The vienna writers circl.., p.6
The Vienna Writers Circle, page 6
I nodded with grim approval when Josef showed me what he’d got. Then I stood below holding the wooden chair that I’d brought from the kitchen and watched as Josef climbed up and nailed the cross above my mother’s front door.
8
As the Gestapo officer, Heinz Piehler, looked around his home drawing room, Sigmund Freud observed him as calmly and neutrally as he was able to muster. Freud didn’t want to risk any outward signs of disdain or hostility, which might endanger himself or his family.
Piehler wore a dark gray suit and was accompanied by two other men, one also in plain clothes, his Gestapo assistant, and an SS officer in full uniform. These other two stayed strangely static as Piehler walked around the room. Piehler stopped and traced one finger across a small brass Buddha on a bookshelf.
“If you are allowed passage out of Austria, a Kommissar will be appointed to appraise your various works of art and your private papers.” Piehler looked back at Freud, smiling thinly. “While I might have appreciation of such objects, I don’t have in-depth knowledge of them. This man, Kommissar Sauerwald, will have.”
“I see.”
“Sauerwald is a party member, but like you he’s also very much an academic, so hopefully someone you can trust.”
Freud nodded. “Seems quite a reasonable and admirable arrangement.”
Piehler held his gaze keenly on Freud for a moment, trying to gauge whether he was being sarcastic. “We wish to be fair with you. At the end of Kommissar Sauerwald’s evaluation, you will be asked to sign an acceptance of it—in part as a reflection of that fairness.”
A slower nod this time. It was becoming clearer now. He would be asked to sign an acceptance of that valuation and whatever large part of it the Nazis would take to allow his passage out of Austria, so that it appeared he was fully in accord with it. “As you say, appears a perfectly fair arrangement.”
Again a steadier stare from Piehler for a moment. “You will also need to share with Sauerwald any bank accounts you hold, and show him any and all statements. It’s important to hold nothing back—in order to ensure that a final valuation is fair.”
“I perfectly understand.” Freud felt his jaw tightening—a common symptom in any case with his increasing mouth cancer—as he fought to keep his expression calm and neutral, not betray his pent-up frustration and anger.
Piehler continued pacing after a second, eyes darting keenly around the room. “I see you have a number of photos of immediate family, but none it seems of friends and associates.”
“My wife has put those in various folders and separate albums.” Freud smiled tamely. “Only so many photos a room can take without appearing cluttered.”
“Yes, of course.” Piehler returned the smile equally tamely. “Hopefully Kommissar Sauerwald will also be able to appraise those to see if they are of any value.”
Josef
After nailing the cross above Lena’s door, Josef didn’t feel like just going home for the night. So after a snack at a Würstelstand, a leisurely bath, changing into an evening suit and splashing on some fresh cologne at home, he headed to his favorite nightclub, Der Blaue Engel.
Smoke was heavy as he walked in, swirls of it rising through the spotlights aimed at the central stage. In the glow of that spotlight was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. But then he’d become something of an expert on how she looked: he’d been coming to see her one or two nights every week for the past four years.
Now twenty-eight years old, Deya Reynes was as fresh and beautiful as the first day he’d met her; but then maybe, too, he was biased: love is blind.
Josef could see that the audience was equally captivated. She was wearing a full flamenco outfit today, long wavy black hair and large amber eyes completing her exotic Spanish senorita look. Deya Reynes wasn’t just her stage name, but her name in real life; or, at least, had been for the past six years. Josef, along with club owner Max Adler, was one of the few people who knew that Deya was originally a Romani gypsy. Her past and identity buried so long ago that Josef couldn’t even recall her original name; or in fact if Deya had ever told him. Deya loved mysteries.
The identity change had not only been because of the anti-Romani stance with the rise of the Nazi party, but also hiding away from her violent and abusive ex-husband, who she left a year after their daughter was born.
That identity change had in fact been made by a cousin of Deya’s, Lorenzo, which he later developed into a useful sideline business with the increasing number of Romani and Jews in the city keen to bury their own identities.
As Deya stamped her heels more dramatically, flouncing her skirt higher at points, Josef smiled as he noticed some men close to the stage trying to see if she was wearing any underwear. She blew a kiss Josef’s way as she spotted him three tables back.
Then, following a more pronounced castanet clicking and heel stamping—almost like a drumroll—Deya swept her flamenco skirt away and threw it to one side, answering that front-row curiosity. Underneath, she wore frilly black lace panties and matching stockings held up by garters.
Raucous cheering and laughter rose from the far side of the room, but as Josef looked over he saw it was equally because another bottle of champagne had been opened as a club girl draped herself in the lap of an SS officer, another girl raising her glass and giggling among the group of nine: four uniformed SS, two of whom Josef hadn’t seen in the club before, two brownshirts and three police SD, one of them Kurt Landmann from his own station. Josef lifted a hand in acknowledgment and Landmann smiled and waved back.
Five or six showgirls worked the audience, wearing only bolero tops, lace corsets and underwear, trying to entice customers into buying as much overpriced champagne as possible. And for an extra “fee,” sometimes they’d disappear into one of the curtained booths at the back of the club.
