Heidegger's Glasses: A Novel (32 page)

Read Heidegger's Glasses: A Novel Online

Authors: Thaisa Frank

BOOK: Heidegger's Glasses: A Novel
3.53Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Nothing. What makes you ask?
You seem angry with her, said La Toya.
I’m not.
They say you knew her at Freiburg, said La Toya. He pointed to the sky. It was blue, filled with the cottoned traffic of clouds.
Would you have seen this at Auschwitz? he asked.
I have no idea. Why?
Because Elie saved your life.
That’s not true. Lodenstein did.
Then why do I think she fought for you?
I don’t know what you mean.
Then I’ll tell you, said La Toya. She was going to find a way to go to Heidegger and tell him where you were. She thought his wife would get you out.
Elfriede never liked her.
We’ve all heard the business about the bundkuchen, said La Toya. But Elie is persuasive. Where do you think we get fresh bread? And good sausages? How come there’s always cashmere for people who want blankets? Or plenty of schnapps? Do they fall from the sky? No. They come from the shit Elie puts up with and the favors she does.
Maybe they do. But we hardly knew each other.
That’s not what people say.
What then?
You can imagine. People know everything, just the way they know about the camps.
But they keep asking about chimneys. Why can’t they stop?
Because, said La Toya. There’s a difference between knowing something and believing it. They know about the chimneys but don’t believe in them until they’ve talked to someone who’s seen them.
They’d come to the shepherd’s hut without spilling a drop of water. La Toya said it was a job well done, and Asher said at Auschwitz you learned not to waste anything. But he wasn’t thinking about water. What La Toya had said stayed with him long after he returned to the Compound, and late that afternoon he walked up to Elie’s desk. She slammed her dark red notebook shut and looked at him as if she expected someone else—no one in particular, just not him.
I want to thank you, he said.
Elie didn’t hear him because someone had created a word for
Dreamatoria
the Scribes found hilarious.
What? she said, while the laughter closed in around them.
Asher felt embarrassed by his own gratitude, as if it could destroy a shell he needed around him. He told her he needed more typewriter ribbon.
I don’t know why you need it when all you do is read detective stories, said Elie.
Oh, I’ll get around to using it. The dead can’t wait to read my answers.
Spare me. Elie smiled at him, making him remember the first time he’d met her at Freiburg—at a party at the Heideggers, over an impressive table of desserts. He went back to his desk and remembered how his wife disappeared without a trace, telling him she was going to Berlin to help a piano student, kissing him, hugging Daniel, racing down the steps.
After Asher had gotten a ribbon he didn’t need, he began to think about what would have happened if he’d stayed with Elie. He imagined different lives—one in which they’d taught at Cambridge and taken long walks on village greens. And another where they escaped to Argentina and set up a dry goods store. Yet another where the boat to Argentina sank.
Parallel lives
, he scribbled on a piece of paper,
a hat trick that makes life and death reversible
. It was the first thing anyone had ever seen him write.
Gitka said: That corpse is beginning to lighten up.
Abella,
At night, a guard and I make small talk. He says he loves me. And gives me extra food and makes sure to look out for my parents. I think he’s trying to find out more about the insurrection. Please come to the edge of your cellblock. No one is watching very closely.
Leticia
Asher proposed a new phrase for
Dreamatoria
—
infinitely reversible
. It reminded him of fresh snow at Auschwitz that covered pools of blood and corpses and nooses as well as the old snow that melted and revealed everything. It reminded him of himself as well: how he’d been given a life, denied it, and given part of that life back again. The Scribes applauded, and Asher won two cigarettes. He offered one to Elie.
Oh no! she said. You won it fairly.
Then smoke one with me, he said.
Well, maybe a fourth of one, said Elie.
They went to the hall and sat on a wrought-iron bench. Asher said it was nice that dead people could get answers in such a charming atmosphere.
You haven’t lost your sarcasm, said Elie. You don’t even sound glad you’re here.
I am, said Asher. Especially for Daniel—even if all he does is take typewriters apart and sleep with Maria.
But aren’t you glad for yourself?
