The Empire of the Senses (17 page)

Otto leaned into Lev. “No one cares.”

Lev shrugged. “At least he has the comfort of saying such things out loud.”

Otto nudged Lev again. “Let me tell you, this is what will happen. His wife will die and he’ll take up with another woman, a prettier one who is a better cook. He’ll be much happier and will barely remember his first wife. In a year’s time, he’ll be back here, praising God. Simple as that.”

Lev said, “It’s human nature, to forget so we can survive.”

The smell of wet wool and sweat filled the small prayer room. There was barely any space to move forward. Lev elbowed a few men aside, trying to reach the doorkeeper. He felt as if he was part of a larger human body, this crowd clothed in black.

Finally, they got to the front of the crowd. Behind him, Lev felt nudges and shoves from the other men. He could smell their smoke-infused beards and the saltiness of their last meal. The red-bearded man stared ahead. He was unusually short, but his muscular arms and protruding chest made him appear less so.

Lev said in Yiddish, “We need to see the rabbi.”

The man did nothing, his mouth a tight line.

Otto tried in German, “We are German officers and we have an appointment with the rabbi.”

The man picked a piece of lint off his sleeve and examined it. Lev palmed him ten marks. He glanced at Lev with faint curiosity. His red beard glinted copper and gold, and he now played with the very tip of it. Lev palmed him another ten. Otto swore but Lev elbowed him silent.

The small man shifted his weight from one hip to the other, his legs straddled before the door. “The rabbi is very busy, as you can see. What makes you think I will just let you inside? Others have been waiting for days.” He continued to finger his beard.

The back of Lev’s neck started to itch. He wanted to shake this little man. Instead, he folded an additional ten-mark note into the man’s palm.

The man smiled, and the money disappeared into his coat pocket. For a prolonged moment, he patted the outside of his pocket. Then he opened the door.

They entered into a plain room with one window looking out onto a courtyard. The air was cold and blue. It seemed as if no one was here, but behind a wooden desk sat the wonder-rabbi. He had black hair, a black beard sprinkled with white, and gray uncertain eyes. His long bony face reminded Lev of an El Greco painting, along with his delicate hands and tapered fingers and papery white skin. A slight flush animated his cheeks, which only made the rest of his face appear paler. He acknowledged Lev and Otto, while at the same time he looked distracted, as if he saw many men before him.

Lev wondered if they should sit down on the faded brown rug, a dusty square of wool in front of the desk. “Samuel ben Abraham, thank you for seeing us.” His Yiddish was coming back.

The rabbi massaged his temples with his index fingers. He looked down at his desk, a clean wooden surface. “I deal between God and man. Between man and man is more difficult.” He squinted at Lev and Otto, and his blue lips curled back. “Christian and Jew?”

Otto said, “I can’t walk because of my swollen toe.”

The rabbi closed his eyes. A slight wind shook the windowpane. It was fiercely cold inside the room, but he had no need for heat or food or light, as if he sprang from ether. He mumbled, “A Christian is better than a Zionist. If they build a Jewish nation, such a place will no longer have any Jews in it.”

Otto nodded in agreement.

The rabbi opened his eyes. “You are not a Zionist, are you?”

Lev shook his head. “I’m German.” He hesitated. “A German Jew.” It sounded like a lie.

The rabbi snorted. “God is all-knowing. We must thank Him for His wisdom.”

For a moment, they held their breath, unsure if the rabbi would
continue in this vein, but he did not. He tugged on his beard and told Otto to soak his foot in a tub of cold water filled with mint leaves and to elevate it during sleep. He added that he should not walk or run or wear boots or drink alcohol or speak often because this would agitate the blood and he could see that Otto had agitated blood. “Your face is always flushed. Your hands are never still.” His tone was accusatory but understanding, like a scolding father, and Otto, suddenly the wayward son, became obedient. “Yes, of course. Whatever you suggest.”

The rabbi nodded, satisfied. Then he reminded them, “God gave us this insight. It is not of human invention but all made and created by Him.” He paused and focused his wintry gaze on Lev. “The fear of God is more trustworthy than your so-called modern humanism.”

