The Last Days Read Online Free PDF Page A

since they have shut the great gates, the gates of the mighty Reich and the gates of America. My daughter won’t stroll into my shop tomorrow. So I stick to dressmaking, but while that’s all well and good, I’m not uncultured, and I can recognize a great writer when I see one, and what’s more I’ve seen a photograph of him in the newspaper. Your husband is a man of rare elegance, please tell him to drop by, you know Max Wurmberg also does menswear, I have pure wool suits that are like the ones the best sewing shops in Berlin used to turn out, not than anyone wants to remember Berlin these days… You know, I only exhibit dresses in my windows because the future belongs to dressmakers, that is if there’s any future for dressmakers at all. I prefer not to think about the future too much, that’s what fooled Ernst Rosenthal… One day or another, the great Roosevelt is finally going to declare war, I only hope that when he does decide to send his troops over, my little Gilda will still be alive. It’s already August 1941, and if he keeps on waiting, I don’t know what part of Poland they’re going to find her in. It’s just that, you see, I would like to be a grandfather, look over here in this box, it’s a coat for the baby, with a brocaded velvet exterior, and cotton jersey on the inside. It’s for my grandson, look, I’ve stitched his name on the sleeves, he’s going to be called Max, just like me, according to our forefathers’ tradition.”
    He had broken off to search for a dress at the back of the cupboard, saying that it was his favourite, and that he’d set itaside for his daughter, although Gilda would never dare wear it. It was a low-cut red dress that left the back almost naked. Lotte had tried it on, albeit a little reluctantly. The dressmaker had lingered in front of her, on his knees, sticking needles through the cloth and adjusting it. He hadn’t spared any compliments when praising her slender figure, her curves, her long legs. He had promised the dress would be ready before their departure.
    “You’re going to look marvellous, Mrs Zweig, you already look marvellous, look at those hips, those shoulders, you’re a dream woman, you deserve the greatest of men.”
    Then they took their leave.
    “You’re going to look sublime in your red dress…” Eva had exclaimed.
    Lotte hadn’t reacted. She walked like a robot, with a faraway look in her eyes.
    “On the beach at Copacabana…” Eva had continued.
    Lotte couldn’t picture herself strolling on a beach. Neither could she imagine her husband walking with her by the edge of the sea. She would undoubtedly never wear that dress.
    “You’ll be in Brazil in a few days! You don’t seem all too happy about it.”
    Happiness wasn’t a word she was accustomed to. Ever since she’d been a teenager, she had thought of joy as vague and out of reach. She wasn’t like the other girls. She had known that from an early age. She had the impression that the other girls were happier, more lively and more radiant. She dwelt in shadowy fringes. These days it was easier, people both praised and resented her—after all, she lived in Stefan Zweig’s shadow! She would never wear that dress. Her body had always seemed foreign to her. It was a sterile land. Then where did all her hopelessness, which left her feeling lifeless, come from? She’d had a happy and unproblematicchildhood. Her father had doted on her, her brother had loved her and her mother had cherished her. They had looked after all her needs. They hadn’t denied her anything. Yet nothing but sorrow and suffering emerged from the unreal lands of her childhood . She had always been pervaded by a feeling of defeat. Her respiratory ailment had suited her perfectly as she hadn’t needed to adapt to it. She had always felt out of breath, wherever she had happened to be at the time, at home or at school. She had watched her family getting on with the business of living, heard her friends laugh