The Second Sight, page 27
“No. Zaentz is a gentle soul,” Hubbard said, “something like Sebastian. How is your secret husband?”
“Gone to America,” Meryem said. “His father died.”
“No!” Hubbard said. “He dreaded the day this would happen. They’ll put him in the vault—that’s how he always described it. He’ll never escape.”
“Does he want to escape?”
Hubbard gave her a searching look. “Of course he does. Everyone does.”
But he asked her no more questions.
2
THE CHRISTOPHERS KEPT OPEN HOUSE, A HOLDOVER FROM THE TIME of the great inflation ten years before when money meant nothing to Hubbard. Half a dozen people dressed in leather and corduroy straggled in as twilight began to fall, including Zaentz the artist, who came late, and Otto Rothchild, who was the first to arrive. Otto was accompanied by a blond young man who seemed to be very ill at ease.
Even then Otto was eager to teach, and when he saw Meryem’s tears he said, “You know what God said about tattoos, don’t you? He said, ‘You will not tattoo yourselves.’ “
“Where is that written?” Lori Christopher asked.
“In Leviticus, where God sends Moses down the mountain to tell the Israelites not to rend their clothes or gash their flesh when mourning the dead.”
The blond young man laughed.
“Franz thinks I just told an anti-Semitic joke,” Otto said. “All you have to do in Berlin to get a laugh these days is speak the word ‘Jew.’ “
Lori regarded Otto and his friend with undisguised loathing. She said, “I wish you wouldn’t bring your Nazi friends here, Otto.”
“I know,” Otto replied, “but Hubbard needs them for his writing. Besides, Franz isn’t a Nazi, are you, Franz?”
The young man shook his head. “Not at all,” he said.
“Not yet,” Lori said. “What are you in the meantime?”
“I believe in the revolution of youth,” Franz said. “The values of our parents’ generation are shit. They must be shoveled out and replaced with the clean new values of youth. Germany will be saved by discipline and willpower, not by the corrupt, vile system invented by the capitalist, anti-national force which is ruining the Fatherland.”
“What capitalist, anti-national force is that, exactly?” Lori asked.
“You mustn’t get the wrong idea,” Otto said. “Franz is one of the Wandervögel. He and his friends are idealists. They sing the wonderful old German folk songs, go on hikes in Lederhosen through the German forest, rediscover the old German gods, make friends with the peasants, commune with the German soil. Quite harmless.”
“It’s good to have your reassurance about that, Otto,” Lori said. “What is your family name, Franz?”
“Stutzer,” Otto replied. “But Franz is not one of the real Stutzers. He’s one of the new Germans.”
At dinner Franz Stutzer ate in silence while the others talked. The main dish was spaghetti with tomato sauce; he was still bourgeois enough to watch the others to see how it should be eaten.
“You should like this dish even if it isn’t German, Franz,” Otto said, lifting a fork wrapped with strands of pasta. “It’s Herr Hitler’s favorite food. He always orders it in his favorite restaurant in Munich, and then cuts it up into little bits. That way it goes straight down into his stomach. He’s far too busy thinking, of course, to be able to chew at the same time.”
“I thought you said this fellow isn’t a Nazi,” Lori said. “He isn’t. But he admires Herr Hitler.”
“Like so many others.”
All this table talk was in German. At first Meryem had trouble following the staccato Berlin usage because she had only spoken the language with her teacher, a drawling Austrian. But as the evening wore on she found that she understood most of what was said. In the case of Lori, she often knew what the words would be before they were spoken.
Zaentz sat opposite her, a bearish man with a cropped white beard and oil paint smeared on his trousers. When he finished his spaghetti he wiped the plate with a slice of bread, then leaned across the table and said, “I’d like to paint you and Meryem together, Lori.”
Hubbard was triumphant. “What did I tell you?”
“Why not just Meryem?” Lori said. “You’ve done me a dozen times.”
“Yes, but there was always something missing.”
“Wait a minute,” Hubbard said. “What about the Madonna of Charlottenburg?” He meant the ethereal drawing Zaentz had made of Lori when she was pregnant.
