‘ Levi, meine Liebling… I’m back.’
Ramona wrenched open the door but it banged against the security chain. ‘Levi! Levi! How…?’ Ramona tore at the security chain, opened the door and threw her arms around Levi’s neck. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming home? I’ve been so frightened, Levi!’ Tears of relief flowed down Ramona’s cheeks as she clung to her husband.
‘Papa! Papa!’ Rebekkah and Ariel came running down the hall. Rebekkah launched herself at Levi and fastened her little arms around his neck in a vice-like grip. Levi kissed his daughter and put his free arm around Ariel. ‘We’ve missed you, Papa!’ Rebekkah said, hanging on to her father for dear life.
‘I wasn’t sure if the Nazis were tapping our phone line, so I couldn’t ring,’ Levi said, after kissing the children goodnight. He took a seat at their kitchen table. ‘I hardly recognised Vienna for the soldiers,’ Levi added, after he’d explained his escape from Tikal.
‘It’s been terrible, Levi.’ Ramona sipped her tea. ‘Rebekkah and Ariel are too afraid to go out, and so am I. We can’t even walk in the park. There are signs everywhere: Juden Verboten. ’ The Brownshirts have been here twice already this week, demanding that I close my boutique. Not that I have any customers any more,’ she said, wiping a tear from her cheek.
Levi reached across the kitchen table and held Ramona’s hand. ‘We still have each other and the children, Liebling, and that’s all that matters.’
‘I’m frightened, Levi. Won’t Himmler and this von Hei?en be looking for you?’
Levi cursed himself for leaving his family unprotected. ‘I should never have gone; not that I had much choice,’ he added ruefully. ‘Although I don’t think von Hei?en will have admitted to Himmler that he had the figurine in his possession, much less the reason it disappeared. But you’re right, we’ll have to leave, and quickly. I’ve made contact with Ze’ev Jabotinsky down at the Jewish Agency. They’re setting up escape routes through Istanbul. If we can get to the United States or England, Albert Einstein or Erwin Schrodinger might be able to put in a good word for me at Princeton or Oxford. I can carry on my Mayan research,’ he said, ‘and you can start another boutique.’
‘And what about the apartment? Even if we could sell, in this market we won’t get anything.’
‘My brother has German citizenship. He can look after it until things improve.’
‘He’s a Nazi sympathiser, Levi!’
‘Yes, but that can work to our advantage. At least the apartment will stay in the family until all this is over.’
Ramona’s sobs diminished, calmed by her own inner strength and conviction, which was in turn underpinned by an unshakeable faith. Suddenly shouting and the sounds of shattering glass carried through the cold night air. Levi got up and went to the front window. Further down Judengasse he could see torches.
‘Turn off all the lights, quickly!’
The sounds of shouting and the smashing of glass intensified. A menacing group of young thugs – members of the Austrian Hitler Youth and Brownshirts – had entered Judengasse.
‘ Judenfrei! Judenfrei! ’ The yelling echoed off Judengasse ’s buildings. ‘Jew-free! Jew-free!’ Just as Nebuchadnezzar and Titus had destroyed the First and Second temples in Jerusalem, Hitler and Himmler were determined to destroy the Jews of Vienna. Bricks were being hurled through the plate-glass windows of every shop daubed with the Star of David.
‘Get the children and lock them in the bathroom,’ Levi whispered. In the shadows, he could feel Ramona’s fear. Levi quickly picked up the precious Mayan figurine that had remained in Vienna, wrapped it in red velvet, lifted the carpet in front of the fireplace and hid the figurine alongside the other one in the long tin trunk he’d placed under the floorboard. He’d thought about putting them in the big safe in his study, but he knew that would be the first place the Nazis would look. Satisfied the figurines were as secure as he could make them at short notice, Levi hid his notes on the Fibonacci sequence and the pyramids in Tikal inside one of his friend Erwin Schrodinger’s books, Science and the Human Temperament. He slid the book back on the shelf and turned to secure the apartment. He and Ramona moved a heavy dresser over the big trapdoor that concealed the stairs leading to Ramona’s boutique below.
