Wunderland(85)

Climbing to her feet, she brushes dirt and glass from her coat. Beside her, the woman has stopped sobbing and is straightening her coat and hair with trembling hands.

“Here,” says Renate, realizing as she holds out the bag that she left her own school satchel on the tram floor.

The woman takes the purse, still staring glassily across the street. Renate holds out her hand. “Here. Let me help you up.”

The woman allows herself to be pulled to her feet. Clutching Renate’s arm, she fumbles for the missing shoe, then freezes as an unearthly sound—like a thousand geese, honking breathy death knells—fills the air. Turning, Renate sees the wreckage of the enormous organ that had led the congregation through song and mournful prayer each weekend. Its silver pipes are bent and smashed, its ivory keys shattered. Sheets of music slip and float through the hot air like a school of startled fish, dispersing.

“Madness,” mutters the woman, working her stockinged toes and heel back into her shoe. Two fire trucks rumble and screech into view, looking like black ladder-backed beetles. As they stop in front of the synagogue the woman tips her head back, taking in the thickening smoke stream. Then she turns and looks back up at Renate.

“I’m not a fan of the Jews,” she says dully. “Frankly, I don’t care one way or the other. But this…”

She waves her hand helplessly, shakes her head. She is incapable of finishing the sentence.

Renate licks her lips. What she plans to say is: It’s all right. The fire department will take care of it now.

But what she says is this: “I’m a Jew.”

She has no idea where the words come from, has no comprehension of having even thought them, much less deciding to give them voice. In fact, she has never thought of herself in these terms. Not after being declared a “full Jew” by Agent Schultz; not after three years of name-calling and isolation. Not even after entering a fully Jewish school and occasionally slipping into evening services at this very synagogue—just (she always told herself) out of curiosity.

And yet here they are now: four indelible syllables, a terse incantation into the acrid air. Ich bin Jude. And here, too, is a strange new certainty inherent in the utterance, one born of these battered storefronts, these shattered windows, the flaming synagogue rooftop before her. As the firemen leap nimbly from their benches, their hoses unspooling and stiffening like waking snakes, Renate finds herself repeating it, defiantly holding the woman’s gaze:

“Ich bin Jude.”

The woman blinks.

Very carefully, she removes her hand from Renate’s arm.

“Get away from me,” she says coldly.

And turning away, she limps off down the devastated street, cradling her purse before her like an infant.

Renate stares after her, her throat tightening and her eyes tearing in the smoke. A children’s taunt she’s heard lately runs inanely through her head: Jew, Jew, spit on your head. Jew, Jew, better off dead.

For a moment, she almost agrees. For a moment, she almost does want to die.

But very slowly, though it feels as though it takes all of her strength, she turns back to the burning building.

The firefighters have taken positions on either side of the structure and are hanging off their hoses like competing teams in tug-of-war. But as the jets start to spray, Renate realizes that they are aimed not at the flaming synagogue but at the buildings on either side of it.

She makes her way toward one of the Polizist, who has been watching the scene with evident satisfaction. Hesitantly, she grasps his sleeve. “They’re not spraying the fire,” she says. “Why aren’t they spraying the fire?”

He looks down at her, almost indulgently. “Because that’s not their job, sweetheart. They’re only paid to protect German buildings.”

“But…but what if there are people trapped inside?”

He shrugs. “Let them figure it out. After all, the Yids brought this on themselves, didn’t they? They’re only getting what they deserve. All over the city, it sounds like.”

Then his expression shifts, hardens. “Hey!” he shouts. “Stop that!” And he is running toward the inferno and a man who is plucking and scattering pages from a prayerbook the way he might pluck and scatter petals from a daisy. His target is not the book ripper, however, but a man with a camera who is taking pictures of the devastation.

Renate stares after him, her thoughts tangling, her breath heavy. He means us, she thinks numbly. He means we are only getting what we deserve….

Then she thinks: all over the city.

A terrifying thought strikes her. No, she tells herself. Surely not…

Turning on her heel, she starts running as fast as she can.



* * *





When she reaches Bismarckstra?e she’s run over two kilometers and is panting so hard she starts coughing. Clutching her throat, she pushes her way through a small crowd of neighbors that has gathered across the street. They are people who used to smile and greet her and ask after her parents, but now quickly look away as she passes. When she reaches the far curb she sees what they were watching: another gang of boys and men, standing in a semicircle around another man who is wearing only a bloodstained undershirt and briefs. From somewhere in the background comes a woman’s clear, outraged voice: “Let him go! Do not touch him!”