“That turned out all right because Paul was hidden in the picture,” Zaentz said. “But this will be better. These two are one. They complete each other.”
“You mean you want to paint them as a single woman?” Hubbard said. “This is getting interesting.”
“Possibly,” Zaentz said. “I won’t know until I start painting.” Otto interrupted. “How can you paint Meryem?” he said. “Islam forbids images. Isn’t that so, Meryem?”
Meryem let him talk.
“On the Judgment Day, according to Moslem teaching, those who make images will be called upon to breathe life into them,” Otto said. “If they can’t do so they’ll be punished.”
“Then the risk is all mine,” Zaentz said. He turned to Meryem.
“Will you pose?”
“If Lori will.”
Otto was talking again. “The teardrops are exquisite,” he said.
“Do they mean anything?”
“They’re just teardrops,” Meryem said.
“I wonder if they’d be considered an image on the Day of Judgment,” Otto said. “If so you’ll have those tears to answer for at the final trump, when, as the Holy Koran says, the world is rolled up like a scroll and the children’s hair turns gray.”
3
WHILE POSING FOR ZAENTZ’S PAINTING, MERYEM AND LORI SAT SIDE by side in identical costumes beneath a huge tilted window set into the roof of the artist’s attic studio. Zaentz painted very slowly. He was capable of spending an entire morning working on one square inch of canvas. Because he had no interest in politics, he had not followed the Berlin fashion and become an abstractionist or a cartoonist. There was more light in his painting than in his studio: he painted as the young Velazquez might have painted if he had lived after the invention of electric light. His pictures were so naturalistic, so accurate in every detail, that they were sometimes mistaken for photographs. However, they did not lie, as photographs often do, by capturing a single isolated facial expression. Zaentz’s subjects had faces in which many other faces were visible, depending on the light and the angle at which they were viewed: later in life Paul Christopher looked every day at a copy of the picture of Lori that his father called the Madonna of Charlottenburg and never saw the same person twice.
Every afternoon at about one o’clock, after he finished writing, Hubbard brought lunch in a picnic basket. In fair weather the four of them ate in Schiller Park, but when it rained, which was often in Berlin in autumn, they spread the food on a table beneath the big window. One day the rain was heavier than usual.
“You can’t go out in this downpour,” Zaentz said. “Let’s play a game of whist.”
Card games were unknown among the Ja’wabi, and Meryem had never handled cards. Hubbard explained their values and suits and the rules of the game. They began to play. As the cards were played, Meryem began to see pictures. There were so many of these at first—visions of the Ja’wabi in the desert, a scene in which Sebastian sat in a shadowy room with four silent women Meryem recognized as his mother and sisters, and indistinct images of people she did not know—that she could scarcely register them.
Lori held a very strong hand in diamonds, and as she played the ace and then the face cards, winning trick after trick, Meryem saw a sailing boat in a storm at sea. Lori, wearing a long sleeveless coat, was knocked overboard by the boom. She did not resist the water but sank helplessly to the bottom of the shallow sea, among large rocks bearded with seaweed. Paul, a much older Paul than the one she now knew, swam down to her, but was unable to save her because the long coat was holding her down.
Zaentz had been watching Meryem. When he saw the look in her eyes he threw down his hand and took her by the hand.
“Come over here and sit,” he said, leading her toward the easel. “Don’t change, don’t speak, don’t think of anything new.”
4
HUBBARD’S NOVEL THE ROSE AND THE LOTUS WAS NEVER PUBLISHED in German, so he thought it was possible that Heydrich, who appeared in it under his own name, did not know of its existence. Heydrich knew about Zaentz’s picture, however.
“I saw it before I saw you that day at the Adlon Hotel,” he told Meryem. “After I danced with you, the amazing reality from which the picture came, I knew that I must have it, that I must know everything about it. I want you to come and see it.”
“I’ve already seen it a thousand times,” Meryem said.
