It was while crossing this forest on horseback with his escort of chevaliers in armor that King Charles VI had become insane. On a very hot summer afternoon, not a cool September day, and more than five centuries ago, at a time when bandits lurked behind every tree, I reflected, smiling at myself.
Still, the afternoon hours were oppressive, and I rejoiced when the road started to climb a hill and, at last, a vehicle passed by. A van and a trailer hooked to it. Both painted green, with little shuttered windows like the horse-drawn gypsy wagons of old. The odd convoy was struggling up the hill when the trailer started rolling back. Acrobat-like shadows jumped out, grabbed rocks from the roadside, blocked the wheels, rehooked the trailer to the van. The image out of a child’s dream vanished over the top of the hill, the last image from the world I knew before it sank into confusion and fear.
Last solitary walk, September 1938
I reached Tours in late afternoon, spent the night there, remember none of it. The 1914 nightmare resurrected the next day, September 24, 1938, has erased all recollections except one—a white poster on a gray stone wall with two oversized black words at its top: Mobilisation Génèrale.
“Mobilisation génèrale means war,” my father had said when I was six years old. And it had come true, then.
In panic, I boarded the first train for Paris, a maddeningly slow train. At every stop I saw them again, invading my compartment, the soldiers of 1914 in soiled “horizon blue” singing “La Madelon,” pouring red wine into tin cups.
Of the days that followed, I remember mostly the tense quiet on the streets of Paris and the anxieties we shared, Abel and I, but did not talk about. What had been done with German civilians living in France during the last war? Interned, I vaguely remembered. How? Where?
At the singularly quiet terrace of the Dôme, older artists ventured halfhearted jokes. Chamberlain was meeting Hitler, we heard. “The umbrella against the sword, the duel of the century!” someone exclaimed. Not many of us laughed. There was too much fear in the air.
At last, on September 30, France and England signed an agreement with Germany: the Munich Agreement.
No war. There would be no war. That was all we saw. And Czechoslovakia? Sacrificed. Yes, yes, but peace, we had “won” peace!
Jubilant crowds greeted Edouard Daladier, the French premier, upon his return from Munich. Grateful farmers at the border with Germany gave farewell parties for our soldiers and loaded them up with presents. A returning friend knocked on our door one night. In his military backpack he carried a freshly slaughtered goose and a bottle of Alsatian liquor.
We had a victory banquet. We had several victory banquets.
Less than two months later, Abel’s German friend unexpectedly showed up. How I disliked him! I still do. After that, things went fast. On the last day of December, Abel left for Stuttgart. To this day, I remember how pale his face was when we put him on the train at the Gare de l’Est, a few friends and I.
In February, I followed him, leaving gray Paris for Stuttgart, where the air was clear, dry, cold, and invigorating, where big people looked strong and healthy and I, at once, became ill.
VIII
I didn’t stay long in Abel’s dismal little room. On the third day, as happens only in happy stories, a handsome couple appeared and whisked me away to their beautiful dwelling. Soon I was lying in bed in a lovely sunny room. An intriguing young woman attended to my needs. Slim in a high-necked embroidered blouse of the same blue as her eyes and black satin slacks, she moved like a dancer while her face kept the serenity of a nun’s. Her name was Christine.
Christine and I communicated, with some difficulty, in her scanty French and my scantier German. Her greetings, which Abel translated, had confused me. I would never forget them.
“Congratulations! It is indeed appropriate to get sick when taking the first step on German soil.”
Christine took me to her doctor, Dr. Müller, a short, small man with a square head and a knowing, forgiving smile.
“Acids, acids,” Dr. Müller diagnosed.
He prescribed a strong solution of sodium bicarbonate (two pints of it daily), herb teas, enemas, and, most important, Hunger Kur, a draconian diet of strained mush, a bit of yogurt or grapefruit every third day.
Christine was taking notes. Suddenly she got into an argument with the doctor about Hitler and Czechoslovakia, I understood. Christine’s voice rose, sarcastic and angry. Dr. Müller, a man who knew that he knew best, remained calm and smiling.
“Because he made a vegetarian out of Hitler ten years ago, Dr. Müller thinks Hitler can do no wrong,” Christine scoffed as we left. “An ass in politics, but a good doctor. He will cure you.”
Which did not happen as fast as expected. For weeks, I remained extremely weak, plagued by pains in the abdomen and nightmares that made me scream in my sleep. And daydreams. Always the same ones: I was going back to Paris. A friend had told me before I departed, “Come back to us if you don’t like it. Don’t feel stupidly ashamed.” I wanted to go back. Something was telling me to go back. But I could not leave Abel.
In the end, Dr. Müller’s Hunger Kur worked, or perhaps it was Christine’s smiling and often unsmiling ministrations, or the feeling that I had been long enough a guest-patient in Christine’s restless household. It included the husband, a businessman, middle-aged, good-looking, well dressed, and a bit vain, who prudently took off his party badge before stepping over the threshold of his home, a maid, who proudly displayed hers pinned onto her snow-white uniform, and pugnacious Christine, who never missed an opportunity to heap sarcasm over every one of the party’s actions.
Abel visited often and stayed for dinner. Christine treated him kindly and openly showed that she felt sorry for him. She would not explain why.
During my illness, Abel’s family had searched and finally found an apartment for us. Not wanting the regular cumbersome furniture available, Abel had a few pieces made to order. “And no chair,” he declared. “A chair is for those who want to settle down.” No chair. He would sit on a crate. He ordered a drawing table, two sofa beds, a small square table with a corner bench, and two tiny cabinets.
Abel’s mother shook her head, smiled, and told me Abel had always been a bit of an eccentric. Christine helped me pick out a few cheap kitchen utensils.
In April, we moved to our pleasant but sparsely furnished three-room apartment. Located on the top floor of a three-story house in the hilly suburbs where neat, solid houses were surrounded by gardens, orchards, and tiny vineyards, it had a fine view of the city in the valley below.
Everything was well organized and practical. There was a laundry room in the basement. The tenants took turns using it. They also stoked the coal furnace in winter and cared for their share of the English garden that surrounded the house.
Six months of life in Germany was not going to be the ordeal I had imagined. Why had I been so fearful? Good order, I told myself, was a protection.
And now family, position, society demanded that Abel and I get married. Yes. Yes, we had intended to; more practical for traveling.
We got angry and upset right away: a new law required proof that our forebears had been non-Jewish for four generations. What kind of nonsense was that? But we submitted. My father and grandmother procured baptism certificates from parish priests. Abel got his own certification. And one gray morning in May, we walked down to City Hall. I did not wear the white suit and elegant hat made in Paris but a plain black suit and a hat I had concocted out of two old ones.