The Librarian of Burned Books, page 30
The worst thing for Althea to do at the moment would be to stew in silence and worry. Bernice would take care of that.
“Course, sugar.” Bernice leaned against the arm of the blue sofa where Althea was perched and proceeded to play her role perfectly. “Let me tell you what I heard about two of the editors from Publishers Weekly. They just found out they have the same mistress . . .”
Viv grinned as she left the room to hunt down Hannah Brecht, putting out several small fires along the way.
Where Althea had seemed on the verge of falling apart, Hannah was utterly composed. She stood in the wings of the stage, watching the bustle with a vaguely amused expression. She’d arrived so early that Viv had plopped Hannah down in her office and handed over a copy of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby—an upcoming ASE that Edith had to fight to get included in the program due to its lackluster sales.
Once the audience started filtering in, though, Hannah had gravitated toward the action.
Viv paused and watched her for a second. She wore a flattering green shirtwaist dress that Viv had noticed brought out the warm color in her eyes and contrasted nicely with the dark curls that she’d let cascade around her shoulders. The stage lights kept her half in shadow and half illuminated and Viv thought that maybe that’s just how Hannah lived her life. In the sun and the shade, both, sharing herself but keeping her mystery, as well.
“Are you nervous?” Viv asked as she came up beside her. Hannah didn’t take her eyes off the audience.
“Not quite the right word,” Hannah drawled with something that sounded close to humor but wasn’t.
“Hmm,” Viv hummed. She’d never gotten used to Hannah’s reticence, with how she watched the world as a spectator rather than a player in it. The attitude threw Viv, who had never known a way to guard herself from caring too much. And so it made her clumsy at the small talk that Hannah didn’t even seem to need.
“You said Miss James would be in attendance?” Hannah asked, finally glancing over.
Viv checked the slim watch she’d worn just for today. “Yes, I’m actually going to wait to fetch her until after most of the other speakers have gone. She seemed . . . nervous.”
The corners of Hannah’s mouth twitched, but she simply crossed her arms and watched as Mr. Stern strode onto the stage to introduce the first guest—a man who’d lost both legs in the spring and had been kept entertained in the hospital by the ASE books.
Viv hadn’t limited herself to taking care of only Hannah and Althea when setting up the event—she’d enlisted librarians who served as volunteer readers for the council, a family member of a soldier whose last letter home had been about the ASE project, the GI who had discovered the books in a hospital in Italy, a war correspondent who’d been stationed with men in the Pacific. If Taft could hold out against the barrage, he was an even more cynical man than she had thought.
The people who mattered, though, were his constituents, and Viv felt fairly certain her fellow Americans would be won over.
As they neared Hannah’s portion of the event, Viv looked around until she spotted Edith lingering nearby. “I’m going to get Miss James. Would you let Miss Brecht know when to go on?”
“Of course,” Edith said, reaching out to draw Hannah closer. Hannah hesitated, watching Viv for a moment like she wanted to say something, before smiling that restrained smile of hers and turning toward Edith.
Viv paused, unsure if Hannah actually needed comfort before facing the crowd. But after an internal debate, she decided to take Hannah at her word and headed toward the waiting room.
Althea’s eyes were still wide when Viv stepped into the backstage room, but Viv got the impression she was more intrigued by Bernice’s gossip than scared.
“Ready?” Viv asked after Bernice sent her a small wink.
Althea had dressed in a crisp white blouse and red plaid skirt that might have been better for a taller woman. Still, she projected a serious aura that Viv knew would go over well with the audience.
“We still have one more speaker before you, but I thought you might like to watch,” Viv said, stopping herself from enfolding Althea in a hug. But just because Viv had grown closer with the woman didn’t mean she’d forgotten the way she’d slammed a door in Viv’s face not long ago. Acknowledging Althea’s nerves might not be welcome or appreciated.
“Who is it?” Althea asked in a way that gave Viv the impression she didn’t care but wanted to focus on something other than her own upcoming speech.
“A woman I met here in New York, actually,” Viv said, as they maneuvered their way into the wings. Hannah was waiting beside Edith as Mr. Stern introduced her. “She works at the Brooklyn Jewish Center, which has a library devoted to the books banned by the Nazis. Before that, she worked in a similar library in Paris.”
Beside Viv, Althea froze, her eyes locked on Hannah’s silhouette. “Hannah.”
It was only an exhale, really, one that got swallowed up by the crowd’s applause as Hannah stepped out onto the stage.
“Yes,” Viv said, eyes darting between the two of them. If possible, Althea had paled further, her jaw wobbly as if she were trying not to cry. “She did mention that she knew you.”
Althea’s eyes closed as she huffed out a laugh. “Once upon a time.”
Chapter 49
New York City
July 1944
It had been more than a decade since Althea had seen Hannah Brecht. And yet she’d known it was Hannah by her shape alone, by the way she held her head, by the fall of her hair and the sway of her hips as she walked.
Althea wanted nothing more than to give in to her shaking legs and sink to the floor. Hannah Brecht, in America. Not only America, but New York City, only feet away from her.
