became conscious of his own breathing.
The synagogue was very old, a two-story wood frame structure with a sloping roof, built perhaps a century earlier for use as a workshop, possibly a carpentry workshop since it stood against the low shed of a neighboring lumberyard.
A sign in Hebrew above the door said Beth Midresh, which meant House of Worship. That told Szara that it was being used by immigrant Jews from Poland and Russia-all synagogues in the Pale were identified that way. In France they used the name of the street, while the wealthy Jews of Germany often named their synagogues after a leader in the community-the Adler synagogue, for instance. Those were grand and glorious temples, nothing like what he approached. Seen in the light of a waning moon, the synagogue on Prinzallee might have stood in Cracow or Lodz, seemed to come from another time and place.
The impression held. The front door was unlocked, but the frame was warped and Szara had to pull hard to get it open. The interior took him back to Kishinev-the smell of sweat and urine in stale air, as though the windows were never opened. Behind the altar, above the double-doored ark that held the scrolls of the Torah, was a tiny lamp, the eternal light, and he could just make out two narrow aisles between rows of wooden chairs of several different styles. He took the aisle on the left and walked toward the front, the boards creaking softly under his feet. The door to one side of the altar was ajar; he gave it a gentle push and it swung open to reveal a man sitting slumped at a bare table. The room was narrow, perhaps serving at one time as a rabbi’s study-there were empty book shelves built up one wall.
“Dr. Baumann,” he said.
Baumann looked up at him; his collapsed posture didn’t change. “Yes,” he said in a low voice.
There was a chair directly across the table from Baumann’s and Szara sat down. “You’re not sick, are you?”
“Tired,” Baumann said. He meant the word in both senses: exhausted, and tired of life.
“We have to discuss a few things, quickly, and then we can leave. You have a way to get safely home?”
“Yes. It isn’t a problem.”
Perhaps he had a driver waiting or was driving his own automobile, Szara didn’t know. “We want to find out, first of all, if you’ve come under pressure from any of the Reichsministries. I don’t mean having to hand in your passport, or any of the laws passed against the Jews in general, I mean you in particular. In other words, have you been singled out in any way, any way at all.”
Szara thought he saw the probe hit home. The room was dark, and the reaction was very brief, not much more than a pause, but it was there. Then Baumann shook his head impatiently, as though Szara was wasting his time with such foolish notions: this was not a question he wished to discuss. Instead, he leaned forward and whispered urgently: “I’m going to accept your offer. Your offer to leave here, for my wife and I. The dog too, if it can be managed.”
“Of course,” Szara said.
“Soon. Maybe right away.”
“I have to ask …”
“We want to go to Amsterdam. It shouldn’t be too hard; our friends say that the Dutch are letting us in, no questions asked. So the only difficulty is getting out of Germany. We’ll take a suitcase and the little dog, nothing else, they can have it all, everything.”
“One thing we’ll need to-” Szara stopped cold and leaned his head to one side.
Baumann sat up straight as though he’d been shocked. “My God,” he said.
“Is it singing?”
Baumann nodded.
Szara instinctively looked at his watch. “At one-thirty in the morning?”
“When they sing like that,” Baumann said, then paused, his voice fading into silence as he concentrated on the sound.
Szara remembered the parade on the Unter den Linden. These were the same voices, deep and vibrant. Both of them sat still as the sound grew louder, then Baumann stood suddenly. “They must not see us.” The beginning of panic was in his voice.
“Would we be better off out in the street?”
“They’re coming here.
Szara stood. He remembered the road into Wittenau-there was nothing there. By now the words of the song were plainly audible; it was something they sang in the Rathskellers as they drank their beer:
“Hide.” Baumann spoke the word in a broken whisper, the voice of a terrified child.
Szara fought for control of himself. He had been through pogroms before-in Kishinev and Odessa. They always attacked the synagogue. “We’re getting out,” he said. It was an order. Whatever else happened, he wasn’t going to end his life in dumb shock like an animal that knows it’s going to die. He walked quickly out of the narrow room and had taken two steps back up the aisle when one of the dark windows flanking the entry door suddenly brightened; a golden shadow flickered against it for a moment, then the glass came showering in on the floor. The men outside sent up a great cheer and, simultaneously, Baumann screamed. Szara spun and clapped his hand over the man’s mouth; he felt saliva on his palm but held on tight until Baumann made a gesture that he could control himself. Behind them, the other window exploded. Szara leaned close to Baumann. “A stairway,” he whispered. “There must be a stairway.”
“Behind the curtain.”
They ran up three steps onto the altar. Szara heard the stubborn door squeak at the other end of the building just as Baumann threw the curtain aside and they disappeared behind the ark. There was no banister on the stairs, just steps braced against the wall. He raced up, Baumann behind him, and tried the door. On the other side of the curtain he could hear chairs being kicked around and the other windows being broken to a chorus of laughter and cheers. “Jews come out!” roared a drunken voice. Szara tore the door open with one hand and reached back for Baumann’s sleeve with the other, pulling him into the upstairs room, then turning and kicking the door shut. The second story was unused-a pile of drapes, cob-webbed corners, broken chairs, the smell of old wood … and something else. Burning. He turned to look at Baumann; his mouth was wide open, gasping for air, and his hand was pressed against the middle of his chest. “No!” Szara said. Baumann looked at him strangely, then sank to his knees. Szara ran to the closest window, but there were torches below and dim shapes moving across the alley side of the synagogue. He crossed the room to a second window and saw that the upper story was just above the roof of the lumberyard shed. It was a very old window, tiny panes of glass in wooden strips, and had not been opened for years. He strained at it for a moment, then drew his foot back and kicked out the glass and the bracing, kicking again and again, savagely, even though he felt the fabric of his trousers rip and saw blood droplets suddenly appear in the thick dust on the sill. When the opening was sufficiently wide, he ran to Baumann and took him under the armpits. “Get up,” he said. “Get up.”
There were tears on Baumann’s face. He did not move.
Szara began dragging him across the floor until, at last, Baumann started crawling. Szara spoke to him like a child: “Yes, that’s it.” Somewhere close by he heard the splintering sound of a door being ripped off its hinges and he glanced, horrified, toward the stairway, then realized the noise came from below, that they were after the scrolls of the Torah in the ark. The smell of burning was getting stronger; a curl of smoke worked through the floorboards in one corner. He leaned Baumann against the wall below the window and spoke by his ear: “Go ahead, I’ll help you, it isn’t far and then we’ll be safe.” Baumann mumbled something-Szara couldn’t understand what he said but it meant he wanted to be left to die. Infuriated, Szara pushed him aside and worked his way through the jagged circle of broken glass and wood, tumbling forward onto his hands on the tarred gravel surface of the roof of the lumberyard shed. He scrambled to his feet and reached back through the opening, getting a grip on the lapels of Baumann’s jacket and hauling him forward. When Baumann’s weight began to tilt over the sill, he thrust out his hands instinctively and the two of them fell together.
Szara lay stunned for a moment. Falling backward and taking Baumann’s weight had knocked the wind out of him. Then he began to breathe again and, in the cold air, became aware of a wet sock. He struggled away from Baumann and sat up to look at his ankle. Blood was welling steadily from a slash down his shin. He pressed the