“But not for a long while. You will be astonished by it. I’ve had it put into a beautiful gold frame with an electric light shining on it. It’s the jewel of my collection. You must come see it.”
“No, thank you.”
“You can bring along your pretty baroness as chaperone. She too will be astonished by it.”
Years had passed since Meryem first came to Berlin; she came every fall and stayed all winter. By now Adolf Hitler was in power, and despite his youth Heydrich was a Nazi notable, seen every-where in Berlin in his SS uniform. He was wearing it now because he had leaped out of his staff car when he saw Meryem walking down the Prinz Albrechtstrasse, where his headquarters was located. According to Berlin gossip, as merchandised by Otto Rothchild, Heydrich had made his name as an imaginative killer in those very headquarters. He had led an assassination squad of five SS men who locked Gregor Strasser, one of Hitler’s critics within the Nazi party, inside a cell. The condemned man was known for his wit and intelligence. While Strasser scrambled frantically from wall to wall, the SS men fired at him through the bars with pistols, laughing uproariously as they fired and shouting, “Tell us another one, Strasser!” When Strasser still showed signs of life even though he had been shot some forty times, Heydrich went inside the cell and finished him off by firing a bullet into the back of his neck.
“Will you come?” he said to Meryem. “Six o’clock. I’ll send my car for you and your friend.”
“I’m sorry,” Meryem said, “it’s impossible.”
Heydrich gave her his brilliant smile; except for his broad, feminine hips, he was an ideal Aryan type—so perfectly blond and blue-eyed, in fact, that his chief, Heinrich Himmler, suspected that he must be concealing a Jewish ancestor inside this genetic disguise.
“You’re maddening,” Heydrich said, touching Meryem’s chin with a gloved index finger. “I warn you, I will never give up.” He smiled again, then lowered his voice to a stage whisper: “You are in danger.”
The next morning Meryem and Lori were arrested by the Gestapo after they returned to the stables after their ride in the Tiergarten. The arresting officers, two men in soft hats and long black leather coats, loaded them into a Mercedes, all four of them on the backseat with the secret policemen on the outside and the women in the middle. Their hips and legs were crushed together, but because of the leather coats the intimacy was reduced. “What is the meaning of this?” Lori asked. “Where are you taking us?”
The men did not answer. Lori leaned forward and turned her head to study their impassive faces. They stared straight ahead, avoiding eye contact.
“Seized by the Gestapo—it’s like a Communist propaganda movie,” Lori said. “Why didn’t you see this in the cards, Meryem?”
The secret policemen seemed interested in this remark. Lori lifted her eyebrows and stopped talking. She was perfectly calm—even contemptuous. Although she was guilty many times over of crimes against the Reich, specifically of assisting Jews to escape from Germany, she was not frightened. Like every other member of her family, she had been raised to believe that fear was a bad habit that could be conquered like any other. Her father had been killed by a mob because he had conquered fear; her cousin Bartholomdus had saluted the American who sent him down in fiames because he had conquered it. She was teaching her son to conquer it.
The shades were drawn in the Mercedes. After a rapid passage through city streets and a lengthy ride along wooded roads, the car turned into a drive, tires crunching gravel, and stopped. The secret policemen, still silent, escorted them up the steps of a hunting lodge and showed them inside.
“What is this place?” Lori asked, gazing at the stuffed heads of stag and wild boar that crowded the walls.
No answer. It was still only seven-thirty in the morning, and the interior was chilly. The smell of coffee filled the air.
“I think I know,” Meryem said.
A door painted with flowers opened and Heydrich appeared, wearing a silk dressing gown and a white aviator’s scarf over the black riding breeches and gleaming black boots of his SS uniform.
“Dismissed!” he shouted.
The secret policemen clicked their heels, released their grip on the women’s arms, and departed. Heydrich continued down the stairs.
“Good morning, dear ladies,” he said. “I see that we are all dressed alike. Three people in breeches and boots, up early in the beautiful German morning. Smell that! Come, have some coffee with me.”
“We prefer to leave,” Lori said.
