ram struck the shutters and shook the building, about every five or six seconds.
“The shutters must be holding. Maybe they’ll give up,” my father said in a whisper, turning toward us.
One of the demonstrators must have seen him at the window, because they stopped hammering at the shutters and began insulting my father. He stood to the right of the window where he couldn’t be seen but could keep observing the street. Some of the Nazis had gathered stones and were trying to hit our window with them, but by the time the missiles reached the third floor, they didn’t have enough velocity to do much damage. This seemed to tire them out. I thought that they’d start attacking the hall door downstairs again and expected to hear the blows of the battering ram in the hallway. On the other hand, perhaps they’d refrain from invading the building. We in fact were the only Jewish tenants, but did they know that?
I was right about their either being tired or becoming circumspect about the house not being fully infested with Jews. The battering ram did not begin again. They just shouted, “Jewish garbage! You just wait! We’ll be back, we’ll burn down your hovel! Vermin! Dirty Jew! Come downstairs if you have any balls! Hang all the Jews!”
Little by little, they rejoined their comrades, who were already shaking the shutters of a neighboring store. A few citizens had joined them and most of the crowd, behind, still just as curious, followed without saying a word, as before. My father closed the window and with a weary gesture wiped away the sweat from his face.
“Well, my children, it’s over for today.”
THE DAY AFTER these events, the Danzig government took the position that it opposed such acts of violence, even though, of course, it had not deployed police to do anything about what happened the day before.
As a matter of fact, the Nazi president of the Danzig senate assured the Jewish community that physical assaults against the Jews and the destruction of their businesses were breaches of “party discipline.” Nevertheless, my father was no longer so optimistic that the anti-Semitism was just normal, periodically awakened, eastern European behavior. He and my mother now felt that it was only a matter of time before things would get much worse. They began to consider sending me away from Danzig to continue my studies once I passed my final exams at the gymnasium.
In the days that followed, the political climate indeed became more and more turbulent. Personal relationships between German Jews and other Germans began to be affected. Elisabeth, a close friend of my mother, had a brother who was now in the SS. He admonished her not to associate with us. Elisabeth ignored him, for my mother’s friendship meant more to her than her brother’s party affiliation. In Germany, Jews could no longer occupy public offices, marry, or have intimate relations with Germans. They had been forced to resign professorships, and Jewish doctors were only allowed to treat Jewish patients. Anti-Semitism was becoming more and more blatant. But in Danzig all this had been nothing more than a rumor about what was happening in Germany. Now blatant anti-Semitism was more and more frequently striking home.
ELISABETH WAS TO become a person important not only to my mother but to me. In fact, if the violence I had witnessed constituted a kind of initiation into the darkest aspect of adult reality, I was soon to experience with her an initiation of a far more pleasant sort. One afternoon I arrived home from school earlier than usual and heard her and my mother talking and giggling in my parents’ bedroom, trying on new dresses. The bedroom door was open, and I caught a glimpse of Elisabeth standing in front of a full-length mirror with nothing on but her bra, laced panties, and silk stockings. The sight made me yearn for something I certainly didn’t imagine was possible. Elisabeth, at twenty-six, was ten years younger than my mother and ten years older than I. She caught my libidinous gaze and answered it with a flirtatious smile. My mother must have seen my glance but not Elisabeth’s response and immediately ordered me to my room. From then on Elisabeth’s body inhabited my dreams. My days were spent preparing for final exams at the gymnasium, so I could not afford to be completely occupied with erotic reveries, but she was never very far from my thoughts.
One early spring Friday, home alone studying late in the afternoon, I heard a soft knock at the front door. When I opened it, before me stood the very woman who was already present to me between more studious attentions. After a moment’s hesitation, she asked, “Isn’t your mother home? We were supposed to go to a movie together this evening.”
“Oh,” I said. “She must have forgotten to tell you. She and my father have gone to Sweden for the weekend.”
“Too bad,” she said. “Today is the last showing of The Blue Angel with Emil Jannings and Marlene Dietrich.” She paused and looked at me smiling. “Didn’t you tell me you read Heinrich Mann’s novel Professor Unrat—the film is based on it. How about coming to see it with me?”
“I would love to.” The words were out of my mouth before I had a second to think about them.
On the way to the theater, we spoke about nothing very consequential, but I was quietly summoning personal qualities I had no inkling I possessed. At the box office, I nobly offered to pay for the tickets (actually with money my parents had left me to purchase my meals). Elisabeth didn’t stop me. She was watching me closely and seemed impressed with how confidently this adolescent was dealing with the transaction, as well as with the subtle interpersonal intricacies of such an excursion. In the theater we sat close, mere inches apart, as the show began.
Short reels of comedic sketches and cartoons preceded the main feature. When the screen lit up, I let my eyes drift toward her, just catching her profile. She had high cheekbones; the lines of her face drew to a perfect, narrow chin, ruby red lips darkly accented in the low light, bosom slightly exposed, not carefully or modestly hidden. Marlene Dietrich was amazing to behold, but I was accompanying a woman, who, in the flesh, was more amazing than any beauty on the screen. The tragic obsession of the aging professor in the film was fascinating, but far less so than the object of my awakening passion. My longing for Elisabeth could not possibly be masked, though even I was sophisticated enough to understand the advantages of coyness.
After the movie, she walked me back home. To bid me goodbye, she kissed me on my cheeks, but my lips sought hers and I briefly pressed my body against her, just long enough for her to feel the force of my excitement. She did not pull away.
“Have you ever tried?” she whispered.
“Not yet,” I replied.
“Would you like to?”
I was trembling all over as we got to the couch in the living room. I fumbled to get my trousers down. To shorten the agony of excitement, Elisabeth immediately instructed me how to proceed, gently guided me into her, and fully participated, enjoying it as much as I. From then on we got together, if possible, at least twice a week, until I left for Paris six months later. The motivation driving our behavior I do not consider immoral. It never even felt socially incorrect, though it might indeed have seemed to be so, given the sexual mores of the time. My mother suspected nothing. The idea that her best friend, in the bloom of womanhood, could be turned on by a teenage boy, never crossed her mind. Nor did Elisabeth’s attitude toward my mother change; and they both were very proud of me when I passed my final exams with excellent grades.
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