Outside, the twilight had turned into evening. By now, the hall inside was packed with journalists, with dignitaries, with waiters bearing little plates of crackers and caviar. The very flow of history ran through that brilliant hallway, and on the veranda, Lehmann lit another cigarette and adjusted herself on the bench. The look she gave Judit was no challenge, simply an assessment.
“Well, it’s bound to come out eventually. Everything does. With the way things are headed, every file will be open within the next five years, and there will be so much to read—so much—that people will have to choose what to remember. But now? Think hard, dear. All things have their proper time and place.” Lehmann gave a grunt and pushed herself to her feet. “Speaking of which, we should go back inside.”
Judit said, “Durmersheimer knows.”
“I’m sure a lot of people know,” Lehmann said. “How is that knowledge useful to them? You never ask yourself that question. You’ve got a self-destructive streak, Ginsberg. And you always get yourself into hot water. That’s when cabbages begin to stink, isn’t it? When they’re in hot water? When they start to cook?”
Then, even through the walls, they heard applause explode. One surprise guest had arrived. It was Mikhail Gorbachev, flown in for the private screening, and later there would be talk that he shouldn’t have come, that he’d taken things too far, and that he would pay for it later. Judit and Anna Lehmann both missed the spectacle of Gorbachev kissing Helena Sokolov, first on both cheeks and then on the mouth, and though the second guest had been delayed, the lights flashed on and off three times. The film would begin shortly.
Yet Judit persisted. “My husband is dead because he knew about this.”
“About what? The Soviet atrocities against the Saxons? They’re the subject of the film we’re about to see. About those lost souls who lined up at my tent and told me horror stories? You’ve catalogued those stories too. So did those lost souls kill your husband? Did I kill him? Who is your quarrel with, Ginsberg?”
“Somebody killed him. Because he won’t forget.”
“So is your quarrel with memory?”
“I can’t forget,” Judit said helplessly. “I can’t forget him.”
“And so you avenge him. Just as Stein avenged the dead. And so did I. You know,” said Lehmann, “the dead can only say one thing: Avenge me. It’s a motif. It’s as reliable as death itself, my dear.” She looked, critically, at the end of her cigarette. “What you might ask yourself is this: What do the living say?”
8
From Helena Sokolov’s Anniversary Address Televised immediately after the screening of the documentary: “We Have Survived Them,” May 14th, 1988.
Tonight, we have watched an extraordinary film. What is extraordinary about this film? I will say first that it is frank, and that it is courageous, and that it is of the moment. It is the embodiment of the extraordinary times in which we live. Forty years after our founding, businesses from around the world flock to our country and pour their resources into our economy. We see the results in the towers rising throughout the nation, in our new roads, new rail lines, new industries. And we will continue to grow. I have said time and time again that when a girl like me can stand before this body and tell the truth, everything is possible.
Forty years after our founding, two girls like me have found each other. Each has suffered a tragedy. The first, we all know. Judit Klemmer was a young bride when she lost her husband, whose life was cut short as he raised his baton over the Dresden Orchestra on this very day four years ago. His legacy of tolerance lives on through the work you saw tonight. The second story is no less compelling. Fredericka Shumaker was six months old when she was abandoned on the Brandenburg border in 1953. She was raised in Germany, but as you saw tonight, she found her way back to our country, and what she found here has made you reconsider everything you’ve known about our early years and everything you thought about the future.
Judenstaat is forty years old today. We’ve lived through challenging times. We have moved from an uneasy infancy to childhood to adulthood, and against all odds, have built ourselves a state that has surpassed the expectations of our founders. We have survived. But we are more than a nation of survivors. And I will say it now: it is not enough for a nation to survive. A nation must live.
A nation must live and a nation must grow. A nation must look towards the future and not be hemmed in by the expectations of the past. A nation must accept that living things cannot stand still. And I say to you today that the people of Germany and the people of Judenstaat have at last reached the age of reason.
Tonight, as I sat between the president of the United States and the leader of the Soviet Union, I thought, as I often do, of Leopold Stein. He himself said to me, quite recently, “Helena, I’d give anything to be sitting in that room with you.” I said, “But Leo, you’ll be there.” He knew what I meant, and then he made his hands into that arc, that bridge, the way he does, the gesture that we all know, and the old man began to cry. He said, “Helena, I don’t want to leave them with walls. That was never our way. It’s time to build more bridges.”
What could I say to that? To sit beside that man and hear his words, I felt an awesome responsibility. I say to you: we are ready to build more bridges. I say to you, we are ready to tear down walls. Tear down that wall—between East and West! Tear down that wall—between two peoples whose histories are intertwined. What is Germany? What is Judenstaat? We are one people! We live in one world! We must move on together!
And when we move on, when we cross the bridge our legacy has constructed, we leave nothing behind. We carry all of who we are into that future. And what a future it will be, where there are no closed doors, no shadows, no dark corners! The two women who made this film have shown us the way. Walk with them now, into the sunlight.
THE BORDER
1
BAD Muskau was two hours northeast of Dresden. Bondi had described the place in detail, a holiday camp and spa dating from well before the war, with mud and thermal treatments, formal English-style gardens, and a lovely little river that crossed the Polish border. What with its amenities, Judit was surprised she’d never heard of it before, and that was a good sign. It was unlikely to be overrun with tourists.
The date had been long set, and in the havoc of the month that followed the screening, Judit had been overwhelmed with press conferences and public interviews, and they brought up strong, unpleasant memories. As had been the case four years before, she’d sleepwalked through those days, abstracted from her circumstances. Fredericka did the talking. The woman who arranged the microphone on Judit’s lapel commented on her complexion. “You barely need foundation, Mrs. Klemmer.” Judit responded with a nod that might have seemed serene, but actually was a way of shaking off exhaustion.
Her life was past impossible. There was no escape now, not even to the room in Johannstadt; with the black-hat demonstrations, meeting there was out of the question. Judit began to realize how much those afternoons with Bondi meant. They had been the only real thing in her life. Now, unmoored, she found herself in taxicabs and limousines, and her own self seeped away. By the time she came back to her mother’s apartment, there was nothing left.
Yet her mother needed Judit’s attention now. The night after the documentary was broadcast and Sokolov made her speech, Leonora confronted her in the kitchen and said, “Judi, I don’t understand.”