“Baronesse, please,” Heydrich said, using the title by which the unmarried daughters of barons were addressed. “Surely you won’t refuse a cup of coffee?”
“Please do not address me in that way. I am a married woman.”
“Unlucky day! But I’m married too, you know, with two splendid children. My wife never comes here. Come. I’ve promised to show Fräulein Meryem something.”
The painting was displayed on an easel. “I designed the frame myself,” Heydrich said. “The lights are controlled by a rheostat. See?” He adjusted the lamp. “Bright, normal, dim at the touch of a finger. If only the artist were still in Germany I would have him redesign the picture. Alas, he was smuggled out of the country by enemies of the Reich.”
“Redesign the picture?” Lori said.
“Yes, indeed. Wonderful as it is, it has a flaw. I’ve always thought the figures should be in a natural state.”
“ ‘A natural state?’ What do you mean by that?”
“Nude.”
“And perhaps holding a pair of snow-white pigeons?”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Heydrich said, “but you have a point. One dove could have green eyes, the other gray like the German sky, a mirror image of the girls. If we ever see Zaentz again I’ll tell him about your idea. But I don’t think we will see him, do you?”
“I shouldn’t think so,” Lori said.
“How reckless you are!” Heydrich said. “I admire that.”
The Christophers had smuggled Zaentz to Denmark in the Mahican only a few weeks before because of a rumor that he was going to be arrested. They assumed that the police were after him because he was a Jew, but now Lori wondered if Heydrich had been behind it. Had he wanted to put him in a cage in order to watch him undress Meryem with his brushes?
“I’m surprised you’re so interested in Zaentz’s work,” she said.
“I see your point, but of course he doesn’t paint like a Jew,” Heydrich said. “I defy anyone to look at this picture and identify it as the work of a Jew.”
“Even the FÜhrer?”
“I mean any ordinary person like you and me,” Heydrich replied. “If Zaentz had chosen any other subject I would not have been interested, but this particular painting has me in its power. The easel is on casters, so I can take it with me from one room to another. I look up from my study desk late at night, or from one of my lonely suppers, or from my bed when I wake, and there it is.”
“But how did you acquire it? I understood it had been sold to someone else.”
“The picture was seized from a bankrupt Jew for unpaid taxes, and I was lucky enough to have the chance to purchase it at auction.”
“You must have got a wonderful bargain,” Lori said.
“Astonishing. I could hardly believe my luck, dear lady.”
A male servant with a military haircut came into the room with a trolley.
“Ah, the coffee!” Heydrich said. “This is real Italian roasted coffee, straight from Rome. I always say there is no aroma like it.”
He poured the coffee himself into gilded porcelain cups and offered one to Lori.
“No, thank you,” she said.
“But you must have some,” Heydrich said. “Also some of these delicious pastries. I won’t let you go unless you have some.”
He smiled yet again. “I really mean that.”
Lori and Meryem each took a pastry.
Heydrich popped an eclair into his mouth. “It makes me so happy that you enjoy the same things I do,” he said.
They rode back into Berlin in Heydrich’s car. He sat between the women on the leather seat with his boots crossed at the ankles and propped up on the jump seat. He smelled of boot polish, brilliantine, and strong shaving lotion. Beyond a glass partition, the servant who had brought in the coffee sat in the front seat beside the driver. He now wore the uniform of an SS private, with a machine pistol slung across his chest. The Mercedes in which Lori and Meryem had been brought to the villa followed the staff car, and another, identical Mercedes led the way.
“You’re well protected,” Lori said. “You must be quite precious to your leader.”
“The enemies of the Reich are everywhere and they tend to be cowardly—they specialize in ambushes with smuggled arms,” Heydrich said. “Smuggling is a terrible problem. And you’re right. The Führer himself is concerned about it. Which means that soon there will be no problem.” He winked. “Smugglers should beware, dear lady.”
They were approaching the Opera House, a few blocks away from the Christophers’ apartment in Goethestrasse. Heydrich rapped on the glass partition and the car stopped. He picked up Lori’s hand, then Meryem’s, and kissed them one after the other.
