Heidegger's Gla.s.ses_ A Novel.

by Thaisa Frank.

PROLOGUE.

In the ordinary winter of 1920, the philosopher Martin Heidegger saw his gla.s.ses and fell out of the familiar world. He was in his study at Freiburg, over one hundred and sixty kilometers south of Berlin, looking out the window at the thick bare branches of an elm tree. His wife was standing next to him, pouring a cup of coffee. Sunlight fell through the voile curtains, throwing stripes on her crown of blond braids, the dark table, and his white cup. All at once a starling crashed against the window and dropped to the ground. Heidegger reached for his gla.s.ses to look and as he leaned over, the coffee spilled. His wife cleaned the table with her ap.r.o.n while he cleaned the gla.s.ses with his handkerchief. And all at once, he looked at the thin gold earpieces and two round lenses and didn't know what they were for. It was as though he'd never seen gla.s.ses or knew how they were used. And then the whole world became unfamiliar: The tree was a confusion of shapes, the blood-spattered window a floating oblong. And when another starling flew by, he saw only darkness in motion.

Martin Heidegger didn't mention this to his wife. Together they cleaned and muttered. She brought more coffee and left the room. Heidegger waited for the world to fall back into place and eventually the ticking belonged to the clock again, the table became a table, and the floor became something to walk on. Then he went to his desk and wrote about this moment to a fellow philosopher named Asher Englehardt. Even though they often met for coffee, they enjoyed writing to each other about tilted moments: The hammer that's so loose its head flops like a bird. The picture that's crooked and makes the room seem uncanny. The apple in the middle of the street that makes you forget what streets are for. The thing made close because it's seen at a distance. The sense of not being at home. Falling out of the world.

A few days later Asher Englehardt wrote back in his familiar, hurried script, chiding Heidegger for always acting as though the sensation was new. "There is nothing of substance to depend on, Martin," he wrote. "All these cups and gla.s.ses and whatever else people have have or or do do are props that shield us from a world that started long before anyone knew what gla.s.ses were for and will go on long after there's no one left to remember them. It's a strange world, Martin. But we can never fall out of it because we live in it all the time." are props that shield us from a world that started long before anyone knew what gla.s.ses were for and will go on long after there's no one left to remember them. It's a strange world, Martin. But we can never fall out of it because we live in it all the time."

Asher believed this resolutely and continued to believe it twenty years later when he and his son were taken from their home in Freiburg and deported by cattle car to Auschwitz.

Dear Mother, Can you bring me the shoes I kept in the cupboard? I know I'll need them for the journey.

Love,Mari

THE ORDERS.

Nearly a quarter of a century after Heidegger's revelation about his gla.s.ses, a woman with a red silk ribbon snaking around her wrist drove a captured U.S. jeep to a village in Northern Germany. The village was in blackout, and its outpost-a wooden building set far back in a field-would have been easy to miss if she hadn't made many trips there in the dark. It was a bitter winter night, and snow fell on her face as she walked across the field. She stopped to brush it off and looked at the sky. It was dazzling, brilliant with stars, so wide it seemed carved into separate galaxies. And even at this stage of the war, the woman felt happy. She had just smuggled three children to Switzerland and hoodwinked a guard. Her name was Elie Schacten.

Elie looked at Orion's hunting dogs and scattered them into points of light-ice-flowers in the dark sky. Then she knocked twice on the shrouded door. It opened, a hand pulled her inside, and an SS officer kissed her on the lips.

What happened? he said. You were supposed to be here yesterday.

There was a problem with the clutch, said Elie. You should be glad I got here now.

I am am glad, said the officer. But I think you were up to something, my willowy little friend. glad, said the officer. But I think you were up to something, my willowy little friend.

I'm not your willowy little anything, said Elie. She shook him off and looked around. How's the junk shop? she asked.

You can't believe what we're getting, said the officer. Five kilos of Dutch chocolate. French cognac. Statues from an Austrian castle.

