Heidegger's Glasses: A Novel (30 page)

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Authors: Thaisa Frank

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Armesto,
It has been so long since I’ve seen you and now they say that prisoners with unlucky numbers are trading identities with prisoners with lucky numbers in exchange for bread. But how can you know what number’s lucky or unlucky? And who can change luck when those numbers are on your arm forever?
Love,
Tahari
To the left of the window, hidden from Lars, Elie was watching Asher play chess. On the one hand, she felt illicit because watching people who didn’t know they were being watched felt wrong. On the other hand, she felt innocent because she wanted to be sure this emaciated man really was Asher Englehardt—the one she had known. The lead-paned glass on the window was thick, making the interior seem cast in waves, adding to the sense that perhaps nothing inside it was real. She’d hidden behind the artificial pear tree, and its dappled light shifted as the sun rose in its jagged ascent. Elie inched closer to the bench.
Without question this man played chess the way Asher had—appearing to be indifferent but not indifferent at all. He didn’t seem to concentrate on the board and surrendered pieces with abandon. Elie saw him look amused when he checkmated Talia, just as he once checkmated her. He challenged Talia to another game—which she accepted with some annoyance. Asher was drinking tea—a procedure Elie watched with great absorption. He held a piece of sugar in his mouth and stirred first to the right, then to the left. He once told her that his grandfather drank tea by holding sugar in his mouth—a custom that belonged to peasants—and he liked to think about the tides when he stirred because he was sure that one day scientists would discover tides in something as small as a teacup. Watching him was like reading a book she hadn’t opened for years. She leaned closer to the window and stepped back when she heard footsteps in the hall. They belonged to Lodenstein and Stumpf— who both looked ponderous—and Dimitri, who ran ahead. She kissed him and told him to go inside.
I have such regret, she heard Stumpf say in a mincing voice. If I ever can do anything….
You can never stop being a fool.
Stumpf slunk away like a dog that’s been hit on the nose. As if a more formal appearance would undo the disaster he’d helped create, he’d begun to wear his black SS jacket in the Compound. It was too tight to button and billowed behind him when he walked. He still wore his woolly slippers, which made his appearance even more incongruous and out of sorts. Lodenstein walked toward her, and she felt unhinged, as though she had traveled back to Freiburg, played chess, gone to Heidegger’s lectures. She hadn’t believed there would be a war, then. She’d even told Asher she was sure his wife was safe. Yet someone she herself thought had been killed in that war was walking toward her now.
Alain,
Sometimes I imagine you. You are never doing anything remarkable—just going to the refrigerator for milk, or letting in the cat—yet I find these memories precious just because you are yourself. I do not know if I’ ll see you again.
Love,
Sylvie
In the dark, under the soft, grey quilt from Rotterdam, Elie and Lodenstein still found each other in bed. They made love as if at any moment the Gestapo would break down the door, and they must hold each other so tightly nothing could separate them. During these times, Goebbels, Mueller—the notion of danger itself—became the stuff of inflated fears. But during the day, when sun shone through the clerestory windows and light seemed to chase them, they worried. Lodenstein interrupted games of solitaire and patrolled the forest, afraid that a group of SS or Gestapo were using the pines as camouflage. Elie made lists of people who might help Asher, Dimitri, and Daniel find a boat to Denmark, and burned them in the forest. Once Lodenstein found her burning names under a pine tree.
Don’t burn those anymore, he said. You never know who’s watching.
You shouldn’t be out there, either, said Elie.
I always carry a gun.
I do too.
But I’m patrolling. And you write the same list over and over. Why?
Because it calms me.
They both felt paralyzed from taking action and talked in circles. If what Mueller said was true, the entire Compound would be implicated for harboring fugitives. Perhaps Maria was safe—she could blend in with the other Scribes during an inspection. But they had to get Dimitri, Asher, and Daniel to Denmark. Elie often repeated what a Resistance fighter once told her:
A fugitive is like a puppet with a red string. The Reich can trace it to the end of the world.
To which Lodenstein replied:
We can’t think like that. It’s like focusing sunlight on paper on a hot day. If we do it long enough, there will be a fire.
They would eventually decide that Goebbels was too preoccupied to care. The Russians had penetrated Silesia. Allied troops were close to the Rhine. And the Germans hadn’t been able to split the Allied forces in the Ardennes. Furthermore, there hadn’t been any mail from the outpost since Asher and Daniel had arrived.
These rationalizations soothed them. But only for a while. And the next time they were caught by daylight, they found themselves terrified all over again—not just for Asher, Daniel, and Dimitri—but for everyone in the Compound. The Reich had become more brutal with every failure. There was talk of a scorched-earth policy and more plans to blow up the gas chambers.
Sometimes, as if the artificial sun could comfort them, they went downstairs, sat on a wrought-iron bench, and tried to strategize—about finding money to offer a bribe for safe passage to Denmark, or discovering a hiding place for Asher, Daniel, and Dimitri. One day, Stumpf came out of his shoebox to join them. He sat on the very edge of the bench, as if he didn’t deserve to take up any space. Then he said:
If only I’d brought the right glasses! I could have left without a trace, and Goebbels would be happy.
Elie said he should never have meddled in the first place, and Lodenstein stayed quiet. Why bother to mention that Elie should never have gone behind his back? But when Stumpf talked about Elie getting Frau Heidegger’s recipe for bundkuchen, he shouted to him:
Go back to your fucking shoebox! I never want to talk about this again.
Then he went to the kitchen and poured a glass of schnapps.
You’re angry with me too, Elie said.
Maybe, said Lodenstein. But I don’t love Stumpf.
You’re still too hard on him.
At this very moment, Asher and Sophie Nachtgarten came from the main room and walked to the mineshaft. Elie began to stop them from going upstairs, but Lodenstein held her waist.
Let him get some air. Nothing will happen today, he said.
As if you were sure, said Elie.
Sophie and Asher disappeared into the mineshaft, and Elie felt an ache in her heart—not jealousy, but pain. Seeing Asher with Sophie made her think about other people she’d seen with Asher—people she could never bring back.
Dear Tessa,
A soldier who says you know him has asked me to give you a message: When the war is over, come meet me. But be careful, Tessa. You don’t know what’s happening with people deserting right and left.
Love,
Lottie
Asher had come to the main room that day, after a month in which the only people he saw were Talia and Mikhail. He resented their writing the letter to Heidegger. Yet the Solomons were a link, a tether to Auschwitz, and superstitiously—although Asher despised superstitions—he was afraid if he forgot Auschwitz completely, some unexplained force would send him back there. He also loved chess and the illusory justice of detective stories where every criminal was punished. But one day he closed a book and realized he’d been immersed in a world of antiseptic murders, as well as tiny conquests on a wooden board.

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