The Far Side of the Sky (2 page)

“Where is Onkel Karl?” Hannah demanded.

Franz glanced over at Esther. Their eyes locked, and they wordlessly agreed:
Not tonight.

“He has gone … gone home,” Esther said softly. “Is he all right?” Hannah asked.

Esther summoned a smile. “They can’t hurt him now, darling.” Hannah looked to Franz. “I’m afraid, Papa. The breaking glass and the shouting.”

“Everything will be all right,” he soothed. “As soon as I finish bandaging Essie, we will make cocoa.”

“I’m not thirsty.” Hannah flashed a shy little smile. “Besides, there is no gas to heat the cocoa. I just want to stay with you.”

Franz cleared the lump from his throat. “Of course,
liebchen.
Is Frau Lieberman all right?”

Hannah nodded. With her curly brown hair and darker colouring, she bore far more resemblance to Franz than she ever did to her blonde, blue-eyed mother, Hilde. But she shared so many of Hilde’s expressions. And like her mother, Hannah could convey so much without uttering a word.

They returned to the sitting room, Hannah still clutching Franz’s hand.
The girl carried herself with such poise that, much of the time, Franz was oblivious to her slight limp and other handicaps. Hannah’s head had been wedged too tightly in her mother’s birth canal, depriving her brain of oxygen for precious minutes. She’d had to be delivered by an emergency Caesarean section that left her with spastic weakness of her left arm and leg. Her relatively mild cerebral palsy was not the only birth trauma. Within days of the delivery, Hilde succumbed to an overwhelming postoperative infection, leaving Hannah motherless and Franz a widower.

Franz gently wrapped his arms around Hannah again, cradling her head against his chest and rocking her on the spot. Her soapy childlike fragrance only intensified his guilt.
How will I keep you safe?

“Vienna—Austria—is no longer our home,
liebchen,”
Franz said. Six months earlier, uttering those same words would have been unimaginable. Before the rise of the Nazis, Franz had not even considered himself Jewish. He was an Austrian and a surgeon. Nothing more.

“Your father means that we have to leave the country,” Esther added gently.

Tears welled in Hannah’s eyes, but her lips broke into the most genuine smile Franz had seen in ages. “I so want to go, Papa.”

“We will go, little one.” Suddenly, nothing aside from Hannah’s safety mattered anymore. “We will.”

Hannah finally drifted to sleep in Franz’s arms. She didn’t stir when he carried her into his room and laid her on his bed. He tucked Hannah’s favourite doll, Schweizer Fräulein—the Swiss country girl–style rag doll that she had slept with since the age of two—under her arm and then covered her with a second wool blanket. He sat on the edge of the bed and watched his daughter sleep. Brushing his fingertips over her brow, he combed a few fallen strands of hair away from her eyes.

By the time Franz returned to the sitting room, Esther had already slipped into Hannah’s bedroom and closed the door behind her. He could hear his sister-in-law’s soft sobs drifting out under the door. Tasting acid, he wondered if the Nazis had just left his brother’s corpse to rot on the lamppost. He doubted it; they tended to hide the evidence of their barbarism, as they had with all the Communists and other political opponents who had simply vanished overnight following the
Anschluss.

Forcing the thoughts from his mind, Franz reached for the telephone. He swallowed his dread and slowly dialed his father’s number.

“Guten tag, Herr Adler sprechen,”
Jakob Adler answered in his typical solicitor’s tone.

“Papa, wie gehts?”
Franz asked.

“I am fine. They did not reach my street. There are not enough Jews here … to make it worth their while,” his father wheezed. Jakob had been afflicted by tuberculosis as a teenager, and his lungs had steadily deteriorated in recent years. Nowadays, he fought for almost every breath. “And you, Franz?”

“I am all right.”

“And your brother and the girls?” “Hannah and Esther are safe.”

“Not Karl?” Jakob asked in barely more than a whisper.

“No, Papa. Karl is …” Franz’s voice faltered. “The storm troopers found him … Karl is dead.”

Jakob went quiet. Only his wheezing filled the agonizing hush.

“Papa, there was nothing to be done,” Franz muttered. “I was … I was too late.”

“No, of course. Too late, indeed,” Jakob breathed. He sniffled a few times and then cleared his throat. “Franz, you must get Esther and Hannah out of the country now.”

“And you too, Father.”

“No.”

“You cannot stay here.”