They were talking about the outpost-a pine room with crooked beams. It had one oblong window with a blackout curtain and was crammed with objects from raided shops and houses. It was also cold. Wind blew through cracks in the walls, and the coal stove was empty. Elie tightened her scarf and walked through a maze of clocks, books, coats, chifforobes, and two optometrist chairs to a velvet couch. The officer dragged over eight bulging mailbags and leaned in so close Elie felt his breath. She let her hair loose so it screened her face.

That tea-rose is hard to come by these days, said the officer, meaning her perfume. He leaned in closer and touched her blond curls.

Elie smiled and began to read postcards and letters. The sheer amount always overwhelmed her. Most were from Operation Mail-letters written under coercion at camps or ghettos, often moments before the writer was led to a cattle car or gas chamber. Most were on thin, brittle paper and had a dark red stamp that overrode the addresses to relatives. The instructions on the stamp were: "Automatically forward all Jewish mail to 65 Berlin, Iranische Stra.s.se."

Elie scanned without reading-her only purpose was to identify the language. She tried to ignore her sense of revulsion-never pausing to look at the name of the writer or what they'd written. Sometimes, when she was trying to fall asleep, she saw phrases from these letters-hurried, terrified lies, extolling the conditions in the camps. But when she scanned them quickly, she noticed nothing-except when she saw the enormous bag marked A, for Auschwitz. It was bigger than the other mailbags and seemed larger than anything this world could contain, as if it had fallen from another universe. Elie always had the sense that she had fallen with it and paused before reading the first letter.

What's wrong? said the officer.

I'm just tired, she said.

Is that all?

The officer, who loved gossip, always tried to pry into Elie's past because these days people parachuted into the world as if they'd just been born, with new papers to prove it, and she was no different-the daughter of Polish Catholics, transformed into a German by Goebbels. Her features conformed to every Aryan standard. Her German accent was flawless.

Elie stared at some bolts of wool wedged between two bicycles. Then she went back to sorting letters. The officer lit a cigarette.

You won't believe this, he said. But a Jew just got out of Auschwitz. He walked past the fence with the Commandant's blessing.

I don't believe you, said Elie.

It's all over the Reich, said the officer. An SS man came to the Commandant and said this guy owned a lab, and the Reich needed it for the war and the guy had to leave to sign over the papers. So the Commandant said he could, and now they can't find the lab or the name of the SS man. They don't even think he was real. They call him the Angel of Auschwitz.

My G.o.d, said Elie.

Is that all you can say? It's a f.u.c.king travesty. And Goebbels won't shoot the Commandant. He says he can't be bothered.

Elie fussed with the strands of the red ribbon on her wrist. She couldn't take the ribbon off because, along with special papers, it gave her unlimited freedom to travel and amnesty from rape, pillage, or murder. The officer leaned close and offered to untangle the strands. One had a metal eagle on it-the beak was the size of a needle's eye. He paused and admired the craftsmanship.

Elie let him untangle the ribbon and counted things on the walls: five gilt-edged mirrors, fifteen typewriters, one globe, seven clocks, eight tables, bolts of white cashmere, a mixing bowl, twelve chairs, a tailor's dummy, five lamps, numerous fur coats, playing cards, boxes of chocolate, and a telescope. A jumble shop A jumble shop, she thought. The Reich can raid everything but heat. The Reich can raid everything but heat.

I must get back, she said, standing up. If I see any codes from the Resistance, I'll let you know.

Stay the night, said the officer, patting a confiscated couch. I'll keep my hands off you. I promise.

You have more than hands, said Elie.

My feet are safe, too, said the officer. He pointed to a hole in his boots, and they laughed.

As she always did, Elie accepted his offer to take whatever she wanted from the outpost-this time, fourteen bolts of wool, a grandfather clock, the telescope, the globe, ten fur coats, a tailor's dummy, two gilt mirrors, three boxes of playing cards, and half a kilo of chocolate.

She also accepted his offer to carry everything across the field, where the snow was still soft, and the sky still promised pageants of light. Elie let the officer kiss her on the lips just once and hold her longer than she would have liked. Then she drove deep into the North German woods where pine trees hid the moon.

