“Finish up, Kurt. I’m going to call a car to take us home. There’s no point in running into those louts as we get off the tram.”
Kurt was caught in a true, proper bureaucratic double bind. Unless he declared his allegiance to the new order, he would never be allowed to leave; but if he submitted to it, the universal draft would apply to him, voiding his visa. Kafka, Kurt’s countryman, would have appreciated the bad joke, but for the fact that the Nazis were already dancing on his grave in Prague. Kurt hoped his supposed heart condition might earn him an exemption, but in late summer 1939 he was declared fit for administrative service. He couldn’t make use of his “nervous condition” to avoid the draft. He even drew a veil of silence over his years of psychiatric treatment, because the American immigration services, flooded with applicants, would have denied his request on that basis. I now know that if we had made an official case for his “fragile mental state,” Kurt’s fate might have been far worse. In those days, your release pass from a psychiatric ward was also your ticket to a work camp.
The prospect of enlistment in the Wehrmacht was inconceivable to him. What would he be forced to do? Work out the logic of an imminent war? Become a white-collar murderer? He would have imploded. Outside his research, nothing meant a thing to him, but the rest of the universe had decided differently, shoving his nose into the sorry shit of history.
23
Since midnight, Anna had watched every flap of her radio alarm clock as it fell into place. At five thirty she sat up on the edge of her bed and rubbed her head until it hurt, tangling her hair further. The cat was mauling the bed frame. She made no move to stop it. She rose and cleared away last night’s television tray: a half-emptied bottle of wine, a yogurt, and a packet of crackers. Unfuckable virgin. She was still mulling over the old woman’s insult. As though she had a problem fucking.
She stayed a long time in the shower, increasing the temperature to the point where it was just bearable. She went back to bed in her bathrobe, her skin and hair still wet. Despite her torpor, she still couldn’t manage to sleep. She started caressing herself. The cat looked at her from the foot of the bed. She couldn’t concentrate. She got up and shut the peeping tom in the kitchen. She went back to caressing herself, summoning a memory that was guaranteed to work, even if it always left a lingering sense of unfinished business.
She is eighteen. She accompanies her father to a dinner at the Adamses’. She hasn’t seen Leo since that famous letter, which she still regrets sending. He never answered any of her subsequent ones. At dinner he is distant and excuses himself before dessert. She slips away from the table to hide in the library. Leo comes into the room, locks the door, and without a word rams her up against the bookcase. She recognizes the stubborn look on his face — the same one he wears on the rare occasions when he loses at chess. He kisses her. His tongue, ineffective, tastes of bourbon. He has given himself courage. They’ve never kissed before. From a sense of competition over who would break down first and ask the other for a kiss. She wonders if she really feels like it. Because they are going to do it, this thing that will partition their memories. She would like to be transported. She isn’t. She has often imagined this scene: rough but elegant. Far from this awkward reality. They have the overfamiliarity of an old couple without the complicity to make up for it. She touches a man but still sees the child, the adolescent, the friend. The same smell, but stronger. The same mole on his cheek, but now under the shadow of a beard. Like a familiar song in a different key. Her mind fixes on the strangeness of it, keeping her from letting go. So she inventories what she has learned from others. She wants to do well. She runs her hand under his T-shirt, explores his warm skin, cooler toward his lower back. Her fingers drop toward his buttocks, which Leo clenches. She fumbles with the snap on his pants to release his penis. She fondles his hardened cock, noticing that up till now she has known only circumcised ones. Leo spreads her arms out, forcing her to be passive. She clings to the raw image of his glimpsed penis. She feels tiny between his gigantic hands. And finally the little boy disappears.
He fucks her standing, the silence punctuated by a ticktocking grandfather clock. The wooden molding digs into her back at every thrust. It’s an execution squad. He has to get his revenge. She has to settle an outstanding debt. The part of herself that is excited by submission is not one she had known before. She feels her pleasure welling up too quickly. His strokes sync with the clock; she keeps herself from moaning, opens her eyes: he isn’t watching her come.
The anticipated orgasm radiated outward from her parts; she smiled — her little machine still worked. What happened afterward she preferred to forget. They had put their clothes back on and opened the door. Before leaving the room, Anna had asked for a word, a gesture of affection, but he had brushed her aside absently. “Wait, I have to jot something down and I’ll be right there.” She understood that if she chose to wait now, she would be supplicating for the rest of her life. Back in the kitchen, Ernestine, the governess, noticed her mussed clothes and gave her a quiet smile, taking her pallor for embarrassment. She left without saying goodbye to Leo and pretended to be indifferent when he called the next day.
She looked at her radio alarm clock: 6:05. Still a full hour before she could start her day. She reached over to her dressing table and took a novel haphazardly from the stack.
Her parents had almost been pleased by her taste for books. Something might be made of the girl yet. Of course, she’d never be as brilliant as the Adamses’ son. But at least she didn’t call them from the police station. Leo was probably the child they would have liked to have. Their hopes for her had been modest, and she had not disappointed. She didn’t even have the excuse that she was lazy: she worked hard, eager for the half smile that greeted every A, but there were never enough of them. It would have been hipper to have a dunce to bemoan. Still, at fourteen Anna spoke several languages. Her mother corrected her too-colloquial German, and her father thought her French and Italian barely adequate for ordering in a restaurant. The adolescent buried her anger in little black notebooks, labeled by date and scrupulously aligned on the shelf in her room, describing the people around her in unvarnished terms. Since the day when Rachel had “inadvertently” read one of her notebooks, Anna had gotten into the habit of using the Gabelsberger shorthand that her grandmother had taught her for fun. She saved her rounded handwriting for her homework. At her graduation, her father looked at his watch, and her mother, in an offensively low-cut dress, eyed the male livestock. Among all these pimply youths, there had to be one who would take an interest in her daughter. Marriage might be a good solution: sometimes talent skipped a generation.
Given her grades, she should have gone to a state college instead of Princeton. But the Roths hadn’t stood on their pride: a few quick phone calls and Anna was accepted at their alma mater. She had tried to hold out for a little more freedom, but she was made to see that such an opportunity came only once. In her junior year, Anna had unearthed that rare treasure, William, her tutor in literature. She presented him officially to her family in the second semester; they were engaged in the third. George Roth enjoyed the boy’s company, finding him a deferential listener. The academic prospects of the two young people might be limited — English literature of the nineteenth century was hardly a field to reward ambition — but they had at least shown good taste in following the family tradition. Will was reliable, punctual, and devoted to his family. Physically, he promised to age well, and he seemed mentally prepared to consent to it. To Anna, he had the particular merit — unlike her previous partners — of being an assiduous lover and of having a large library. Rachel made no comment about her daughter’s choice. She always acted politely toward him but without warmth. Anna would have felt relieved to know that her fiancé was safe from her mother’s usual attempts at seduction had this restraint not been further proof of Rachel’s contempt for him.