“No, Grandmother Professor,” they all replied.
“Good,” she said. “Don’t be. Biblical prophets make terrible historians. They never bother with the past, and they always mistake the present for the future. Now sharpen your swords, boys and girls. Beat them into plowshares. Harvest what we’ve sown and bring it back to Grandmother Professor.” That meant they should write papers, and read them out loud in the seminar.
Judit volunteered to present her paper first. It had been based on public records she had found in Leipzig’s town hall, and she’d spent long hours writing out requests and waiting for documents and missed a chance to hear Hans perform in a string quartet. He said he understood, but she could tell it mattered to him. All that work had to be worth the sacrifice.
She’d transcribed columns of names and figures into her notebook, and the resulting five-page paper was so dense with information that Professor Lehmann stopped her after half a page and said, “Again, Ginsberg. Slowly this time.” She did her best to slow down. Then Professor Lehmann said to her, “That won’t do.”
“What won’t do?” Judit was startled. She’d been expecting praise. In fact, the other seven students were no less surprised.
“This reading of the facts. It won’t do. The information,” Lehmann said, “is certainly correct. The names of the contractors, are, no doubt, accurate, as are the figures. Nor do I doubt that the contracts were given to those with American connections, as you imply.”
“She doesn’t come right out and claim it,” said the student who had volunteered to read his paper next.
“As you imply,” Lehmann continued, addressing Judit. “And it’s very likely that people surrounding Stephen Weiss were hardly choirboys, as we all know.”
The mention of Weiss changed the temperature of the room. This was 1974, after all, and times had changed to the point where one might talk about Americans in a way that showed sophistication, but never Stephen Weiss. Never like that.
Now, Anna Lehmann turned to the other students. She said, “What Miss Ginsberg has written is an excellent example of the difference between ideology and history. Deductive reasoning begins with a principle and marshals evidence to justify that principle. In this case, the principle would be Bundist orthodoxy.”
Judit bristled. The hair on her arms and head literally spiked out like porcupine quills.
“You seem insulted,” said Professor Lehmann. “Yet of course, five years ago, that would have been the highest praise.” She smiled a little with her sour, badly lipsticked mouth, but that smile didn’t touch the rest of her face. “Never begin with a principle, boys and girls. Or you’ll end up being the agents of your own salvation, and we all know where that leads. Clear your heads of all that nonsense.”
How could it be nonsense? Judit had grown up with principles. She had been taught that corrupt motives lead to corrupt results. Judit’s research had confirmed that contracts given by the Cultural Ministry in 1949 had benefited a handful of stockholders in New York. That wasn’t ideology. It was just true.
Lehmann, in her uncanny way, addressed what Judit left unspoken. “Why do we seek the truth? Not to pass judgment, surely. We can no more pass judgment on a fact than we can pass judgment on the weather. When we pass judgment on the weather, we call that ‘small talk.’ I suspect, Ginsberg, that you don’t think much of small talk.”
Judit was silent, but her thoughts were grim. Also, her heart was pounding.
“Now, it’s far more interesting to take those speculators on their own terms. Were they doing something wrong? They lived in an age of speculation. They lived in their own ideological atmosphere with their own set of principles, and it is far more interesting to define those principles. Name them.”
“Alright,” said Judit. “They’re called greed.”
Lehmann turned to the other students. “Surely you children haven’t lost your imaginations entirely. Surely you haven’t smoked so much marijuana”—Lehmann’s great joke was that her students all smoked too much marijuana—“that you’re incapable of fixing one thought to another.”
But if you let go of ideology, then what is history but a lot of random information, informed by nothing? Judit let the other students make that case, and some of them did. Meanwhile, she sank into herself and thought about the summers when she learned how each layer of sandstone corresponds to an age. With her spade, she had dislodged real things. Those artifacts were just as real as Lehmann’s room, with its upright piano and the photograph of the stern-looking lady who had played it once, the china cups and matching teapot, the nine small spoons. Let years do their work and bury that room, and then let Lehmann claim her life was only random bits and pieces. Judit knew better.
Judit felt a fierce ownership of Anna Lehmann even as she felt dismissed by much of what she said. Of course, even then, Judit knew the two emotions were entangled.
5
WHAT Judit said to Hans was, “I wanted to take that teapot and crack it over her head. I mean, what the hell does she expect of me?”
“Why don’t you ask her?” Hans said mildly. They had just made love, and the very ease and warmth of lying next to Hans made Judit talk and talk. He usually didn’t mind. This time, he felt compelled to say, “You could always drop the class.”
“It’s not even in my field,” said Judit. “I just thought maybe I’d learn something, but all I’m learning is that I don’t know anything. Plus that picture of her old girlfriend keeps staring at me.”
“She’s jealous,” Hans said.
Judit buried her face in the mattress. “Right. Of a library science student. I mean, I’m sure she’s really threatened by me. I bet she’ll steal all my material and write a Bundist exposé.”
“I mean the girlfriend’s jealous,” Hans said. Judit rolled back over and couldn’t help but laugh and squirm as Hans held her down. “Watch your step, Lamb. That woman’s got such a reputation, even I’ve heard of her. Don’t get too dazzled or I’ll think you’ve fallen in love with her.”
“I’m not in love with her,” Judit insisted. “She’s too old!” All the while, Hans pinned her to the bed, and they both hoped it wouldn’t collapse from the activity. It was an awful bed.
“So who are you in love with then?”
“You, you, you!” Judit cried, until he fell on top of her and knocked out her breath, which was a good thing because that shut her up. They didn’t want the neighbors to complain.
Judit had been spending more and more time in that apartment. On mornings when she’d slip back to her dormitory, what she did and who she was felt palpably apparent. Yes, she was full of sex, and also full of wild anxiety about her circumstances. Would the neighbors complain? Would they report her to the dean who would arrange for Hans to be evicted and expel her from the college? For what? For sleeping with the enemy? Did anybody say that anymore?
When Judit was in Archeology Camp, she was warned to stay close to the group. The implication was that there were Saxons in the area. Charlotte Kreutzberger reported that she’d seen one swimming in a gorge, and when Judit asked her how she knew he was a Saxon, she’d blushed from the neck and whispered, in her ponderous way, “His thing—it wasn’t cut.” Until Judit met Hans, she had no idea what Charlotte was talking about.
There were plenty of rumors about Jewish men with Saxon mistresses who would do things that a good Jewish girl would never dream of doing. That was the usual line. Again, until Judit met Hans, she had no idea what that meant either, and then he both told her and showed her how to do it. Then she said, “I guess I’m not so good.”