Hannah Brecht alive and not buried in some mass grave.
That hadn’t been a certainty, Hannah being alive. Not after the Nazis had marched into Paris. Althea had still hoped, had still told herself that Hannah had opened her last letter. But the war was all but designed to crush any of that spark out of a person. Hope seemed worse than foolish, it seemed dangerous.
Sound rushed back in when Hannah greeted the audience, the microphone picking up the wryness in her voice, the one that spoke of many lives lived, of many horrors seen and survived, of people and speeches far grander than whatever she was about to say.
Vivian Childs was watching Althea, not Hannah, though, her eyes squinted in concern. Althea blinked at her a few times, not sure what to even say to reassure her.
“Did she know I would be here?” she heard herself ask.
“Yes,” Vivian said softly, her expression uncharacteristically gentle. Althea wouldn’t go so far as to say she knew the woman well, but they’d spent enough time together now that she thought she had the girl’s number. She was young, vivacious, passionate in a way Althea could never remember being. So sure the world could do good, even when she’d seen how bad it could be.
After only a single long night of reading those letters from soldiers, Althea had been left gutted, torn open and bleeding. Vivian had to do that every day and still she strove to try to fix the injustices she’d seen.
Part of Althea had been ashamed, watching Vivian move through life. What had Althea done but hide away and lick her wounds for more than a decade? If it had been anyone else at the door, Althea would have kept it closed. But when Althea looked at Vivian, she saw what she wished she could have been when she’d been younger.
Althea James had always wanted to be a different version of herself.
She doubted Vivian Childs had ever had that thought.
Being around Viv made Althea believe again, believe she could change the world, just because she wanted to.
But had Althea known Hannah would be at the event . . .
What? She couldn’t finish the thought. Would she have come? Or would she have been paralyzed like she had been for the past ten years? By fear and guilt and also anger. Because the anger was there, she wouldn’t deny it. It burned like an infinite flame in her chest, reminding her every moment of the way Hannah had turned to her with wounded eyes, so ready to cast blame, so ready to believe Althea could betray her.
War had a way of making previous hurts inconsequential. But at the sight of Hannah, this one flared to life once more.
None of that mattered, though, because Hannah was speaking.
“Few people have to watch their country die,” Hannah said, her lyrical voice all the more captivating because she spoke softly. Althea found herself leaning toward her, and she imagined the rest of the audience was no different. “I have had that dubious privilege, and I can tell you that it comes not as a rebel shout but as a sly whisper. The cracks creep in, insidious as anything I’ve ever seen. It can start with rumblings about an unreliable press and rumors about political enemies that will threaten your family, your children. It can deepen with each disdainful remark about science and art and literature in a pub on a Friday night. It comes cloaked in patriotism and love of country, and uses that as armor against any criticism.
“When I hear people talk of Germany these days, it breaks my heart. Not many remember that some of the greatest thinkers and artists of our time came from my country. Einstein, Schrödinger, Mann, Arendt, the list goes on and on. Despite what propaganda posters may have you believe, those exiles represent the Germany I know far better than the madman currently at the helm. I grew up in a place that prized intellectualism, reason, and civil discourse, in a country that held a reverence for books. I grew up in the land of Grimms’ Fairy Tales and Goethe’s epics. I grew up in a democracy, fledgling though it might have been, that allowed space for radical ideas and uncomfortable discussions, that encouraged critical thought and free speech.
“When I tell people about the 1933 book burnings in Berlin, many are shocked to hear that it was students who led the charge, who lit the pyres and brought the books to the flames.”
Althea closed her eyes, thinking of a light rain, of novels stacked high in wheelbarrows, of Diedrich’s twisted expression as she confronted him.
“Because how could that have happened? Those students cherished books. Just like many Germans who burned their own collections all across the country after that night cherished books. But they loved their own beliefs more. And that kind of love? It can rot a person from the inside. Can rot a country from the inside.”
Hannah held the crowd’s attention easily, as if she could grasp the threads of it in her hands and pull.
“There are nights I lie awake wondering what the moment was that we lost the Germany I knew. Some might point to the invasion of Poland, the official act of war. Some might look at the Anschluss the same way. There are a million such moments. Kristallnacht, the Night of the Long Knives, the Jewish boycotts, the race laws, the opening of the concentration camps, the November treaty that brought about so much bitterness. But sometimes I think it was the moment right before the gasoline was poured on the books. The moment the most educated country in the world willingly, joyously, wholeheartedly turned away from knowledge.”
Hannah looked down, not at notes, but like she was fortifying herself. “I was asked to speak today because a bright, passionate young woman believed that I have something important to say about the dangers of government censorship. Perhaps I do. I can tell you that there are people out there who want the world to only think as they think. In fact, long before Hitler had the power to incite countrywide book burnings, he wrote in Mein Kampf that a smart reader should take away from books only the ideas that support their own beliefs and discard the rest as useless ballast.”
She emphasized the last phrase in a way that made it seem like it was a direct quote.
