Dark Star

about it,” she said slyly. Szara, for a moment, was tempted to ask her to explain-for he sensed she’d worked it out- the mechanics of such a thing: how it was actually accomplished, where the Jews hid the stolen souls and what they did with them. But he didn’t. He thanked the ladies and took the train back to Berlin and an evening with Marta Haecht, the promise of which had kept him more or less sane for another day.

Later on, he would have reason to remember that afternoon.

Later on, when everything had changed, he would wonder what might have happened if he’d missed the Berlin train, if he’d had to spend the night in Lubeck. But he knew himself, knew that he would have found some way to be with Marta Haecht that night. He considered himself a student of destiny, perhaps even a connoisseur-that obnoxious word-of its tricks and turns: how it hunted, how it fed.

He would see himself on the train to Berlin, a man who’d beaten his way across a lifeless afternoon by banking thoughts of the evening. And though the browns and grays of the German November flowed past the train window he was not there to see them; he was lost in anticipation, lost in lover’s greed. In fact, he would ask himself, what didn’t he want? He certainly wanted her, wanted her in the ways of a Victorian novel kept in a night table drawer-what magnificent fantasies he made for himself on that train! But that wasn’t all. He wanted affection; kindness, refuge. He wanted to spend the night with his lover. He wanted to play. The game of temptations and surrenders, cunning noes and yesses. And then he wanted to talk-to talk in the darkness where he could say anything he liked, then he wanted to sleep, all wrapped and twined around her in a well-warmed bed. He even wanted breakfast. Something delicious.

And what he wanted, he got.

In its very own diabolical way, destiny delivered every last wish. Only it added a little something extra, a little something he didn’t expect, buried it right in the midst of all his pleasures where he’d be sure to find it.

The Iron Exchange Building was even stranger at night: the long tile hallways in shadow, the frosted glass doors opaque and secretive, the silence broken only by an agonizing piano lesson in progress on the floor below and the echo of his footsteps.

But in low light the studio of the painter Benno Ault was agreeably softened. The shrieks and torments pinned to the wall faded to sighs, and Marta Haecht, at center stage, appeared in short silk robe and Parisian scent, slid gracefully into his arms, and gave him every reason to hope that his thoughts on the train had not been idle fantasies.

They had their Victorian novel-in feeling if not in form-and wound up sprawled together across the sofa, for a moment stunned senseless. Then Marta turned the lamp off and they lay peacefully in the darkness for a time, sticky, sore, thoroughly pleased with themselves and the very best of friends. “What was that you said? ” she asked idly. “Was it Russian?”

“Yes.”

“I wasn’t sure, perhaps it was Polish.”

“No, Russian. Very much so.”

“Was it a sweet thing to say? “

“No, a rough thing. Common. A command.”

“Ah, a command. And I obeyed? ” She was smiling in the darkness.

“You did. Somehow you understood.”

“And that you liked.”

“Couldn’t you tell?”

“Yes. Of course.” She thought for a time. “We are so different,” she mused.

“Not really.”

“You mustn’t say that. Such a difference is a, a pleasure for me.”

“Oh. Day and night, then.”

She put a hand on his chest. “Don’t,” she said.

They were still for a while. He looked up at the large window, illuminated by the pale night sky of a city. A few snowflakes drifted against the glass and melted into droplets. “It’s snowing,” he said.

She turned halfway around to look. “It’s a sign,” she said.

“You mean the night we met, back again.”

“Yes, just so. I can still see you in Dr. Baumann’s kitchen, making small talk. You hadn’t even noticed me. But I knew everything that would happen.”

“Did you truly? “

She nodded yes. “I knew you would take me off somewhere, a hotel, a room. I thought, a man like you can always have a woman like me. It struck me, that thought, I was so surprised at myself. Because I was so good. I’d always known boys who wanted me, at the university and so forth, but I was such a little Madchen, I wouldn’t. I’d blush and push them away-they were so earnest! And then- this thing always happens when you aren’t expecting it-the Baumanns, the stuffy old Baumanns, invited me to their house.” She laughed. “I didn’t want to go. My father made me.”

“But you said you knew who I was, that you wanted to meet me.”

“I know I said that. I lied. I meant to flatter you.”

“Ach!” He pretended to be wounded.

“But no, you should be flattered by such a lie, because the moment I saw you I wanted everything, to be made to do everything. Your dark shirt, your dark hair, the way you looked into me-it was so … Russian-I can’t describe it. Something about you, not polite, not at all polite the way Germans are, but strong, intense.” She smoothed his hair back above his ear; the gesture seemed to last a long time and he could feel the heat of her hand.

“Isn’t that what Germans always think of Russians, when they don’t hate them? “

“It’s true. Some hate, and are hateful. But for the rest of us it’s complicated. We are all tied up inside ourselves, almost embarrassed at being in the world. It’s our German culture I think, and we see Russians-Jews, Slavs, all the people in the East-as passionate and romantic, their feelings out for all to see, and deep in our hearts we’re envious of them because we sense that they feel, whereas we just think about everything, think and think and think.”

“What about Dr. Baumann? Passionate and romantic?”

“Oh, not him.” She laughed at the idea.

“But he’s a Jew.”

“Yes of course he is. But here they’re more like us than anything else, all tight and cold, self-conscious. That’s the problem here in Germany; the Jews have become German, consider themselves German, just as good as any German, and there are many Germans who feel it is a presumption. They don’t like it. Then, after the revolution in 1917 we had here in Berlin the Russian and Polish Jews, and they are really quite different from us-perhaps rude is the word, not cultured. Mostly they stay off by themselves, but when one sees them, for instance when they are on the trolley car and it is crowded, they stare, and one can smell the onions they eat.”

“The Jews from Poland have been sent back.”

“Yes, I know this and it’s sad for them. But there were some who wanted to go back, and Poland would not let them in, and there are people who said why must this be always Germany’s problem? So now they all have to go back, and for them I feel sad.”

“And Dr. Baumann? Where can he go? “

“Why should he go anywhere? For most Jews it’s terrible, a tragedy, they lose everything, but for him it’s not like that. The Dr. Baumanns of the world always find a way to get along.”

“Is this something your father tells you?”

“No. Something I know from my own eyes.”

“You see him?”

“Socially? Of course not. But I work for a man called Herr Hanau, a man from the little town of Wannsee, up on the Baltic. Herr Hanau has a small shipping company, one big ship and three little ones, and to receive consideration for government contracts he has moved his business to Berlin, and here I am his assistant. So, some weeks ago, we were awarded a small shipment of machine tools that goes up to Sweden, a great victory for us, and Herr Hanau invited me to lunch at the Kaiserhof, to celebrate. And there, large as life, is Dr. Baumann, eating a cutlet and drinking Rhine wine. Life cannot be so bad for him after all.”