At one point a thin girl without shoes darted across the road. Elie wasn't surprised: at this stage of the war, people appeared just like animals. But she couldn't stop, even to offer bread. There were as many guards as trees. And one rescue was dangerous enough.

The pines grew thicker; wind blew through the canvas roof of her jeep, and Elie's fear of the dark rose up, along with a terror of being followed. She concentrated on the road as if her only mission were to drive forever.

Alongside her fears ran her shock about the Angel of Auschwitz. Elie always found clever escape routes for people-sewers in ghettos, tunnels below factories. But she'd never contemplated an escape from a camp. She wondered if the angel was a rumor. What better way to annoy the Reich than imply a place like Auschwitz wasn't foolproof?

Near three in the morning, the road became an unpaved road, jolting the car and making the grandfather clock tick. Elie's ribbon brushed against the gearshift, reminding her she was tethered to the Reich. She looked in the rearview mirror to make sure she wasn't being followed and made a sharp turn to a clearing where another jeep and two Kubelwagens were parked near a shepherd's hut with a round roof. The clearing had a watchtower by its entrance and a well set far back near the forest.

A tall man in a Navy jacket and rumpled green sweater ran out and threw his arms around her. Then he helped her unload the jeep. They brought the telescope, the tailor's dummy, the bolts of wool, the coats, the mirrors, the chocolate, the playing cards, the clock, the globe, the mailbags, and a hamper of food to the shepherd's hut. The room had a pallet and a crude wooden table. Opposite the door was a fireplace. To its left was another arched door that opened to an incline. Elie and the officer dragged everything down the incline to a mineshaft and loaded it into a lift. He leaned over to kiss her, but she shook snow from her coat and turned away, caught in thoughts about the angel.

What's wrong? he said. Does only half of you like me?

All of me likes you, said Elie. I'm just saving the other half for later.

Dear Luigi,It was an easy journey even though it was long.The country is lovely here. Come meet me.Love,Rosaria The officer went to their room-five yards up the incline-and Elie took the mineshaft almost ten meters down into the earth. The mineshaft lift was a small, cramped cage, and she was relieved when she could pull back the diamond-shaped guard. It opened to a rose-colored cobblestone street lit with gas lamps. Opposite the mineshaft was a large mahogany door with Gleichantworten Mogen Gleichantworten Mogen (Like Answers Like) hammered out in the same jaunty semicircle as (Like Answers Like) hammered out in the same jaunty semicircle as Arbeit Macht Frei Arbeit Macht Frei. Elie opened this door to a room the size of a small stadium, where more than forty people slept on desks. She heard glissandos of snoring and rustling. If someone moved or shifted too abruptly, papers fell to the floor. The walls were lined with sewing machines, mixing bowls, coats, mirrors, typewriters. Elie's desk was in the front of the room, facing the others. As soon as she lit its kerosene lamp people struggled from sleep to greet her. A door on the far wall opened, and sixteen more people tumbled out. Everyone crowded around Elie, asking if she was safe, rushing to bring treasures from the mineshaft. She opened the hamper of food, and they applauded when they saw ham, a roast chicken, sausages, smoked fish, cheese, cigarettes, vodka, fleischkonserve, cans of ersatz coffee, and thirteen loaves of freshly baked bread-a gift from a baker whose niece Elie helped escape to Denmark. They opened the vodka and toasted news that the Russians were advancing. Then they toasted Elie.

To Elie! they said. To our Gnadige Frau!

Elie raised her own gla.s.s and wrapped the fresh meat and bread in soft cloth. She took the mineshaft back to the room she shared with the officer who met her as she walked up the incline. He held out his hands, and they walked to their room, the last remnant of life above the earth. It was a small white square with oblong windows near the ceiling that became trapezoids as they sloped closer to the ground. Elie wanted nothing more than to lean into his arms and tell him how much she had missed him, but she was afraid she would start to cry from sheer exhaustion. Instead she shone the kerosene lantern around the room with a slight aura of disapproval. There were socks, playing cards, boots, and books scattered on the floor. There was also another green sweater.

This looks just like the outpost, she said.

Actually, Elie, I changed the sheets.

That was good of you.

So I'm exonerated?

Maybe.

