We stood in front of a high, narrow desk draped in the Nazi flag. I listened to words I did not understand, spoken by a man I could not see, said “Ja” at the right moment, probably. Abel was ceremoniously given a thick black book, Mein Kampf, and we were done.
Wedding, Stuttgart, May 23, 1939
We invited our witnesses for a glass of white wine in a nearby restaurant. We were served white radishes with the wine, I remember.
The festivities were over.
IX
“Yugoslavia,” Abel said. “We could afford a short trip to Yugoslavia. We need fresh air.”
I was ready to go.
We inquired about visas, passports, and were handed forms to fill out.
This was when I discovered that I had acquired German nationality. I don’t know why I had not thought of that before. The next day, I rushed alone and in alarm to the French consul.
“If you did not declare before me, on the day of your marriage, that you wished to abandon your nationality, according to French law, you are still French,” the consul said.
“I want to make a declaration that I wish to keep my French nationality,” I said.
The consul smiled but registered my signed declaration and made out a passport in my married name.
“I must warn you,” he said, “you might find yourself unable to cross the German-French border with your two passports. I cannot put a visa on your German passport that I do not recognize, you understand, and the Germans won’t put a visa on your French passport that they do not recognize.”
I did not tell him, but I was not worried. A few years back, in Fascist Rome, I had been able to convince a high official of my innocence when it had been discovered that I had overstayed my visa by six months. The bored employees I had seen at the French-German border could not be that difficult to deal with.
We left for Yugoslavia in June. At first the lushness and fertility of the countryside surprised us. We had expected the aridity of Greece and southern Italy.
We rushed like tourists through the ancient fortifications of Dubrovnik and the glorious fruit and flower market of Zagreb. We had little time. We swore we would come back.
The day we entered the bazaar of Sarajevo, Abel opened his sketchbook and I knew we would not go any farther. To us, this was the fabulous world of the Orient. Muslim merchants, taciturn and solemn in their colorful garb, sat among treasures: Persian rugs, carved chests, fabulous jewels, and embroidered things we could not identify. Over everything, the mysterious glow from gilded lamps and the scents of incense and Oriental coffee.
One day we stopped to buy cigarettes at a small store close to the bazaar entrance. The tiny place was crowded with plump bags resembling bags of rice. Lolling on top of them was the merchant in modern dark clothes, a fez askew on his head.
Soon Abel and the merchant were conversing in a mixture of German, French, English, and Greek. Abel said he wanted to travel to the Orient. The merchant sat up.
“I can arrange,” he said. “You visit Afghanistan, Turkey, China. Ja, ja. I can arrange. You carry bundle. Sometimes you have camel, horse, donkey. Up mountains you have back. Ja, ja. You strong man.”
A Merchant in the Bazaar of Sarajevo, 1939 (watercolor)
The merchant clapped his hands. Almost instantly, a nimble girl of about twelve was at the door. Long, flowing black pantalets, embroidered crimson vest, white scarf knotted on top of her head that left her dark hair to fall free. The merchant lazily showed three fingers of his left hand. The girl ran, came back a few minutes later carrying three tiny cups of thick, fragrant coffee on a brass tray.
“And my wife?” Abel said.
“Oh, facile,” the merchant said. “Wife go to spy school in Cairo. Four years. Good for woman, spy school!”
“What is in the bundle?” Abel asked. “Gold?”
“Better, better,” the merchant said, smiling.
A not-very-distant day would arrive when to become an opium smuggler and a student spy in Cairo would seem better paths to follow than the road into darkness that suddenly opened.
X
“I want to stay in Sarajevo,” I told Abel the day before we returned to Germany.
“So do I,” Abel said.
Six months, Abel had promised. We would not stay more than six months on German soil. Five months had already passed. I knew Abel had not forgotten. Neither he nor I ever mentioned the promise.
Back in my foreign home, I tried to respect the German vegetarian laws and taboos Christine had taught me as I cooked vegetables without killing them by overheating, baked bread without yeast and pies without much fat or sugar. I learned to do the laundry in the old time-consuming manner, and how to press the starched cuffs and collars of men’s shirts.
One day around lunchtime, a young man came to demonstrate the use of a vacuum cleaner.
Abel came in.
“My mother never owned a vacuum cleaner,” he said. “My wife does not need one.”
And I knew that the man I had just married would probably not make a very good husband. I would not let the thought disturb me. It was better, I reasoned, not to burden ourselves with unnecessary possessions. Abel worked long hours at the agency, long hours every night at home doing freelance work. He never complained. I would not either.
Our lives had changed so completely and abruptly, it was as if we had, all of a sudden, reached old age. The only solace now was walking in the pleasant countryside on Sunday afternoons and remembering, remembering, a past so different from the present that it seemed as distant and irretrievable as a dream.
I took a few German lessons that were disappointing, slow, and boring. I decided to use my own empirical method. I listened stoically to conversations I did not understand and read, or rather deciphered, one book after another. Soon the written words began to make sense. And one day, at a family gathering, I spoke.
“You knew German before you came to this country,” declared Abel’s older sister.
In July we received an invitation to the French consulate for Bastille Day celebrations.
We danced to French music. We sang the Marseillaise heartily but not too well, and we drank champagne. I was eager to meet the French citizens of Stuttgart. They were few. I remember speaking to an attractive young woman.
“I have already five children,” she said. “I never go out.”
“I have made two hundred jars of marmalade and stored them in the cellar of the consulate,” the consul’s vivacious wife said.
One German, an invited official, brown shirt, boots, and ruddy face, sat alone, staring at the cup of champagne set in front of him on a small round table. Suddenly he reached for the cup, emptied it in one gulp, gagged, got redder, glared at everybody.
Two weeks later, we were invited to a reception for the wedding of the consul’s daughter.
We danced and drank champagne. The very young bride, I remember, was playful, the groom, an Argentinean businessman, was serious, and the consul and his wife were strangely distracted.
It must have been about a week later, at the beginning of August, that I had lunch with a young