Julie Orringer - The InvisibleBridge

“Vom Rath didn’t hate the Jews,” Polaner said. “He was a Party member, of course, but he loathed what was going on in Germany. That’s why he came to France: He wanted to get away. At least that was what he told me.”

Two days had passed; Ernst vom Rath had died that afternoon at the Alma Clinic. Hitler’s doctors had come, but they had deferred to the French doctors. According to the evening news broadcast, vom Rath had died of complications from damage to his spleen. A ceremony would be held at the German Lutheran Church that Saturday.

Andras and Polaner had gone to the Blue Dove for a glass of whiskey, but they’d discovered they were short on cash. It was the end of the month; not even the pooled contents of their pockets would buy a single drink. So they told the waiter they would order in a few minutes, and then they sat talking, hoping they could pass half an hour in that warm room before they’d be asked to leave. After a while the waiter brought their usual whiskey and water. When they protested that they couldn’t pay, the waiter twisted one end of his moustache and said, “Next time I’ll charge you double.”

“How did you meet him?” Andras asked Polaner.

Polaner shrugged. “Someone introduced us. He bought me a drink. We talked. He was intelligent and well read. I liked him.”

“But when you learned who he was-”

“What would you have had me do?” Polaner said. “Walk away? Would you have wanted him to do the same to me?”

“But how could you sit there and speak to a Nazi? Especially after what happened last winter?”

“He didn’t do that to me. He wouldn’t have done it. I told you.”

“That’s what he said, at least. But he may have had other motives.”

“For God’s sake,” Polaner said. “Can’t you leave it alone? A man I knew just died. I’m trying to take it in. Isn’t that enough for now?”

“I’m sorry,” Andras said.

Polaner laid his folded hands on the table and rested his chin upon them. “Ben Yakov was right,” he said. “They’ll make an example of that boy. Grynszpan. They’ll have him extradited and then kill him in some spectacular way.”

“They can’t. The world is watching them.”

“All the better, as far as they’re concerned.”

…

Klara stood at the window with the newspaper in her hand, looking down into the rue de Sévigné. She had just read aloud a brief article about the actions the German government would take against the Jewish people in recompense for the catastrophic destruction of German property that resulted from the violence of 9 November. The newspapers were calling it the Night of Broken Glass. Andras walked up and down the length of the room, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. At the writing desk Elisabet opened a school notebook and scratched a series of figures with a pencil.

“A billion reichsmarks,” she said. “That’s the amount of the fine against the Jews. And there are half a million Jews in Germany. That means each person has to pay two thousand reichsmarks, including children.”

The logic was astounding. He had tried and failed to grasp it. Grynszpan had shot vom Rath; vom Rath had died; November 9, the Night of Broken Glass, was supposed to have been the German people’s natural reaction to the killing. Therefore the responsibility for the destruction of Jewish shops, and the burning of synagogues, and the ransacking of homes-to say nothing of the killing of ninety-one Jews and the arrest of thirty thousand more-lay with the Jews themselves, and so the Jews had to pay. In addition to the fines, all insurance payments for damaged property would go directly to the government. And now it was illegal for Jews to operate businesses in Germany. In Paris and New York and London there had been protests against the pogrom and its aftermath, but the French government had been strangely silent. Rosen said it was because von Ribbentrop, Hitler’s foreign minister, was supposed to visit Paris in December to sign a declaration of friendship between Germany and France. It all seemed a great ugly sham.

From downstairs came the flutter and clang of the afternoon mail arriving through the slot. Elisabet got to her feet so quickly she overturned the chair, sending it backward into the fire screen, then ran downstairs to get the letters.

“I used to have to bribe her with gingerbread to get the mail,” Klara said as she righted the desk chair. “Now she won’t let it sit for half a minute.”

Elisabet was a long time coming up again. When she reappeared, breathless and flushed, it was only to throw a few envelopes onto the writing desk before she ran off down the hall to her room. Klara sat at the desk and thumbed through the mail. One piece, a thin cream-colored envelope, seemed to catch her attention. She took her letter knife and opened it.

“It’s from Zoltán,” she said, and scanned the single page. Her eyebrows drew together and she read more closely. “He and Edith are leaving in three weeks. He’s writing to say goodbye.”

“Leaving for where?”

“Budapest,” she said. “This isn’t the first I’ve heard of it. Marcelle said she’d heard a rumor that they were leaving-she told me last week when I met her at the Tuileries. Zoltán’s been asked to manage the Royal Hungarian Opera. And Madame Novak wants to raise their child near her family.” She rolled her lips inward and pressed a hand against her mouth.

“Are you so unhappy to see him go, Klara?”

She shook her head. “Not for the reason you’re thinking. You know how I feel about Zoltán. He’s a dear friend to me, an old friend. And a good man. He employed you, after all, when the Bernhardt could scarcely afford it.” She went to sit beside Andras on the sofa and took his hand in her own. “But I’m not unhappy to see him go. I’m glad for him.”

“What’s the matter, then?”

“I’m envious,” she said. “Terribly so. He and Edith can get on a train and go home. They can take the baby home to Edith’s mother, to raise it with its cousins.” She smoothed her gray skirt over her knees. “That pogrom in Germany,” she said. “What if such a thing were to happen in Hungary? What if they were to arrest my brother? What would become of my mother?”

“If anything were to happen in Hungary, I could go to Budapest and see about your mother.”

“But I couldn’t go with you.”

“Perhaps we could find a way to bring your mother to France.”

“Even if we could, it would only be a temporary solution,” she said. “To our larger problem, I mean.”

“What larger problem?”

“You know the one. The problem of where we might live together. In the longer term, I mean. You know I can’t go home to Hungary, and you can’t stay here.”

“Why can’t I?”

“Your family,” she said. “What if there’s a war? You’d want to go home to them. I’ve thought about it a hundred times. You must know I thought about it a great deal in September. It was one of the reasons I couldn’t bring myself to write to you. I couldn’t see a way around it. I knew that if we decided to be together, I’d be keeping you from your family.”

“If I stay here it’ll be my own decision,” Andras said. “But if I have to go, I’ll find a way to bring you with me. We’ll see a lawyer. Isn’t there some statute of limitations?”

She shook her head. “I can still be arrested and tried for what I did. And even if I could go home, I couldn’t leave Elisabet.”

“Of course not,” Andras said. “But Elisabet has plans of her own.”

“Yes, that’s just what I fear. She’s still a child, Andras. She wears that engagement ring, but she doesn’t really understand what it means.”

“Her fiancé seems utterly sincere. I know he has the best intentions.”