Guesthouse for Ganesha Read online

  She was primed for the tests to be confronted. Esther’s core ensured these young children, who now constituted her family—her responsibilities—would have, at the very least, the basic necessities as long as they were in her care. Esther may have lost most of her desire to love and nurture, but her resilience remained unshakable.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A symbol appeared …

  ubiquitously.

  One of the oldest in existence.

  Prevalent throughout the world …

  a cross quadrupled …

  a cosmic pinwheel.

  More potent than words.

  Arrogated from the original Sanskrit …

  meaning: conducive to well-being.

  Appropriated from the right-handed emblem of …

  purity … auspiciousness …

  innocence … supreme devotion …

  Ganesha.

  Assumed from the left-handed emblem of …

  destruction … strife … devastation …

  spiritual dissolution …

  Kali.

  This … is the one they used.

  She excelled at options. Found alternatives. Located more for less. Esther still shopped in the Jewish Quarter’s shops but, after some probing, became acquainted with the burgeoning black market. It became not so difficult to find what she needed, as she only had to listen closely to those who whispered and watch the ones who pointed with their eyes. She found them hanging out on street corners. Leaning against buildings. They were the ones who pretended to be engaged in conversation. Or folded and refolded stacks of newspapers. With their assistance, she discovered those who offered what was no longer available in regular stores—at a price, of course.

  It all came down to money.

  This was paramount. One did not need friends or family. Only money. Butter, milk, flour, even cheese and eggs—anything and everything were within reach if one had money.

  As her client base shrank, and despite Abraham’s negligible contributions, Esther figured out new ways to hoard money. She scrimped more Reichsmarks from every tailoring assignment, cut corners to put aside every possible Pfennig. Most fortunately, she had saved a considerable sum. And she felt no qualms hiding these funds from Abraham. She placed coins behind the flour on the highest shelf over the sink. The paper bills were unseen at the bottom of her sewing basket, below a couple of layers of fabric, and in a slit skillfully cut into the top right corner of the mattress on their bed—her side.

  She provided necessities, if even on the most basic level. He bought candy.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Herr Wolf said, “We are going to treat the Jews like flowers;

  only we won’t give them water.”

  The garden had been rich and lush,

  overflowing with color and texture, life and song …

  And dance … there was always dance.

  A vibrant panoply of personalities that welcomed visitors …

  families … friends … lovers …

  to gather and talk and play and laugh

  and sit and breath and be.

  Until the day sustenance was slowly denied.

  And the garden … silently … painfully …

  began to shrink … began to cry.

  Not comprehending … for there were

  no cogent answers to the why.

  Then the Hummingbirds came.

  Instead of transferring life-bearing pollen …

  only blood dripped from their knife-like beaks.

  There were now buds that would never bloom,

  and seeds that would never rest….

  With her small basket curled under her right arm, Esther walked down this street just as she had a thousand times before, prepared to get vegetables and perhaps some meat for the evening meal. Typically Miriam accompanied her, slowing her mother down as she looked at a bird flying by or a squirrel on a tree or asked question after question. But this morning the little girl had chosen to stay with her papa and play in the shop with Tova.

  For this, Esther was grateful. No explanations would be necessary. Because starting on this day, it was no longer possible to ignore or deny everything was now different.

  The air was thick and apprehensive. The street, mostly bare of people. The few she did pass looked down or away or within. Overnight, prominently and brashly displayed in many shop windows—those shops she regularly frequented—appeared bold signs that proclaimed: KEINE HUNDE, KEINE JUDEN! NO DOGS, NU JEWS!

  JUDEN VERBOTEN! JEWS FORBIDDEN!

  A few shops, the ones she recognized as possible to enter, had JUDEN emblazoned in yellow across the full expanse of their windows.

  Esther stopped. No movement possible.

  Although she stood for just a few seconds, an eternity passed.

  She remained still, and strong, and tall. She gathered her full stature, establishing a figure that ascended far above her nearly five feet.

  With control, she slowly and warily looked around. Up and down this street she had come to know so well. She blinked and acknowledged that the familiar had melted away.

  Esther turned and retraced what little remained of her original steps—back to their too small apartment three stories above Abraham’s shop. And then, she sat.

  Time, once again, lost its influence.

  At some point, Miriam and Tova ran through the door. They shouted and sang as they came in the kitchen, still joyful from the afternoon in Papa’s shop and the chance to play.

  “Mama, Mama, was gibt’s zum Abendessen? What’s for dinner? What’s for dinner? We’re hungry!”

  Esther turned to them and responded with a stony glare, “Drek—drek mit laber! Dirt with liver!”

  In the Kali Yuga … humanity toils … righteousness …morality … virtue … ethics … diminish … and evils … evils abound …

  The situation escalated, more rules, more restrictions, more humiliations that culminated in the branding of the yellow Star of David required on all their clothing—“Jude” broadcast in black imitative Hebrew script at its center. This became mandatory for everyone over six years of age. To facilitate identification, they were told. To what end, they were not told.

