Dear Mrs. Klemmer,
We met only briefly, but I take the liberty to write you to let you know that our encounter has left a deep impression on me and on my family as well as on the whole of our community. Chana Batya informed me of your childhood friendship, and I can only take it as evidence of your loyalty to our people, Israel, that even in these confusing times, you have performed mitzvah after mitzvah telling our stories through the medium of film. Yesterday, I approached the Rebbe, and he is very aware of your work, which he has followed closely. Rabbi Schneerson’s message to you, for which I am only an emissary, is this: Remember, always, you are a Jew. When miracles occur, you may laugh, like Mother Sarah, or you may weep, like Mother Rachel, but you are forbidden to despair.
Folded inside was an American dollar bill. At least Judit assumed that it must be one. She’d never seen an actual dollar bill before. It was dull green, smaller than a Judenmark. She didn’t know what it was worth these days. There wasn’t time to calculate exchange rates. The taxi pulled up by the entrance of the National Museum, and Judit fished around for Judenmarks. It was morning, and she had work to do.
7
IT wasn’t morning, though. It was past eleven. Judit glanced at the clock above the front desk as she passed and was surprised to find Mr. Rosenblatt rising in alarm and calling, “Wait! Mrs. Klemmer—Judit!” and abandoning his post to follow her. She kept going, right to the stairwell that led down to her archive, and she opened the door when she felt his hand on her arm.
She turned at last. The poor old man had her arm in a grip. “I know I’m late,” she said. “And I know I missed a day. I should have called the office. But I’ll make up for lost time even if I have to work all night.”
“Judit,” said Mr. Rosenblatt, “no one’s allowed downstairs.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Judit said. “What is this? Was Sammy in there? Did he touch my stuff?”
“You’d better check with Mr. Kornfeld,” Mr. Rosenblatt said carefully.
Judit shook his hand off her arm with difficulty; he was stronger than he looked. She switched on the light and started down the stairwell, conscious that Mr. Rosenblatt had gone back to his station, and aware that he was phoning someone; she could hear his thin, anxious old-man’s voice rising and falling. Then she saw the padlock.
It was clamped, crosswise, on the door, a padlock with a combination. She stood there. Then she shook it. She called up, “Mr. Rosenblatt! What’s this about?” He didn’t answer. Finally, she walked back to the lobby and saw that Mr. Rosenblatt was still on the phone, and he turned to Judit, cupping the receiver with his hand.
“They’re waiting for you. Upstairs.” His voice shook a little.
Had someone found out about the break-in three months ago? He did look spooked. Judit hoped that she hadn’t inadvertently caused the poor man trouble. When she reached Kornfeld’s office, his secretary said, “Gosh. I’m glad you’re back, Judit. Everything here’s been topsy-turvy. The new setup must have cost a fortune.” That’s how Judit found out that her footage had been moved to the Media Room.
That room, which Judit had always refused to enter, was in a newly restored atrium that had been boarded over until just last year. When the museum had been a palace, this must have been its greenhouse, walls of glass awash in light, and an expansive view of Stein Square. Several expensive-looking chairs faced each other across an oblong table where five dull-plastic monitors sat like burlap sacks. There was a lot of business underneath the table too, dials and switches, tiny flashing green lights. It was no surprise that Sammy Gluck was there to greet her, looking moist and holding both his hands out effusively, happy enough to burst.
“Welcome back!” he said. “Isn’t this beautiful?” He switched on a screen, and there was the face of Leopold Stein as he looked in 1952, square-jawed and hostile. Sammy wiggled a dangling object on that table, and the eyes of Stein were suddenly all whites. Blue irises appeared. Then the whole face vanished, leaving a pair of angry blue eyes.
Judit said, “Sammy, this is an incredible waste of time and money. We’re not here to play.”
Someone spoke up from behind. “No. We’re here to work.” The accent was a strange one. Judit turned, and faced a well-dressed, slim blond woman in rectangular glasses who extended a hand and introduced herself. “Fredericka Schumaker from Berlin. Freddi. I take it you’re the editor. I’ve been waiting on tenterhooks. I hear you’re terrifying.” She smiled. Her teeth were excellent. Judit took the hand because she wasn’t sure what else to do with it.
“I guess you’re the director,” Judit said in a voice that sounded childish even to herself.
“Good guess,” said Freddi. “Now sit down, kiddo. I laid out most of the storyboard even before I got here, and the interviews are almost done, but what we need’s a feel to the thing, see? It needs a flow.” Freddi leaned back in one of those chairs and crossed her expensive-looking legs. Her shoes had square toes, and thick high heels; her feet were enormous. “Sammy’s already worked with some of the footage from downstairs.”
To Judit’s horror, across those screens ran film she’d pieced together—shots of rubble, construction sites from 1949—and what had been sunlight was now white and flattened, not a shadow visible. Then Judit realized he’d done something else to the footage. There were no people in it. Reading Judit’s face, Sammy said, “Hey, I just cleaned it up a little, Mrs. Klemmer.”
“Cleaned it up?”
“Better to start with an empty canvas,” Sammy said. “Then we can add what we need later.” He looked at Freddi for reassurance, but her face was unreadable. Somewhat deflated, he said, “Nothing that can’t be undone. I mean, that’s the whole point. Nothing’s permanent.”
Judit pulled one of those chairs from behind the table and sat glaring at them both. She had no intention of condoning this brand of mischief, but she couldn’t take it seriously. Then it came back to her: what she had said to Sammy on Thursday in her delirium. Well, now she had recovered and she would let him know that it was all a misunderstanding. That the archive was padlocked, that this mad scientist’s laboratory was functioning, that a Berliner marched in here on legs like a giraffe’s and talked about a storyboard, none of it had anything to do with her work. Kornfeld would have some explaining to do, but in the end, it wasn’t possible that any real damage could have been done in just four days.
The first thing Kornfeld said was, “We thought you were dead. A week and a half, no sign of you.”
“I was just here Thursday,” Judit said.
“No you weren’t. And you weren’t at your dormitory, or at your mother’s.” He looked shaken, and actually seemed more angry than relieved to find Judit sitting across from him. “That poor woman’s called here twice a day.”
“Oscar,” Judit said, “I swear I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Kornfeld fell back into his chair and gave something between a growl and a sigh. He ran his hand over his forehead and face so that what little hair he had stood up, and then he said, “I was told to say you’d taken a vacation. It was simpler that way. Gluck worked night and day transferring the stuff to video before that German could take over completely. Where the hell were you, anyway?”
Judit felt sweat bead all over her body. “I need the combination.”
“What combination?” Kornfeld asked. Then he said, “Oh. I see. Well, that’s beyond my jurisdiction.”
“What are you talking about?” Judit asked. “Whose jurisdiction is it?”