Listening to Lola play the violin, I thought of my childhood. When Mother told me to go away, I would sometimes climb on a giant elm near the house she cleaned. At the nook of branches on the top of the tree, above the ground, I could see beneath me the grassy land, the barns scattered like old toys, the loop of a winding dirt path, and the pearly horizon like spilled milk. Often, I would sit on the branch for hours, reading Dickinson, watching the arrows of sunlight glint through the leaves, the chipmunks’ ballet-like pirouettes, the brown beetles with wings flaring like cupped hands. Creatures came to visit, sitting close to me, the woodpeckers, the cardinals, the goldfinches, the red-breasted robins, the blue jays, like fussy aunts and amiable uncles that I never knew.
In Lola’s sparsely decorated family room, sitting with her family, listening to her music, watching her red scar, a broken chord, a ridge before the storm in Amherst, I felt I was back to the tree of my sanctuary again.
But always, the shadows of danger loomed. There were Sara’s nervous whispers in German the moment I stepped into their family room, Josef’s careful and distressing account of harassment at work, the visits of the uncle who had taken over the Schnitzlers’ fabric shop at last and now demanded the key to their apartment, and the disturbing news in the newspaper—the new restrictions, recent riots, and heartbreaking property destruction, which I made Lola translate for me. Then it was ordered that the Schnitzlers report their bank accounts and donate all valuables over five thousand reichsmarks to the government. Lola was furious. They had barely gotten by, and now they must surrender the last of their valuables her father had left for them.
Anxious, Josef mentioned leaving Vienna—he believed the rising hostility was detrimental to his career. Palestine, the United States, and Britain were ideal destinations, he mentioned. I had never paid attention to visa applications in the consulate before, but, concerned, I asked Fengshan about the process. China didn’t have an immigration policy, Fengshan said casually.
Anyway, Lola didn’t want to leave Vienna. She was a Viennese, she said. Her music career and her life belonged here; she had no plan to go.
Then one afternoon in June, when I arrived at their apartment, Lola pulled me inside. Her usually calm face looked strained and tearstained.
“What’s wrong, Lola?”
“It’s Josef.”
A group of policemen had raided his pharmacy that morning, searching for Josef’s boss’s daughter, whom they accused of engaging in an illegal sexual relationship with an heiress of a jewelry company in the United States—somehow, they had seized the letters sent by the heiress. Josef’s boss and his daughter had left on an overseas trip a few weeks ago, so the police arrested Josef and the rest of the pharmacy staff, accusing them of aiding a homosexual. They were taken to the Hotel Metropole, the Nazi Headquarters.
CHAPTER 12
LOLA
Sara pedaled on the sewing machine in the family room, frantically feeding the needle a long strip of cloth with her good hand. Working was a way for her to relieve fear and stress, but she was sobbing. Little Eva looked frightened, her eyes lowered, winding her music box with the mini ballerina figurine. Mutter locked herself in her room. Now and then, she murmured, “He must have left the house with his left foot first.”
I opened the door and closed it behind me. It was up to me to save my brother.
I asked for advice from Josef’s fiancée, his friends, my musician friends, and the neighbors who still dared to speak to me. They said I needed to gather any valid documents to prove Josef was a good citizen, documents from non-Jews who could vouch for his good character, and that the best case to prove that was a letter of recommendation from a Nazi Party member. As far as I could tell, Josef had few non-Jew friends. But after hours of thinking and querying, I finally thought of one of his clients who was German, a Nazi, working in the Rathaus.
I put on my wide-brimmed straw hat and applied my lipstick in the mirror. The scar on my face looked crimson, hostile, so I smoothed on a thick coat of powder to cover it up. Then I went to the man’s office in the Rathaus, and, swallowing my pride, I begged him to write a letter to confirm Josef’s good character. “Josef is a good brother, a capable employee, and a good fiancé. He is going to get married next year.”
“Miss Schnitzler, if you can wait, I’ll have the letter ready for you in an hour.” The man—thank God—still had a conscience.
I wanted to kiss him when he handed the letter to me, despite his uniform and the swastika armband.
Then I went to the War Ministry to request my father’s war record, which would prove Josef was the son of a war hero, and then I lined up outside the tax office to receive a tax record that would show how diligently my brother had paid taxes. It took me two weeks to finally receive both. With the letter confirming my brother’s good character, the certificate demonstrating his good breeding, and the tax record verifying that he was a dutiful citizen, I went to the dreadful Headquarters where Grace and I had been confined, waited outside for three hours, presented the documents, and was told I should come back the next day.
The next day, when I arrived, I was told my brother couldn’t be released due to insufficient documents.
“Insufficient? What else do you need?”
Apparently, they had lost the letter that indicated Josef’s good character.
I had never run on the street—in Vienna, only desperate people ran—but I was desperate now. I raced back to the Rathaus as fast as I could and pleaded with Josef’s client to write another letter. The man took a sip of his coffee, asked me if it was hot outside, and then picked up his pen. He wrote this out of pity, I could see, but for my brother’s freedom, I didn’t care.
The new letter in hand, I went to the Headquarters again, waiting outside the majestic building in the rising heat of summer, sweat dripping from my forehead and pooling on my neck. I waited from morning to evening. No one bothered to take my documents; every Nazi official was busy in and out of the Headquarters. June went by, and then came July. Then finally a man with a blond goatee took my letter and certificates. After a quick glance, he said these were all rubbish.
“Please, what else do you need?” I felt my eyes moisten, but no. I could beg but must not cry.
“Your brother is an enabler of a homosexual, a traitor to this country, and a Jew. He must vow to leave the country and never come back. Show us proof of his intention to depart; then he’ll be released.” The Blond Goatee threw me back the stack of papers I’d prepared.
The Nazis could have told me weeks ago while I begged and waited outside in the suffocating heat. They were toying with my brother’s life.
A visa, then. A visa for my brother’s freedom. As if we still had the illusion of having a decent life in Vienna!
CHAPTER 13
FENGSHAN
“May I talk to you, my love?” Grace’s voice came.
He folded up the newspaper he was reading. The ?vian Conference had convened yesterday, and an effusive wave of jubilation and relief was printed across the few liberal newspapers that still reported the plight of Jews. It was time for humanitarian intervention from the world, they cheered. But the local weekly newspaper, Der Stürmer, which appeared to be propaganda for the Nazi government, published a scathing article mocking and criticizing the overreach of the United States, Britain, and France.