“You saving yourself just for Deya, as usual?”
“As usual.” Josef smiled tightly as club owner Max Adler approached. Josef held a hand out and Max joined him at the table. “Being unpredictable is not a trait to be admired, you know.”
Max chuckled. “Don’t worry. We’ve got only one new girl working tonight. I’ll warn her not to pester you—that you’ve only got eyes for Deya.”
Always the same routine. Josef would turn up toward the end of the night when Deya was on her last couple of dances and the other girls knew meanwhile to leave him be. He’d order a bottle of champagne which Max let him have cut-price due to his regularity, plus in part he paid his way with backup security. Der Blaue Engel attracted a fair few of Vienna’s lowlifes and Josef would often advise Max which ones might be troublesome. And a few nights when customers had got too heavy-handed with the girls or a drunken brawl had broken out which the bouncer had trouble handling, Josef had helped eject them.
Deya would never spend any time with other customers or go to the curtained booths while Josef was there, and while no doubt she did on the five or six nights he wasn’t there, or even before he arrived, he never asked. That part of Deya’s life he now accepted—the chance of changing that went five years ago—but they both studiously sidestepped the details. Too painful. It was far from the ideal arrangement; but dating a club girl like Deya, probably as good as it got.
As more cheering and raucous laughter came from the SS and SD police tables at the end, Josef commented, “Looks like a good crowd tonight.”
Max glanced toward them, smiled tightly. “I don’t know about good. We’re busy, at least.”
Josef nodded. As a Jewish club owner, he knew that Max had been walking a thin line these past few years, and now even more precarious with Anschluss. Though Max had partly himself to blame; he’d purposely aimed to attract the military and police at his club, in fact was originally going to call it Der Blaue Max, after the military medal. Before someone suggested that naming a salacious club after a military honor might be seen as disrespectful—so he’d opted in the end for Der Blaue Engel, after the Marlene Dietrich film, which had hit screens two years before he opened the club.
Max was assured that name would equally attract military men, which it did. But now with the advent of Anschluss, it no doubt felt they were too close for comfort. Max’s only saving grace, and probably why he’d so far been left alone, was that he was a veritable giant of a man, approaching six foot four, and hale and hearty in manner. Not a timid Jew they could shove around. Despite themselves, the Führer-ass-lickers warmed to his personality, and the club girls loved him too, looked upon him as a big, protective teddy bear.
Max lit up a cigar, adding to the smoke swirls drifting up through the spotlights. “Things haven’t changed in here at least,” he commented wistfully, as if by omission acknowledging the changes outside. He was silent, thoughtful for a moment, perhaps contemplating those changes, but deciding in the end this wasn’t the right time or place to talk about them as he glanced again toward the SS and brownshirts at the end of the room. Then, as Deya approached the table having finished her dance, he got up with a smile. “I’ll leave you two to it.”
“I wasn’t expecting you here tonight,” she commented as Max drifted away and she took her first sip of champagne.
“No. I came on impulse in the end.” Josef pushed a smile. “Tough night.”
Josef hadn’t intended to say anything originally, but as Deya looked across sympathetically, tracing one azure fingernail around the edge of her champagne glass, he felt sucked into those warm amber eyes like he had been for seemingly half a lifetime, and he found himself opening up about the events of the night: his Jewish writer friend’s aged mother afraid for her life, and nailing a cross above her door to hopefully ward off future looters or the SS.
Deya was thoughtful for a moment. “Is that why you came to see me now? You thought this family might need Lorenzo’s help?”
“No. I came to see you,” Josef said flatly. “Felt I needed the company.” Then, realizing that might sound dismissive and offhand, he shook his head. “They’re not anywhere near that stage. He can’t even get his mother to contemplate leaving, even if she was well enough to travel.” What had started purely with identity masking for Deya and her cousin, Josef knew, had increasingly verged into helping people leave the country the last two years; the identity changes simply a prelude to that. And no doubt now there was even heavier demand.
Josef took out a packet of Sports, offered one to Deya and lit up for both of them with a silver lighter.
“Well, let me know if and when they’re ready,” Deya said, blowing out the first smoke. “Because Lorenzo’s not long ago taken on a new Jewish partner in that business, Alois, known and trusted by that community. Lorenzo changed Alois’s identity to Lutheran shortly after the rest of his family were sent to Mauthausen.” She looked to one side briefly, as if concerned she might be overheard. “Word has it, it will just get worse.”
“I hear that too.” Josef shrugged. “But, as I say, right now this friend is far from ready—if he ever gets to that stage.”
For the remaining twenty minutes until Deya’s next dance, their conversation was lighter, more general—though it seemed strange, and perhaps carried with it a shade of guilt, talking about how their respective weeks had been, recent shopping trips and a “lovely watercolor” Deya’s daughter, Luciana, had painted at school and brought home—when around them the city was in chaos.
Although they inadvertently touched on the subject again when Deya commented that she’d noticed her favorite cosmetics and perfumes shop, Krucie’s, which Josef knew was Jewish-owned, was closed and boarded up. And all the time avoiding the unspoken question between them: With this increased focus, was Deya concerned that her own buried gypsy background might be uncovered?