  Truth obscured.

  The streets became filled with brown-shirted soldiers—boys, in actual fact, barely out of school, most, no doubt, still in school—marching up and marching down. Goose-stepping. In unthinking conformity.

  Spiritual degeneration.

  With only one hour permitted each day for shopping of any kind, fewer meals had to stretch further.

  Darkness.

  The reduced periods allotted to travel by streetcar and tram limited Esther’s ability to pick up her tailoring assignments and return them in a suitable fashion. Her business suffered, just as intended. Politics, actions, and attitudes conspired against her—against all of them.

  So much darkness … in action … and in thought …

  Although restrictions abounded, the rules and requirements and orders seemed to change daily. Attacks and charges were ambiguous. There were constant shifts in regulations, momentary lulls in persecutions. Mixed signals sent consistently. Vacillating policies. Any semblance of normalcy was not possible.

  And ignorance … of an unfathomable magnitude prevails.

  In comparison to many around them, Esther, Abraham, and the girls were among the fortunate. A couple just down the street that had long owned the neighborhood drugstore was accused of tax evasion and forced out of business. The wife resorted to cleaning houses—when she could find the work—and her husband set up a shoeshine stand. Others in the neighborhood—those who worked in offices, restaurants, retail shops, factories—began to lose their jobs. All given excuses. No basis in fact.

  Sporadically, men in the neighborhood were rounded up and taken away. No one knew where. The destination never revealed. No questions allowed. More often than not, these men did not return. The few that did were battered nearly beyond recognition, too frightened to speak. />
  The sound of synchronized boots against gravel became routine. Sturmabteilung—Stormtroopers—marched through the streets. They shouted anti-Jewish slogans and sang jingoistic songs:

  Die Fahne hoch! Die Reihen fest geschlossen!

  SA marschiert mit mutig-festem Schritt

  Kameraden, die Rotfront und Reaktion erschossen

  Marschieren im Geist in unseren Reihen mit—

  ………………..

  Fly high the flag! The ranks be tightly closed now!

  SA is marching, bravely and firm

  Comrades shot dead by Red Front and Reaction

  In spirit march within our ranks

  And always the catchphrase: “Sieg Heil! Hail victory!”

  Random searches took place. Die Polizei took whatever they wanted. No recourse.

  Daily now, Tova and Miriam were taunted in school by their classmates—without provocation. Names were called. Hair pulled. Rocks thrown. These children went unpunished. Then—teachers began to ridicule the girls.

  “Tova, you don’t seem to know any of the answers this morning.” Fraulein Richter inquired, “Didn’t you read your assignment last night? It was only a few pages.”

  When Tova, cheeks flushed, slowly moved her head from side to side, Fraulein Richter continued, “Wirklich? Really, again? Class, once more Tova is the example of how not to be a good student.” Her classmates snickered. “Go stand in the corner!” And that’s where she stood until lunchtime, more than one hour. Red-faced.

  Far too often these girls returned home in tears and ran to their papa for comfort.

  The family’s decent landlord assured them that the roof would remain over their heads. And her actions supported these declarations; when die Polizei came by to ask if there were any Jews in the building causing trouble, she said, “Nein, nein. Not here,” while she swept the sidewalk.

  This support, coupled with steady loyalty from a handful of customers—many of whom were young, bold Germans—allowed Esther and Abraham to continue to scrape by.

  More struggles. New challenges. Increased frustrations. Constant juggling. Yes. But they got by nonetheless, when so many around them were losing everything.

  Then all efforts became compounded when Esther found herself pregnant for the third time. In the middle of one night when exhaustion overtook her, and she could not resist Abraham’s pleas. And, yet again—after she mixed the herbal combinations recommended by the neighborhood’s Hebamme, the midwife, this time adding more pennyroyal than was recommended, more evening primrose, more parsley, and the rest—her attempt to terminate the pregnancy was unsuccessful.

  With Zami’s birth, Miriam began to have tantrums. She was used to being the baby of the family, her father’s pet, and became resentful of the new arrival. This little thing brought only noise and distraction and took away the attention of her precious papa.

  Esther watched and listened acutely as the situation around them developed. Her senses were heightened. Adrenaline elevated. Although she had never laid down her guard—not since she had arrived in Köln—she found herself, once more, immersed in strategizing the methods and means that would ensure survival. She was stunned by what had unfolded, though it was difficult to shock someone who, for so many years, had mostly been going through the motions of life. Someone who had already known a bitterness that strangled her inner core.

  Evenings, after the children and Abraham had gone to bed, Esther would sit in the kitchen area close to their radio and listen to the speeches of a man who described an Über race. His discourses blamed the Jews for all the misfortunes that had befallen Germany and the world: “—the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew—definitely a race, but—not human.” In this way she learned of the latest restrictions leveled against the Jewish people, considered the scapegoats for all of the world’s ills.

  The noose slowly tightened—

  Setting … and circumstance were now ripe …

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Molded over the millennia … shattered in one night.

