Those Who Save Us Read Online Free PDF Page A

should be toying heartlessly with fellows her own age, not wasting her time with an old bachelor like me.
    But you’re only thirty-seven, Anna says.
    Max hands her the hat, one of its flowers crumpled on its silk stem. Then he lowers his glasses and gives Anna a serious look.
    That’s enough, young lady, he tells her. You know that’s not the real reason why this is impossible. For your own good, you really must not come back.
    Over Anna’s protests, he pushes her gently through the door and shuts it behind her.
    Anna stands on the top step, her hand between her breasts where Max’s was not a minute ago. She is too nonplussed by the speed of the encounter and what he has said afterward to rejoice over it. She stares into the garden while she waits for her pulse to resume its normal rhythm, watching fat flakes of snow filter so languidly through the air that they appear suspended.
    Naturally, Max is quite right. These evenings should come to an end before either of them get further involved, though the real obstacle—as Max has implied—is not that he is twice her age. The problem, not addressed head-on until tonight, is that Jews are a race apart. And even if Max is not observant, the new laws forbid more than Aryans visiting Jewish physicians: sexual congress between Jews and pure-blooded Deustche is now a crime. Rassenschande, the Nazis call it. Race defilement. It is like the poem Max read to Anna last week—how do the lines run? Something about a dark plain on which armies clash by night. She and Max are pawns on opposing squares, on a board whose edges stretch into infinite darkness, manipulated by giant unseen hands.
    But if Anna can’t recollect the poem in its entirety, she remembers how Max read it, with exaggerated self-mockery, pausing to glance ironically at her between stanzas; his little half-smile; the glint of mischief flashing like light off his spectacles. Anna laughs and runs her tongue out to catch the snow as she descends the steps toward the gate. Of course she will come back.

3
    ONE MORNING IN MARCH 1940, ANNA WAKES WHEN HER father pounds on her bedroom door. She lies blinking and dis-oriented: What time is it? Has she overslept? Gerhard is never up and about before her. She turns her head to the nightstand clock, and when she sees that it is but an hour after dawn, she leaps from the bed, snatches the robe from the door, and runs into the hall. Gerhard is now nowhere to be seen, but Anna hears him crashing about downstairs.
    Vati? Anna calls, following the noise to the kitchen. What is it? Is something wrong?
    Gerhard is snatching plates from the china cabinet, holding each up for inspection before dropping it to the table.
    This, he says, waving a saucer at Anna, this is what’s wrong. Why is so much of the china chipped?
    Anna clutches her dressing gown closed at the throat.
    I’m sorry, Vati, I don’t know. I have been very careful, but it is so old and fragile—Gerhard tosses the dish next to its companions.
    Gerhard tosses the dish next to its companions.
    Nothing to be done, nothing to be done, he mutters.
    He yanks open the icebox and thrusts his head inside, strands of silver hair hanging over his forehead.
    Leftovers, he says. Carrots and potatoes. Half a bottle of milk. Half a loaf of bread— Is this all there is?
    Why, yes, Vati, I haven’t yet gone to the market today, it’s far too early, so—
    Gerhard slams the door closed.
    There is nothing in this house fit for a chambermaid to eat, let alone decent company, he says. You must go immediately. Get meat. Veal or venison if they have any. Vegetables. Dessert! You must spare no expense.
    Yes, of course, Vati, but what—
    Gerhard charges from the room, leaving Anna staring after him. She has been an unwilling student of her father’s erratic behavior her whole life, alert as a fawn, calibrating her every response to his whims. But nothing in Gerhard’s mercurial moods has prepared Anna for his invasion of her territory,