It wasn’t until halfway through Deya’s next dance—a Salome-style routine with different colored veils discarded at set intervals—that Josef finally started to feel more relaxed, more mellow.
“Someone I’d like to introduce you to,” Kurt Landmann’s voice crashed in from the side as he approached with one of the SS officers Josef hadn’t seen in the club before. “Heinrich Schnabel, newly arrived just last week.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Schnabel said, reaching a hand out. They shook. “My responsibility is the first and eighth districts, which I understand also partly overlaps your own patch. So I daresay we’ll be bumping into each other again, cooperating where necessary.”
It wasn’t until Schnabel mentioned the area he was covering that it clicked: the SS officer that Johannes had mentioned walking into the Café Mozart!
“I look forward to it,” Josef said with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. “Where were you stationed before?”
“In Linz. Where our beloved Führer spent much of his childhood.”
“Very commendable.”
An awkward silence settled. Something else was clearly on Schnabel’s mind. He glanced back at Max Adler, who was now standing at the bar. “I see that you appear to have no problem fraternizing with Jews.”
“He’s the owner of the club.” Josef shrugged. “So somewhat difficult to avoid.”
“I see.”
“Max is okay,” Landmann offered, keen to break the second tense silence to fall in as many minutes. “He takes care of us well.”
“I daresay he does,” Schnabel said, as if that was by the way. Irrelevant. “But I’m sure it can’t be easy for you.”
Josef met Schnabel’s steady gaze. That easy confidence and arrogance which assumed that everyone detested Jews, Mischlinge and gypsies as much as he. Josef had seen it countless times before, even with his own father—the cause of many arguments between them. While he’d been dead now almost three years, that reminder often felt uncomfortably close.
“We all have our crosses to bear,” Josef said with a wry smile, recalling the cross he’d nailed above Lena’s door just hours before.
“I’m sure we do.” Schnabel returned the smile curtly. “Look forward to meeting you again, Inspector Weber—very possibly on our shared patch.”
It took several minutes after the exchange for Josef to get his equilibrium back, feel mellow again. But then as Deya finished her routine ten minutes later, once more he found himself on edge.
As Deya left the stage, she had to pass within a couple of yards of Schnabel’s group, and he seemed to go out of his way to intercept her and guide her by one arm toward his table. Some words were exchanged, then Deya appeared to protest and point toward Josef. But Schnabel leaned in closer at that moment and said something that made her face cloud. And it wasn’t until one of the other showgirls at the table said something and also pointed Josef’s way that Schnabel finally relented and let go of Deya’s arm.
As Deya walked toward Josef, he saw Schnabel raise his glass and smile at him. And Josef wasn’t sure if it was by way of apology for stepping in when he shouldn’t have, or some sort of challenge: The girl might be with you tonight. But there will be other nights.
9
Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.
—Sigmund Freud
Johannes
Over the next few weeks we observed Vienna and the nation as a whole sink into an anti-Semitic abyss the likes of which I have never known before.
More Jewish shops were boarded up, some through forced closure, others the owners fearing smashed windows and looting. A number were also daubed with the Star of David or JUD, often in yellow paint. Incidents of incitement and open violence against Jews were rife, with the number of Jewish suicides in Vienna increasing tenfold.
At the end of the three-day suspension, we received news from St. Joseph’s that our son, Stefan, was to be excluded permanently from the school, ausgewiesen. Summoned in front of the same four-man panel, Headmaster Stadler appeared to show genuine remorse as he handed us the formal written notice. “Because your son has been a good student.” Which he needn’t have added.
Then we started the tedious task of finding a new school for Stefan. Out of seven we wrote to, two refused outright, three didn’t even give the courtesy of a reply and the two remaining interviews weren’t encouraging.
“I note that your son is a quarter Jewish,” the first headmaster we sat in front of commented. “Only a grade down from a Mischling, but sufficient for him to legally be considered a Reich citizen and so allowed entry to our school. But I’m afraid we view attacks on fellow pupils very seriously. We’ll let you know.”
Stefan’s fistfight being recorded as the main reason for his expulsion at St. Joseph’s caused a similar problem at the next school interview. Although this time when the headmaster asked pointedly why Stefan had hit this other boy, I answered equally pointedly: “Because this boy and two others were pushing and taunting our son and calling him a filthy, stinking Jew.”
The headmaster just stared back blankly, as if he hardly saw anything wrong in that, or perhaps he was thinking: That’s to be expected in today’s Austria. If your son can’t weather that, then he’s not going to last long in this society.
I’d gone with Hannah each time to put on a more Catholic front, but it had made little difference. Seeing my despondent face that night after yet another school rejection, a nearly-in-tears Stefan commented that he was sorry he’d punched Horst, “And caused you and Momma all this trouble.”
It broke my heart. I ruffled Stefan’s hair and gave him a reassuring grimace. “It’s okay. You did the right thing, standing up for yourself. But right now some people might not appreciate that.” I realized I was getting dangerously close to a “bad time for Jews” speech, which Stefan might understand in four or five years’ time, but not now. How do you explain to a nine-year-old they’ve been born the wrong race or religion for a certain moment in history?