Asher took a long drag on the cigarette. He was wearing a shirt with rolled-up sleeves. Elie looked at the blue numbers on his arm and said they nearly matched his eyes. He shook his head, remembering the morning when he’d been tattooed by a fellow prisoner—the needle embroidering numbers that became his only name at the camp. Elie noticed and said:
Maybe those add up to a lucky number.
Are you into that occult garbage too?
It was just a funny idea, said Elie.
Asher added the numbers, and they came to nine, the number of sacrifice.
Maybe there’s something to it.
Maybe, said Elie. She began to sew the quilt she’d been mending and kept her eyes on it in such a deliberate way Asher was sure she knew he was looking at her.
Elie, he said. They say you saved me and Daniel.
Through a lot of bungling. That’s how it is these days.
He took her hand: Thank you.
The mineshaft began to groan. Elie startled and got up.
So, still a secret, said Asher.
Nothing’s secret here, said Elie. I’m not sure anything needs to be.
Dear Eliza,
You would never guess what I heard, but I must tell you in person. Meet me at the barracks.
Love,
Andreas
Even though Daniel slept with the Scribes, Asher Englehardt still slept in the storage room, impervious to Sonia Markova and Sophie Nachtgarten, who made it clear they’d enjoy sleeping there too—although not at the same time.
Daniel sometimes brought typewriters to Asher’s room, and one day set a typewriter on the bed and took it apart, until it was a mere shell, and the floor was filled with pieces of dull metal. Then he explained every mechanism—how it worked, what could go wrong with it, how things fit together, where they belonged. It was the first time Daniel had explained anything to him, and Asher was proud and astonished. He was even more astonished when Daniel showed him how a typewriter could be reassembled from random pieces into something whole again. This was far better than
infinitely reversible
.
Now and then, Asher brought typewriters to his room, took them apart, and reassembled them. He memorized gears, springs, the order of keys—metal with a special power because it could produce any combination of words in the world. He loved going to sleep, surrounded by the smell of ink.
Once, he had brandy with Elie, Lodenstein, and the Solomons and made everyone laugh by telling Mikhail that once he’d owned a car, and Mikhail could have used it as an example in his letter to Heidegger about the mysterious Being of machines. The laughter, the presence of Elie—and the Solomons, who knew about everything—all of it transported him to the time before the war. The evening pushed him against everything he’d lost and made him miss his wife. So he never wanted to have brandy with the four of them again. When he ran into Elie on the street, they always nodded quickly and hurried on. Except for once, when they both said
good night
at the same time.
For a while, then, he was able to live in relative silence—a silence he craved because even the smallest gesture or manner of speech could unnerve him. A loud voice reminded him of roll call. Scribes rummaging for coats reminded him of inmates scrambling for bowls of food. When he was by himself, he could read or invent words for
Dreamatoria
. When he was with other people, he felt a minefield inside him that could detonate at any moment.
But his pristine silence was disturbed when Dieter Stumpf broke his glasses. He’d put them on his chair while he was labeling a box of letters, sat on them, and heard a crunch. Stumpf was nearsighted. Without his glasses, he couldn’t drive to his brother’s farm near Dresden to bury unanswered mail. So he brought Asher his broken glasses.
What do you want me to do with these? said Asher.
I was hoping you could fix them, said Stumpf.
With both lenses broken?
What if I get equipment?
Stumpf, who still wore his SS jacket, reminded Asher of the most obnoxious of the Auschwitz guards, as well as Mengele, who once barely gestured to the right when he’d decided Asher’s fate and often had crates of bleached bones outside his door. Asher was tempted to say
no
. Nonetheless, he agreed. Making glasses could be a distraction.
Stumpf asked Elie to get optometry equipment from the outpost, and she said she would, even though she didn’t care whether Stumpf got glasses or not. It would be a chance to look around, to discover if there were more rumors about fugitives, and find out why they hadn’t received any letters.

Other books

Filling in the Gaps by Peter Keogh
Heart Earth by Ivan Doig
The Mother Lode by Gary Franklin
Prophet by Jennifer Bosworth
The Tweedie Passion by Helen Susan Swift
Rival by Lacy Yager
Tangled Web by Jade C. Jamison