Blind and deaf Jews can now wear armbands identifying their condition in traffic. I no longer have a lower body, an external heart, in Herta’s scheme of brings. I am cut off at the waist forever.
Jews allowed to keep pets; budgies and puppies, etc., doled out at police stations; Jews weeping with gratitude as they take their new playmates home. Herta starts to breathe differently as we kiss; she is always self-possessed; every move of mine is coldly monitored.
Jews permitted to buy meat, cheese, and eggs. Revocation of all picnicking privileges, even though I whine about my health and name flowers in English until I’m blue in the face.
Jews empowered to have friendly relations with Aryans. Herta no longer says “I love you.” I still say it. Kissing continues, after a fashion, but tongues now completely verboten.
Curfew for Jews lifted. It used to be nine P.M. in summer and eight P.M. in winter. Herta has to be home by eight-thirty, whatever the season.
The designation Unbeliever ceases to be mandatory for the Jews. But I have to say that I no longer believe.
She loves me, she loves me not. I take the same two-hour bus and tram ride for the same old peck on the cheek. Soon she will celebrate her sixteenth birthday. Then what?
Will we even hold hands? Sometimes, wildly, I find myself urging Odilo to use violence (quickly, before she’s fifteen): violence, which mends and heals. Actually, though, I have little enthusiasm for the venture. Could he do it, do you think? Is it in him? I’ve come to the conclusion that Odilo Unverdorben, as a moral being, is absolutely unexceptional, liable to do what everybody else does, good or bad, with no limit, once under the cover of numbers. He could never be an exception; he is dependent on the health of his society, needing the sandy smiles of Rolf and Rudolph, of Rüdiger, of Reinhard. On Kristallnacht when we all romped and played and helped the Jews, and the fizzy shards swirled like stars or souls, and when Herta bent to wipe her lips with a pink handkerchief—before spitting my tongue out of her mouth. Is it somehow the Jews’ fault? That lock of her hair he had, kept in a pillbox—why did he return it? Now I can exactly see the shape and size, the perfect fit, of the loneliness that is approaching. She gives me flowers, but she loves me not. She loves me not.
Still, sprich durch die Blume. Hush now, speak through a flower. I know you shouldn’t grumble: for one thing, it’s against the law. . . . She’s stopped talking to me. It was only a matter of time. Hush now. One day at the bus stop, as she alighted, she just waved goodbye to me. In the evenings I still wait there for her, and track her as she walks to school, with my ears humming. Now she moves right through my gaze, which no longer has the power to slow or halt her. Then she vanished. Her small shape is gone, forever, replaced by a void of the same dimensions. I look for her everywhere—but he doesn’t. Odilo’s recovery was idiotically swift. The very next day he was upbraided by the professor for giggling out loud in Gross Anatomy: Rolf and Rudolph were making jokes about the new female corpse. ndeed, his
affections seem to have redirected themselves, platonically but otherwise intact, to fair-browed Reinhard. … I suffer alone. Arzt fur Seelisches Leiden, say the placards in the ground-floor windows. Doctor for sick souls. Now that sounds like the kind of doctor I need. At present we’re spending much of our time at the hospital, as a visitor— because our mother’s turned up at last. Her name, by the way, is Margaret. Odilo and I have been airing the new apartment until it is heavy with her smell. I suppose we’ll probably set up house together. At least she’ll be someone to talk to. In English. She reminds me of Irene. She keeps saying, “Where am I? Where am I?” “In the hospital,” Odilo keeps dourly replying. “In the hospital. In the ward in the hospital. Das Krankenhaus, Mutti. Im Krankenhaus.”