Lev felt his cheeks burn, and out of the shadows of his mind, he heard his mother yell that, to his university friends, he would always be an eastern Jew from Galicia, despite his silk cravat and newly acquired monocle—a silly thing he wore for a semester, which his mother nearly tore off his face in one of her fits. Staring at the rabbi’s bluish-white face, the way he passively sat in his chair not expecting anything from this world, infuriated Lev. He remembered such holy men shuffling down Hirtenstrasse, a street all shades of gray, unpaved and mazelike, peppered with little shacks housing whole families in one room, trapped yellow light emanating from cracked windows, rubbish in doorways composed of old newspapers, torn stockings, shoelaces, and apron strings. And he was sure the rabbi would think such remnants were worth preserving instead of the glittering facades of new buildings, the white lights in the trees lining Unter den Linden, the cinema palaces of Alexanderplatz, overlaid in gilt.

Lev averted his eyes and examined the dusty rug with its frayed edges and threadbare middle.

Otto stepped forward, leading with his bad foot. “Thank you, Rabbi. Thank you for your help. Already, it’s less swollen.”

The rabbi glared at Lev and threw up his hands, his eyes rolling back. “Why? Why must I set sight on your clean-shaven face? It nearly contaminates my eyes to see a Jew shave off his beard, to grow so distant from God.”

Otto, his head bent forward in supplication, a pose Lev had never seen him occupy, started explaining army regulations, but Lev gripped his shoulder. He only wanted to escape, to flee, lest he be cursed, but then he cursed himself for entertaining such thoughts, for being drawn into this cloistered realm where rabbis cursed and blessed whole families for generations, crippling men into believing the reason their son died or a fire destroyed their house was because a wonder-rabbi once glanced at him in the wrong way ten years ago. He was about to lunge for the handle when the oak door sprung open as if the red-bearded man knew exactly when their meeting had ended.

10

While they had been inside with the rabbi, the solid gray sky broke apart into brilliant blue patches, the afternoon sun illuminating the remaining clouds as if a flame burned within each one. People spilled out of their homes, relieved the grim day had lightened. Children chased one another, throwing snowballs, yelling and running, their cheeks blotchy from the icy air.

Otto and Lev walked back to the barracks along the blindingly white streets, and Otto talked the whole time about how wonderful the rabbi was, how his toe had healed, how he barely felt even a trace of pain. Occasionally, he held Lev’s arm to steady himself before striding ahead with the newfound fervor of a patient miraculously healed.

“Yes, the rabbi,” Lev said, pausing at the sight of a boy with bright blond hair, the same color as Franz’s, who ran ahead of the pack, clearly the leader. Victoriously, he did not wear a hat, and it seemed that this freedom lightened his step, made him enviable in the eyes of the others.

Otto said over his shoulder, “He offended you. I saw it on your face, as if you were battling an angry ghost.”

Lev kicked at the snow, his boot dirtying the pristine whiteness. “The way people treat these rabbis, with such reverence and esteem. As if they can solve the world’s problems with one wave of their hand, as if they alone know the infinite secrets of the universe. I don’t like it.”

“That’s not to say some men don’t have a gift—” Otto doubled over, groaning.

“A gift?” Lev teased.

Otto leaned against a snowbank, his bad foot dangling in the air. “Help me again?”

Lev suppressed a smile and offered Otto his arm.

Otto murmured, “I suppose sometimes the pain returns in flashes.”

“Slowly, Otto, go slowly,” Lev said, scanning the streets. He had led them in the direction of Leah’s house without really meaning to, his feet mysteriously carrying them toward the river, the flat yellow fields and the white birches, toward the abandoned farmhouse where he had last touched her.

Otto glanced around. “The base is the other way.”

Lev kept walking, ignoring him. “No cure is immediate. You have to follow what the rabbi said—no alcohol, no excitement. Rest, Otto. Plenty of rest.”

Otto nodded morosely, still holding on to Lev for support, allowing Lev to lead him even if they were walking in the wrong direction. “Antonina won’t let me rest. She chatters day and night about the most inane subjects—her sister’s husband, who is a brute, how she doesn’t have enough flour to bake bread and could I get her some, the best way to clean out a chamber pot, how the consumption of pumpkin seeds would benefit my constitution. I fight the impulse to strangle her, to cease her incessant chatter. My palms itch; it takes all my will not to clutch that fat neck of hers and wring it.”