Elie draped her coat on a chair. Then she opened her arms.

Both sides of me are ready for you now.

Elie had moved from the small dark room below the earth because she said people needed extra s.p.a.ce to sleep. But everyone knew it was because she loved Gerhardt Lodenstein, who was Oberst of the Compound.

The crazier things get the longer three days seem, he said, pulling her to the bed. What took so long?

The less you know the better, said Elie.

The SS shoot people like flies these days. I worry.

It's not so crazy at the borders, said Elie. I had three kids under blankets, and the SS hardly looked. They've stopped believing in this war. Everyone has.

Not Himmler or Goebbels, said Lodenstein. And not the camps. They're killing more people every day.

Mentioning the camps made Elie remember the story about the angel. She kissed Lodenstein, took her revolver from her cardigan, kicked off her boots, and got under the covers. She was still wearing her skirt, her blouse, and the red silk ribbon.

You can't sleep in your clothes, Elie.

Lots of people do these days.

I know. But we're still safe here.

Still, said Elie.

Still is safe enough.

Elie smiled, and he undressed her carefully. When he touched her, she felt as soft as the ribbon he'd untied-the ribbon that, along with cla.s.sified papers, allowed her freedom to travel. He pulled her toward him. She pulled away.

Something's wrong. What happened to you out there? he said.

Elie touched the quilt. It was a feather comforter, covered with grey silk, and came from a raided house in Amsterdam.

There's a mess out there, she said. And we sleep under this Reich-f.u.c.ked thing.

But that's not what's bothering you.

Lodenstein turned off the kerosene lantern, and the dark felt soft, almost tangible. He touched Elie, and her body felt like lace. They made love slowly.

Who can resist the feeling of being made into lace? she thought. she thought. Only someone who knows they're about to be ga.s.sed or doesn't know if their child will eat the next day. Only someone who has to walk for kilometers in danger on a cold winter's night. Only someone who knows they're about to be ga.s.sed or doesn't know if their child will eat the next day. Only someone who has to walk for kilometers in danger on a cold winter's night.

Lodenstein fell asleep, but Elie lay awake, thinking about the SS man who had transformed into an angel. Elie imagined his conversation with the Commandant, the prisoner being told he could leave. She imagined the two of them walking out of Auschwitz. If one person can leave, two people can leave, If one person can leave, two people can leave, she thought. she thought. And then three. And then four. And then three. And then four.

Before Goebbels gave her ident.i.ty papers, he'd shown Elie photographs of Auschwitz, watching for signs of compa.s.sion. She'd been careful not to register anything while she looked at rows of barracks and the russet barbed-wire fence that billowed around the camp as if frozen by the wind. The tufted wires looked like runes but could tear skin to shreds. What would it take to get someone past that fence? What would it take to get someone past that fence? she thought. she thought.

Dearest Herta,I can't tell you how much I miss you. There's someone in this camp who can sing Lieder. They allow him to sing at night because the officers enjoy it and it reminds me of you. I can hear your voice inside this fence. This is all I can write for now.Love,Stefan While Elie lay awake she looked at the sliver of black phone beneath maps and papers and thought of people to call to ask about the angel. But she and Lodenstein already lived in peril because they helped fugitives, and a call to the wrong person could get them shot. So Elie pressed her head into the quilt and tried to ignore the dank mineral smell of the mine permeating from below. At night the smell grew stronger, as if the mine were denouncing its transformation after Hans Ewigkeit, a famous German architect, had toured it and said this will do this will do.

No detail had been too small: the mine was masked by a sh.e.l.l, enclosing three water closets, a kitchen, a cobblestone street, an artificial sky, a room for over fifty people, and a s...o...b..x of a watchtower. Everyone who slept below the earth had fallen from some place or other. And at night, while Elie felt the weight of a feather quilt, they shifted and coughed and fought to keep warm. Everything in the project depended upon them. It was called the Compound of Scribes.

Near dawn it began to snow heavily, piling against the windows and filling the room with blue light. Elie touched Lodenstein's light brown hair and traced the hairline scar on his forehead. Everything felt soft, as if made of another element, and she finally fell asleep, light-years away from the Compound.