“I can tell you that banning books, burning books, blocking books is often used as a way to erase a people, a belief system, a culture,” Hannah said. “To say these voices don’t belong here, even when those writers represent the very best of a country.
“I can tell you many things about how men who crave power use fear and panic that’s incited by certain ideas to get what they want,” Hannah continued. “Just as Goebbels and Hitler did that night in May when they convinced a country that setting fire to words that you don’t like or don’t agree with will make you right. But I think, more importantly, I should tell you about that death I witnessed. Of the way Germany’s democracy turned to ash under the weight of itself.
“I am here to warn you that it is so easy to let the fuel spill onto those pages. Once that spark catches, once the fire is lit and the flames begin to consume everything you hold dear, there is nothing in the world that can put it out.
“We cannot stop individuals who read for the sole purpose of confirming their already closely held beliefs.” She enunciated each word, a delicate fist pounding on the podium. “But we can stop the dictators, the tyrants, the bullies who try to impose that method onto others. This may feel insignificant, this moment here, in this room, talking about a single amendment to a bill that was drafted with the best intentions. I can tell you, though, that history is built on moments that feel insignificant. We didn’t know that night of the book burnings that the event was anything special. We pictured a few students with a few books. Even when we arrived and saw the stacks upon stacks of novels and research journals, we didn’t realize everything that would come after.
“In 1928, my father, along with the rest of my country, was mocking Hitler. They saw him as a joke, someone who could be easily controlled, someone who would burn out after everyone heard his deranged spiels. Only a handful of years later, we had to flee Germany after my brother was dragged to a concentration camp, where he would be murdered for his beliefs.
“History is built on moments that feel insignificant,” Hannah said again, and Althea marveled at how she could land each word as a punch. “And so in every moment you must ask yourself: Do you want to be the ones handing out the gasoline cans? Or the ones trying to put out the fire?”
“Yes,” Viv whispered as the audience broke into applause.
Althea laughed, overcome and overwhelmed, her eyes wet, her soul aching, her mind back in that plaza in the one moment in all her life she’d been brave. If she did nothing else right in the world, she would always have that night. Viv grinned at her, with just a touch of mania. “All right, your turn.”
Althea just blinked at her. “You want me to follow that?”
Chapter 50
New York City
July 1944
Viv melted back into the shadows as Hannah Brecht walked offstage, not that it mattered. The woman’s eyes were locked on Althea.
From Althea’s earlier reaction, Viv had gotten the impression there was more to the two women knowing one another than once upon a time. But the intensity with which they watched each other now confirmed it. Viv had the sneaking suspicion that if they’d been alone, they already would have been tangled up in each other’s arms.
“You’re here,” Althea said on a whisper.
“Because of you,” Hannah answered, not quite as shaky, her hand curled around Althea’s wrist, the two locked in their own world.
Viv hated that she needed to interrupt the reunion, but the fact of the matter was that there was an audience waiting on her. And the show had to go on. She stepped forward, once again making her presence known, and two pairs of eyes snapped to her in surprise.
“Sorry, but . . .” She trailed off, jerking her head back toward the stage, where Mr. Stern was waiting in expectant silence. “Althea?”
Althea shook herself slightly, opened her mouth to say something to Hannah, but then closed it. She smiled at Viv instead. “Right.”
Hannah didn’t move until the last second, stepping out of Althea’s way but just enough so that their shoulders brushed as she did.
Viv raised her brows at Hannah, who smiled back and shook her head.
One thing that Viv could be grateful about—however Althea felt about seeing Hannah, it had at least brought some color into her face. She no longer looked like a strong wind would take her down.
From Viv’s angle, she could see the nervous breath Althea took before she started, but Viv doubted the audience would be able to. The audience that was on its feet, the raucous applause almost knocking Viv back on her heels.
Exactly what she’d wanted.
It took a few minutes for everyone to retake their seats, but Althea barely even seemed to note the commotion.
“I’ve been told my book was in the pockets of the GIs when they stormed the beaches in Normandy,” Althea started, and the slight chatter that had lingered from the standing ovation quieted immediately. “I’ve now read countless letters from the men, their families, their leaders who assure me my book has saved them. And perhaps I should talk about that. How the Armed Services Editions change lives, entertain grateful troops, the whole song and dance.” She paused then inhaled. “Instead, I’d like to tell you about the months I would have gladly joined the Nazis.”
A rumble went through the audience at that.
“I was invited to Germany in 1932 by Joseph Goebbels, the man who runs the Nazi propaganda machine—quite effectively, I might add,” Althea continued. “The night Hitler was named chancellor, I marched in celebration. I was naive, you see. I thought politics were all civil, I thought world leaders were constrained by norms, that while there could be and had been war, that war would be waged by rational men.
“I had never cared for politics before then,” Althea said, with a careless little shrug. “They didn’t affect me, I told myself. And what could I do, anyway? I could vote, finally. But why do so when the world would turn as it always had? Politics were something done far away from my life, a game that was played by men who had too much time on their hands.”
Sporadic laughter covered up the insulted murmuring Viv could hear from a few of the congressmen in the front rows.