  Imbued with healing properties and mystical strengths.

  With the abilities to cure and to calm.

  Every color of the rainbow … every size known to man …

  Such con—struction turned to total de—struction.

  First one home … then the next … one business … then two.

  Synagogue after synagogue …

  one after another …burnt to the ground …

  shattered …

  broken …

  shreds of life.

  All transformed into shards of broken glass—

  crystal …

  Kristallnacht.

  The abrupt silence woke her. Like the moments right before a large quake when the earth takes a slow, deep, measured inhale, or the stillness that occurs as the tide retreats into the depths, calculating the force necessary to return to shore with embroidered dominance and impact. Though deep asleep, the absence of sound announced the looming arrival of a not unanticipated, though much-dreaded, caller and thrust Esther into a state of hyperconsciousness.

  Some say it was initiated by a long designed plan, one implemented after years of vengeance against those singled out by the propaganda machine as enemies within the state. Others insist it was a lone incident, one young man’s desperate reprisal, a visceral reaction to too many injustices inflicted on his family. Regardless of its root, the incendiary spark incited rampant destruction throughout the land. In the brief span of a few hours, hundreds of synagogues were burned, thousands of Jewish-owned businesses destroyed, and nearly one hundred Jews murdered.

  That same evening, more than thirty thousand people of Jewish lineage were sent to camps. Concentration camps. Such a benign term, “to concentrate.” It assumes a gathering, a place to focus, absorb, meditate, muse. And the concept of “camp” does not elicit the type of activities that were to take place there. But at this time, the true objectives were concealed, the full extent of the horror to be carried out not yet revealed.

  As the onslaught of heavy boots pounded down the pavement, and the sounds of shattering glass and screams encircled them, Esther scooped the baby out of his crib and jumped onto the children’s bed. Both Zami and Miriam were sound asleep and yelped when she woke them. Tova was curled up under the covers, whimpering. Abraham tried to comfort his little girl, but no words would form. Even a more educated man, a scholarly man, could not have found the sentences that, woven together, would provide a logic or rationale for what was taking place on the streets below.

  For the remainder of the night, Esther and her family huddled in a corner of the bed in the small room, clutching each other. They listened anxiously as the shops on their street were ravaged. And they took in one sharp collective breath when they heard men smash the large window of Abraham’s cobbler shop below and enter to complete their task. For too long they were unsure whether their apartment door would be broken down, whether this night would be their last. For the next seventy-four minutes, the sounds of unbridled anger and hatred overwhelmed them: fists against walls—boots against counters—wood against wood—metal against wood—shoes flung into the street—ripping leather—shelves shattering—equipment smashing.

  And then—quiet.

  Amidst her sobbing children and distraught, enfeebled husband, Esther heard me whisper …

  It is time.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Esther—

  so aptly named.

  Hidden …

  from herself.

  Veiled …

  to the world.

  —facilitates deliverance.

  No accidents …

  No coincidences.

  In the morning, as she surveyed the damage before her, Esther’s composure stood in stark contrast to the frenzy and despair of those in the neighborhood. She moved slowly up Kämmergasse, balancing each step on the glass mounds that blanketed the street. Every shop window was shatte
red. Half the interiors had been burned. The air was thick with ash. Screeches echoed between the buildings, still in pain. Produce, staples, supplies, equipment, and clothing were strewn all over. She watched some neighbors cull through the ruins in search of anything salvageable. Others swept, their brooms no match for the mountains of rubble surrounding them. Esther spoke not a word.

  Clearheadedness, decisive action, and forward motion were now her trinity.

  She did not bother to conspire with Abraham. She knew full well he would hold her back. Resist her efforts. These past few years he had given no credence to her observations, to her warnings. Even now, after last night’s calamity, with head shaking, he only said, “Diese verrückten Regeln—These crazy rules, this insane government, it can’t continue. This is a passing craze. Worse than others, maybe, but this too will pass.”

  And he laughed, as though all that was taking place, all that had taken place, was merely some type of prank or a joke—destroyed businesses, broken windows, smoke thick in the air, hysteria all around, and worse.

  Just a joke.

  Nothing seemed to upend Abraham’s buoyancy. He did calm the children, who were in a constant state of distress. And he distracted them. This was the most important benefit.

  He must keep them out of my way, she thought. It’s time to leave, and I must plan for all of us. This situation is impossible. It will only get worse, like some incendiary device on verge of erupting. Of this I am confident. The fragile seams of existence—my life—are rapidly unthreading. I must figure out a fail-safe departure. And soon! I can’t be bothered by the children’s whining. Or Abraham’s foolishness.

  But—depart to where?

  As she gnawed on the inside of her right cheek, Esther ruminated: Is there somewhere safe? A sanctuary where such madness does not dwell? Where people—all people—are free to live their lives? To simply go about daily activities and responsibilities and interests without risk that all could be taken away at a whim—no notice, no warning? Could such a place possibly exist?