When Lodenstein woke up, Elie was still sleeping. One arm trailed along the side of the bed, reminding him of the first time he'd ever seen her sleep-on a train when she'd brought him to the Compound. They'd traveled at night, and the benches were transformed into bunks. Elie slept on top; he slept below, and one of her arms was so close he could have touched the red ribbon on her wrist. Once he'd gotten out of bed to look at her and was so entranced-and so further entranced by her charming dishevelment in the morning-he'd left his shaving kit on the train. It was sent to the Compound two weeks later with a note from Goebbels's office: There's a war on. We don't give out shaving kits like pfennigs. There's a war on. We don't give out shaving kits like pfennigs.

He wondered what Elie had done in her search for ways to help people. What SS men had she flirted with? What hawkers on the black market? What flagging underground newspaper group would keep printing because she'd found them money? What forgers would make pa.s.sports because she'd hidden a relative? Lodenstein understood that flirtations and unholy alliances were the stuff of rescues: they appeased guards, suspicious landlords, inquisitive neighbors. But when Elie was gone an extra day, he worried about blurred lines between secrets for the good of the Resistance and secrets that belied a hidden life.

Elie woke up, looked at him, and closed her eyes.

I wish it wasn't morning, she said.

I'll get breakfast. The morning can wait.

Lodenstein threw his green sweater over a pair of fatigues, took the mineshaft to the cobblestone street, and turned left to the kitchen-a four-meter-long galley with pots hung so low they clanged like hollow bells when people brushed against them.

Two Scribes were lifting a can of ersatz coffee while another spooned it into gla.s.s jars. They didn't notice Lodenstein, and he wondered, not for first time, if they knew he had anything to do with their lives being close to bearable. Even at this early hour he heard someone offer cigarettes as a prize for inventing a crossword puzzle in fifteen languages. He also heard typing-probably in coded diaries-and a lottery to sleep in Elie's old room. Goebbels didn't allow these things, but he ignored them.

More people came in to make coffee. The mine was cold, and everyone wore fur coats from the outpost. He felt ermine, mink, fox, and lamb's wool. They nuzzled his back like friendly animals.

The bread Elie had brought the night before was on a butcher block in the middle of the kitchen. There had been five loaves of white bread and eight of pumpernickel in the hamper last night. This morning all the pumpernickel was left, and there were three loaves of white. He cut two thin, cautious slices. Someone saw him and said: Take more! For Elie!

Another Scribe said the same thing and then another and another until Elie's name rang all over the kitchen like an invocation. He cut more bread and thanked them in a dozen languages. They laughed and thanked him back.

Everyone spoke German, but conversations were filled with foreign words-Hungarian for shame (szegyen), Italian for ink (inchiostro), Polish for shadow (cie). Every week there were more words because the inhabitants-collectively-were fluent in forty-seven languages and dialects besides German. And this was why they'd been spared the camps and could be in this sh.e.l.l-fighting, scribbling, clawing, to carry out a mysterious and Byzantine mission.

My lovely Susanne,I arrived last week and was lucky to get work building a road. The food is good and I like being out in the fresh air. There is good work for women, too-sewing uniforms, mending, typing. I know you would like it here.Love,Heinrich Gerhardt Lodenstein was fluent in five languages but hadn't needed to barter in any of them for his position as Oberst of the Compound: long ago, in return for a bicycle, he'd promised his father that he would enlist in the secret police, where his father was a prominent member. The secret police was called the Abwehr-a remote, elite organization expert in deciphering codes and known for its hatred of the Reich. Its head, Wilhelm Canaris, tried twice to a.s.sa.s.sinate Hitler before the war. When he joined, Lodenstein thought he'd spend two years learning codes, then practice law. But the Reich created its own secret police, shrinking the Abwehr, and reducing Gerhardt Lodenstein's job to filing old papers from the First World War. Eventually Goebbels-with malice because he disliked Lodenstein's father-enlisted him in the SS and made him the reluctant head of the Compound of Scribes, forcing him to oversee an absurd and useless project: answering letters to people who were dead.