“It is not your decision to make, Franz.”

“I will not leave without you.”

“You most certainly will! Listen to me, Franz. We both know that my lungs are ruined.” As though to prove the point, Jakob paused to pant for three or four breaths. “They will undo me long before Herr Hitler has the opportunity.”

Franz winced at the memory of the flabby storm trooper beating the Yacobsens. The Nazis would show his father no more mercy, regardless of his poor health. “You cannot—”

“Son, have I ever asked anything of you?”

“No. Never.”

“So please indulge me this one request.” Jakob gulped a few breaths
of air. “Allow me to spend my final days at home. I want to die here in Vienna, just as your mother and …” His voice quavered but this time his lungs weren’t to blame. “And your brother have.”

Franz recognized the futility in arguing the point over the telephone. “I understand.”

“Franz, I would like you to visit the British consulate.”

“Papa, everyone knows the British are not issuing new visas.”

“I have done legal work for the consulate,” Jakob said. “I know the vice-consul, a Mr. Howard Edgewood. A reasonable man. I would like you to speak to him.”

“Of course.”

“I will telephone Mr. Edgewood in the morning to arrange an appointment.”

“Thank you.” Franz paused, groping for the right words, but all he could muster was, “Papa, I am so sorry.”

Jakob was quiet for another long moment. “I only wish I had not been so horribly short-sighted.” He exhaled so heavily that the receiver whistled. “Do not make the same foolish mistake, Franz. Never underestimate the Nazis again. Their hatred is beyond rational, beyond human. They will never stop.”

Sleep was out of the question. Franz sat at the table agonizing over possible escape options. He berated himself again for having turned down a French colleague’s offer to fill the position of visiting surgical professor at the University of Paris. Franz had reasoned that Jakob was too frail to be uprooted or left behind. Now, with Karl dead and his father facing the same fate, Franz found the irony of his own flawed rationale painful to remember.

Franz was still awake as the dawn broke, but the daylight brought no renewed sense of security. On the contrary, it left him feeling even more exposed.

A gentle rap at the door froze Franz in mid-breath. Ever since the rioting began, he had half-expected the authorities to come for him too. After a moment, he relaxed, realizing that if it were the dreaded
Sicherheitspolizei or the SS, the door would be shaking from the heavy fists and the orders shrieked through it.

Still, Franz approached warily. He undid the deadbolt and opened the door a crack. As soon as he recognized Ernst Muhler, he opened it wider.

Ernst held a full grocery bag in either arm, a fragrant loaf of fresh bread poking out from one. Tall and gaunt with a blond widow’s peak, the flamboyant artist dressed unconventionally, favouring all-black ensembles, but fashion had nothing to do with his current appearance. Ernst’s nose was swollen and bloodied. His lips were scabbed and crusted, and he had raccoon-pattern bruising around both eyes. But his smile remained as undaunted as ever. “I thought you could use a little sustenance,” Ernst said in his distinctive lilt as he raised the bags in his arms.

Franz glanced down the hallway to ensure that they were alone. “You shouldn’t have come, Ernst,” he whispered. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Rumour has it that Vienna has become somewhat volatile of late,” Ernst said as he strode past Franz and into the apartment.

Franz slid the deadbolt back into place and followed his Gentile friend into the sitting room. He had known Ernst for over ten years, ever since his wife had dragged him to one of the painter’s exhibitions. The eccentric marriage of eroticism and frailty in Ernst’s avant-garde work had unexpectedly moved Franz. He wound up buying three paintings and, despite—or perhaps because of—their diametrically opposed lifestyles, the two men had formed a tight friendship. Ernst had since become a rising star on the Vienna art scene, until the Nazis came to power and banned his artwork as “pornographic.”

Ernst placed the grocery bags on the kitchen table. “Where’s my little puffin?” he asked.

“Hannah is still asleep.”

“She must have been scared witless last night.” He sauntered over and flopped down on the couch, throwing an arm over the backrest. “You know, Franz, I found these Nazis a bit tiresome even before last night’s tempest, but they’ve truly outdone themselves. Such brave, virile men, aren’t they just? Assaulting the helpless, vandalizing property and burning
down temples.” He snorted and then clutched his chest. “Ah, but the artist in me cannot help but admire their sense of aesthetics. They truly excel at making ugly things look and sound pretty, don’t they? Have you heard what they’re calling last night’s rampage?” Franz said nothing, but Ernst, who was accustomed to carrying on one-sided conversations, continued. “Kristallnacht. Isn’t that lovely?—’the night of crystal.’” He grunted again. “Only the Nazis could make a night of national disgrace and hateful violence sound like an opera that Mozart might have penned!”