“Yes, yes,” Lev replied, his senses heightened, wondering if Leah might be walking this way, if he could at least catch a glimpse of her. He observed all the people on the street, searching for her face in the crowd. The physical need to be in her presence tricked him into thinking he had seen her when it was another woman with black hair, not as lustrous, bending over a small child who had lost her boot in the snow. When she glanced up, with her narrow eyes and thin downturned mouth, the woman’s unfamiliar face jarred him. But the unexpected fine weather, the sharp sun hitting the back of his neck coupled with the general air of frivolity that overtook the people on the streets, infused Lev with the hope that perhaps he would find Leah today. He imagined how they would marvel over seeing each other unplanned.

“Aren’t you listening?” Otto cried.

“You were telling me about Antonina,” Lev said, suddenly overcome with gloom:
I’m lost in the fog of a daydream that will amount to nothing
.

“She refuses to let me rest! Purposefully, she’s wearing me down, sapping my strength as Delilah did Samson.”

“I would hardly compare her to Delilah,” Lev muttered, spying the rooftop of Leah’s house peeking through the fir trees. Perhaps she was at home. Perhaps she would step outside to collect firewood or tend to the chickens and she would see him there, walking by. Perhaps, perhaps.

Otto tugged on Lev’s coat sleeve. “You’ve taken us back the long way making it only harder for me to walk. Do you realize if we’d turned right at the mill—”

The same hatless blond boy ran past, a snowball hidden in the folds of his jacket. He accidentally bumped into Otto, knocking him off balance. Otto cursed the boy, who glanced back with a malicious smile.

Geza ran after the boy and hurled a snowball at his head. He missed and the snowball broke apart, revealing a stone packed away inside of it.

The boy kept running, disappearing into the trees.

“Geza!” Lev shouted.

He turned around, hands stuffed into his pockets.

“Are you throwing stones now?”

Geza jerked his hands out of his pockets. “He stole my pencils and tore apart my school notebook.”

Otto shook his fist, half joking. “Assert your dominance—catch the blond beast!”

“Don’t encourage him,” Lev said, worried Leah would hear the commotion and frown upon what had happened, thinking Lev had instructed Geza to throw the stone.

“Officer, if I have violated some code of conduct I apologize,” Geza replied with a touch of sarcasm. How bold and unruly the boy was, his hair loose around his eyes, without a scarf, not even in this frigid cold, as if he thought himself immortal.

“My name is Lev.” He paused. “Did your mother receive the medicinal teas I gave to Leah for her? Such concoctions work quite well to cure the disease.”

Geza nodded, lowering his gaze. “Yes, thank you, Officer. I mean Lev.”

He sighed. “All right. Go home. Don’t cause any more trouble with that boy. I’ll get you more pencils, another notebook.”

Otto snorted. “I’d go after him if I were you.”

“Thank you,” Geza repeated, his voice softening.

Lev patted his arm. “Think nothing of it.” He resisted the urge to ask after Leah and paused, hoping she might appear, but the moment dissolved and nothing happened. Geza said good-bye and walked back to his house.

The sky tipped into violet and the cold chill of evening rustled through the trees. “Let’s go,” Lev said, and Otto grumbled about his foot, how it was acting up again because Lev had taken them the roundabout way and now it was getting dark and he was tired. Lev pretended to listen while trying to quell the pinpricking heartsickness, as if her absence pierced his vital organs, leaving holes and tears.

A few days later, Lev returned to Leah’s house bearing new colored pencils and a notebook for Geza, both individually wrapped in brown paper, tied with string. He had placed a sprig of holly under the string, an added touch of delicacy he hoped Leah would notice and like. The house was quiet and still, encircled by the green hush of the forest. The other houses nearby appeared equally deserted when normally the neighborhood bustled with activity, with children playing and women gossiping and men, in huddled groups, discussing portions of the Torah. After leaving the packages on the front step, Lev lingered, glancing through the dusty windows, remembering the night when he had seen her bathing, her skin gleaming in the candlelight. He gazed longingly at the dark window, catching his own forlorn reflection in the glass, when he saw a figure move through the room. He froze, overcome with nervousness. It would look strange if someone saw him lurking here without any discernible purpose. He lightly stepped off the porch, but the old wood creaked under his boots. The front door swung open.