‘Go and join the children now,’ Levi said, and he moved towards the front window. The mob was getting closer; the sound of glass smashing was sickening. Levi drew back as a group of about twenty young thugs stopped outside Ramona’s boutique.
‘ Juden verrecke! Death to the Jews!’ one of them yelled, hurling brick after brick through the window. The mob, armed with iron bars, stormed in and began systematically smashing glass shelving, counters, cases, anything that would break. They splashed yellow paint over the designer dresses and hats. One thug climbed the stairs and began to batter the door with the butt of his rifle, but the rest of the mob was moving on, and he gave up. ‘We’ll be back, Jew bastards!’ he yelled as he ran down the stairs to catch up.
‘How long do you think we’ve got?’ Ramona asked, her arms around Rebekkah and Ariel. Rebekkah sobbed and Ariel fought back the tears, both of them terrified. The sounds of smashing glass receded, replaced by sirens as flames began to pour from the Synagogue, just a block away from Judengasse.
‘We’ll have to pack tonight,’ Levi replied, his eyes moist.
13
ISTANBUL
T he sun bade farewell in a fiery salute, streaking the sky to the west of Istanbul with fierce red and orange. In stark contrast to Cardinal Pacelli, who when papal nuncio in Munich had travelled in a black limousine adorned with the Vatican coat of arms, the papal delegate to Turkey and Greece and future Pope John XXIII, Archbishop Angelo Roncalli, elected to leave his old battered Fiat in the garage. Dressed in comfortable civilian attire, Roncalli hailed a ramshackle taxi in the narrow road outside the Papal Embassy in Olcek Sokak. In years to come, long after he had died, a grateful Turkish people would rename Olcek Sokak ‘Pope Roncalli Street’.
‘Hotel Pera Palas, please.’
‘ Evet, Pera Palas!’ The old driver engaged the gears with a frightening crunch and pulled out into the chaos that was Istanbul’s traffic, waving his hand placatingly at those yelling abuse that was nothing more than ritual amidst the cacophony of screeching brakes and blaring horns.
‘Senin bir ailen var? You have a family?’ Roncalli asked the wizened driver.
‘Evet.’ The taxi driver’s dark face creased with a smile at Roncalli’s use of his native tongue, his smile punctuated by three missing teeth. ‘Two boys and a girl,’ he answered proudly. ‘And you?’
Roncalli smiled and shook his head. ‘Hayir. Just me.’
The roadside was thick with traders, and the driver threaded his way past them with a practised ease. Tarpaulins were spread edge to edge with eclectic offerings of fish and chickens, leather and brass, shoes and shirts, and occasionally uds and cumbus, Turkish lutes and mandolins. They reached Refik Saydam Caddesi and began the descent towards the Bosphorus, the long narrow stretch of water that connects the Black Sea to the Marmara. On the other side of the road, an old brown horse, ribs showing through his pitifully thin coat, nostrils flared and breath clouding in the cold, laboured to pull an impossible load up the steeply sloping hill. The rubber tyres on the rickety wooden cart had worn through to the canvas, and the hessian sacks of rice, spice and coffee, piled three metres high, defied gravity. Old men struggled past under the weight of big wicker baskets full of oranges, bananas and bread. Legless beggars sitting on small wheeled boards pushed their way between smaller carts, some supporting brass urns full of strong Turkish coffee, others containing braziers on which chestnuts and kebabs were roasting. Myriad smells of spices and meats wafted through the open window of the taxi.
‘Thank you, my friend,’ Roncalli said as they reached the Hotel Pera Palas. ‘A little extra for the children,’ he added, pressing more lire into the taxi driver’s hand.
Roncalli paused and took in the view of the Golden Horn. Across the harbour, the minarets of the great mosques of Istanbul rose like stone fingers towards the evening sky. Roncalli turned and headed towards the Pera Palas, an opulent rococo-style building on Mesrutiyet Caddes i. A young bellboy with dark curly hair, dressed in black trousers and a deep-purple military jacket topped with gold epaulettes, smiled broadly and sprang to open the
