door that—could it really be just moments earlier?—she’d painstakingly and quietly entered. Jamming her feet into her boots, she flings the door open and hurls herself down the stoop, her untied bootlaces flapping, her heart pounding out a rhythm to which her mind supplies cruel lyrics: JudenJudenJuden. She trips on her laces and is leaning down to tie them when the front door flies open behind her.