The Orphan's Tale. Pam Jenoff
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I wrote immediately, begging him to tell me what their plans were, if they needed money. I would have brought the whole family to Berlin and fit them into our apartment. But that would only have meant drawing them closer to the danger. In any event, the point was moot: my letter came back unopened. That had been six months earlier and there had been no word. Where had they gone?
“Ingrid!” Herr Neuhoff booms as he enters the sitting room. If he is surprised to see me, he gives no indication. Herr Neuhoff is not as old as my father and in my childhood memories, he had been dashing and handsome, if portly, with dark hair and a mustache. But he is shorter than I remembered, with a full stomach and just a gray fringe of hair. I rise and start toward him. Then, seeing the small swastika pin on his lapel, I stop. Coming here had been a mistake. “For appearances,” he says hastily.
“Yes, of course.” But I am not sure whether to believe him. I should just go. His face appears genuinely glad to see me, though. I decide to take a chance.
He gestures to a chair overlaid with lace and I sit, perching uneasily. “Cognac?” he offers.
I falter. “That would be lovely.” He rings a bell and the same woman who answered the door brings in a tray—one house servant where there used to be many. The Circus Neuhoff has not been left untouched by the war. I feign a sip from the glass she offers me. I do not want to be rude, but I need to keep my head about me to figure out where I am going from here. There is no resting place for me in Darmstadt anymore.
“You’ve just come from Berlin?” His tone is polite, one step short of asking what I am doing here.
“Yes. Papa wrote that he disbanded the circus.” Herr Neuhoff’s brow creases with his unspoken question: the circus broke up months ago. Why have I come now? “More recently I lost contact and my letters came back unanswered,” I add. “Have you heard from them?”
“I’m afraid nothing,” he replies. “There were only a few of them left at the end, all of the workers had gone.” Because it was illegal to work for the Jews. My father had treated his performers and even the manual laborers like family, caring for them when they were sick, inviting them to family celebrations, such as my brothers’ bar mitzvahs. He’d given generously to the town, too, doing charity shows for the hospital and donating to the political officials to curry favor. Trying so very hard to make us one of them. We had nearly forgotten that we weren’t.
Herr Neuhoff continues, “I went looking for them you know, after. But the house was empty. They were gone, though whether they went on their own or something had happened, I couldn’t say.” He walks to the mahogany desk in the corner and opens a drawer. “I do have this.” He reveals a Kiddush cup and I rise, fighting the urge to cry out at the familiar Hebrew letters. “This was yours, no?”
I nod, taking it from him. How had he gotten it? There had been a menorah, as well, and other things. The Germans must have taken those. I run my finger along the edge of the cup. On the road my family would have gathered in our railcar just to light the candles and share a bit of whatever wine and bread could be found, a few minutes of just us. I see shoulders pressed close to fit around the tiny table, my brothers’ faces illuminated by candlelight. We were not so very religious—we had to perform on Saturdays and had not managed to keep kosher on the road. But we clung fast to the little things, a moment’s observance each week. No matter how happy I had been with Erich, some part of my heart always drifted from the gay Berlin cafés back to the quiet Sabbaths.
I sink down once more. “I should never have left.”
“The Germans still would have put your father out of business,” he points out. If I had been here, though, perhaps the Germans would not have forced my family from their home or arrested them, or done whatever had caused them to not be here any longer. My connection to Erich, which I had held up like such a shield, had in the end proved worthless.
Herr Neuhoff coughs once, then again, his face reddening. I wonder if he is ill.
“I’m sorry I can’t be of more help,” he says when he has recovered. “You’ll go back to Berlin now?”
I shift awkwardly. “I’m afraid not.”
It has been three days since Erich returned unexpectedly early from work to our apartment. I threw myself into his arms. “I’m so glad to see you,” I exclaimed. “Dinner isn’t quite ready yet, but we could have a drink.” He spent so many nights at official dinners or buried in his study with papers. It seemed like forever since we’d shared a quiet evening together.
He did not put his arms around me but remained stiff. “Ingrid,” he said, using my full name and not the pet name he’d given me, “we need to divorce.”
“Divorce?” I wasn’t sure I had ever said the word before. Divorce was something that happened in a movie or a book about rich people. I didn’t know anyone who had ever done it—in my world you married until you died. “Is there another woman?” I croaked, barely able to manage the words. Of course there was not. The passion between us had been unbreakable—until now.
Surprise and pain flashed over his face at the very idea. “No!” And in that one word I knew exactly the depths of his love and that this awful thing was hurting him. So why would he even say it? “The Reich has ordered all officers with Jewish wives to divorce,” he explained. How many, I wondered, could there possibly be? He pulled out some documents and handed them to me with smooth strong hands. The papers carried a hint of his cologne. There was not even a spot for me to sign, my agreement or disagreement irrelevant—it was fait accompli. “It has been ordered by the Führer,” he adds. His voice was dispassionate, as though describing the day-to-day matters that went on in his department. “There is no choice.”
“We’ll run,” I said, forcing the quaver from my voice. “I can be packed in half an hour.” Improbably I lifted the roast from the table, as though that was the first thing I would take. “Bring the brown suitcase.” But Erich stood stiffly, feet planted. “What is it?”
“My job,” he replied. “People would know I was gone.” He would not go with me. The roast dropped from my hands, plate shattering, the smell of warm meat and gravy wafting sickeningly upward. It was preferable to the rest of the immaculate table, a caricature of the perfect life I thought we’d had. The brown liquid splattered upward against my stockings, staining them.
I jutted my chin defiantly. “Then I shall keep the apartment.”
But he shook his head, reaching into his billfold and emptying the contents into my hands. “You need to go. Now.” Go where? My family was all gone; I did not have papers out of Germany. Still I found my suitcase and packed mechanically, as if going on holiday. I had no idea what to take.
Two hours later when I was packed and ready to go, Erich stood before me in his uniform, so very much like the man I had spied in the audience beyond the lights the day we met. He waited awkwardly as I started for the door, as if seeing out a guest.
I stood in front of him for several seconds, staring up beseechingly, willing his eyes to meet mine. “How can you do this?” I asked. He did not answer. This is not happening, a voice inside me seemed to say. In other circumstances, I would have refused to go. But I had been caught off guard, the wind knocked out of me by an unexpected punch. I was simply too stunned to fight. “Here.” I pulled off my wedding band and held it out. “This isn’t mine anymore.”
Looking down at the ring, his whole face seemed to fall, as if realizing for the first time the finality of what he was doing. I wondered in that moment if he would tear up the papers that decreed our marriage over and say we would face the future together, whatever the odds. He swiped at his eyes.
When his hand moved away the hardness of the “new Erich,” as I called him in the recent months when it had all seemed to change, reappeared. He pushed the ring away and it clattered to the floor. I hurried to pick it up, cheeks stinging from the roughness of his once-gentle touch. “You keep it,” he said. “You can sell it if you need money.” As if the one thing that bound us together meant so little to me. He fled the apartment