Franz pointed to his friend’s face. “What happened to you?”

“This?” Ernst ran a finger delicately over his swollen cheeks. “I’m afraid my little Gestapo captain got a touch frisky.” He dug a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket as he spoke and effortlessly slid one out. “It won’t leave a scar, will it, Herr Doktor? Now that they no longer allow me to paint, my face is my life, you know.”

Ernst heaved an exaggerated sigh. He lit his cigarette and took two long drags, leaning forward to bring his lips to the butt in his raised hand. “There’s no pleasing the Nazis, is there? First, they deem my artwork degenerate. Now, the little devils have decided my lifestyle is too.” Ernst took another puff. “These days I see a lot of my Gestapo friend,
Captain
Erhard Langenbrunner.” He sat up straighter, mock saluted and clicked his heels together. “Erhard is a blue-eyed, broad-shouldered Norseman—the embodiment of Hitler’s homoerotic Aryan fantasy, really. Erhard keeps telling me that the Third Reich will not tolerate homosexuals among their ranks. Yesterday, he threatened to send me to Dachau concentration camp with ‘the rest of the faggots.’” He sighed again. “Honestly, Franz, only the Nazis could believe they could cure my
proclivity
by locking me up in a camp full of men just like me.”

Even Franz chuckled at the absurdity of it.

“Erhard and his friends knocked me around a bit,” Ernst went on. “Truly, the attention he pays me makes me suspect Erhard could use a stint in Dachau too. It’s always the ones who protest the loudest who secretly harbour the same desire, isn’t it?” He touched his bruised cheeks again. “Anyway, I promised the captain I would dedicate myself to exclusively
depraving women in the future. And that was that. Besides, it’s really nothing compared with what you Jews have been through. So appalling.”

A new worry struck Franz. “How do you know the Gestapo didn’t follow you here?”

Ernst flicked away Franz’s concern along with the ash from the tip of his cigarette. “I’ve been followed by my attentive little fascists for months, on and off. They are about as subtle as a herd of stampeding elephants. Trust me, Franz, no one followed.”

Franz nodded. “Thank you for bringing us the food, Ernst. I will, of course, pay you back.”

“Nonsense. You have overpaid for my paintings these last ten years.” Ernst winked. “So tell me, how are Karl and Esther coping?”

Franz looked down at his feet. “Of course, you haven’t heard.”

“Heard what, Franz?”

“Karl is dead. They killed him last night.” Franz’s voice was deadpan but he could barely believe his own words.

“No! The bastards!”
Ernst leapt to his feet. “Oh, Franz. I am so sorry!”

Franz brought a finger to his lips and nodded toward Hannah’s bedroom, where his sister-in-law was staying. “Esther,” he mouthed.

“How?” Ernst asked in a low, plaintive tone.
“Why?”

Franz shook his head. “They knew Karl had been helping other Jews with their documents. They went to his office to find him.”

“Those savages!” Ernst muttered.

“Karl managed to save Esther,” Franz said. “She was at the office with him when the troopers arrived. He broke a small window in the back and pushed her out into the lane behind the building. That was where I found her.”

Ernst squeezed the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “Franz, I know a man at the Dutch consulate. A dear friend. I will speak to him about urgent visas. We have to get your family the hell out of Austria.”

Franz stared at him appreciatively. “You are a good person, Ernst. And a better friend.”

Ernst grunted a humourless chuckle and reached for his cigarettes
again. “What I am is ashamed. Ashamed to call myself Austrian—or German—or whatever the hell it is we are supposed to be these days.”

Franz studied his friend’s battered face again. Angst, and even a glint of fear, had replaced the usual flippancy. “Why do you choose to stay, Ernst?”

“Oh, the same stupid sentimental reasons. Vienna is home. After all, how can I leave the city where Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele helped to define twentieth-century art?” Ernst sighed. “And, of course, I’m in love.” He blew out his lips. “But we have to keep
that
a secret, since my beloved works for city hall. He is not ready to leave his wife and join me in Paris. And lovesick fool that I am, I can’t bear to live without him.”